I recently was shown a video in one of my classes by my professor. It was a video she had made discussing the dangers of DHMO. If you are anything like me you are probably wondering what DHMO is....well don't worry, we will get to that in a minute. In the video my professor talked about the dangers of this substance and how it causes fatalities every year to a number of students as well as how it is destroying certain elements on campus (making metal rust). When we were finished watching the video our professor had us vote whether or not we thing DHMO should be banned from our campus. Everyone but two of us voted to ban it. When our teacher asked those two students why they didn't vote to ban it they responded with "there wasn't enough information given about the substance". Their response was just what our professor wanted to hear. They were right, we did not receive enough information and it turned out that all of us (with the exception of two) voted to ban water from our campus...that's right WATER. DHMO stands for die-hydrogen monoxide, or in other words two hydrogen one oxygen (H2O). Needless to say most of us felt pretty silly. I personally wish I would have thought through a little more than I did and realized what were were actually witnessing versus what was being asked. The point of this exercise was to show us that you can't vote against things, or really on things at all unless you have enough information. Without the proper amount of information you might do what we did and vote against something that is actually a very important element in our everyday lives...like water. I now realize the importance not only in science, but in life as well, of having all the information you need about something before coming to a final thesis or opinion.
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