Product liability becomes a joke for scientific minds
The fact that I've been disturbing my colleagues by giggling at science-based product liability warnings probably means I ought to write something to explain why. If you, too, find the idea of something innocuous carrying a label that says "WARNING: This product warps space and time in its vicinity" inherently funny, then you're already on my wavelength, but I have to warn you that we're not usual.
I do have an excuse. You might not expect it from someone who writes for a living, but my family, pretty much entirely, are scientists of one form or another. I have a brother in America at the moment who's working on ideas for alternative-fuel cars; his company had one idea that looked highly promising until it turned out worldwide usage of this engine would need more of the essential catalyst than there was in the world. They are not discouraged.
He did come back with a couple of jokes, though. My favourite: A British chemist asks an American one what he works with, and the American says "Aerosols". The UK chemist looks around to check, then says "yes, my colleagues are awful too".
Granted, that's a pronunciation joke, rather than a scientific one. Those labels trying to avoid product liability claims for theoretical physics do depend a little more on a bit of scientific knowledge - try "IMPORTANT NOTICE TO PURCHASERS: The entire physical universe, including this product, may one day collapse back into an infinitesimally small space. Should another universe subsequently re-emerge, the existence of this product in that universe cannot be guaranteed."
There's several things I like about this: that it assumes you know this theory (the Big Crunch); that it's a warning about something so far away in time, and not universally accepted as certain to happen; and that it assumes the survival of some personal injury lawyers to make the compensation claim.
As far as I can tell, the original source of the warnings is the light-hearted "Zero Gravity" section of the American Physical Society's 2000 newsletter, but they've spread to the websites of physics departments around the world. This goes some way toward proving the theory that scientists do have a sense of humour too, and want to share it.
Further evidence for that comes from entertaining names for molecules that have occurred through history - the arsole molecule (an organic compound with a ring structure), moronic acid (found in ancient Egyptian jars), and draculin (found in the saliva of vampire bats) are good examples. It's also nice to know that some arsoles can be aromatic.
One name that didn't get approved is 'ignose', from the Greek for 'don't know' - the discoverer of the molecule didn't know what its structure could be. When this name was turned down, he suggested 'godnose' instead. It turned out to be Vitamin C. Read more about entertaining molecules.
The Ig Nobel awards were set up by the marvellously named Journal of Improbable Research, with the aim of honouring "achievements that first make people LAUGH then make them THINK". Winners have included researchers on the medical side effects of swallowing swords, a scientist with a theory on why woodpeckers don't get headaches, and the discoverer of a method of extracting vanilla flavouring from cow dung. The last had a flavour named after him in a local ice-cream shop.
The Guardian's resident science writer, Ben Goldacre, made a post on his website that indulges in the wonderfully puerile humour that can result from the easy typo that can be made from "hadron" - a subatomic particle, which may be either a baryon or a meson. These pieces, particularly one where the authors meant to talk about hadrons colliding with each other, made me even happier than the product liability warnings.
This may mean the bad jokes are the best, so I end with the worst. What do you do with dead chemists? Barium.
This article may be published on another website free of charge, on the condition that a link is provided from this article to our website: http://www.youclaim.co.uk/product-liability-claims-insurance-for-supplier.htm
