Remember that study that claimed black plastic kitchen utensils could be harmful to us? It caused quite a stir with headlines warning about unsafe levels of BDE-209, a flame retardant that could be a cancer risk.
But hold on—those researchers, from Toxic-Free Future and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, now admit they made a big mistake. They miscalculated the figures in their report.
The problem isn’t fancy statistics or tech issues. It’s something much simpler: a basic math error. The safe daily dose of BDE-209 is 7,000 nanograms per kilogram of body weight. The researchers assumed a body weight of 60kg and miscalculated the safe dose to be 42,000 nanograms. They thought that was alarmingly close to the daily intake of about 34,700 nanograms from using those black utensils.
But here’s the catch: 7,000 times 60 should actually give you 420,000, not 42,000. So, the supposedly worrying dose isn’t an issue at all.
This was a serious blunder by the three researchers involved. Megan Liu, Erika Schreder, and Sicco Brandsma are all qualified academics. Brandsma works at a notable European university, while Liu and Schreder have backgrounds in molecular biology.
What’s troubling is how this error slipped through peer review. It suggests other scientists didn’t catch something so glaring. This incident reflects a broader issue in academia, where there have been growing concerns about plagiarism, data fabrication, and the reliability of many published studies.
It makes you wonder: how many other pieces of “science” we read about are also based on shaky ground and poor calculations? The answer may not be reassuring.
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