Do wind turbines kill all the birds? Or is it the cats instead?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Donald J. Trump often cites a very questionable number. Then he shows a lack of credibility by continuing to repeat it - even after it has been debunked. A number also needs to be put into context. How does it compare with other related numbers?

 

Back on June 2, 2016, there is an article by Vanessa Schipani at FactCheck.org titled Trump’s Hot Air on Wind Energy which said that:

 

“Scientific studies have come up with a wide range of mean estimates concerning bird mortality due to wind farms – from 20,000 to 573,000 bird deaths per year. But no study has estimated that wind farms presently kill 1 million birds a year, as Trump claimed.

 

 …A 2013 Nature study by Loss and others estimated that ‘free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds’ in the U.S. annually. But the researchers added, ‘Un-owned cats, as opposed to owned pets, cause the majority of this mortality.’

 In another study published in the journal The Condor in 2014, Loss and colleagues also estimated ‘that between 365 [million] and 988 million birds … are killed annually by building collisions in the U.S., with roughly 56% of mortality at low-rises, 44% at residences, and <1% at high-rises.’”

There is another article by Sophie Lewis at CBS News on October 23, 2020 titled Trump claims wind energy “kills all the birds.” Cats and windows are actually much more to blame. She said:

 

“During Thursday night's final presidential debate between the president and former Vice President Joe Biden, Mr. Trump reiterated his stance against wind energy with a peculiar claim: It ‘kills all the birds.’ 

 ‘I know more about wind than you do,’ Mr. Trump told Biden when moderator Kristen Welker turned to the topic of climate change. ‘It's extremely expensive. Kills all the birds. It's very intermittent. Got a lot of problems.’ "

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

A more recent article by Hannah Ritchie in By the Numbers on January 30, 2024 titled How many birds do wind farms kill? had the statistics that are shown above in a horizontal bar chart with a logarithmic scale. Cats killed 2400 million birds, while wind turbines killed just 1.2 million. So cats killed 2000 times as many as wind turbines! And cats were one of six categories that killed more birds than wind turbines did.

 

There is also an article by Joe Schwarcz at the McGill Office for Science and Society on October 11, 2024 titled The Windmills in Donald Trump’s Mind. And another article by Michael Doyle at E&E News on September 12, 2025 is titled Wind turbines aren’t the biggest threat to birds.

 

An image of wind turbines in Power County, Idaho was cropped from this one at Wikimedia Commons.  

 

 

The Extended Date/Time Format (EDTF) is a standard digital way for listing dates and times

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On this blog I refer to dates for articles, etc. in the usual American format of Month_ Day,_Year. But I am aware that the British instead put the Day first.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a standard way of listing dates and times using only numbers called the Extended Date/Time Format (EDTF), as shown above, with dashes between date items and colons between time items using a 24-hour clock.

 

The Library of Congress has an article on February 4, 2019 about this Extended Date/Time Format (EDTF). And Wikipedia has a page on the International Standard for it, which is ISO 8601. Markus Kuhn at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center has an article with A summary of the international standard date and time notation.

 

Finally, there is a very detailed 23-page pdf article by Annamarie C. Klose, Scott Goldstein, and Morris S. Levy in Library Resources and Technical Services on October 2025 titled It’s About Time and subtitled Use of the Extended Date/Time Format in the Digital Public Library of America.

 

 

A xkcd cartoon about holes we have drilled in the earth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An xkcd cartoon by Randall Munroe on July 1, 2026 (shown above) is simply titled Holes. Its vertical scale extends from 4,000 meters above sea level to 12,000 meters below it. Details shown on it are discussed at Explain Xkcd.

 

The Bingham Canyon open-pit copper mine near Salt Lake City is shown at the upper left. I blogged about it on July 15, 2011 in a post titled What can we say about a really big hole in the ground?

 

At the lower right Randall shows the two deepest holes, at almost 12,000 meters (or 12 km). How far have we gone relative to the center of the earth? The radius of the earth averages 6,371 km. So we have drilled 0.19% of the way to the center – barely scratching the surface.

