What’s wrong with these pictures
Posted by Phillip on Tue 18 Sep 2012Categories: News , Uncategorized | [11] Comments
Oh dear.
On Twitter this morning, various people have alerted us to a rather shocking TV chemistry blunder. James May, of Top Gear fame, has a series on the BBC called Things you need to know, and last night’s show was about chemistry.
Within the first two minutes of the programme, it became obvious that the people doing the graphics had basically zero chemical knowledge (which is not a problem in itself), and hadn’t even bothered to have one of the chemists they obviously interviewed as part of the show to cast an eye over them (which turns out to be a much bigger problem). As May starts to try and explain what a chemical reaction is, using baking soda and vinegar as an example, this graphic pops up on the screen.
Now that one’s not too bad apart from a missing carbon in the formula for vinegar, those carbons are so tricksy to keep track of! OK, the numbers should be subscript and we have a mixture of some sub- and some not. That’s a fairly harmless error. But there’s also no arrow to suggest this is a reaction and delineate which are the reactants and which the products.
And it gets worse on the next graphic – when the formula of sodium bicarbonate is presented with the three as a superscript rather than a subscript. This is starting to get more dangerous as an error, as the meaning is much more easily confused, and it’s a bigger step away from convention. This isn’t a one-off either – later in the show, when the formula of sodium chlorate (NaClO3) is shown, it also has a superscript three.
But the daddy of the bloopers is still to come. When May describes the structure of acetic acid, things go horribly wrong – the infamous five-valent Texas carbon rears its head.
This is disappointing from the BBC, which is usually very good at science programmes. And to be fair, the overall message of the rest of the programme is OK – chemicals are all around us and aren’t all bad for us, we need them to survive. It’s just a shame that the researchers seem to have dropped the ball a little on this one. Chemistry, particularly structures and formulae, is a language in itself. Using it badly doesn’t help anyone, and it would have taken anyone with even a tiny chemical knowledge to spot these mistakes.
Phillip Broadwith
Tue 18 Sep 2012 at 10:54 am
The first image is also missing a carbon in acetic acid.
Tue 18 Sep 2012 at 11:01 am
I watched this last night and thought it’s target audience was those less exposed to the field.
I can imagine my parents or grandparents would have enjoyed it and found it informative and inspiring.
I watched the program and found it enjoyable and fun, and I think this is where the BBC were trying to head.
Tue 18 Sep 2012 at 11:28 am
Enjoyable science programmes are all well and good, Andy, and I agree that was the main aim of the programme but these errors are still an issue. There’s nothing wrong with basic chemistry if it’s been targeted at an audience with little chemical knowledge but when even that basic chemistry is wrong it’s slightly worrying.
People don’t tend to watch these programmes and remember the exact reactions and formulae but it’s still better to get them right to give people accurate information and to uphold the high standard of science that the BBC normally provides.
Tue 18 Sep 2012 at 11:32 am
Whether the programme was entertaining and interesting or not, these kind of mistakes make our job as chemistry educators more difficult. It should have been checked first!
Tue 18 Sep 2012 at 12:42 pm
Enjoyable and fun is a great goal, but when enjoyable and fun *and* accurate is basically zero extra effort, it seems silly to choose the worse option…
Tue 18 Sep 2012 at 1:24 pm
Nice to see my £160 TV tax is being well spent.
Tue 18 Sep 2012 at 8:06 pm
Shame if you’re going to teach anything you have to get it right.
Tue 18 Sep 2012 at 9:52 pm
Evidentemente el presentador del programa y las personas de la produccion no saben quimica y no se han preocupado en aprender. Tanto la nomenclatura como la estequiometria quimica son altamente protocolares ello permite darle a nuestra ciencia un alcance global, es decir un quimico chino y uno irani con uno peruano y otro de hawaii pueden hablar el mismo idioma quimico con estas reglas. Espero se logre mejorar este “detalle” mediatico.
Thu 20 Sep 2012 at 3:39 pm
After reading about this on Chemistry World vis Twitter, I was intrigued about this BBC TV series. Upon exploration of the BBC website, I tried to download clips to see what I had been missing. When I clicked on the “play arrow”, the clip appeared to download, then abruptly the text “media selection request failed” appeared. After unsuccessfully reattempts, I am appealing to you for advice.
Thu 15 Nov 2012 at 9:33 am
[...] got covered in a variety of chemistry blogs, so I won’t go into details [...]
Fri 16 Nov 2012 at 8:05 pm
The program was sloppy at best and downright offensive to many in its ignorance. It does not matter that the program is aimed at a ‘general’ audience, pupils in schools respect the word of James May and on this occasion that word was nonsense. A schoolboy would get punished for these carelessness in an exam.