Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Can we convert non food grade reagents into food grade using crystallization only

acetone - 11-6-2014 at 10:11

I have some zinc sulfate which I would like to eat as a dietary supplement. Thing is that I bought reagent grade Zinc Sulfate. Can I purify it through multiple crystallizations so that it becomes food grade? Please no comments about buying multivitamins fortified with zinc. They are expensive.

Zyklon-A - 11-6-2014 at 10:21

Probably, I would do at least three recrystalizations.
No guarantees though, I'm not a licensed physician, consume at your own risk!

UnintentionalChaos - 11-6-2014 at 10:32

Zinc compounds are probably the last non-food grade thing I would consider eating. Zinc tends to co-occur in ores with lead, arsenic, and cadmium, the last of which is quite similar chemically and hardest to remove. Food-grade zinc supplements are absurdly cheap, such as http://purebulk.com/zinc-gluconate-powder.html#.U5iggvldWSo

acetone - 11-6-2014 at 11:37

Quote: Originally posted by UnintentionalChaos  
Zinc compounds are probably the last non-food grade thing I would consider eating. Zinc tends to co-occur in ores with lead, arsenic, and cadmium, the last of which is quite similar chemically and hardest to remove. Food-grade zinc supplements are absurdly cheap, such as http://purebulk.com/zinc-gluconate-powder.html#.U5iggvldWSo


Thank you for this valuable info.

unionised - 11-6-2014 at 11:40

The difficult question is not
"how do I purify this to make it food grade" but
"how do I know that I have purified this to make it food grade?"

blogfast25 - 11-6-2014 at 12:24

Has a medically qualified person indicated (diagnosed) that you are suffering as a result of low zinc intake? I guess not because otherwise that person would have prescribed some zinc food supplement.

So it appears you simply believe you are deficient in zinc but do not have any sound evidence for it.

acetone - 11-6-2014 at 20:52

Quote: Originally posted by blogfast25  
Has a medically qualified person indicated (diagnosed) that you are suffering as a result of low zinc intake? I guess not because otherwise that person would have prescribed some zinc food supplement.

So it appears you simply believe you are deficient in zinc but do not have any sound evidence for it.


No I don't believe that I have any deficiency. I just wanted to know the effects of a little more zinc on my body. I eat a healthy balanced diet. Although I'm a vegetarian.

[Edited on 12-6-2014 by acetone]

numos - 11-6-2014 at 21:18

Acetone is asking if a substance can be purified in a home lab through recrystallization to make it edible, so...

Out of curiosity, how are commercial "food grade" chemicals made? Recrystallization right? I would imagine you would use a separate set of glassware, in which no hazardous substances have been contained before.

So theoretically speaking, if you want my opinion, as long as your using new glassware and do proper recrystallizations (3 minimum, as stated) it should be perfectly fine to take internally.

Fantasma4500 - 12-6-2014 at 01:51

somehow isolate the pure zinc, electrochemical?? and then react with a pure chemical somehow
i mean.. NaOH and zinc powder and a penny and you can coat copper with zinc, recall this from the penny into silver and gold where you then heat the zinc coated penny to make it brass aka gold coloured

blogfast25 - 12-6-2014 at 04:56

Quote: Originally posted by numos  
Acetone is asking if a substance can be purified in a home lab through recrystallization to make it edible, so...

Out of curiosity, how are commercial "food grade" chemicals made? Recrystallization right? I would imagine you would use a separate set of glassware, in which no hazardous substances have been contained before.

So theoretically speaking, if you want my opinion, as long as your using new glassware and do proper recrystallizations (3 minimum, as stated) it should be perfectly fine to take internally.


No, he's not or at least not only. Learn to read:

"I just wanted to know the effects of a little more zinc on my body."

As regards your blind 'faith' (because that's what it is) in recrystallization, it's risible. Sure, recrystallization CAN eliminate impurities, sometimes very effectively. But without knowing what you put in (analysis) and what you get out (more analysis!) you're driving blind. Would you blindly consume something that previously contained a toxin just because you've recrystallized it three times? What if it co-crystallises three times, huh?


