How Regulations Hamper Chemical Hobbyists 610
An anonymous reader writes "Chemical & Engineering News just ran this story that relates how government regulations create a terribly restrictive atmosphere for people who do chemistry as a hobby. (A related story was previously posted.)" The article gives some examples of why hamfisted regulations are harmful even to those who aren't doing the chemistry themselves: "Hobby chemists will tell you that home labs have been the source of some of chemistry's greatest contributions. Charles Goodyear figured out how to vulcanize rubber with the same stove that his wife used to bake the family's bread. Charles Martin Hall discovered the economical electrochemical process for refining aluminum from its ore in a woodshed laboratory near his family home. A plaque outside Sir William Henry Perkin's Cable Street residence in London notes that the chemist 'discovered the first aniline dyestuff, March 1856, while working in his home laboratory on this site and went on to found science-based industry.'"
Regulations (Score:1, Insightful)
Distrust by the masses.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I imagine that any kind of scientific exploration is viewed with distrust and quite a bit of fear. My son has recently discovered the world of electronics, and I feel bad for him since even radio shack doesn't carry what it used to.
I wonder if this shift is endemic in our country, from a nation of strivers to a nation purely of consumers.
--
Keep One Eye Open on Craiglist.com - Search hundreds of communities from one place with one click [bigattichouse.com]
while historical chemical advances (Score:2, Insightful)
have been done by hobbyists, i humbly submit this isn't possible anymore. all of the historical advances made by hobbyists were done decades ago, involving simple concepts. all advances today are not simple, but require the support of an advanced facility, simply because all of the fundamental, simple advances in chemistry have already been scoured
similar to hobbyist game makers of just 20, 30 years ago, and how there is no way they could compete on the same footing with modern mainline game studios and the high end graphical renderings they crank out
however, i also humbly submit that if you want to tinker in your shed, try genetics. genetics is still very much a frontier where the fundamentals are still being worked out, and although much equipment required for genetics research (centrifuges, gel electrophoresis, etc.) are still expensive, none of it is outside the realm of the committed hobbyist
i fully expect to see lone hackers working on the human genome in my lifetime. on the plus side, they break the monopoly of conglomerates who claim intellectual property over our genetic heritage. on the negative side, well, they are hacking the human genome. if the ethical considerations of that will give anyone pause
Re:Regulations (Score:5, Insightful)
There are many responsible people who can tinker with chemicals but there are many irresponsible ones who would end up seriously harming themselves or others, accidentally or on purpose.
And yet we let damn near everyone drive.
Re:Regulations (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you suggesting that these regulations have no effect on the potential for people to discover new things?
I'd argue that irresponsibility can't be fixed by any amount of regulation. Attempts to do so only make it more difficult for the responsible to contribute to society in positive ways.
Bad example... (Score:5, Insightful)
Charles Goodyear figured out how to vulcanize rubber with the same stove that his wife used to bake the family's bread.
You should never use the same equipment for your chemistry as for your other household things. If you're going to do chemistry at home, do it safely. This means having a separate (well-ventilated) room for your work, and using separate ovens, microwave, glassware, and other equipment for your work. Chemical contamination is a real threat. You may look at a chemical reaction and deem all the reactants and products to be safe... but if you make a mistake you may contaminate a room/oven/glassware with a more dangerous side-product. And you do not want to be then ingesting these contaminants (worse, you do not want to expose your family and friends).
So, like I said, be safe and use dedicated equipment for your experiments. (And don't brush your teeth with the toothbrush you use to clean your test tubes.)
Re:Regulations (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:4, Insightful)
More of the same sad shit... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't let people experiment with stuff that they might be able to make a bomb out of, or a meth lab because we law enforcement agents can't tell the difference, and besides, only terrorists and criminals are interested in chemical reactions. right?
That says nothing about the fact that even if it is illegal, terrorists, criminals, and drug czar wannabes will still have their labs. This can only hurt the honest law abiding citizenry.
It's about time we had much less government interference, and more government support of engineering and entrepreneurship in these United States. Do you have any idea what it costs for a safe chem storage locker? If price is not enough, they put regulations out to make it near impossible to do simple things, never mind experiment with any chemicals.
Why would someone want to do that? Hmmm perhaps you might be looking for a heat transfer fluid for a closed system solar power electric generator. Perhaps you are experimenting to find the optimum chemical recipe for heat transfer fluid on a home/earth heating/cooling system for your area. Perhaps you are trying to create a cheap cleaning solution that is environmentally friendly. There are hundreds of reasons that someone might want to set up a chemistry lab at home for hobby use. I mean seriously, if you find a cheap clean easy method to convert old motor oil to some sort of valid fuel... go for it. Perhaps you find the exact chemical soup required for quickly biodegrading rubbish or plastics in a quick ecologically sound manner.
The roomba did not come from government research facilities or even Boeing or Lockheed-Martin. Why should we expect that all chemical discoveries would come from commercial enterprises? That's just fucking stupid.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't bring about a free society by increasing oppression. Criminals are an excuse for oppression, but they are not a _reason_ for it.
Re:Doomsday. (Score:5, Insightful)
Enough said.
Re:Regulations (Score:5, Insightful)
Worse yet, we let them pro-create. Protect them from blowing themselves up and let them create little replicas of themselves. The antitheses of evolution.
People fear what they don't understand (Score:3, Insightful)
America's culture of the 21st century is a culture of fear. People fear what they don't understand and because of the modern age of fear selling tactics. If people actually learned something in schools instead of public school being a social experiment, then the public might understand intelligent hobbyists such as this.