 

 

Why don’t we have better and recent photo or video evidence for UFOs, Bigfoot, yeti, demons, and ghosts?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I first got serious about photography and bought a single-lens reflex camera (Minolta XG-M) 45 years ago in 1981. Back then to take a still photo my camera first needed to be loaded with a roll of film. Then I had to manually focus it. The camera had auto exposure, so once I set the aperture it would select the correct exposure time. After taking each picture I had to advance the film. And for video your camera needed film (or tape) and a battery.

 

The iPhone appeared on January 9, 2007 – almost two decades ago. Now many of us (~93% of the global population) are carrying around smartphones which only take a few seconds to prepare for recording either still images or video. There should be zillions of high-resolution still images and video of UFOs and other paranormal subjects. If not, then they just are tall tales.

 

An article by Heslley Machado Silva in Skeptic magazine on February 26, 2026 asks Where Have All the UFOs, Yeti, Demons, and Ghosts Gone? She says that:

 

“Over the past decades, we have witnessed a quiet yet decisive transformation in the history of human beliefs: the apparent disappearance of major paranormal phenomena that for millennia fueled mythologies, religions, folklore, and countless reports of supposed extraordinary manifestations. UFOs hovered over mountains and deserts; colossal creatures such as Bigfoot, the Yeti, or the Sasquatch roamed remote forests; spirits, apparitions, and ectoplasmic entities materialized in abandoned mansions; miracles occurred before the eyes of the devout; demonic possessions defied rational explanation. Today, all these phenomena seem to have taken permanent leave, an intriguing coincidence emerging precisely at the moment humanity begins to carry in its pockets (or better yet, in its hands) ultra-high-definition cameras capable of recording every detail of daily life, or any anomaly, with unprecedented precision.

 

…. beliefs persist and remain widespread, but the supposed phenomena that should generate clear and reproducible evidence seem increasingly absent precisely at a moment when we possess technology capable of recording them with great clarity. This shift invites a skeptical exercise: Why have paranormal and supernatural apparitions disappeared exactly when it became possible to document them unequivocally? For centuries, human testimony was the primary source of such accounts. However, scientific literature consistently demonstrates that testimony, even when sincere, constitutes extremely weak evidence: It is susceptible to perceptual illusions, cognitive biases, cultural expectations, and reconstructed (and often false) memories.

 

…. From a methodological standpoint, this persistent absence of records is consistent with analyses in the philosophy of science applied to paranormal claims: If a phenomenon supposedly interacts with the physical world, it should be detectable by physical instruments; if it never is, despite the exponential growth in instrument sensitivity, then its existence becomes an increasingly implausible hypothesis.”

 

Look at Bigfoot as an example. An Instragram post by Adam Thorn on October 20, 2022 says that:

 

“On this day 55 years ago, the famous Patterson-Gimlin film was made. This was, and still is the best video footage ever taken of a Bigfoot (nicknamed Patty).”

 

The Wikipedia page on Bigfoot refers to it as a one-minute film. Why don’t we instead have something from the past two decades – both longer and clearer?  

 

A cartoon of a UFO was adapted from one at OpenClipArt.

 

 

Who is a pseudoexpert?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a useful article by Joffrey Fuhrer et al. in Frontiers in Psychology on November 11, 2021 titled Pseudoexpertise: A Conceptual and Theoretical Analysis. Their abstract says:

 

“Some people publicly pretend to be experts while not being ones. They are pseudoexperts, and their presence seems to be ubiquitous in the current cultural landscape. This manuscript explores the nature and mechanisms of pseudoexpertise.

 

We first provide a conceptual analysis of pseudoexperts based on prototypical cases of pseudoexpertise and recent philosophical work on the concept of expertise. This allows us to propose a definition that captures real-world cases of pseudoexpertise, distinguishes it from related but different concepts such as pseudoscience, and highlights what is wrong with pseudoexpertise.

 

Next, based on this conceptual analysis, we propose a framework for further research on pseudoexpertise, built on relevant empirical and theoretical approaches to cultural cognition. We provide exploratory answers to three questions: why is there pseudoexpertise at all; how can pseudoexperts be successful despite not being experts; and what becomes of pseudoexperts in the long run. Together, these conceptual and theoretical approaches to pseudoexpertise draw a preliminary framework from which to approach the very troubling problem posed by persons usurping the capacities and reputations of genuine experts.”