[Edited on 12-6-2014 by blogfast25]

blogfast25 - 12-6-2014 at 05:06

@acetone:

This kind of 'self-medication' is pointless and very little is likely to be gleaned from it. Suppose you do obtain food grade 'zinc whatever' and ingest some over some period of time, then what? What measuring response will you use to scientifically evaluate anything? Just 'how I feel'? Any analysis of blood or urine? If you can't do any of that and don't have training in the body's metabolism it's a wasteful and potentially still dangerous exercise in futility.

acetone - 12-6-2014 at 08:17

Quote: Originally posted by blogfast25  
@acetone:

This kind of 'self-medication' is pointless and very little is likely to be gleaned from it. Suppose you do obtain food grade 'zinc whatever' and ingest some over some period of time, then what? What measuring response will you use to scientifically evaluate anything? Just 'how I feel'? Any analysis of blood or urine? If you can't do any of that and don't have training in the body's metabolism it's a wasteful and potentially still dangerous exercise in futility.


OK but I still want to eat some zinc. Still my question makes sense that - "Can you purify non food grade materials into food grade material using recrystallization alone?" You must be having bad days. The tone of your post sounds cranky.

[Edited on 12-6-2014 by acetone]

Zyklon-A - 12-6-2014 at 08:25

The answer is "yes", but to what extent? Sure, you can purify it, but how will you know when it's pure enough to orally ingest?
It's too big of a gamble I think, maybe five recrystallizations would be enough, but why take the chance?

hissingnoise - 12-6-2014 at 08:42

Quote:
OK but I still want to eat some zinc.

Why not just gorge on Zn-rich foods ─ that should (in time?) get it up and working like new?

Zyklon-A - 12-6-2014 at 08:45

Yeah, eat a bunch of cooked oysters!
100 grams contain 78.6mg of zinc (524% DV).

blogfast25 - 12-6-2014 at 09:40

Quote: Originally posted by acetone  
[Still my question makes sense that - "Can you purify non food grade materials into food grade material using recrystallization alone?"[Edited on 12-6-2014 by acetone]


No, it doesn't make much sense at all: it's far too generic. It makes about as much sense as 'eating zinc', crankiness aside...

It [recrystallizing] would work for some, not for others. There's no simple 'yes/no' answer.

Etaoin Shrdlu - 12-6-2014 at 09:56

Quote: Originally posted by blogfast25  
@acetone:

This kind of 'self-medication' is pointless and very little is likely to be gleaned from it. Suppose you do obtain food grade 'zinc whatever' and ingest some over some period of time, then what? What measuring response will you use to scientifically evaluate anything? Just 'how I feel'? Any analysis of blood or urine? If you can't do any of that and don't have training in the body's metabolism it's a wasteful and potentially still dangerous exercise in futility.

I suppose you always consult medical databases before ingesting ethanol, painkillers, or any chemical that affects mental states, before you can be sure whether there was a noticeable effect.

Yeah, yeah, dietary supplements aren't the same thing, and many are more likely to have a placebo effect than to make a real physiological difference, but that doesn't mean nothing can ever be gleaned from personal experimentation.

[Edited on 6-12-2014 by Etaoin Shrdlu]

blogfast25 - 12-6-2014 at 10:02

Quote: Originally posted by Etaoin Shrdlu  
[...] but that doesn't mean nothing can ever be gleaned from personal experimentation.



To glean meaningful information from well designed, sufficiently large clinical double blind tests is hard enough, but from a single non-medically trained self experimenter? Very little is to be learned from that, especially if the placebo effect isn't measured (it can't be with a single data point of course).

You might as well eat an apple a day (if you aren't already), then claim: 'hey, I feel better for that!'. Scientifically that means diddly squat. Attributing any well being to the apple is a belief system. I thought we were here to do science.

Etaoin Shrdlu - 12-6-2014 at 10:14

Yeah...not my point. He's not trying to do a statistically significant study. He's just curious whether he will notice effects on himself, personally, from taking zinc supplements. Those results might absolutely be the result of a placebo effect, but that doesn't make the inquiry itself any less scientific. This is not even close to a problem unless he starts running around trying to con/help/convince other people people based on one lone data point (as so many others have done).

Once again, you drink ethanol, you take aspirin for a headache, and then come back and tell me nothing "meaningful" was gleaned from the effects. How exactly is one lone person taking dietary supplements out of curiosity any less a scientific undertaking than one lone person trying to find an effective method to recrystallize that supplement to a certain level of purity?

acetone - 12-6-2014 at 10:22

Quote: Originally posted by blogfast25  
Quote: Originally posted by Etaoin Shrdlu  
[...] but that doesn't mean nothing can ever be gleaned from personal experimentation.



To glean meaningful information from well designed, sufficiently large clinical double blind tests is hard enough, but from a single non-medically trained self experimenter? Very little is to be learned from that, especially if the placebo effect isn't measured (it can't be with a single data point of course).

