This week our MEDT 3401 class has been looking at a site about DHMO (Dihydrogen Monoxide), and there are a few questions that we are supposed to answer about it. But first I have something to say about it. IT'S JUST WATER PEOPLE!!! It amazes me how many people think that DHMO is really some unknown dangerous toxin. This is the kind of website that should remind us not to place our faith in something we read on the Internet. Not everything you read online is true. Information can be easy to manipulate and even if it is partly true it may not be entirely true. Now, on to the questions about the website.
1. Who wrote or produced the information?
-The website is produced by the United States Environmental Assessment Center, and a guy named Tom Way.
2. What authority or special knowledge does the author have? If the site is credited to an organization, what do you know about that organization?
-The author seems to have a lot of research to back up his claims about DHMO. He talks about surveys and research, but he never cites them in such a way that you can go straight to the research and find out what it really says. The cite is credited to the Environmental Assessment Center. I cannot find any information about the Environmental Assessment Center. I listened to an interview will the author of the site and he said that everything on the website about the dangers of DHMO are true, he just neglected to mention the common name of DHMO on his website. If you go through the site, and remember that he is just talking about water then yeah, most of what you read is true. You can die from accidental inhalation of water, prolonged exposure to solid DHMO, which is ice, can cause severe tissue damage. DHMO is a major component of acid rain, it is a major component of just plain rain too, and gaseous DHMO can cause severe burns. When you talk about these being dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide it sounds really bad, but if you remember that DHMO is water these dangers suddenly don't sound as threatening because they are things that we all encounter everyday.
3. What bias or slant do you detect in the source? What does it say that indicates a bias?
-The site talks about a cover up. It says that the government and the press is trying to hide the dangers of DHMO and that we should support a ban on DHMO. I think the author is bias against the government and the press. and the general population. He is trying to make the government and the press look bad through the false idea of a cover up. In the process of that, he is making the general population look bad because we can't see what he's doing and because we support a ban on water. The athour is also showing us how easily information can be manipulated to make it look scarier, and more dangerous, and that we will fall for it every time if are not well informed.
4. Should DHMO be banned? Why or why not? -No it should not be banned. Why? Because we need it to survive. It makes up roughly 2/3 of the human body.
Sorry 'bout the ranting and raving guys, guess this turned out to be a soap box issue for me. :)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Great point on how he never states the resource so you can actually read it yourself. i did not even notice that.
I thought DHMO was something bad like most people but now i know that it is just water.
Post a Comment