Instead, the media has labeled every science hobbyist as a mass murderer waiting fora chance to unleash their techno-death on the world!!! Mwuhahahah!!! Then it will be robot apocalypse!! Dogs and cats living together!! Mass hysteria!! YES!!!!
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you can thank the drug warriors for our loss of rights. We drug users are simply engaging in our right to pursue happiness. Nobody has a right to decide what does and doesn't go into my body except for me.
The intense violence and total terror you see, is the result not of drugs, but of a black market run rampant. No society in history has ever gotten rid of drug use. We can't even keep drugs out of maximum security prisons, what makes you think we can keep drugs out of a free society? Do you honestly think the society would still be free if we did? Of course not. The solution, as with alcohol, is regulation not prohibition.
Though, I must say, excellent troll. I almost believed you believe that garbage.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:5, Insightful)
In a free society, we should be free to make the choice of what we want to put into our bodies. It's hopeless for the government to try to regulate such a frivilous thing. If the war on drugs was gone, and replaced with an honest education campaign (something that goes farther then saying "drugs are bad"), along with the government being able to oversee the production and distribution of these drugs, they would be safer. There wouldn't be the risk of spreading AIDS through needles, or having your substance cut with something else resulting in overdose. Many illegal drugs, such as cannabis, mushrooms, and LSD are relatively safe and I don't think exposing them to our culture would have to much of a negative effect - as long as people are well educated.
Not just for home chemists (Score:5, Insightful)
Without wishing to sound like a libertarian, this is true for a great many things that are regulated - from the outside those regulations either a) are totally uninteresting, or b) seem pretty reasonable. But when you're on the inside of whatever activity is being regulated it's often the case that you can see how stupid/harmful regulation is.
It's not unlike watching a news report on TV about something you're familiar with. You see how badly they butcher the subject, and then start wondering what they do to subjects you don't know about...
Re:Regulations (Score:3, Insightful)
This might make sense except that restrictions on who can drive are a lot less restrictive. Even though you'd have to be manufacturing high explosives to get anywhere as dangerous as a car.
Re:while historical chemical advances (Score:3, Insightful)
similar to hobbyist game makers of just 20, 30 years ago, and how there is no way they could compete on the same footing with modern mainline game studios and the high end graphical renderings they crank out
Good analogy.
Difference is, game hobbyists are still able to tinker today with the technology that was considered state-of-the-art 30 years ago, and that tinkering is still producing fruit. If you'd asked Atari's hardware designers in 1977 whether the 2600 VCS console would ever be able to play a clip of full-motion video, you'd be laughed at. A couple years ago, homebrewers made it happen.
This access to the trailing edge isn't necessarily available to hobbyists in other fields anymore. It's a crapshoot whether an electronics hobbyist will be able to find a breadboard kit and a soldering iron in his local Radio Shack anymore. Modern chemistry sets don't have anything more dangerous/interesting than phenolpthalien solution. And good luck buying a model rocket engine without submitting to a criminal background check anymore.
Re:Have you seen Breaking Bad? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Another problem is addictive personalities are going to be addicted. Period. Once there is an available supply the addiction kicks in. Societal norms, "morals" and fear of being ostracized prevents all of the addictive personalities from obtaining their first hit today. Erase that and we will likely have vastly larger numbers of people that are going to be serious, full-time drug users with no possibility of contributing to society.
Absent regulation, where exactly do we go? Freely distribute drugs to drive the prices down? Rely on genetics to sort out the non-productive drug users in a few generations? I don't think so. None of these solutions really work very well as shown by the pretty much free reign drugs have had since the 1950s in the US.
Re:Doomsday. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is kind of like gun laws. All it really does is keep the stuff out of the hands of law abiding citizens. Most criminals aren't going to care if the substances they are using are illegal for them to have if they're going to use them to break the law anyway.
Re:while historical chemical advances (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but that's got to be one of the most naive things I've ever heard. Considering all polymers, there are arbitrarily many different permutations of the known elements available in a pure substance and then considering all mixtures thereof we have more different concoctions than can be enumerated. While certainly the properties of many of these have been well-understood or could be inferred from known experiment, there are many that await only someone with imagination to discover and apply.
Case in point: http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2005-11/11-year-quest-create-disappearing-colored-bubbles [popsci.com]
Reading your analogy about games, http://www.newgrounds.com/ [newgrounds.com] might also be an eye-opener. Many of those games are whipped up by talented hobbyists but still get a lot of play.
~Ben
There we go again ... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's quite possible to make explosives and poisons using only household chemicals. *sighs* All it takes is a few weeks of study on the Internet, a decent library, and some systematic note-taking.
But you can't stop that sort of thing without prohibiting oft-used household chemicals. So it's not widely talked about.
The general public hasn't got a clue about what is or isn't dangerous, and neither do most of the Authorities. Starting with the police.
It's long since ceased to be about ensuring safety for neighbours and society at large, it's simply cover-your-backside regulation on part of otherwise clueless officials.
It's Ok that something's done to prevent people from building complete plastique factories and amphetamine laboratories in their basements, but with a little common sense and some understanding of chemicals it's s completely doable to safeguard the neighbourhood.
Register people with home laboratories if you must, but leave them alone. Like HAM radio amateurs.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is precisely the sort of thing that Sagan worries about in Demon-Haunted World.