You might as well eat an apple a day (if you aren't already), then claim: 'hey, I feel better for that!'. Scientifically that means diddly squat. Attributing any well being to the apple is a belief system. I thought we were here to do science.


You do "science" your way and I'll do science my way. You might have heard or used the med class called antidepressants. These are drugs which improve your mood. But mood cannot be quantified. These meds can improve mood but not in everyone and still they sell good. There are many ADs on the market. It is not known why a particular med works for one and not for the other. My aims are
1. Either to boost mood
2. Or to boost physical strength(this can be quantified, you can count your push ups)
I do not see any need or reason to subscribe to your version of science.

[Edited on 12-6-2014 by acetone]

[Edited on 12-6-2014 by acetone]

blogfast25 - 12-6-2014 at 11:38

You're clueless, acetone. Clueless.

Go do your 'thing', just don't call it science. You don't even seem to know what an antidepressant is. Mental states can be quantified to an extent.

And push ups for physical strength... you're funny!

[Edited on 12-6-2014 by blogfast25]

blogfast25 - 12-6-2014 at 11:51

Quote: Originally posted by Etaoin Shrdlu  
Once again, you drink ethanol, you take aspirin for a headache, and then come back and tell me nothing "meaningful" was gleaned from the effects. How exactly is one lone person taking dietary supplements out of curiosity any less a scientific undertaking than one lone person trying to find an effective method to recrystallize that supplement to a certain level of purity?


Neither are a scientific undertaking: the effects of aspirin on head aches is well known and has been highly quantified, including the percentage placebo effect.

Recrystallizing supplements only teaches us something if you can prove there's been an improvement in purity. Otherwise it's a belief: 'these nice crystals look purer'. Potentially dangerous too, if you're going to ingest something you didn't know it purity of, before OR after.

Would you suggest that lone experimenters' highly personal 'experience' with food supplements should be eligible for publication in any peer reviewed science journal? Do you think if these 'results' were published on say 'facebook' that readers should accept it at face value?

[Edited on 12-6-2014 by blogfast25]

unionised - 12-6-2014 at 11:58

Quote: Originally posted by acetone  


"Can you purify non food grade materials into food grade material using recrystallization alone?"

[Edited on 12-6-2014 by acetone]

OK, that question makes sense.
the answer is "It depends."

What impurities are present?
Incidentally, it's perfectly possible that lab grade (or even commercial grade) materials are food grade.
"food grade" means that it meets a set of specifications for purity and, in particular, freedom from toxic impurities.
It doesn't tell you anything about how the stuff was made.

numos - 12-6-2014 at 12:28

Quote: Originally posted by blogfast25  
Quote: Originally posted by numos  
Acetone is asking if a substance can be purified in a home lab through recrystallization to make it edible, so...

Out of curiosity, how are commercial "food grade" chemicals made? Recrystallization right? I would imagine you would use a separate set of glassware, in which no hazardous substances have been contained before.


No, he's not or at least not only. Learn to read:

"I just wanted to know the effects of a little more zinc on my body."

[Edited on 12-6-2014 by blogfast25]


Yes, but that is his experiment, what he wants from this forum is to know if/how it is possible to recrystallize reagent grade chemical to food grade.

Quote: Originally posted by blogfast25  
As regards your blind 'faith' (because that's what it is) in recrystallization, it's risible. Sure, recrystallization CAN eliminate impurities, sometimes very effectively. But without knowing what you put in (analysis) and what you get out (more analysis!) you're driving blind. Would you blindly consume something that previously contained a toxin just because you've recrystallized it three times? What if it co-crystallises three times, huh?


I did say theoretically, as in if everything worked according to theory. An analysis would be necessary, I agree. And I apologize if my post sounded too encouraging, reading back, it does sound encouraging. I suggest that acetone try to make it, though not consume it. That way he could try and test for purity and determine if he was successful.
Quote: Originally posted by Zyklonb  
The answer is "yes", but to what extent? Sure, you can purify it, but how will you know when it's pure enough to orally ingest?
It's too big of a gamble I think, maybe five recrystallizations would be enough, but why take the chance?


In the science community we shouldn't ask "why?" questions, leave those to the philosophers, we should be asking "how?" questions.

Not "why would you purify it", but "how can you purify it"
Quote: Originally posted by blogfast25  
You're clueless, acetone. Clueless.

Go do your 'thing', just don't call it science.

