By the Numbers Do You Trust Science?

Of course you do. You’re probably a scientist yourself. A few interesting statistics reveal how political views influence the trust factor.

Reasonable skepticism is healthy, but blind distrust of scientists affects many of the issues addressed in our latest edition's statistical roundup: Covid-19, global warming and pollution. It seems we’re still taking the tablets, though (see chart 3). Find out interesting statistics in the gallery below.

Gallery

Did you know? Curious facts and figures from analytics, chemistry and life sciences.

56°C Urban areas in the Middle East and North Africa are threatened with temperatures of 56 degrees Celsius (and more) if climate change does not slow down. Week-long heatwaves could affect about half of the population in these regions, or around 600 million people, in the second half of the century. These predictions come from modeling calculations by the Climate and Atmosphere Research Center in Cyprus and the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany.

13 times as much plastic waste as an average household creates is produced by a single microbiology lab. This was calculated by the Austrian initiative Green Labs Austria. So there is still a lot of savings potential there for more sustainable research. The same applies to the energy consumption of freezers. According to Green Labs Austria, setting freezers to –70 °C instead of –80 °C can cut electricity use by 31 percent without compromising the quality of DNA and soil samples.

109 Researchers at the University of California in San Francisco/USA have detected 109 industrial chemicals in the blood of mothers and their newborns. Of these, 40 come from plasticizers, 27 from cosmetics, 29 are pharmaceuticals and 25 are typically found in household products. The researchers also found 23 different pesticides, 3 flame retardants and 7 polyfluorinated alkyl compounds.

Source: LABORPRAXIS

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