When science is a distrusted, mysterious thing that only people in white coats and with proper licenses can hope to understand, let alone do, how can we educate new scientists? Will we encourage children to enter the profession? Can we make informed decisions in our political process if we view science in this way?
Re:I can see the the other side as well. (Score:3, Insightful)
Is this hypothetical idiot making nitroglycerin in a packed elevator? Do you have any real idea how much high explosive it takes to cause the kind of mayhem you're envisioning?
You want to see something that will really freak you out?
Go read up on Tannerite [tannerite.com]. This stuff is loads of fun, 50 state legal, and available over the internet. What you'll find even more amazing is that as far as I know, not a single person has died from it's use.
Re:Regulations (Score:5, Insightful)
No! The only way you could have the antithesis of evolution is if the rules of the universe were changed such that the things more likely to survive became less numerous over time.
What you are doing is projecting some kind of value judgment onto a natural process, which should be rejected by the logical mind. If you're so concerned about the unintelligent procreating over the more intellectual people in an overthrow of evolution, perhaps you should consider what larger, smarter species various insects might have driven to destruction over the last 400 million years.
That said, human society is about more than just natural selection; we have the reasoned ability to choose what is better long-term, rather than simply allowing immediate survival to determine everything.
Sorry for the rant, but if you let these ideas stick, they tend to spread.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The sad thing is people actually believe what you say.
And it's even more depressing how easy it would be to solve all those problems.
If I was currently selling illegal drugs in the US and wanted to continue to rake in giant piles of money I'd be making political donations to whoever was pushing the "tough on drugs" laws with a little note along the lines of "keep up the good work mate".
Why? Well if it was legalised I'd be ruined!
Who was hurt most by the ending of prohibition? The mob of course, they wanted it to never end.
Legal distributors selling safer cheaper drugs would push them out of the market entirely.
The best thing that can happen for them is for a competitor to be busted, they can just expand into their former market overnight. Sure they might be busted themselves but the organisations which survive and grow will be the ones which are best at avoiding getting caught.
I've heard that during prohibition foreign alcohol producers quietly lobbied to keep prohibition since consumption didn't go down, the American producers were pushed out of business and import taxes went the way of the morning mist.
Few people seem to be able to graps this, drug laws just create a situation where there's a group of people distributing drugs with a large financial incentive to expand their market.
Want to get rid of the drug dealers? It only takes a few easy and cheap steps.
Step 1: Provide free high quality drugs to people already addicted with no criminal penalties or consequences to people who come forward and ask for them.
Step 2: You're basicly done, you've knocked the bottom out of the drug buisness, you are now the distributor and you have no reason to try to get more people addicted. Drug dealers can no longer make any profit out of getting kids addicted since they just go to you when it starts costing money.
Much much much much cheaper than the massive failure that the war on drugs is.
Re:while historical chemical advances (Score:5, Insightful)
Another problem is the threat that chemists can pose to themselves and others. For every Goodyear who succeeded, how many unknown chemists ended up with poisoning, burns, cancer, or other damage to the local neighborhood?
Ok, so you had unknown chemists with poisoning, burns and cancer. The fact that they remain unknown means that they didn't really pose a risk. How often do you hear stories of some home chemist doing something that required the evacuation of his neighbor's house, let alone the entire neighborhood?
Now, how often do we hear about car accidents that result in an 80 car pileup and 10-15 people killed?
My hobby of electronics and electrical work is far more likely to kill or maim someone than a chemist.
Never heard of Zubbles? (Score:5, Insightful)
After an unexplained breakthrough in his kitchen, he was able to produce blue bubbles.
Popular Science named them the "Innovation of the Year" for 2005, and Reader's Digest said they were one of the "Best Innovations" of the year in 2006.[1]
I suspect you are trolling, but the mods giving you +5 Interesting have apparently bought your post whole.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:3, Insightful)
None of these solutions really work very well as shown by the pretty much free reign drugs have had since the 1950s in the US.
As opposed to the "War on Drugs" that began in the '80s? Nancy Reagan, et al, right? Since we started that program, drug use has almost completely disappeared!
Oh, wait...
Sorry, I'm with Hatta. Even though I've never used anything stronger than alcohol, nor do I have any desire to do so, I think the U.S.' position on, ummm, "recreational pharmaceuticals" is just plain stupid.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:4, Insightful)
These regulation would also prevent you from putting whatever you want into other people's bodies, with or without their consent.
I should hope so. Nobody deserves to be drugged without their consent. IMO, that's as bad as rape, and should be treated just as harshly.
Another problem is addictive personalities are going to be addicted. Period. Once there is an available supply the addiction kicks in.
Supply is always available. In fact, it's easier for a 15 year old to get illegal drugs today than it is for them to get a beer. The black market doesn't check IDs. Regulate drugs, and fewer kids will get them, and we'll end up with fewer addicts.
Societal norms, "morals" and fear of being ostracized prevents all of the addictive personalities from obtaining their first hit today.
Nonsense. Anyone who wants drugs can get them today. Nobody out there is waiting for crack to be legalized just to go have a hit.
Erase that and we will likely have vastly larger numbers of people that are going to be serious, full-time drug users with no possibility of contributing to society.
Addicts and users of most drugs have no problem contributing to society. It's only when you stigmatize them as criminals, and refuse to let them contribute to society that they stop. Look at all the caffeine and nicotine addicts around, they have no trouble contributing to society. Look at Dr. William Halsted, one of the founders of Johns Hopkins, he had a successful career in surgery all while maintaining himself on morphine. Look at the results of heroin maintenance studies in europe.
