09.06.14
OMG, a jar of one of the deadliest poisons was lost for 100 years!
Or what’s new in the laboratories of clickbait today?
Ricin gets its moment:
N.I.H. Lab Search Uncovers Forgotten Ricin
WASHINGTON — The National Institutes of Health said on Friday that it had uncovered a nearly century-old container of ricin and a handful of other forgotten samples of dangerous pathogens as it combed its laboratories for improperly stored hazardous materials …
They included a bottle of ricin, a highly poisonous toxin, found in a box with microbes dating from 1914 and thought to be 85 to 100 years old, the memo said.
Ricin, which is a protein that relies on retention of its activity for its toxic quality, would never last a century in a bottle. It probably died a year or two, at most, after it was bottled, depending on conditions, leaving only debris.
Plus it was 1914. Protein chemistry was in its infancy. The sample would have been highly impure. No arguments.
The news, by AP by way of the New York Times, noted that all samples, which included other abandoned pathogens, were destroyed.
Runner-up, Vox — again.
What would happen if the Yellowstone supervolcano actually erupted?
“It would be bad. But that doesn’t mean you should start freaking out.”
How considerate to include the optimistic qualifier. In any case, the piece is littered with classic clickbait nosegold: Illustrations, illustrations, illustrations, the same illustrations, crabbed from the original source, used by every other clickbait farm doing the exact same piece.
Written by Brad Plumer, ridiculed previously for being “[on] the apocalypse beat, more or less.”
Last time, in case you forgot, this from the Vox masterclickbaiter:
“The world is on the brink of a mass extinction. Here’s how to avoid that.???
A silver lining in every cataclysm.