[Edited on 12-6-2014 by blogfast25]


What kind of answer are you expecting? This is an insult, and looking through your posts, you have contributed much to this forum, so I am going to assume you're in a bad mood and won't judge based on this response. But science is:
Quote:

the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.
-google


If he wants to see the effects of "a" [zinc sulfate] on "b" [his body] then he is doing science.


pichoro - 12-6-2014 at 13:17

Whether it's science or not, wouldn't it simply be safer to buy a bottle of zinc vitamins rather than try to make your own from chemicals of unknown purity and unknown contaminants, before or after attempts at purification using potentially compromised lab glassware?

I see Nature Made Zinc, 3000 mg for under $8 on amazon... Beats the hell out of the cost of an ER visit, or worse, a funeral...

Rogeryermaw - 12-6-2014 at 13:57

the simple answer is of course you can. the same way the food and supplement industry does. but the food industry can also afford to do full analysis on every batch of product they run. if you bioassay anything you make in greater than microgram quantities, you may be unpleasantly surprised. bloggy may seem like he's ticked...he may be. but his advice is pretty sound. the long and short of it is: i think it would be a great idea as a purely informational project but please, have anything you're going to put in your body analyzed first... professionally.

Etaoin Shrdlu - 12-6-2014 at 14:15

Quote: Originally posted by blogfast25  
Quote: Originally posted by Etaoin Shrdlu  
Once again, you drink ethanol, you take aspirin for a headache, and then come back and tell me nothing "meaningful" was gleaned from the effects. How exactly is one lone person taking dietary supplements out of curiosity any less a scientific undertaking than one lone person trying to find an effective method to recrystallize that supplement to a certain level of purity?


Neither are a scientific undertaking: the effects of aspirin on head aches is well known and has been highly quantified, including the percentage placebo effect.

Our current state of knowledge has nothing to do with my point. Imagine I described hypothetical chemicals which hypothetically had the exact same effects as ethanol or aspirin, and which you had never come into contact with or heard of before, and further imagine you had taken, say, just the one which got you drunk off your ass, then tell me again that the results of your drinking it somehow told you nothing. Or, imagine someone in an island tribe who has never seen or somehow even heard of high-purity ethanol, imagine he drinks it (to try to gauge what the effects would be if someone drank it), and tell me his experiment is somehow unscientific because he doesn't have a modern lab behind him.

Science generally starts with one test, one surprise, one hey-I-wonder-if, then progresses from there. Not with a full battery of experiments on thousands of subjects (admittedly pharmaceutical companies are getting closer to it nowadays, but this does not make smaller tests any less scientific, it simply leaves them exactly as they were before, statistically insignificant).
Quote: Originally posted by blogfast25  
Would you suggest that lone experimenters' highly personal 'experience' with food supplements should be eligible for publication in any peer reviewed science journal? Do you think if these 'results' were published on say 'facebook' that readers should accept it at face value?

Of course not. You'll note the bit where I said he shouldn't try to con/help/convince people of the ultimate truth based on one data point. Before he could expect anything he discovered/corroborated to be accepted as fact, it would need to be verified, which would take a lot more tests, on yes, a lot more subjects, or alternatively, very thorough, properly blinded tests on only himself if the objective was to elucidate an unusual individual response. Science is never about accepting things at face value. Yes, a single experiment with a single human subject is statistically insignificant and will almost certainly involve placebo effects. It is still science to wonder "hey, what happens if I do this," then do it and note what you can.

Was everyone who tried to study this sort of thing say 200 years ago also not conducting science in your mind? Was Alexander Shulgin not conducting science because he tested psychoactives on himself? I surely hope that whenever you have an idea for an experiment you run at least 20 trials to account for variability, otherwise I suppose you aren't doing it either.

Acetone, while I'll defend experiments even involving only one single trial as they may well serve as a jumping-off point to other things (and in simple cases sometimes they will tell you all you need to know), it's still very likely you aren't going to get any measurable results. Wish you the best of luck anyway. (Don't try to purify zinc supplements by crystallization, just buy them.)

acetone - 12-6-2014 at 23:31

Quote: Originally posted by blogfast25  
You're clueless, acetone. Clueless.

Go do your 'thing', just don't call it science. You don't even seem to know what an antidepressant is. Mental states can be quantified to an extent.

And push ups for physical strength... you're funny!

[Edited on 12-6-2014 by blogfast25]


Good to see you that are laughing clown. I will call my thing anything I want and there is nothing you can do about it .

