More from Science

Don't you just love it when scientists make a big announcement that they have proven some thing or other is really beneficial?  Take, for example, chicken soup.  For absolutely ever scientist said there was no empirical, scientific proof that chicken soup really did make you better.  It was all an "old wives tale" they said, poohpoohing all the wise old women who knew better.  Only after some bright bulbs decided to actually test chicken soup and found that it really did have healing properties did science take things seriously.  In the mean time I think I heard millions of "Old Wives" laughing up their collective sleaves.  Now, it appears, that scientists have once more proven what anyone with a brain already knew.  Chocolate, especially dark chocolate, is really good for you.  It has, so they say, an effect on the body that helps lower blood pressure.  So not only does chocolate taste good, it is now scientifically proven it is good for you. So does this mean now that when someone tells me to boil onions and add honey to the liquid that I need to find some scientific journal, or for that matter, scientist to give me the go ahead?  What about genetically modified onions?  Do they count?  Will it keep away the mutant mosquitoes?  How about regular ones?  Vampires? - oh wait - that's garlic.  Personally I can't see why I'd want to drink onion juice, honey or not, but many of the women here swear by it as a cold remedy.  True, it would certainly put off anyone who didn't have a cold from hanging around, but where's the data?  Where are all the nice tables of numbers and graphs and charts?  Where is the double blind test to prove this?  I have no idea, but if the Old Wives around here swear it works, I think I might take their word over some scientist, even if that scientist did test the theory (see chicken soup).  Until next time, I'm taking something less potent for my cold and eating a big bar of chocolate.