Science Lesson: Creativity and pollution
Today’s lesson teaches that a scientist can make great discoveries by being creative.
A new kind of scientific detective work has, reportedly, paid off bigtime in the field of environmental science.
Thousands of scientists labored for decades to identify the most dangerous sources of environmental pollution—but despite all their slow, careful measurement and experimentation, they failed to identify what we now learn is a major source of pollution. A January 5, 2009 Catholic News Service report explains:
The birth-control pill is causing “devastating” environmental damage and plays a role in rising male infertility rates, said the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano…. Pedro Jose-Maria Simon-Castellvi, president of the Vatican-based World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, wrote the article that appeared in the paper’s Jan. 4 edition.
The pill has created “devastating ecological effects from tons of hormones being released into the environment for years,” the article said.
Details have not yet been made public. Students (along with every environmental scientist in the world!) can now giddily await the day when Dr. Simon-Castelvi publishes a formal study, in a good science journal, giving details of how he achieved his breakthrough discovery.
(Thanks to investigator David Kessler for bringing this to our attention.)