The problem with addiction isn't the addiction in itself. It's the things people have to do to maintain their addiction. When they can just go to the clinic and get a fix, they don't have to spend half the day scraping up money for a fix, and the other half the day waiting for their man. When they don't have the stigma of criminality over their heads, they can get an honest job and earn a decent living. When the price of their fix isn't marked up several orders of magnitude because of the black market, they don't have to steal to afford their habit.
All that said, methamphetamine is a very hard problem. I am not sure how to deal with that one best. Every other drug can be made less harmful by being regulated, since the greatest portion of harm comes from its legal status and not pharmacological effects. Meth has much worse pharmacological effects than most drugs, but I still think we'd be better off treating meth users as sick instead of criminal.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Think of it this way. I'm a pilot; I fly airplanes for fun. If I live on a 40-acre farm, it is legal and reasonable for me to build an airstrip in my back yard and fly my airplane off of it. However, even if I had a lot large enough to fly an airplane from I would have the local P.D and the FAA knocking on my door if I were to try that in the city where I live.
By the same token, while it might be reasonable to work with highly volatile chemicals in a rural lab, it might not be so reasonable to do something while living in a duplex in town. That doesn't necessarily mean that the sale of such chemicals should be restricted, however.
The real issue is that people tend to be afraid of things they don't understand. Most people in the U.S. no longer are interested in science, and are therefore likely to think that people who enjoy experimenting with chemistry are "up to no good." That's a very, very sad thing, IMHO.
Re:Bake on a stove? (Score:1, Insightful)
Yep, you can actually bake with a Dutch Oven. Crazy.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:2, Insightful)
And yet you can walk into any good hardware store and buy it by the pound. It's a classic drain opener. GP's neighbor might well have had a pound of it in the cabinet under the sink, and almost certainly had some cooking oil around, thus possessing the basic chemicals used for soap-making...and yet got all flustered at the idea of someone making soap.
Stupid laws, stupid lawmakers (Score:3, Insightful)
I must have been 7 or 8 when I got my first "ChemCraft" chemistry set for Christmas. By the time I was in Junior High, my best friend had a well-equipped chem lab in his basement, and I had one in an unused upstairs bedroom (my father even ran in gas for my bunsen burner). We used to make regular trips (driven by parents, of course) to a local science supply business to purchase glassware, chemicals, and such.
Now we have stupid paranoid lawmakers passing stupid paranoid laws, and even stupider fogbound bureaucratic government agencies enforcing the laws in a totally ham-handed manner.
Aaaarrrrgh!
Is there **ANY** way to get rid of all this idiotic nonsense?
(I could suggest that we elect Libertarians to **ALL** public and lawmaking posisitons, but I have a feeling that's not going to happen ... anyone have a better idea?)
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:4, Insightful)
addictive personalities are going to be addicted. Period.
Exactly. So why are we wasting our time, money and freedom trying to stop them?
Societal norms, "morals" and fear of being ostracized prevents all of the addictive personalities from obtaining their first hit today.
No, it quite obviously does not.
Freely distribute drugs to drive the prices down?
Most drugs are cheap. No need to drive the prices down, they'll plummet all by themselves.
There can be no regulation - regulation would prevent you from putting whatever you want into your body.
Regulation is necessary to protect the innocent, not the drug (ab)user. You can pretty much kill your last brain cell with alcohol. There's no regulation against that. Regulation is that you are not allowed to drive drunk. Regulation is that you can't advertise alcoholic beverages to underage audiences.
Personally I abstain from drugs. I don't drink, I don't smoke. I don't like it when people use drugs around me and I tell them to stub out the cigarette if they smoke in non-smoking areas. I am all for regulation of drug marketing and drug use in public, including alcohol and nicotine. But as much as I would like people to come to their senses and stop using drugs altogether, I believe that as a society we're better of with regulated drug use instead of prohibition. The negative effects of prohibition far outweigh the loss of productivity from the relatively few users whom we lose to their addiction.
Re:while historical chemical advances (Score:5, Insightful)
1. The combinatorial space in science (and in the production of chemicals especially) is absolutely massive. There is no practical way for chemists to explore it all, so of course they make educated guesses about what is both (a) reasonably easy to make; and (b) of some practical value. However because the combinatorial space is large, there is still plenty of uncharted territory for others to explore. Random fortuitous discoveries are certainly a part of science.
2. Hobbyists can afford to do research that is risky and has no obvious application (I mean "risky" in the sense of "it might not work or lead anywhere" and not in the sense of "it might be dangerous"). They don't have to satisfy funding agencies or pragmatic concerns. They can just explore. Thus they can sometimes pursue crazy lines of inquiry that established scientists wouldn't touch.
3. There is such a thing as having your creativity inhibited by institutionalized concepts. A hobbyist isn't as restricted by the "well-established-rules" of the field, and thus may make creative discoveries others would have missed. (This is rare, by the way: the vast majority of science comes from pushing along using well-established procedures and concepts... but rare "out of the box" discoveries are also important in science.)
4. Doing chemistry (or science in general) on a budget, using only commonly-available equipment, can actually force specific kinds of discoveries. Specifically, it helps to discover things that are cheap (which industry loves!) since it can be done with commodity chemicals and tools. (Who knows, there may be a cheap way to make a better antifreeze using only what is in your house and back-yard.) So hobbyists actually have a chance to discover things that will actually make an impact on industry (whereas the chance that they discover something fundamentally new, without modern diagnostic tools, is slimmer).