[Edited on 13-6-2014 by acetone]

[Edited on 13-6-2014 by acetone]

ziqquratu - 12-6-2014 at 23:46

Anecdotal evidence can only ever contribute to science as a starting point - It can NEVER prove anything, but is useful only for providing observations which can be used for the formation of hypotheses (i.e. the very first step in the scientific method). Thus, while critical to science, it is only the very beginning - never an end.

Let's use aspirin as an example - and for this, it doesn't matter whether we know what aspirin does or not. So, I have a headache, I take aspirin, the headache goes away. Question - did the aspirin cure the headache? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps it was a placebo effect, perhaps I took the aspirin at the peak of the headache and it was about to start going away anyway, etc. At best I can say MAYBE aspirin cured my headace. Likewise, if the headache stays, it doesn't mean the asprin was ineffective - maybe it stopped my headache from worsening! But none of this is science - it is experience, and it tells me what question to ask in a scientific experiment.

A scientific experiment is used to test a specific hypothesis. "Aspirin cures headaches" is a hypothesis which can be tested - but it requires a large, controlled study which is designed to minimise the impacts of other confounders. Any "experiment" that we're doing "to see what happens" is NOT scientific, because any observed effects may be chance (and I'd argue that any effect you see in response to challenging a biological system is more likely to be a fluke than a true effect - for a challenge with unknown effects, at least). You can still call it an "experiment" if you want, I suppose, but that doesn't make it scientific - let alone useful.

As for the statement "You do "science" your way and I'll do science my way" - that just plain offends me, as it should any scientifically literate reader. The scientific method is simple, elegant and the most reliable tool we have for investigation of the natural world. There are different ways to do studies (which may not be so simple and elegant!) but there is only one way to do science. If you're doing it any other way, your "science" is pseudo.

Etaoin Shrdlu - 13-6-2014 at 08:08

Quote: Originally posted by ziqquratu  
Let's use aspirin as an example - and for this, it doesn't matter whether we know what aspirin does or not. So, I have a headache, I take aspirin, the headache goes away. Question - did the aspirin cure the headache? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps it was a placebo effect, perhaps I took the aspirin at the peak of the headache and it was about to start going away anyway, etc. At best I can say MAYBE aspirin cured my headace. Likewise, if the headache stays, it doesn't mean the asprin was ineffective - maybe it stopped my headache from worsening! But none of this is science - it is experience, and it tells me what question to ask in a scientific experiment.

Agreed fully on everything but your last sentence. The experiment itself was still science. Sometimes the only reasonable conclusion from an experiment is "turns out we're not sure," and the idea that it can't be is really plaguing journals right now.
Quote: Originally posted by ziqquratu  
A scientific experiment is used to test a specific hypothesis.

Yes, it is. Read back a bit in the thread and you'll note Acetone has two of them he's interested in testing.
Quote: Originally posted by ziqquratu  
"Aspirin cures headaches" is a hypothesis which can be tested - but it requires a large, controlled study which is designed to minimise the impacts of other confounders.

Yes, it does, precisely because the effects of aspirin are so easily confounded. Now, try it again substituting ethanol, and tell me a person couldn't glean any reasonable conclusions from tossing back enough to get plastered every Friday. Just because you conducted an experiment which might not show any significant effects does not mean the experiment itself is unscientific, otherwise we'd only be able to do science on things where we were apprised of the results beforehand, which would be patently ridiculous. Do a study on a bioactive compound with a thousand test subjects and it turns out you see nothing statistically significant? Whoops, looks like you were a hack after all. How silly not to try ten thousand from the get-go.

Back to real science, if you try an experiment and the effects of something are minor if they're there at all? You either stop there and don't report fantastic results where there were none, or you repeat it with more trials, better controls, additional pairs of eyes to make sure you're not attributing significance to vagaries of chance. The initial experiment was not any less scientific for this.
Quote: Originally posted by ziqquratu  
Any "experiment" that we're doing "to see what happens" is NOT scientific

I am eagerly awaiting your example of a scientific experiment which was not done for this reason.
Quote: Originally posted by ziqquratu  
As for the statement "You do "science" your way and I'll do science my way" - that just plain offends me, as it should any scientifically literate reader.

That is indeed pretty offensive. So is labeling experiments without enough trials for your own tastes pseudoscience. Pseudoscience is attributing significance to results which are not significant. It is not "designing an experiment with fewer trials than ziqquratu and blogfast think it should have had."

forgottenpassword - 13-6-2014 at 10:40

Food grade mineral supplements are always purified by crystallization of a salt. There is no reason why you couldn't do so at home, if you find an appropriate method.

ziqquratu - 14-6-2014 at 06:44

There's nothing wrong with a negative result - most of them are negative (although, as you note, you wouldn't believe it just from the literature!). And it's not the results that determine whether an experiment is scientific or not - a scientific experiment is, by definition, one which is conducted in accordance with the scientific method.

