Special chant: Gabriel Leon, scientific tuitero, in his crusade against the myths and charlatans: "Nostradamus is a chanta historical"

-When you started to demystify scientific fraud in your social networks and beliefs?
I started 2010 with a blog, the Rayleigh effect. I have published a lot of papers in scientific journals read lucky 200 people, I now have 100,000 visits a year. I like to write in science. The polola kicked not explain it, but count does work through cases of the scientist as a human being, which, was sad, escaped in his lab and discovered something amazing. That is woolly.

-The life of a scientist is well busy, how do publish and respond to people so quickly?
A couple of years ago I had a nagging feeling that we did not want the life of scientist because it is very self-sacrificing, my colleagues work 60 hours a week fighting for research funds and stressed for publishing papers. Scientific communication, I like this place and like tuitero I can show people why it is important for Chile to make science closer to those who make social policies and legislate. Science should be useful to the country.

-Also write of everyday myths that is for certain. People shared much your publication on Twitter when you said it was lying that plants steal a home oxygen at night.
It is true that plants emit CO2 at night, but the amount is very small to cause any damage. When it is explained to people that many of the things that were told are not truth you think about why you cheated. But eye, you decide to create it also, ever wondered how a plant could be dangerous. You failed at the time of questioning what you were saying.

FAT AND WATER AGAINST CANCER SLIMMING

-You have publicly criticized the astrologers and alternative therapy products sellers. Do you think that people like Pedro Engel or Pedro Grez, the creator of the famous Grez method are so successful?
They use a lot of scientific terminology without any basis with the idea of selling you something. People want to tell him: "look, to lose weight you have to eat this and stop eating the other". The scientific world rarely goes to give a categorical answer. And that generates a search: If science does not help me with this I will have to find the answer elsewhere. There is fertile ground for a group of people that you will offer quick solutions to everyday problems. This also has a framework, cases of collusion and damage public faith. People now say: "You saw that we were way", and apply it to everything. As when appears in Facebook it photo of a fruit with the phrase of that is 10 thousand times more powerful that the chemotherapy and that the pharmaceutical not want that you find out because if not them cagas the business. Are you much logic and end up believing that the cure for cancer is to eat a fruit.

-In a way, we all want to believe.
Of course. If they offer you one solution difficult and complex, to another simple and easy, you take that last even if it is wrong. Why is doing so well to the astrologers in the morning and they sell so many books? Where does this urgency to spend money so someone tell you the future? It has to do with the fervent need to know what's going to happen, human being uncomfortable with the uncertainty. In times of economic crisis, they increase consultations astrologers. There is a need to believe. And you are deceiving, because the horoscopes and Astral charts are pure obviousness. What did Nostradamus, with phrases so vague that even after 400 years has people giving your head against the wall. Nostradamus is a chanta.

-Then we give place to the deception?
Yes, but it is right to spend all the blame to the public. There is a problem of education and scientific communication. Once people understand that all information requires evidence that supports it, such things are going to end up. Here in the office, there is a water filter that says to kill cancer and other 30 properties. On Twitter I asked the manufacturer to give me the evidence about that and I blocked, this was his response. Let us make people question, to request explanations. And if you leave them with "is that the power of Mystic...", then bye. Any information that can not be subjected to an experiment to prove it, has no value.

-Do you believe in the diet of fats from Grez method?
It has nothing to do with what I created, type speaks pure leser and point. It tells you that you come down of weight eating pizza all day and people think "the raja, is an easy solution", but it's a lie. Talk about nutrition is complicated, studies of sexual, physical activity and diet are super complex to do because people remember very badly as pulled, how much you ate and how much exercise did, or simply lie.

-You you also showed the deception of alkaline diets with studies and mentioned a watermark that assures kills cancer cells in the body.
This is a blown which is based on an observation that has 100 years, where was that tumours proliferated in acidic environments. That information that was brought to a lot of people say: "if I give an alkaline environment to the tumor, killed him". Without considering absolutely nothing of how the human body functions, it is absurd! If you try to change the PH of the blood drinking alkaline water it will not happen anything, at most will change the PH of the urine, and that even remains in your body. It's like this time they said that eating meat was cancer, they are communication errors that give rise to these myths.

-There is much charlatan that using scientific terms it can convince and gain credibility.
Language valid, that proliferate the esoteric courses that use words such as "quantum", "epigenetics", which are scientific terms that have been kidnapped by a bunch of charlatans who use them to sell their products. All these people earn silver selling your water, your diet, your horoscope. There is a more or less consciously defraud intention. In Spain, a biologist made a social experiment and invented a therapy: the fecomagnetismo, which mixed with human excrement biomagnetism. And the hueon sold it, invited it to Conference and later wrote a book titled "The fine art of selling shit". That shows you the crazy topic.