 

I have discussed one well-known pseudoexpert in a post on October 7, 2025 titled Surrounded by bad books from Thomas Erikson. In that post I mentioned that:

 

“An article edited by Lotten Kalenius from the Swedish Skeptics Association (VoF) on April 15, 2024 is titled One of Sweden’s biggest scientific bluffs which discusses the book and Thomas Erikson. It has a section titled Is Erikson an authority in behavioural science? When he was looked up: 

 

‘So, we used Ladok, the register of everyone who has studied at Swedish colleges and university, to see if we could find the courses taken by Erikson. There was no-one with his name and birthdate registered. In fact, Erikson’s professional background is in sales, first for the bank Nordea and then running his own business training salespeople. It is most likely that his only educational background is, at best, the Swedish equivalent of a high school diploma.’ 

 

Lotten noted that Erikson was named Fraudster of the Year in 2018 by VoF and also added:

 

“He has as much right as my poodle to call himself a behavioural scientist.”

 

Guests on the Coast to Coast AM late-night radio show often are pseudoexperts who discuss their poorly researched books or videos.

 

The cartoon was adapted from the March 17, 1897 issue of Puck magazine at the Library of Congress.

 

 

Polystyrene foam revealed by a demonstration

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

There is an interesting article by Joe Schwarcz at the McGill Office for Science and Society on June 9, 2026 titled The Case of the Missing Coffee Cup. He describes a demonstration:

 

“It is a demonstration that never fails to draw oohs and ahhs from students. Pour a small amount of acetone into the bottom of a beaker and drop in a foamed plastic coffee cup. It instantly seems to melt into the liquid and within seconds just vanishes.

Of course, matter cannot just vanish, but it can change from one form into another. Like sugar dissolving in water, the plastic dissolves in the acetone. How can so much plastic dissolve so quickly in so little acetone? Because there is actually very little plastic in that coffee cup.

Yet that little plastic has been expanded by being filled with gas bubbles, much like blowing up a balloon. As the plastic dissolves, the air is released, and we have an apparent magical effect.”

I repeated it using a cubical sample of polystyrene foam insulation placed in a glass custard cup as shown above. When acetone was added, it became just a small puddle. That got even smaller after the acetone evaporated.

A Wikipedia page for Polystyrene has a section on Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) – commonly known as Styrofoam.

 

 

 

 

Do Disfluencies Increase With Age? Evidence From a Sequential Corpus Study

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a detailed article by Eleonora J. Beier, Suphasiree Chantavarin, and Fernanda Ferreira at Psychology and Aging on March 27, 2026 (pages 203 to 218) titled Do Disfluencies Increase With Age? Evidence From a Sequential Corpus Study of Disfluencies. In their fifth paragraph they explain what they focused on:

 

“Disfluencies have been identified at different levels of production, such as prosodic (e.g., improper stress), lexical (e.g., repetitions), and syntactic (e.g., phrase revisions). Other types of disfluencies include filled pauses (e.g., um, uh), lexical fillers (e.g., well, you know), and silent pauses. In addition, fluency can be assessed by measuring a person’s speech rate, or the speed with which they talk. In this study, we focus on filled pauses (um, uh), repeats (e.g., went to the the store), and repairs (e.g., I think- I believe that …), as well as speech rate.”

 

The abstract says:

 

“Speech disfluencies such as repeated words and pauses provide information about the cognitive systems underlying speech production. Understanding whether older age leads to changes in speech fluency can therefore help characterize the robustness of these systems over the life span. Older adults have been assumed to be more disfluent, but current evidence is minimal and contradictory. Particularly noteworthy is the lack of longitudinal data that would help establish whether a given individual’s disfluency rates change over time. This study examines changes in disfluency rates through a sequential design with a longitudinal component, involving the analysis of 325 recorded interviews conducted with 91 individuals at several points in their lives, spanning the ages of 20–94 years. We analyzed the speech of these individuals to assess the extent to which they became more disfluent in later interviews. We found that, with older age, individuals spoke more slowly and repeated more words. However, older age was not associated with other types of disfluencies such as filled pauses (uh’s and um’s) and repairs.