The scientific method requires several steps, and whilst there's room to quibble on the details, I'm going to stick with what Wikipedia gives so that we can work from a common reference, and for clarity I shall put the steps as named by Wikipedia in bold. If you've got one you like better, by all means provide it and we can build from there. We'll also examine it in the context of the original poster's proposed experiment. Also, please note, that my overly wordy spelling out of every basic detail is not to be taken to mean I think you need to be spoken to in such a way - I simply think it best to lay out a detailed argument from the most basic principles, to try and avoid misunderstandings and arguing against straw men.

The formulation of a question stage is often heavily reliant on anecdote and uncontrolled observations. "I wonder what zinc does when ingested daily?" is a valid question, certainly.

In forming a hypothesis, however, it's necessary to get a bit more specific. A hypothesis is, in essence, a statement of what you believe is fact, the truth or falsity of which can be tested (at least in principle - it's entirely possible to come up with a valid hypothesis which cannot be tested YET, for example because we lack the technology required to do so. Physics is rife with these sorts of hypotheses). So, "I wonder what zinc does when ingested daily?" is NOT a hypothesis; we can rephrase it a little, though, to get one - "daily ingestion of zinc will have a physiological effect".

Predictions, of course, come from the hypothesis, and for a hypothesis to be valid it must be possible to predict what should be observed if it is true (or false, of course). "In response to daily ingestion of zinc, I will observe a physiological change" is a prediction - the only one I can think of - from the hypothesis we came up with in the previous paragraph. Here's where things start to look a bit dicey, though - it's a very general prediction, and the prior probability of (taking zinc) and (physiological change) co-occurring by chance it pretty damned high. But, still, weak as it is, we have a valid prediction, so lets move on.

Next is the fun part - the testing! The design of an experiment to test our prediction. To do so, all we need to do is design an experiment which can demonstrate that, in response to a daily dose of zinc, a physiological change occurs, and that the can be attributed to the zinc. And here's where it falls all to pieces. You can take daily doses of zinc, but without a suitable control you CANNOT ascribe any effect to the zinc. All you can say is "I took zinc AND I developed anosmia" (I'm going to avoid subjective outcomes like "I feel healthier" simply because they're even worse to analyse than objective outcomes). With the data acetone could obtain, he could never claim that "I took zinc WHICH CAUSED anosmia" - even though anosmia is a known side effect of zinc overdose - because the experiment cannot show such causation. Thus, because the experiment cannot test the prediction that "in response to daily ingestion of zinc, I will observe a physiological change", it is by definition NOT a scientific experiment.

To emphasise this point even further - let's assume that acetone goes and gets some blood drawn and his serum zinc levels measured both before and after supplementation, and let's say they go up. Based on the experimental design we've got, he cannot even ascribe THAT to the supplements, because the experiment lacks the necessary controls! The increased zinc could be from other dietary sources, whilst the supplement he chose had poor bioavailability and thus had no effect at all. Perhaps, unbeknown to acetone, a new zinc mine or (poorly run) galvanised metal recycling plant opened up down the road and the increase was due to inhaled zinc fumes. Maybe he shot himself with a nail gun and, despite pulling it out, left a little bit of the coating in there which leached into his bloodstream!

To be clear, it would of course be reasonable to assume that the supplements caused the increase in serum levels, but the experiment as designed could not prove it and thus this assumption is NOT a scientific conclusion.

Now, to address a couple of other points you've made:

There is, of course, no need to KNOW the outcome of an experiment before you do it - that is an absurdity. There is, however, a requirement that you can PREDICT the results. And if you find something odd which deviates from your predictions, you need to go back and design a new experiment to test the validity of those observations! For example, let's say you design a trial to test a new lipid lowering drug. You might say 'we'll look for a decrease in serum levels of LDL". If you get to the end of the trial, though, and find that your patients actually had an increase in HDL, or that people from Canada had a lowering of LDL but nobody else did, you can't say that your drug had these effects! All you can say is you observed them, and you need to go design a trial to test your new hypotheses ("my drug causes an increase in HDL" or "my drug only works in Canadians")!

