Lately I've been asked to speak to 9th graders about a career in
science, and it's depressing. Jobs in science in the next decades are
going to be filled by foreigners with good backgrounds in science, not
by the kind of students I've been seeing. Not the kids' fault; its our
fault for not teaching decent science.

All that is to explain why I always haul my carcase out when
Superthrive is discussed. I don't actually give a damn if someone uses
the stuff or not; I just need to defend the concept of experimentation.
Observation of what you think are positive results is just step one;
the next step is to test under controlled conditions to see if the
hypothesis holds up. The third step is for somebody else to repeat the
test independently. If you've ever read the newspaper, you know that
it's easy to "observe" something like an association of powerlines with
cancer- something that turns out not to be valid when studied
carefully. And you've also seen news stories about food x being linked
with illness y, and further study invalidating the original assertion.
That's OK- that's how science works.

Superthrive may or may not work, but no one has ever published data in
a peer-reviewed journal supporting the claims that are made.

Nina

PS- Thank you for letting me whine. Now I'm going to the lab where I'm
running my third trial to quantify Phytophthora sporangium production
on fallen leaf litter.

PPS- I just got back from a meeting where I saw that "Harry and David"
representative I had terrorized last year- I asked him if he had talked
to Harry and Dave about the shoddy mail-order bonsai, and he said he
*had*, and they were going to discontinue bonsai from their product
line. Not because of us, mind you, but because they weren't as popular
as Moose Munch.