 

Overall, this study provides evidence that, although age itself is not a strong predictor of disfluencies, age leads to changes in other speech characteristics among some individuals (i.e., speech rate and indicators of lexical and syntactic complexity), and those changes in turn predict the production of disfluencies over the life span. These findings help resolve previous inconsistencies in this literature and set the stage for future experimental work on the cognitive mechanisms underlying changes in speech production in healthy aging.”

 

And their conclusions are:

 

“We have presented results from a corpus study of conversational speech to quantify age-related changes in speech fluency sequentially rather than cross-sectionally. We found that older adults spoke more slowly, consistent with previous reports (Castro & James 2014; Gordon et al., 2019; Horton et al., 2010)

and we observed that they produced more repeated words. At the same time, older adults did not produce more repairs or filled pauses, nor was there an effect of age on all three types of disfluencies combined.

 

Our results show that whether a relationship between age and disfluency is observed depends on the type of disfluency measured, which in turn helps explain previous inconsistent findings. Overall, we suggest that while age is not a strong predictor of fluency measures other than speech rate, there are large individual differences in how other speech characteristics change with age, even in relatively high-functioning older adults, reflecting the trade-off between slower processing speed (Salthouse, 1996; Salthouse & Meinz, 1995) and accumulated vocabulary and language experience (Ramscar et al., 2014). Thus, some individuals slow down their speech as they age—a change associated with higher lexical diversity and the use of less frequent words but also more filled pauses—whereas others do not.

 

Our findings challenge the prevalent assumption that older age leads to more disfluent speech by showing that other changes in speech production (i.e., overall speech rate, word frequency, lexical diversity, and sentence length) are better predictors of disfluencies than age.”

 

The cartoon was modified from the center of an image at Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Should we worry about getting cancer from eating burnt toast?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not really. In 2025 Joe Schwarcz published a book titled Better Not Burn Your Toast: The Science of Food and Health. Although there potentially is an acrylamide hazard there is little risk. (I don’t like the taste so I just take a butter knife and scrape off the thin black burnt top layer). A more recent article by Joe Schwarcz at the McGill Office for Science and Society on April 24, 2026 titled Just How Much Should You Worry About Eating That Burnt Toast? discusses it:

 

“Acrylamide forms when the amino acid asparagine and some sugars, mainly glucose, fructose and galactose are heated together to a high temperature. Since asparagine and these sugars are present in many foods and since roasting, baking and frying are common cooking techniques, ingestion of acrylamide is unavoidable. But how much should we worry about its carcinogenicity? 

 

…. In rodents treated with acrylamide, usually in their drinking water, carcinogenic effects begin to be noted when they have consumed about 0.5 mg per kg body weight per day.

 

…. The acrylamide content of many foods has been determined in the lab and human exposure can be calculated from food frequency questionnaires. Typical human exposure turns out to be about 0.3 to 0.6 micrograms per kg body weight per day. This is a thousand times less than the minimal dose that can cause cancer in test animals!” [1 mg = 1000 micrograms]

 

There is another article from Joe Schwarcz in the Montreal Gazette on November 6, 2015 titled The Right Chemistry: No, eating a hotdog is not the same as smoking in which he discusses acrylamide from eating French fries:

 

“Before long scary headlines appear in the lay press: ‘Bacon poses same cancer risk as cigarettes!’ People panic and industry attempts to sooth fears with arguments about poor-quality research, cherry-picked data and calculations about the gross amounts of food that would have to be eaten for the claimed effect to arise: ‘One would have to consume over 150 pounds of French fries every day in order to increase the risk of cancer from acrylamide.’ or, ‘just because we can measure something does not mean the levels are toxic; for farmed salmon, PCB levels were about 3 per cent of the allowable limit of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, the World Health Organization and the European Union.’ ”

 

And there are also web pages titled Acrylamide and Cancer Risk both from the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute.