I also agree that there's nothing wrong with doing small, simple, cheap trials - which may have significant flaws in their design - to probe a preliminary hypothesis. One does not invest in a $100million phase III clinical trial to examine the effects of a drug which was shown to make rats' hair grow faster! This, however, is not the same as doing something "to see what happens". Building up from weak to moderate to powerful trials is simply testing a hypothesis under progressively more stringent conditions, until one has sufficient and sufficiently reliable data from which one can draw a scientifically valid conclusion. Once again, an anecdote may be the starting point for all this, but it cannot be used as a data point!

I also stand by my statement that "any "experiment" that we're doing "to see what happens" is NOT scientific" - a scientific experiment MUST test a falsifiable hypothesis. "Just to see what happens" is a fishing expedition - 100% valid and useful for generating hypotheses, but worthless for providing scientific evidence of a phenomenon. Go ahead, drink ethanol and note that you got drunk - do it once, twice, a hundred times - but don't think that you've proven (in any scientifically valid sense of the word) that ethanol causes intoxication! Yes, you have a reasonable conclusion, but you don't have a scientifically valid one! Even ignoring the variability of the experience of being drunk, at best you've shown that consumption of ethanol is strongly associated with intoxication in a single subject.

I'm not advocating the choice of any particular procedure for any particular study. Nor do I suggest that any particular number of trials is required to show something. For example, if done under properly controlled conditions, I can with one experiment prove that lithium aluminium hydride can reduce benzaldehyde to benzyl alcohol - but to do that, I need to demonstrate that there was no alcohol there to start; that my LAH was of good quality; that no other reducing agents were present; and so on. On the other hand, should my experiment be negative, I have NOT shown that LAH cannot reduce benzaldehyde - all I have shown is that it DID not. More trials would indeed be needed to confirm THAT result (particularly in light of the prior plausibility of the original hypothesis!). Similar examples can be created for negative outcomes - even complex ones, in some cases (for example, given that thalidomide causes a specific pattern of birth defects, one could hypothesise that "taking thalidomide will not cause my baby to have the known pattern of birth defects". Easily proven, but only in light of our knowledge of what thalidomide does; and if the baby is born with defects, it again does not prove that thalidomide caused them because that's not what the experiment was designed to test!).

As for my definition of pseudoscience, let us once again venture to Wikipedia: "Pseudoscience is a claim, belief or practice which is presented as scientific, but does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status." I hope I've made my case for why acetone's experiment is pseudoscience - it fails to meet the requirements of the scientific method, despite being presented as a scientific experiment (or at least that's what one would have to assume, since he's presenting it on a discussion forum dedicated to experimental science!).

arkoma - 14-6-2014 at 08:10

borderline flame war fellas--------

I just consulted my "Handbook of Chemistry and Physics" where i gleaned the following data:

Zinc Sulfate (ZnSO4) MW 161.45 Colorless orthorhombic crystals Solubility 57.7gm/100gm DH2O SOLUBLE IN ALCOHOLS
Lead Sulfate (PbSO4) MW 303.3 orthorhombic crystals solubility .0044gm/100gm DH2O
Antimony Sulfate (Sb2[SO4]3) MW 531.711 white crystalline powder Slightly sol DH2O
Cadmium Sulfate (CdSO4) MW 208.475 colorless orthorhombic crystals sol 76.7gm/100gm DH2O INSOLUBLE IN EtOH

From this it would seem to me that "yes" Zinc can be purified to a pretty damned high standard, at least from Lead and Antimony contamination and PROBABLY from Cadmium with dried EtOH. I won't go on a limb and say this meets "food grade", but I would be interested to see what purity level careful recrystalizations of zinc SULFATE assayed to. 99%+ I would imagine.

Etaoin Shrdlu - 14-6-2014 at 10:06

Okay, I agree with the vast majority of what you laid out in your post with some small differences in opinion, ziqquratu, so please don't be offended if I miss responding to some of it. I suspect we may be largely arguing semantics here.
Quote: Originally posted by ziqquratu  
There's nothing wrong with a negative result - most of them are negative (although, as you note, you wouldn't believe it just from the literature!). And it's not the results that determine whether an experiment is scientific or not - a scientific experiment is, by definition, one which is conducted in accordance with the scientific method.

Agreed. I'm also fine with using Wikipedia definition of the scientfic method since it seems to be a fairly good one.
Quote: Originally posted by ziqquratu  
Also, please note, that my overly wordy spelling out of every basic detail is not to be taken to mean I think you need to be spoken to in such a way - I simply think it best to lay out a detailed argument from the most basic principles, to try and avoid misunderstandings and arguing against straw men.