5. Finally, even if the hobbyist doesn't actually discover anything new or interesting (which is, by far, the most likely outcome), it has a positive effect on the participants. The people doing it are doing so for fun (presumably), and that in itself is reason enough. Moreover it may be the catalyst for someone to go into science professionally. The ability to make kids enthusiastic about science should not be overlooked. Like most hobbies, hobby-science is more about the process than the end result.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:3, Insightful)
So... You can make a really dilute solution of Hydrochloric acid and WATER? How is THAT dangerous?
(HINT: Sulfuric Acid and Potassium Hydroxide neutralize each other and the resultant material is plain old H2O. Throw in some Hydrochloric acid and you have acidic water.)
Re:Regulations ... don't work and cannot work. (Score:5, Insightful)
The irresponsible people are allowed to buy incredible amounts of extremely hazardous materials like fireworks, while many chemicals that require qualifications, to even know what to do with them, are heavily restricted.
But then, someone wishing to do harm to others, can cause a lot of damage with just some gasoline and a lighter. The chemical isn't the danger, its the actions and intentions of the people using it.
Therefore the solution isn't to be found in ever more extra controls and banning parts of chemistry, its to be found in psychology. (We have enough controls on chemistry to avoid accidents, but ever more controls can never stop some people causing intentional harm towards others).
The answer to this problem is actually easier, than the relentless government solution of continued prohibition, of anything else they detect that can be used to harm others. There will always be things that can be used to cause harm to others. There will also always be new things found that can cause harm to others. Prohibition will never work. Its always going to be less than required. Plus they cannot block everything. (Even a house brick can cause harm to others, so they cannot ban house bricks). The solution of prohibition of chemicals and even at times, knowledge itself cannot work.
Psychology shows why people cause harm to others, for their own gain. The harm is caused intentional, there is a reason why they choose to cause harm to others. Only when enough people learn how to recognize the psychology of the ones who cause harm towards others, can we finally move towards a world, without fear of people causing intentional harm to others.
Re:Have you seen Breaking Bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
I grew up with a heroin lab on one side and a dog owner on the other. The dog owner was a constant irritation from day one, with the dog barking at all hours and crapping on the lawn. The heroin lab were decent neighbors who didn't really affect us until the night the cops came. Make all the meth/heroin/whatever you want, but keep your blasted dogs away, I say!
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Please emphasise "enforcement". The police are not there to prevent law breaking, merely to apprehend those who do. THAT is the premise of civilised society, not enforcement before the fact. The mass murderer must have already murdered for the police to chase and charge on those grounds. To expect or allow them to proceed before the crime has been committed is oppression.
Re:while historical chemical advances (Score:3, Insightful)
1. I agree with you 100%. That we have our 'folding@home' programs is just one aspect that demonstrates that chemistry is a field that has so many possible permutations it is simply not possible to know them all. Perhaps a way to view it is similar to someone cataloging species. Sure, it may not mean much that someone discovered the 4000th species of ant in the Amazon, but now we know that such an ant exists. A chemist might not discover a 'useful' chemical or process, but it all gets added to our sum of knowledge.
2. Again, a good point. One of the reasons that professional chemists get paid, is because they can use their expertise to direct research efforts along a path that is more likely to produce profitable results.
3. I believe it was Feynman who made a similar comment with regard to Physics. There was a team utilizing old equipment that was a chewing-gum and duct tape type of deal. Yet they produced some breakthroughs. Not because their team was using the highest end collider, but because they had more knowledge into the equipment that they were using. Granted this involved millions of dollars worth of equipment, but it illustrates that the latest equipment can sometimes 'blind' you to the obvious.
To take that back down the chemistry path. Opps, I created teflon. Opps, I vulcanized rubber. Opps, I invented safety glass. Opps Cellophane.
The big one? Opps, Penicillin.
4. Another point. Aluminium used to be one of the most valuable metals in the world. It even capped the Washington Monument because of this. Now, due to a hobbiest chemist, it is one of the reasons we have jet aircraft that are affordable.
Very good post.
Fear mongering (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as home chemistry is concerned you can thank illegal drug users for the need to clamp down on lab equipment and supplies. The sad truth is that all of us need to help ferret out illegal drug users and get them put away or whatever if we intend to live in a free society. Perhaps people in some areas can't see the problem. They only need have lived in an area that has fallen to drugs to understand the intense violence and total terror that such a neighborhood can come to when drugs run rampant.
WTF?
Illegal drug users aren't doing much of anything to hurt anyone else. They may very well fry their own brains... And might, while under the influence, do some harm to folks around them. But I doubt if it is any more significant than the damage that alcoholics do on a daily basis.
Illegal drug users aren't to blame for this. The response to these illegal drug users is.
By cracking down so hard on illegal drugs we've turned it into an insanely profitable industry. That's why there's so much money and violence surrounding the drug trade. How much violence do you see surrounding the alcohol trade these days? When's the last time you saw a shootout in the street over a six-pack of beer? Take a look at what was going on during prohibition and you'd see a very different picture.
There's no way that taking away liberties is going to increase freedom. By telling folks that "all of us need to help ferret out illegal drug users" you're turning everyone against their neighbors. You won't have to worry about the US Government spying on your anymore, you'll have to worry about your next-door neighbor instead. How is that a step in the right direction? How does that increase freedom?
No amount of intrusion, snooping, or policing is going to stamp out illegal drug use. No society in history has been able to pull that off. Just like abortion and prostitution - it is here to stay, whether we like it or not.