 

Recent research is discussed in a massive (27-page pdf) article by Burhan Basaran, Burcu Cuvalci, and Guzin Kaban in Food magazine on January 11, 2023 titled Dietary Exposure and Cancer Risk: A Systematic Approach to Human Epidemiological Studies.  Their conclusions are:

 

“Acrylamide, whose presence in foods was shared with the public in 2002 and whose importance has been increasing in our lives since then, still contains many unknowns in terms of its formation mechanism, its level in foods and its effects on health. This uncertainty is a major concern when considering the potential risks of acrylamide. Therefore, more information should be obtained about all the factors that may be caused by dietary acrylamide exposure, and by managing this information, meaningful policies for public health should be produced. The high level of acrylamide in foods such as French fries, bread, biscuits and coffee, which have an important place in our daily life and which we can easily reach and consume throughout life, is an important issue that should be considered for our health. Therefore, many researchers have discussed various aspects of acrylamide, and research is still ongoing today.

In the light of the information obtained in this study, it is quite difficult to say clearly that there is a positive relationship between dietary acrylamide exposure and cancer types. In addition, no direct relationship was found with dietary acrylamide exposure on organs or systems. The lack of a standardized measurement method used by researchers also prevents the studies from being comparable. In this context, it seems that more research is needed to say whether exposure to acrylamide based on nutrition is a risk factor for developing various types of cancer. In order to obtain reliable results in explaining the relationship between dietary acrylamide exposure and cancer, it is very important that future research includes more people and foods. In addition, factors such as physical inactivity, harmful alcohol use, dyslipidemia, obesity and different chronic diseases should be considered as parameters in studies.

Additionally, databases should be established in order to evaluate dietary acrylamide exposure, and the accuracy of the information in the databases should be tested and revised according to the new information obtained. The relationship between dietary acrylamide exposure and cancer risk is unclear. It is necessary to develop new evaluation methods that detect acrylamide and other similar compounds that can lead to clinical pictures, which is the end point of the disease, such as cancer. In this respect, acrylamide and other similar compounds should be included in health policies, and researchers should be supported in terms of information and resources. In addition, legislation on foods with high levels of acrylamide should be developed.”

The image of burnt toast came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Bixonimania is a fake disease, but artificial intelligence told people it was real

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Wikipedia page says that:

 

“Bixonimania is a fake disease invented by researchers to examine artificial intelligence and its ability to utilize information in medical and healthcare applications. The disorder, with symptoms of sore eyes and darkening around them (‘periorbital hyperpigmentation’), is supposedly caused by blue light from screens.”   

 

One article about it by Chris Stokel-Walker at Nature on April 7, 2026 is titled Scientists invented a fake disease. AI told people it was real. A second article by Lucia Auerbach at Inc. on April 10, 2026 is titled Scientists Invented a Fake Disease Caused by Blue Light – Now It’s in Medical Papers. And it added:

 

“There were also dozens of easter eggs designed to clue readers in to the fact that the condition was made up. The lead researcher, Lazljiv Izgubljenovic, is a fake name and they work at a fake university, Asteria Horizon University, in a fake town, Nova City, California. One paper’s acknowledgements thanked ‘Professor Maria Bohm at The Starfleet Academy for her kindness and generosity in contributing with her knowledge and her lab onboard the USS Enterprise’. Both papers say they were funded by ‘the Professor Sideshow Bob Foundation for its work in advanced trickery. This work is a part of a larger funding initiative from the University of Fellowship of the Ring and the Galactic Triad.’ “

 

Sideshow Bob (also known as Dr. Robert Terwilliger) is a cartoon character - Bart Simpson’s nemesis in The Simpsons. A third article by Rebecca Watson at skepchick on April 15, 2026 is titled ChatBots are Diagnosing Diseases that Don’t Exist Based on Blog Posts.

 

The doctor cartoon was adapted from OpenClipArt.

