Skepticism B‑class Low‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Skepticism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of science, pseudoscience, pseudohistory and skepticism related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SkepticismWikipedia:WikiProject SkepticismTemplate:WikiProject SkepticismSkepticism B This article has been rated as B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Archives

Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4

This page has archives. Sections older than 31 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 4 sections are present.

Does this link have the original text? [1] If so, it's probably worth copying to wikisource. Lefty 19:30, 2005 May 6 (UTC)

I authored / edited the original web page referenced above (formerly hosted at circus.com). The idea started at UCSC, and Eric Lechner created a warning sheet designed to be posted on water coolers. I added to it and changed it around, creating a political cause, and posting on the web for the first time in 1994. It was first offically published in print by Analog Magazine. Nathan Zohner later drew media attention to it by using it as the basis for his science exeriment, and the folks at dhmo.org ran with the idea further.

The original Coalition page included my home address along with a request to send an SASE for more information. I received many inquiries via post and email, along with a surprising number of letters from teachers who had asked their students to write reaction papers to it. A few of these are still around on the net: http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/dhmofoot.htm

-Craig Jackson, President of the Coalition to ban DHMO

Could you edit the article to reflect this? - DavidWBrooks 5 July 2005 15:32 (UTC)

I removed this joke because I thought it didn't belong in the article, and wasn't funny enough (sorry):

Also another joke about "dihydrogen monoxide" is this

"I'm allergic to dihydrogen monoxide"

This is also another good joke about dihydrogen monoxide:

person 1: "You know what chemical can dissolve anything"

person 2: "No, what?"

person 1: "dihydrogen monoxide"

person 2: "ooh sounds dangerous"

person 1: "well how did you think the Grand Canyon was formed, by water?"

or

person 1: "It covers over 75% of the world, and your body consists largely of it"

Although I don't have an encyclopedic reference to cite, my Dad told me about the dangers of water-under-a-scary-name, and even mentioned the then-equivalent of a spoofed MSDS, back in the 1970s. He went so far as to explain the joke and draw the conclusion that it played on people's scientific ignorance and knee-jerk fear of big words. 68.110.104.80 (talk) 17:00, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

He probably did. But maybe you are mis-remembering this, combining a real memory about your father warning about something else with subsequent knowledge about DHMO to create an unreal memory that seems true to you. We all do that sort of thing; human memory is incredibly fallible. Which is why wikipedia needs sources. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 23:07, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]