All we do by criminalizing these drugs is push them underground, make it more expensive to traffic in them... Which raises the prices... Which makes it more profitable... All of which eventually leads to people deciding that a pile of drugs, valued at several million dollars, is worth a few human lives.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think exposing them to our culture would have to much of a negative effect - as long as people are well educated.
And there's the problem.... Stupid people will continue to be stupid.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Want to get rid of the drug dealers? It only takes a few easy and cheap steps.
Step 1: Provide free high quality drugs to people already addicted with no criminal penalties or consequences to people who come forward and ask for them.
It's quite one thing to legalize and regulate drugs, with which I heartily agree. It's quite another to ask taxpayers to subsidize drug addiction. Taxpayers don't subsidize booze or tobacco, and that hasn't created any black market worth mentioning.
Re:Have you seen Breaking Bad? (Score:4, Insightful)
Except it wasn't chemical labs passing these laws, most labs want to decrease the regulations so they don't have to waste their time following them when they don't make sense. Also as a general rule, most chemical companies have an interest in innovators at home. It seems to me that most research that goes on in those labs are things the average home chemist wouldn't be able to do in their garage. How many garages have NMR capabilities?
It seems to me then that competition from home labs is pretty limited. Anything you DID discover in your basement that would compete with a major chemical lab would probably be very interesting to that chemical lab, because they could replicate it themselves for cheaper.
Anyway, your conspiracy theory is a bit ridiculous.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Regulations (Score:4, Insightful)
Right- hes a first tier citizen. The rest of down here are the ones that have to worry.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I can see the the other side as well. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's one thing if a city or HOA wants to limit the kind of chemicals and experiments people can play with in their jurisdiction, but blanket federal laws about it are a different story because they affect the guy living 50 miles from a paved road just a much as someone living in a 200 foot^2 apartment in Manhattan.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Pure anarchy in itself is not oppressive. Anarchy however has a very short half life and quickly decays into feudalism. For some or another reason, a lot of sheeple require leadership in their life of some sort in order to function. Without leadership they kind of stand around looking like a deer in the headlights until the more leadery people comes in and (ab)uses that.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Pretty good, probably. In bulk they've got to be really cheap, probably less than a penny each. Put a couple into twenty cents worth of packaging and sell the package for a dollar. Even with the cost of moving the packages to the stores, that's got to be a good markup.
My guess is that the profit per item was good, but the volume was too low, so the overall ROI for the effort wasn't worthwhile. Selling the same packages over the internet, or just selling the items with minimal and cheaper packaging like a plastic bag, eliminates most of the costs and gives you a better ROI.
In fact, I just checked RadioShack's website, and it looks like they're selling bulk packages of components at very reasonable prices. A hobbyist could buy the single component that they need, and build up a large home inventory of parts, fairly cheaply. It's not as convenient as the store in some ways, and more convenient in others.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Chicken or the egg situation. Sure, it is that way now, but that is probably because if you break one law, you will probably break another.
Would the situation be the same if you did not have to break a law to sell drugs in the first place?
I would be willing to bet that during prohibition that 90% of alcohol sellers were "nefarious and commit[ed] other crimes as well". However, now that it is legal to sell alcohol, I'd also be willing to be that most of them are not.
Re:Doomsday. (Score:5, Insightful)
In defense of the gun people, anytime a really bad government comes along high up on their "todo" list is to take away arms. They realize that there is only so far you can push an armed populace. This makes gun rights a political barrier much more than home chemistry labs. Hats off to them.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:3, Insightful)
If they step in and jack up the price then you're not following the simple steps.
Where did I say anything about having drug companies come in with high prices?
And they'd have problems with that since they have no patent on pot: other drug companies would just sell for cheaper until the price was just above the cost of production.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Discrete components have gotten more and more expensive. In the past, the electronic components you bought at Radio Shack were the same parts that were used in the complete devices sold in the same store.
Today, electronic devices use tiny ASICs under epoxy blobs, surface mount microcontrolers, tiny capacitors and resistors that are sold on a reel and connected by a very precise pick and place machines... The discrete components are now manufactured solely for prototyping and hobby use. With the decrease in volume, the cost has shot up. Not only does that cut into the margins of a company like Radio Shack, but it also inflates the cost of stocking each store.
On the other hand, an internet supplier only has to keep one set of stock, can sell for less, can keep a wider variety... Radio Shack can't compete with that. They'd be fools to carry the types of components that they used to. Access to parts is greater now than it was anyway.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is it so hard for legalization advocates to understand that the war on drugs is really a war against drug use, and not drug sales. Eliminating drug dealers is supposedly a means to eliminating drug use. Any plan to eliminate dealers that involves users getting their drugs from somewhere else defeats the intent.
(Please note that this post doesn't advocate one position or the other. It merely points out the flaw in the parent poster's logic.)
Re:I can see the the other side as well. (Score:3, Insightful)
I hate to tell you this, but killing 20 people is already illegal. I know it's a shocker, but it's true.
Now if that same idiot decided to get up to 60 in his car and swerve onto the sidewalk, he could also kill those 20 people. Or if he decided to grab *insert any tool here* and go on a rampage, well, it might not be 20, or it might be more.
In no instance will any new laws keep someone who wishes to cause harm from doing so. Perhaps it may impact the scale, but there is as great a chance that it would result in a creative burst (i.e. thinking out side the box) and result in more harm. With the car example, said idiot may in fact kill 30 by doing something different.
The long and the short of it is this: You can't regulate crazy.