 

 

A very useful book on the Science of Cleaning by Italian chemistry professor Dario Bressanini

 

 

 

There is a very useful 2024 book by Dario Bressanini titled The Science of Cleaning: Use the power of chemistry to clean smarter, easier, and safer. A  preview is at Google Books. He discusses what works (a lot), what is useless, and what is dangerous. His twelve chapters and their starting page numbers are:

 

 1] Clean and Dirty, 6

 2] Acids and Bases, 14

 3] Limescale, 30

 4] Soaps, 50

 5] Detergents, 68

 6] Chlorine-Based Bleach, 92

 7] Oxygen-Based Bleach, 110

 8] Laundry, 120

 9] Dishes, 150

10] Disinfectants, 174

11] Baking Soda, 206

12] Household Surfaces, 224  

 

One useless mixture is described in his detailed section on pages 24 to 26 titled Baking Soda and Vinegar: a mixture that makes no sense. The reaction is shown above. He says:

 

“Every time someone suggests mixing vinegar and baking soda to remove a stain or unblock a drain, a chemist somewhere combusts. I couldn’t say precisely when this particular craze began, but it’s definitely popular. Pick any online cleaning forum or Facebook group, then look for a video on how to unblock the sink, clean the carpet, or degrease a frying pan – or follow a few influencers or pick through the hand hints section of a modern home magazine – and it won’t be long before you begin to hear the inexorable chant in your head ‘Vinegar and baking soda, vinegar and baking soda, mix them quickly and watch the magic.’

 

It's a pity that not only does mixing them not work, it can even be counterproductive. I know many of you are thinking, ‘But everyone is saying it!’ Well, I’m afraid that everyone is wrong. No matter how many times we repeat something false, it doesn’t become true. As I explained above, baking soda is basic while vinegar is acidic. When mixed, they react instantly to produce water, carbon dioxide, and sodium acetate, a mildly basic substance with absolutely no cleaning properties. Likewise if you mix – in the correct quantities – two highly corrosive substances like lye and hydrochloric acid. The result is an innocuous water and sodium chloride mixture: salt water, in other words. This happens because in chemical reactions, the properties of the original substances disappear as the substances themselves no longer exist, having chemically transformed. Therefore, it makes absolutely no sense to mix substances that react with each other.

 

I realize, however, that it might be too flippant to dismiss vinegar and baking soda in this way. As a chemist. I’ve often wondered how such an inaccurate piece of advice could have become so popular. It wouldn’t be the first time a wholly incorrect or ineffective home or traditional remedy has propagated at such speed and with such fervor. Kitchen and cooking tips are an excellent case in point, and some of the popular claims about how to clean or keep our kitchens hygienic are so wildly inaccurate that they shouldn’t be given the time of day. Why would throwing coffee grounds down the sink help unclog it?

 

 Anyway, the habit of mixing vinegar and baking soda is so common, and its promoters are so convinced of its effectiveness, that I decided to take a closer look. I spent a long time thinking about it until I eventually identified three reasons this urban legend has taken such a strong hold.

 

The first is psychological: When vinegar (or lemon juice) touches baking soda, it instantly fizzes, producing a very impressive cloud of foam and bubbles. It may look like something special is happening, but it’s still just carbon dioxide with no detergent properties. It you put it in the kitchen sink, the bubbles may drag up some of the dirt from the pipes and you may interpret this as a cleaning miracle. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news: It isn’t.

 

The second reason is the comforting knowledge that both vinegar and baking soda are edible, so they must be completely harmless. Everywhere we turn, we’re bombarded with warnings and ads fueling concerns for our health and the environment, suggesting – incorrectly and often dishonestly – that normal cleaning products, the ones ‘made of stuff with complicated names we don’t understand,’ are hazardous for our health. Conversely, there’s no denying that if you buy a product to unlock the kitchen sink, it will have a warning symbol blazoned across the label. For example, as I said earlier, lye should be used with caution, but it’s precisely its corrosiveness that enables it to unclog your sink. So if you pick up a magazine or follow an influencer and both tell you to use a much safer mix of vinegar and baking soda instead of the more dangerous lye, the temptation to believe is difficult to resist, especially if you’ve forgotten the chemistry you learned in school.