-The morning give enough space for, supposedly, explaining these issues easily.
They are not serious areas of divulgation. The single is José Maza in TVN, which is a luxury as speaks of astronomy. In the morning a potential there is good space, but the problem is that you have first to Maza and then comes a type to sell you beaten detox. Then the people believe that they are the same and there is science in both. And as the smoothie is broccoli they think that does well, but it is not magic.

strong >-there are faces as Pedro Engel, who has good drag and credibility, talking of astrology for hours.
But if Engel is an astrologer, what you can expect from it if all your business-based beliefs without any sustenance? What is the reasonable explanation that the location of Jupiter in space may affect your life? It has nothing to do with what I believe, but on the evidence that supports the claim. People believe it because any claim made by someone with authority, in this case an astrologer with screen, will be considered to be very accurate.

COLLECTIVE DISINFORMATION

-What is most chanta you've read on social networks?
The most delirious was the hypothesis of a girl about vaccines. He said that they would put them mercury so that Governments could control us via satellite, supposedly because it is a liquid metal that would penetrate the body and brain. I found it of film, almost brilliant. On Facebook I'm locked in the antitransgenicos and antivacunas groups. I have received hate messages. A girl who do not know I wrote that it was a disgusting old and hopefully I died. Also I became tired blog when he wrote about transgenics, there they told me that I wish me and my family did die of cancer. That was the level of virulence.

-We desmenucemos to the charlatan's social networks. What characterizes them and how much credibility they manage?
There is a definite profile. They abuse the use of capital letters and the wording is relatively poor, hard to understand. In general read only things that support your point of view, there is a closure intellectual in which tend to gather is and talk with people that thinks as them. They are based on notoriously unreliable sources, which are not official because they think that they lie. Many of these people like to know is aware of a truth that is hidden for the rest, making them feel special.

-Superiority based on repeated lies are as accepted truths.
It is a drama of our time, in which we live with alternative facts and the posverdad. You don't like the truth, actually like feel you well though is with lies. What you care about is to have the reason. We are taking that as a way of life. It is tremendous to have to tell someone who is wrong and when that happens, they want to preserve their history and flee from the evidence.

SCIENCE AND POLICY

-Let's talk about the Cabinet of Donald Trump, who quite collides with the world of science. Antivacunas activists, deniers of climate change and religious fanatics make up the list.
Trump is convinced that climate change is a fabrication to harm the economy of the United States. They will return to burn coal and remove oil. The Vice President, Michael Pence, is a creationist convinced early that the planet is 6,000 years old. Homo sapiens appeared to 180 thousand years ago! In fact creationists have asked to be taught his doctrine as an alternative to evolution, to which any as only one theory. When you hear that, as a scientist is to faint. A scientific theory is a ROE bacan, is not a mere idea or conjecture.

-It is clear that policy uses science for their purposes, in fact, posted a study on how the ultrasound have reaffirmed the idea that the fetus is a human being and how this has served conservative legislators.
Policy, with dark interests or for profit, can use unexpected tools such as an ultrasound to warp reality. In the United States. want to pass a law for all the women that want to abort are forced to listen a sonogram of the heart of the embryo. It is a contrived emotional manipulation, since a group of cells that are not properly a heart can be heard on the development earlier, when there are not even human form. When you see in the Chilean Congress people with plastic fetuses, it is to say that they cut it once. We need as a country to live an ideological morality imposed by a group. With people like Gustavo Hasbún you realize the decadent of scientific debate, when he said that with this law is to finish the Telethon gave me shame. In the discussion of abortion, there was a parade of painful arguments that made me wonder, this is people who are in charge of a country?

-You have checked the scientific arguments that Chilean politicians used to this kind of bills?
The history more chanta in which I have been involved was when the MEP Cristina Girardi drove Bill banning thimerosal in vaccines, by the so-called risk of autism. I demanded him to show the scientific evidence and to my surprise, he sent it me, there were 50 papers. I checked them and cache that were pure journals of low level, in fact the most serious thing that I found quite the opposite to what the Congresswoman defended said. Here an example of how the supposedly scientific evidence can support a cause that could have generated a collapse on the immune system of the country, with the spread of diseases. Indeed, which invented this lie wanted to patent a shot of his own and didn't you, so it began to disparage the rest to sell yours. Again, it is an issue of silver.

Who do you consider the biggest charlatan screen?
Salfate and Dr. File, are true machines do smoke. Surprisingly enormous ease that these characters have to sell fishing, resorting to conspiracy theories or outright inventing leser. Also they have a wide range of super action and does not provide him with disgust to any topic. Worthy copies of chantis chilensis. MI polola puts Dr. File to annoy me and shit with laughter, because it is how when I see a football match and I start yelling at the telly, ja ja ja.

Would you like to continue exposing charlatans?
Of course. Always sitting at a table questioning and based in a simple way so that people can understand. I not them ask that I created because am scientific, but because them give them sources where they themselves can read it and give is has of the truth.

Source: The Clinic