Any attempt at balance is limiting those who never would cause harm in order to *possibly* halt the few who would. As I stated above, murder is already a crime, yet it is not onerous because it does not limit us, rather it punishes those who choose to break from societal bounds. Chemicals, alcohol, drugs, and firearms, while potentially dangerous, do not in and of them selves provide the impetus for causing harm. Any harm that comes from such items is the result of choice, and no law can make people make good decisions.
The straw man argument (Score:3, Insightful)
.
In the U.S., consumer fireworks are regulated - and legal purchases in "incredible amounts" is difficult and expensive.
The Federal Hazardous Substances Act, prohibits the sale of the most dangerous types of fireworks to consumers. These banned fireworks include large reloadable mortar shells, cherry bombs, aerial bombs, M-80 salutes and larger firecrackers containing more than two grains of powder. Also banned are mail-order kits designed to build these fireworks.
In a regulation that went into effect December 6, 1976, the CPSC lowered the permissible charge in firecrackers to no more than 50 milligrams of powder. In addition, these amended regulations provide performance specifications for fireworks other than firecrackers intended for consumer use, including a requirement that fuses burn at least 3 seconds, but no longer than 9 seconds. All fireworks must carry a warning label describing necessary safety precautions and instructions for safe use.
The Commission has issued a performance requirement to reduce the risk of potentially dangerous tip-over of large multiple tube mine and shell devices. Tip-over of these devices has resulted in two fatalities. Consumer Product Safety Commission: Fireworks Fact Sheet [cpsc.gov]
The fact sheet summarizes state regulations as of June 1, 2008.
If you want to do chemistry, why not do not do within the framework of a chemistry club - associated, perhaps, with a local high school or community college?
This is - after all - how many dangerous sports and recreational activities have been organized for a century and more.
You want to work with antique sporting arms?
Join a black powder gun club. You'll learn more and learn it more quickly - while still keeping your eyebrows intact and all ten fingers.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:1, Insightful)
Control rather than prohibition. If it's out in the open you can control it, restrict access to adults, catch stoned drivers, ensure safe substances. Prohibition is the worst method and completely unsuccessful (except in totalitarian states - and who wants to live in one of those?).
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I imagine that any kind of scientific exploration is viewed with distrust and quite a bit of fear.
This is certainly my experience. I mess around in a variety of areas, for fun. I develop my own film and print my own pictures - sometimes with home-made cameras. I look at the stars with telescopes. I make and use my own radio gear. The reaction is almost invariably one of suspicion: radios are for eavesdropping, telescopes are for surveillance, and so on.
Sad.
I can't say I was ever much of a chemist. I found chemistry fascinating in high school, but then my 1st year chemistry prof proceeded to do a throughly professional job of curing me of any further interest in the subject.
...laura
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:3, Insightful)
They do understand this fact. The legalization advocates argue with several different reasons why the war against drug use is wrong. One reason is in terms of harm reduction. Advocates claim that prohibition does more harm than many types of controlled legalization. In this case, it is important to argue that many of the harms that come from prohibition will be eliminated with the proposed type of legalization. Many people mistakenly think that most the problems we see today with drug use are intrinsically caused by the drugs and do not realize that many of the problems are caused by the laws.
The GP was showing that the black market problems associated with illegal drugs can be removed by giving the drugs away for free. This has been shown to be a good strategy for heroin abuse. Have a heroin clinic that tests users for addiction. If they are addicted allow them to receive and use the drugs at the clinic. This will remove all the hard core addicts from the black market and lower the profitability of heroin. If this successfully destroys the black market then you don't have to worry about new users. If it doesn't then other measures can be taken to further restrict new users.
This strategy address both your desire to lower use, and it reduces the harm done by the war on drugs. We should be open to other strategies that include more than the scientifically refuted idea of prohibition. One should consider why we have a war on drug use, what this implies, and how we can best achieve those goals. Personally I think harm reduction is a good basis, but there are many other reasons why the war on drugs is a bad idea.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Punishing someone after the fact doesn't erase the harm their crime may have caused. This isn't a problem of holding people accountable for their negative actions, it's for preventing those actions in the first place.
All perfectly true, but you are discounting the harm caused by the prevention itself. In place of the possibility -- I'll even grant you the probability -- of future harm caused by the actions of others you would substitute the certainty of present harm caused by your own actions. The relative risk of two different kinds of harm is a subjective matter. If this subjective valuation can be used to justify the use of force against a non-aggressor then any other subjective valuation can as well. The law must be impartial and objective to be meaningful; the only alternative under a universal ethic is everyone legally employing force against anyone else whenever they feel like it.
I find it moral to allow proportionately different punishments for actions that offer statistical likelihood of harm. Those are personal values.
They cease to be mere "personal values" when you use them to justify the use of force against others. I, for one, will not accept anything less than a rational and objective argument logically distinguishing your actions from those of the (potential) criminals you seek to punish. If you cannot make such a distinction then your actions are criminal, regardless of their intended effect. Forget subjective morality; as you say, neither of us is likely to convince the other to switch sides. Just answer this: why shouldn't I consider you just another common criminal? How are your actions any different from theirs?
You claim that some individuals under the influence of certain drugs are statistically likely to commit unspecified crimes; for the sake of argument I will assume that this is true, and that the likelihood is 100%. To prevent the possibility of such crimes you propose to prohibit the manufacture, sale, possession, and/or use of such drugs. To effect such a prohibition would require the use of force sufficient to overcome any resistance, including loss of property, incarceration, physical injury, and potentially death. If you fine someone to prevent a potential theft, or injure someone to prevent a potential assault, or kill someone to prevent a potential murder, then your actions are objectively worse than those you seek to prevent.