 

I’ve no doubt that many of you reading this will be ready to swear that your mixture ‘worked’ – that the last time you used it, it really did clean the thing you set out to clean.

 

This brings me to my third reason for this phenomenon, which is strictly chemical. I said earlier that vinegar and baking soda (just like lye and hydrochloric acid) cancel each other out, but only if you use the correct quantities of the two reactants. I’ll save you the calculations, but a liter of ordinary 6-percent vinegar requires exactly 84 grams of baking soda to react fully and produce a solution of water, carbon dioxide, and sodium acetate. Or, if you prefer, 100 ml of vinegar reacts fully with 8.4 grams of baking soda. After the reaction, both the baking soda and the acetic acid originally present in the vinegar no longer exist. I’m pretty certain none of the concoctions touted as the remedy of all cleaning ills contain exactly these quantities, which is the key to understanding why this mixture is believed to work miracles. If you mix less than 8.4 grams of baking soda with 100 ml of vinegar, the baking soda completely disappears when the two substances finish reacting, and all that is left is the excess acetic acid that didn’t react. Vice versa, if you add more baking soda, the acetic acid disappears and excess baking soda is left. It is the addition of the leftover, unused reactants that makes the mixture look like it is working.

 

There are generally two types of recipes for mixing vinegar with baking soda: hose with an overabundance of vinegar, which create a watery solution, and those with an overabundance of baking soda, where the latter is barely wetted by the vinegar to form a paste. When the leftover reactant is acetic acid, it is still active to a degree against any limescale crusting up faucets, lining pipes, or stopping water from draining properly. This is why the mixture seems to work, even if you’re only using what was left after the reaction and not the full 100 ml you started out with. You’re wasting vinegar and baking soda to create a liquid that is much less effective.

 

Some people even recommend making the mixture in advance and keeping it in a bottle. I hope you’re beginning to see why this makes absolutely no sense: As soon as baking soda and vinegar touch, at least one of them ceases to exist. If any cleaning is being done, it is coming from the leftover vinegar.

 

In the other recipes, the cleaning power comes from the abrasive properties of the baking soda, which is useful for scrubbing a crusted frying pan or removing buildup from an oven tray. Here, the amount of vinegar recommended leaves a portion of the baking soda unreacted and lightly moistened, so it can be used to scrape off the dirt. Once again, you’d be better off not wasting vinegar at all and just dampening a small amount of baking soda with water.”   

 

Recent magazine articles also discuss why to not mix baking soda and vinegar. One by Ashley Abramson and Barbara Bellesi Zito at Apartment Therapy on July 31, 2024 is titled Why You Shouldn’t Mix Baking Soda and Vinegar for Cleaning, According to a Chemist. Another by Caroline Mullen in the New York Times – Wirecutter on September 15, 2025 is titled Please stop mixing baking soda and vinegar to make cleaning paste.

 

Regarding what is dangerous there is a box all about bleach on page 98  in white lettering on a dark gray background with a heading of WARNING!:

 

"Never, ever, EVER mix bleach with another substance unless you are 100 percent sure what will happen. You should especially avoid combining bleach with acids.

 

Every year, hundreds of people end up in the hospital after intentionally mixing acidic cleaning products with bleach. When bleach comes in contact with an acid, it liberates poisonous chlorine gas, which was used as a chemical weapon in WWI due to its toxicity. Unfortunately, there are a host of toilet cleaners out there that are identical in everything but color, except that some contain bleach and some contain hydrochloric acid. While cleaning the house one busy morning, you could easily finish one bottle and start using another without thinking – but the new bottle happens to contain a hydrochloric acid-based cleaner, and before you know it, you’re choking on chlorine gas.

 

Separating bleach and acids also means avoiding using a toilet that you’ve just poured a bleach-based product into. Urine is acidic, so if it hits the bleach, don’t be surprised when you get a whiff of gas. And don’t forget that vinegar and lemon juice are acids too. Ammonia and bleach are both frequently used around the house. While they’re equally effective cleaners on their own, when combined (which I beg you never to do), they can create a very unwelcome – not to mention highly irritating and toxic – substance called chloramine.

