This article, and many others like it, seems to be so anti-science that I'm surprised it didn't end with "And that's if the LHC doesn't vaporise us all first!"

I just get massively incensed with the tone of pieces like this - their strong implication that the pursuit of knowledge is inherently A Bad Thing and the readiness with which they are prepared to be scared is so pervasive that sometimes I honestly get the impression that, to the average person, I must seem like an absolute lunatic for my intellectual pursuits.

For example, I've recently been playing around a lot with the Arduino. An acquaintance of mine, upon seeing my desk strewn with various wires and components, immediately asked "Wow, are you making a bomb or something?" - how crazy is that? Now, this person may not be particularly well versed in science or technology, but the fact that the first thing he thought of when exposed to a bit of it was "BOMB!" could well tell you a little about just how dangerous articles like this one can be once they've become the norm.

Maybe it's just human nature to be scared of things we don't understand, but something seems to be eroding the average person's very desire to understand in the first place. I can't help but think that scaremongering such as this is not helping in the slightest.

(And I apologise for jumping on this article as an excuse to have a bit of a rant, but it just makes me so very, very angry.)