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Antonio Martínez Ron is described as a traditional journalist: he asks questions inspired by his curiosity. (PHOTO: Javi Álvarez)
In December 2010, the Spanish science popularizer Antonio Martínez Ron became famous thanks to a joke.
"National Geographic discovers stonehenge fraud," he titled on his blog Fogonazos, where he published an article on a seemingly surprising discovery: 90% of the stones at the legendary site in England were apparently new.
The parody, published on the Day of the Innocents, made the front page of dozens of Internet sites, had to be rejected by the magazine itself and proved, according to the author, that " you should only not believe everything you read, no matter what your appearance and the many sources that seem to quote . "
This mix of humor, skepticism and science is found throughout this young man's work 42-year-old from Madrid: three books, two pages of Internet and a podcast are just some of the journalist's publications.
- How science transformed the world in 100 years
They all talk about science. And that's not why they're boring or complex.
" Basically, I ask myself the questions that whoever I am a curious journalist, I am not a scientist," he told BBC World on the eve of his speech at the Hay Arequipa Festival (Friday, November 9 at 16h at the San Agustín National University, Mariano Melgar Hall).
Here are some questions you answered before your trip to Peru.
- "It is not necessary to seek in science the ability to deny religion"
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The last book of Martínez Ron is entitled The naked eye and it deals with the incredible story of the knowledge of what we see (and we do not see).
Are we extremely ignorant or extremely wise about the world around us?
Well, a little of both, and that's precisely the message (from the book "The naked eye"). We are living beings with very specific sensory characteristics. We only see a very small part of the spectrum and we have been able to overcome these limitations.
We saw, for example, other dimensions of light that seemed imaginable. We were able to discover planets simply by performing a mathematical calculation; discover the atoms, the dark matter, the natural selection and another lot of things that are not seen at all with the naked eye.
What makes us different from animals?
Few things. In general, we are much less special than we think. Curiosity, for example, has been discovered even in unicellular beings, who need to explore their environment.
The difference is that in humans and primates this characteristic has become an essential element of survival.
- The scientist who "risked his life" by enclosing it in a micro-greenhouse containing 200 plants to understand climate change
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The curiosity is great about the connection humans have with primates and why we are different from other species, says the reporter.
So we are a privileged species that can see more?
Let's see: the part we can capture from the electromagnetic spectrum is very small. To understand it, it is often said that if the spectrum was a film strip of a film from Madrid to Moscow, what we see would be equivalent to only one of the images. Or as if we had a television with a million channels and only one tuned.
Some species may see the same or even more, because they find it more useful to see other parts of the spectrum. Snakes, for example, can see more towards the infrared to be able to detect the heat of their possible prey.
We are trichromat (we see three color receiving channels), but the birds are quadriceps. Pigeons, who have a half-witted spirit, can integrate the information from their two eyes that reaches them independently.
Are pigeons dumped?
Yes, pigeons are underrated and, in general, human beings are very overestimated. We are very pretentious, we think to be the summit of evolution. When in reality it does not work that way, because evolution is an immense tree in which we are a branch with concrete characteristics.
But come on, there are some bugs that have incredible abilities. Mantis shrimp, for example, has 17 types of color receptors; we have three; We do not have a faraway idea of what they see.
- Pareidolia: Why do we see faces in unexpected places?
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The vision capabilities of pigeons are more complex than those of human beings.
Is mantis shrimp superior to us?
No, because in terms of evolution, it is not logical to speak of inferiority or hierarchy.
We are not special, we should not think of ourselves as special. In fact, the history of science is a story of forced humility. We first thought we were the center of the universe and it turned out that this was not the case. It turned out that the Sun does not turn around us but is simply a star in a galaxy. And then it turned out that our galaxy is one of billions in the universe and that we are insignificant.
Science has reduced fumes.
What was the most important invention in history?
Obviously, there are many, but I like to point out the work of some scientists with more secondary or lesser-known roles like Ignaz Semmelweis, the physician who realized in the mid-nineteenth century that the The simple act of washing hands could reduce the mortality of women who gave birth and have caught puerperal fever.
This, at a time when the origin of diseases was not known. His observation has saved millions of lives and remains today a fundamental factor for our daily health and in hospitals.
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The human being has managed to exceed his perceptual limits, said the reporter. Yet he sees little.
And at the time, I read that being so clean was not so good, right?
Yes, well, you talk about the hypothesis of hygiene. That's because we recently discovered a new universe that we did not know was there, which is the universe of bacteria.
