[naasking]

> Most of the organic substances where hydroxy groups are substituted with chlorine atoms are more or less toxic and some are carcinogenic.

This kind of argument is so... "weird" to put it politely. H2O also becomes toxic if you add an oxygen atom. The safety of chemical compounds does not follow from a naive classification of bonds.

[dataangel]

It's a heuristic. If you haven't done a randomized placebo controlled double blind exhaustive study of the compound and all you have to go on is the layout of the molecule, is it a bad guess?

[parineum]

Guess all you want I suppose but there are fairly exhaustive studies on artificial sweeteners.

[naasking]

> If [...] all you have to go on is the layout of the molecule, is it a bad guess?

Yes, almost certainly. Like I pointed out, one atom is the difference between a toxin and water.

[dataangel]

That doesn't change whether or not it's a good heuristic. Whether it's a good heuristic depends on how often "extra chlorine hanging off the side" is indicative of toxicity. He didn't make a claim about one atom changes in general, and even if you did you would need to show that on average across many instances from the sample population (substances we are likely actually to run into) it's misleading.