{"id":1214,"date":"2011-11-07T13:22:06","date_gmt":"2011-11-07T19:22:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/?p=1214"},"modified":"2011-11-07T13:22:12","modified_gmt":"2011-11-07T19:22:12","slug":"truth-serum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/2011\/11\/07\/truth-serum\/","title":{"rendered":"Truth Serum"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scientists have been given a bad reputation by being inherently literal. But there is a limit to the amount of bullsh*t that I am willing to hear without fighting back.<\/p>\n

I can recall having endless dead-ended conversations about “carbs<\/em>” this and “carbs<\/em>” that. For those of you who may actually have been fortunate enough to avoid hearing such discussions, the reference is to carbohydrate calories taken in from food. The fact of the matter is that people use these terms loosely, and wouldn’t know a carbon from a xenon if it flashed in their face and the valence electrons did a little ditty. With such lack of basic understanding, no wonder people are superb prey for all the homeopathic propaganda.<\/p>\n

The other day I had a nice leisurely walk around my favorite nearby lake, and came home to have a nice hot shower. In the course of my shower I noticed the following hair conditioner product on a shelf (not mine, I don’t have enough hair to merit such a thing):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Truth serum, recently.<\/p><\/div>\n

What the hell IS<\/em><\/strong> “repairing serum<\/strong>?”<\/p>\n

As a scientist who takes things literally, serum is serum. Ain’t that the truth, serum. The dictionary has the following definitions, all related to blood serum:<\/p>\n

Noun<\/h3>\n

serum<\/strong> (plural<\/em>\u00a0serums<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0or<\/em> sera<\/a><\/strong>)<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The clear yellowish fluid obtained upon separating whole blood into its solid and liquid components after it has been allowed to clot. Also called blood serum.<\/li>\n
  2. Blood serum from the tissues of immunized animals, containing antibodies and used to transfer immunity to another individual, called antiserum.<\/li>\n
  3. A watery fluid from animal tissue, especially one that moistens the surface of serous membranes or that is exuded by such membranes when they become inflamed, such as in edema or a blister.<\/li>\n
  4. The watery portion of certain animal fluids, as blood, milk, etc; whey.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Wonderful Wikipedia <\/strong>actually does make a brief mention of “Cosmetic Serum, describing it as: “Cosmetic serum, a cosmetic product that is more expensive than a cream<\/strong><\/em>.”<\/h4>\n

    Great! What a definition! Humor me!<\/p>\n

    It’s time to hold the hair product company (Dove) accountable for their “serum.”<\/p>\n

    I wanted to contact the company and simply ask, “Why do you call this serum?” At least give them a chance to respond. The Dove company internet site had a “contact” section, but this was a dead end. One could ask a question, but given that there was no place to plug in e-mail (see screen shot below), I saw this as another fictitious enterprise:<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a>I tried their to send them a Tweet question, but their setup for Twitter was fixed in a way that one could not Tweet a question to them. And so it goes. ENOUGH!<\/p>\n

    I would recommend they be forced to swallow their own Truth Serum–sounds like the only way we’d get any real answers.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Scientists have been given a bad reputation by being inherently literal. But there is a limit to the amount of bullsh*t that I am willing to hear without fighting back. I can recall having endless dead-ended conversations about “carbs” this … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[554,552,553],"class_list":["post-1214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","tag-false-advertising","tag-serum","tag-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}