We now know that they can not only cause diseases, but also bacteria whose functions are almost as important as our living cells. We could not digest certain foods without them, for example. And it has been discovered that the elimination of certain bacteria can be the cause of many allergies and autoimmune diseases.
Dolores García Bello, a very interesting scientist, works on the badysis and comparison of the microbiota of the intestine in the inhabitants of industrialized cities and in those living in smaller centers of population and even isolated in the Amazon. And we realize that, first, the microbiota we have in our intestines depends on what we eat, which is why it is different in each of these groups. And second, it conditions the diseases that are contracted.
This is a line that is still under investigation, but it seems that an excess of hygiene may be harmful. that we could have messed up with the cleaning. And that is why it is now recommended to let children play with sand, for example.
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This is how clean and dirty hands look like. Bacteria are innumerable. And if Ignaz Semmelweis was not obliged to wash them, it would not have become a necessity.
So, is it true that you should not wash with soap?
Well, it is true that if you wear a lot, you get the microbiota
Is selling more than an invention of the industry?
be cautious because there is now a rather unjustified "industriafobie". Not because there is a company behind a product, it is necessarily bad. There are people to whom the mere mention of the word "industry" produces hives. And this does not happen only with soaps, but especially in the pharmaceutical industry.
This brings us to new trends that may be critical to science, especially medicine, alternative medicine. Acupuncture, Reiki. What do you think?
That of "alternative" medicine does not exist. In fact, these are dangerous disappointments for our health. When something works, it is called "medicine" directly.
In the case of pseudoscience and pseudotherapies, there is an important "industry" that brings in a lot of money by misleading people. It's a thing that's been repeating for a long time, because it's something very human: we're superstitious beings. Many times, our emotions control us and we cling to the last hope when we are in danger or sick.
What is problematic is that there are people who are willing to use this human sensitivity to create a business, as in the case of homeopathy, which consists of sweet water.
I think we are having a good time of scientific knowledge, but we risk that humanity will lose the reference. What some call the times of the afterlife. Some people hang on to patterns of the past and have failed. Like a world without vaccines, for example.
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Reiki, for example, is, according to Ron Martinez, a custom of curanderismo whose Medical utility has been refuted by science.
We do not need to go back to those dark times where ignorance reigned. I think we should be wiser on these issues and, most importantly, I think institutions, authorities and the media have the added responsibility of not giving false ideas or contrast.
We can not equate a guy who sells a magic cure to a scientist who has been doing research for years.
The Spanish scientist Pedro Miguel Echenique recently cited a very interesting example. He said that if you call on a doctor of the nineteenth century, he must learn everything from scratch because medicine has evolved. The same thing would happen to a physicist, and in any branch of science. But if you bring a nineteenth-century homeopath, you'll have nothing to learn, you're always doing exactly the same thing. Superstition has not evolved.
And the question of food, do you think people who do business with this "healthy diet"?
I think that there was an unnecessary fear of everything related to processed foods and a kind of idea that earlier times, which never existed, were best. Because he has never eaten as well as today. People are bigger, healthier, there is more life expectancy, there are fewer deaths, fewer diseases due to food, the water is cleaner.
But anyway. This desire to detoxify comes from the idea that we are intoxicated by certain foods, in particular by what some people generically call "chemicals", which is absurd because chemistry is paramount. This chemophobia is one of the big problems we have today.
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The wild mantis has 17 types of color receptors. We humans have three.
We talked about these new trends that challenge the science and discoveries that have been made over the years. But there is also global warming . At the time, I find an optimistic tone in your texts and in your work. Are you optimistic?
It depends on the day you catch me. As for the planet, I'm not very optimistic. I have scientific friends who believe that humanity can get out of it; They say it had already happened, as when we had agreed to fight the hole in the ozone layer.
But the political moment in which we find ourselves is marked by those who seek personal benefit. The division is sold more than the union.
Although nations now agree to try to lower the degree centigrade requested by the UN by 2100, scientists in the atmosphere report that the dynamics of the Atmosphere and inertia will have adverse effects on the climate for many years.
So, if we stop polluting now, we will continue to pay this bill in the following years.
You can be optimistic, you can think, for example, that we are finally developing clean nuclear energy.
But I think, nevertheless, that the problem concerns the model of civilization that we have created: we are like a species. A frantic and insatiable anthill that does not stop to spread.
So let's end it like an anthill …
Beware that ants are not destructive and live in harmony with their environment, of course, unless you are prey to it (laughs) ).
This article is part of the digital version of the Hay Festival Arequipa, a meeting of writers and thinkers that takes place in this Peruvian city from 8 to 11 November. 2018.
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