It is instructive to look at the requirements for the justified use of force in self-defense, which include (a) the presence of an immediate threat; (b) no lesser use of force available to effectively mitigate that threat; and (c) the risk of irreparable harm. In some cases you have (c), e.g. murder would be irreparable, but you do not have (a) or (b). The threat is not immediate, but rather a remote future possibility, and there are other ways to mitigate the threat which do not involve the use of force at all: personal persuasion, social pressure, individual preventative defensive measures, etc. The use of preemptive force in this case is not justified.
All this assumes that there is a one-to-one correlation between drug use and crime, and that your measures are effective in stopping the use of drugs, as opposed to merely driving it into hiding. Neither assumption is particularly likely.
Re:Regulations ... don't work and cannot work. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the result of "group responsibility" (Score:3, Insightful)
This is what happens when society's understanding of responsibility becomes corrupted.
Communist 5th columnists have been working very hard to poison our society with the notion of "group responsibility." Instead of individuals being responsible for their actions alone, secondary and tertiary participants in that action are made to shoulder the blame as well, regardless of whether they were aware of their participation or not.
When Chernobyl blew up, everyone who worked at the plant was punished, even people who were not there at the time and had absolutely no responsibility for the disaster whatsoever. The concept of "group responsibility" was and is a central part of communist ideology. In the Soviet Union it kept everyone paranoid and distrustful, making the society as a whole easier for the thugs at the top to abuse and oppress.
The same insanity has been creeping into our society as well. Suing a store because it sold a perfectly legal device to someone who then used it to commit a crime is absurd and abusive. That case should have been dismissed with prejudice and the lawyer representing the plaintiff censured, if not disbarred.
Re:Regulations (Score:3, Insightful)
EXACTAMUNDO!!!
The only way to solve the problem of irresponsible behavior is to ensure that the full impact of the consequences of that behavior falls upon that person or persons.
Re:Have you seen Breaking Bad? (Score:3, Insightful)
Regulations are always supported by insiders as a way to protect themselves from outsiders.
Blanket statements are always wrong. ;-P Seriously, that is not the reasoning for these laws, and there aren't "outs" for big corporations. Home labs only get noticed when the fire department comes. Big labs have scheduled inspections.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree that 90% of America (along with the rest of the world) is incapable of critical thinking. However, I think this explains the popularity of CNN, MSNBC, and network news. Every consumer of "news" prefers a provider that shares his biases. However, those capable of critical thought are aware of their biases, and would therefore prefer to do without the condescension of the feigned objectivity of the established left-leaning providers, even if they prefer a left-leaning bias.
Re:Regulations (Score:3, Insightful)
There's no frontier there, nowhere to go, nothing to do.
If Man were meant to fly, he'd have wings.
The oceans are a vast wasteland, impenetrable beyond a fathom or two.
Man will never walk on the moon.
The horse and buggy is the ultimate in transportation.
If a steam locomotive were to ever achieve over 25 MPH, air friction would cause all aboard to burst into flame.
The sun, moon, and heavens revolve around the Earth.
The Earth is flat.
Remarkable how all these "facts" that "everyone knew" changed as our knowledge and technology improved.
How is it that you have certain knowledge that there's nothing out there and nowhere to go? Thumb a ride on a UFO with some Greys?
Why is it you believe that suddenly Man will gain no more knowledge, technology will no longer advance, Man's abilities will no longer grow, and that Man will discover no more new principals of the universe undiscovered as of yet that combined will allow him to increasingly-efficiently access the wealth of the universe? Or is it that you wish these things stopped happening? Should we all give up this silly quest for knowledge and capabilities and walk away from everything we've built and go back to wearing furs, living in caves, hunting with a club, and dying at 25-30 years of age and wait for the final cataclysm to end the species?
There's a whole universes' worth of real estate, energy, and material waiting for Man to figure a way to belly-up to the buffet. If you'd prefer extinction, please make your selection for yourself alone please.
Cheers!
Strat
There's a simple, logical reason for this (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a simple, logical reason why chemicals are so heavily regulated. It's because too many people have experimented in the past, and that cost often
Question: what does a person do with their failed (or even successful) projects? Well, there's going to be refuse - chemical byproducts - for nearly any reaction, and they're not mostly going to be harmless gases which will float away.
They are, more than likely, going to be water soluble or suspended in water, to one degree or another. Most reasonably advanced science projects will result in waste equivalent to pouring lead powder in someone's water softener.
For instance, let's say someone's experimenting with metals, like maybe stainless steel electrodes in their quest for world conquest or free power, or some such rot. Stainless steel used as electrodes for electrolysis will... get this, result in chromate byproducts. You know, those nasty things which are highly regulated by the EPA, have MSDS with big angry words on them, and generally anger a lot of people when poured down drains due to the impact on plant and animal life. Apparently it kills shit and prevents new shit from growing.
And that's just one idea off the top of my head while this kind of regulation is a "good" thing. There is no liberty for an individual in this; it's selfishness.
There comes a point of diminished return for the society to allow for people to tinker with things they don't quite understand, and to require a high threshold for entry. Encourage that entry, yes; but people are much more likely, at this point, to rediscover a hundred thousand mistakes, and maybe a couple dozen pre-existing discoveries, than to make a genuine discovery using commonly available chemicals. Just not going to happen.