The previous news item briefly touched on apricot kernels. Rumours circulate that they help prevent cancer.
Apricot kernels contain amygdalin, also known as laetrile. Cancer cells are said to die after ingestion, while healthy cells are said to remain unharmed. In the 1970s, supplements containing amygdalin were available as a cancer treatment. This has since been clearly demonstrated to be untrue. On the contrary, amygdalin is dangerous. It is converted in the body into highly toxic cyanide.
Eating even two or three apricot kernels can have serious consequences. Even one kernel is poisonous for young children. Simply swallowing a kernel isn’t a problem, but chewing or crushing the kernels is.
The Belgian Ministry of Public Health has been warning about the high toxic content of apricot kernels since 2016. Since then, most packaging has been removed from health food stores and supermarkets. However, you can still buy the kernels online.
Apricot kernel powder is still used in confectionery, such as imitation marzipan, but it is first heated to high temperatures, which eliminates the toxic effect.
Very good news: the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA) has issued a ban on the sale of MMS.
Miracle Mineral Supplement, also known as Miracle Mineral Solution or Master Mineral Solution, is frequently sold on the Internet as an alleged cure for numerous diseases. However, research has shown that the use of MMS can lead to serious health risks, including burns in the digestive tract, breathing problems and kidney and liver failure.
In 2010, MMS caused controversy in countries around the world. At the time, the NVWA warned against the product, but this did not result in a decrease of MMS sales. After stuyding its effects, the Authority concluded it was too dangerous to be available. The NVWA has also advised the Dutch health minister to encourage stricter regulation of MMS throughout the European Union.
Party logo of the Dutch Liberals (People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy).
Investigative journalism platform Investico, reporting in newspaper Trouw, discovered that during its November 2016 congress, a majority of the Dutch conservative liberal People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) members approved an amendment to their election programme, submitted by a climate change denier. The sentence that climate change leads to ‘rising sea levels and heavy rainfalls‘ was taken out, because according to the submitter ‘it isn’t all that bad’, claiming levels only rose 1.8 mm annually, and that they’ve done so consistently for the past 500 years.
Climate scientist Reinier van den Berg responded with disgust: ‘This is scandalous, toe-curling and outrageous. There is a gigantic acceleration of sea level rises, right now at 3.45 mm a year. We can provide evidence for it everywhere: it’s already causing a lot of water damage. We cannot afford to let this happen to everything that lives on Earth, and generations after ours; we need to take serious action now.’
The chairman of Liberal Green, an environmentalist faction within the party, disagreed with Investico’s conclusions, saying the VVD is clear about the urgency of the consequences of climate change, and the necessity of the Paris Climate Agreement, and that the amendment’s submitter was just a ‘lone climate sceptic’. The question remains why a majority of party members then agreed with a proposal that would violate the VVD’s supposed ‘green core’. With parliamentary elections in the Netherlands coming up in two weeks, Van den Berg concluded: ‘A party that denies such important problems, does not deserve even one vote.’
Scientists from the University of Cambridge, led by Dutch social psychologist Dr Sander van der Linden, are developing a method to ‘vaccinate’ news readers against misinformation.
Their research, using climate change denial as an example, shows that it works well to briefly mention that there is criticism against the consensus on the subject, but provide an easy-to-refute example of this. When someone will later come across similar criticism in a fake news story, they will be prone to reject it. However, if conspiracy theories are given too much attention, and treated with a more detailed debunk, this has an adverse effect on the readers, who will more likely believe the next hoax article that they are presented with.
The key is finding the right dosage that helps people protect themselves against nonsense.
Pepijn van Erp at the 2014 Skepsis Congres. (Vera de Kok CC-BY-SA 4.0)
In recent years, mathematician Pepijn van Erp has risen to prominence within the skeptical movement in the Netherlands. He started blogging about flawed application of statistics in both scientific and pseudoscientific articles, and got involved with Stichting Skepsis as a board member in 2012.
Nowadays he regularly writes articles on various dubious claims in an investigative journalistic style on skeptical blog KloptDatWel.nl (mostly in Dutch) and his own website (mostly in English). Van Erp is occasionally invited to give his expert opinion on radio shows about conspiracy theories, fake news and other topics that skeptics are concerned about. To him, skepticism is ‘interesting and funny’, but also a ‘civic duty’ to protect people from harm.
Scientists from the University of Cambridge, led by Dutch social psychologist Dr Sander van der Linden, are developing a method to ‘vaccinate’ news readers against misinformation.