[heyrhett]

It's wasn't a test. Someone just poisoned all the air.

It's not a test to say "hey I'm going to poison all the air, let's see what happens".

We shouldn't call this a "test" as if it was conducted by actual scientists doing actual experiments.

[acidburnNSA]

Trace amounts of radiation do not poison the entire air. There is natural radiation everywhere, from rocks, from space, from our own bones. The amount remaining from the tests is not even remotely close to a health hazard.

It's all to easy to conflate 'detectable' with 'hazardous' when you're dealing with some of the most sensitive instruments on earth.

See: https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2018/01/f46/doe-ioni...

[heyrhett]

It's still poison. Check msds. Just because there is already poison in the air, doesn't mean people can't put more poison in the air. Just because the poison doesn't kill everyone, doesn't mean it isn't poison.

[acidburnNSA]

That's a perspective one can have, for sure. Something that's like 10 orders of magnitude below the known hazard level is not something anyone should raise alarms about to the general public though. Otherwise you'd have to go around policing every little bird that's exhaling CO₂, etc.

[nexuist]

Who were these people then? To say that they weren't scientists is to say that scientists can never be held accountable because every "actual" experiment is morally and ethically righteous.

[heyrhett]

Morality has nothing to do with it. There can't possibly be a control variable. Would you call someone who goes around smashing things a "scientist"? What is the experiment?

[nexuist]

> It's wasn't a test. Someone just poisoned all the air.

If you want to be pedantic:

It was a test of if the air-poisoner-inator sufficiently poisoned the air. If the air was not poisoned then the experiment obviously failed. If the air was poisoned then the hypothesis was correct and the experiment succeeded.

A bomb test tests if the bomb bombed the location it was meant to bomb with the correct amount of bomb. The control variable would be not dropping the bomb.

> Would you call someone who goes around smashing things a "scientist"?

Yes, automotive engineers do this every day to build safer cars, and anyone in the safety industry obviously replicates unsafe conditions (explosions, fires, electrical failures, chemical spills, etc) to test safety equipment.

"Remember kids, the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down” - Alex Jason

[heyrhett]

Pretty sure they were just screwing around.

[themaninthedark]

What do you think they do at CERN?

[heyrhett]

They are doing contained, well-thought-out experiments, with hypotheses, peer review, control samples, ability to repeat trials, data collection, and discussion.