Every few weeks, I get a fresh comment on an old video I made a about a year ago about Gilbert Ling. It’s low level stuff, remarkable only for the persistent trickle of comments I get, and because there are apparently people on the internet who practically worship this guy, Ling, who most people — even professional biologists — have never heard of.
Quick summary: Ling was an old scientist who, in the 1940s, concluded that the molecular engine that drives ion gradients in cells, the sodium-potassium pump, didn’t exist. That was a reasonable doubt in the ’40s, but became quixotic and bizarre as the evidence accumulated over the subsequent decades. Ling invented an idea he called the Association Induction hypothesis, and later the Polarized-Oriented Multilayer theory of cell water, neither of which have any empirical foundation, while the sodium-potassium pump is one of the better characterized molecules in the cell.
I think that explains the longevity of the support for his crackpottery. People love weird models of water, especially the quacks, who greatly appreciate having a cheap, ubiquitous substance that they can spin mystical jargon around to inflate the appearance of value. There are lots of miracle water claims on the internet, like Gel Water
, H3O2, and its unlikely chemical structure.
I think I’m getting criticized by quacks who revere Ling as a credentialed scientist who legitimizes their opposition to scientific authorities and provides a pseudoscientific framework for their rationalizations.
Also, all the people whining about the oppression of poor Gilbert Ling can’t read, can’t understand the content of a video even, and can’t comprehend even a lay explanation of a biological phenomenon. This guy, for instance, tries to summarize what I wrote and doesn’t even come close.
@juanpablogallardov: And if I can summarize your presentation is based on three points, potassium pumps exist because their proponents won nobel prizes, there is a mathematical model and Ling was too arrogant. That is your whole basis, quite poor I would say.
@PZMyersBiology: @juanpablogallardov No. because some people isolated, sequenced, and characterized the behavior of the pump…incidentally, they won a Nobel for their work.
Yeah. What I said.
We know stuff exists because people put in a lot of hard work to demonstrate its existence. In my experience, quacks aren’t interested in doing hard work.
Failed Causality 101.
How does H3O2 get that pretty carbon-like structure?
@3 From AI, obviously.
Ling lingers.
I remember having to learn how to calculate the amount of energy it took to transport the ions across a semipermeable membrane via an Na-K pump
I know PZ is not exactly a fan of Wikipedia, but I love how the first sentence on H3O2 says it’s a “marketing scam”. X-D
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexagonal_water
Fair.
Water molecules do tend to hang around in sixes, at least in the liquid and solid phases, which is why ice crystals form hexagonal structures. That’s just the neatest way they can fit together, given the bond angles involved. But even if you called that arrangement a single molecule — rather than six separate molecules linked by hydrogen bonds — its formula would be H12O6.
H3O2 is even better with a teaspoon of taurine powder.
There’s an entire series by Prof. Dave:
I’m getting a headache trying to work out how the bonds in H3O2 would work