 

Bleach mixed with hydrogen peroxide (which is a weaker oxygen-based bleach) produces an instant whoosh of oxygen bubbles. On its own, oxygen is not toxic, but the fizz is so vigorous that it can easily send splashes of liquid onto your skin and eyes. Please also steer clear of bleach and ethyl alcohol mixtures, which can create a number of organic compounds – from chloroform to acetaldehyde – in varying concentrations.

 

So I’ll say it again: Don’t mix bleach with any cleaning product, really. Ever!”

 

 

Can jokes liven up scientific conferences?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a serious article by Stefano Mammola et al. in the Royal Society Proceedings B for March 2026 (Volume 293, Number 2067) titled Statistically significant chuckles: who is using humor at scientific conferences? The abstract says that:

 

“We’ve all been there: 11.47, swamped by a long stretch of dense scientific talks at a conference. Six slides into a hyper-technical presentation, the speaker suddenly cracks a joke. The room erupts. Shoulders relax. Minds re-engage. Humour is a powerful but underused tool in scientific communication, often sidelined by academic norms that view levity as unprofessional. Social biases can further shape who feels safe joking without risking credibility. 

 

At 14 biology-related conferences, we collected data on humour use across 531 talks. Jokes clustered at the beginnings and ends of talks, with an extra bump in successful jokes midway through. Most jokes (66%) earned only polite chuckles. Humour success was unrelated to the type of joke or form of delivery; however, male speakers told about 0.35 more jokes per talk, and both male and native speakers had a 10% higher probability of eliciting laughter. 

 

This suggests how social dynamics influence who feels comfortable using humour and whose jokes resonate with the audience. Until academia reckons with these biases, humour will remain a privilege. Still, for those brave enough or granted the social licence, a well-placed zinger can turn a forgettable talk into one people actually remember—and perhaps even enjoy.”

 

There were only 870 unique jokes, with 223 speakers telling none. 367 jokes were about situational hiccups, 161 were about subject matter, only 52 were about popular culture unrelated to academia, and 30 were inside jokes about the academic community or conference. 707 were delivered orally, 133 relied on visuals, and just 30 used physical comedy.

 

I found out about this article from another by Phie Jacobs at Science on March 17, 2026 titled Scientific conferences can be a bore. Can jokes liven them up? Yet another is by Nicola James at Nature on March 18, 2026 titled Knock knock, no one’s there. Study finds scientists’ jokes mostly fall flat.

 

The cartoon audience was modified from a couple and another couple at OpenClipArt.

 

 

Chemistry professor Joe Schwarcz explains how the Costco rotisserie chicken lawsuit is frivolous

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an article by Vaidehi Mehta at FindLaw on February 2, 2026 titled Lawsuit over Costco’s preservative-free rotisserie chicken ruffles feathers. He said:

 

“Their legal arguments center on the idea that Costco’s ‘no preservatives’ promise is deceptive because it conflicts with how the product is actually formulated. They allege that sodium phosphate and carrageenan function as chemical preservatives (by buffering pH, chelating metal ions, reducing fat oxidation, preserving texture, and extending shelf life), so a reasonable consumer would not expect a product advertised as having ‘no preservatives’ to contain these ingredients.”

 

But when you look up the Wikipedia articles on sodium phosphate and carrageenan you will find neither is described as being a preservative.

 

Joe Schwarcz is a chemistry professor and runs the McGill Center for Science and Society. His latest article collection book from 2025 is titled Better Not Burn Your Toast: The Science of Food and Health. Another article by Joe Schwarcz at the McGill Office for Science and Society on February 4, 2026 is titled The Frivolous Costco Chicken Lawsuit. He begins by explaining:

 

“Let’s start with the fact that sodium phosphate and carrageenan are not preservatives! Preservatives are substances added to food, other than salt, sugars, vinegar or spices, that prevent spoilage by curbing the growth of bacteria, molds or fungi.” 

Then he goes on to explain what sodium phosphate and carrageenan are and how they function. He ends by pointing out that the high sodium content from salting the chicken instead is a valid dietary concern.

An image of a rotisserie chicken was cropped from this one at Wikimedia Commons.