Same here and no worries. I noted a reference to flaming, and if I said anything personally offensive to anyone here I apologize.
Quote: Originally posted by ziqquratu  
"I wonder what zinc does when ingested daily?" is NOT a hypothesis; we can rephrase it a little, though, to get one - "daily ingestion of zinc will have a physiological effect".

Predictions, of course, come from the hypothesis, and for a hypothesis to be valid it must be possible to predict what should be observed if it is true (or false, of course). "In response to daily ingestion of zinc, I will observe a physiological change" is a prediction - the only one I can think of - from the hypothesis we came up with in the previous paragraph.

Acetone does actually have much more narrow predictions: that it will elevate his mood, and/or that it will boost his physical strength, from what I can tell, though it's possible he may have even more narrow predictions which he hasn't stated. (Yes, indeed, I agree, this is pretty much guaranteed not to give any data worth looking at with one test subject.)
Quote: Originally posted by ziqquratu  
Next is the fun part - the testing! The design of an experiment to test our prediction. To do so, all we need to do is design an experiment which can demonstrate that, in response to a daily dose of zinc, a physiological change occurs, and that the can be attributed to the zinc. And here's where it falls all to pieces. You can take daily doses of zinc, but without a suitable control you CANNOT ascribe any effect to the zinc. All you can say is "I took zinc AND I developed anosmia" (I'm going to avoid subjective outcomes like "I feel healthier" simply because they're even worse to analyse than objective outcomes). With the data acetone could obtain, he could never claim that "I took zinc WHICH CAUSED anosmia" - even though anosmia is a known side effect of zinc overdose - because the experiment cannot show such causation. Thus, because the experiment cannot test the prediction that "in response to daily ingestion of zinc, I will observe a physiological change", it is by definition NOT a scientific experiment.

See, this is the part where I disagree with probably both yourself and blogfast. You're assuming not only that Acetone has no controls (maybe people in his school or family, or workplace who are not taking zinc supplements - the world is rife with them). Admittedly they wouldn't be the best, much better would be to make sure that they were the same age, same food, same activity levels, etcetera, however, this is nearly impossible for the home experimenter (got a twin, Acetone?) and it is never possible in biology to get perfect controls.

I'd like to step aside a bit and make a point here which I think is relevant and probably the keystone which accounts for most of our differences. If your objective is to determine the effects of something on one single subject in particular, the only reasonable control is that subject. Sticking to a certain pattern of diet and exercise, measuring what you're interested in, then sticking to that same pattern while adding in the new factor, is really the only way I can think of to even pretend to determine what the effects of something are on specifically yourself. Some things will be too subjective or too minor to quantify, like "mental state." Almost everything will be better understood by large-scale studies on multiple people. But if there's an objective, repeatable response... Let's say acetone is anti-miraculously the only person in the world allergic to zinc gluconate. The only way he can determine this is by comparing his state on zinc gluconate to his state off zinc gluconate.

You're also assuming before the fact that zinc will not show any obviously meaningful results, requiring a large-scale study. We only know this because we have foreknowledge of zinc's effects. This has nothing to do with an experiment's validity, only with the foresight of a researcher.
Quote: Originally posted by ziqquratu  
To be clear, it would of course be reasonable to assume that the supplements caused the increase in serum levels, but the experiment as designed could not prove it and thus this assumption is NOT a scientific conclusion.

Yes, the experiment designed by you, where for some reason you assume there are going to be no constraints to prevent things like dietary changes or shooting yourself with a nail gun. And the thing is, it would still be a valid though very poorly controlled experiment. Just not a valid conclusion. This is where pseudoscience generally differs from science, drawing conclusions where there are no valid ones to be found. (A valid, scientific conclusion would be: "We measured higher serum levels of zinc in the subject taking the supplement, however due to his changing his diet abruptly, inhaling zinc fumes from down the road, and shooting himself with a nail gun, further research is needed." Then people could go off and do other experiments on the results of those particular diet changes, inhalation of zinc fumes, and shooting yourself with a nail gun.)
Quote: Originally posted by ziqquratu  
There is, of course, no need to KNOW the outcome of an experiment before you do it - that is an absurdity. There is, however, a requirement that you can PREDICT the results. And if you find something odd which deviates from your predictions, you need to go back and design a new experiment to test the validity of those observations!

Exactly! Why are we assuming Acetone is incapable of doing these things? Sometimes you run into confounding factors. It happens despite the best of plans. Sometimes you push ahead with a new experimental design, sometimes you shrug and move on to other things. Your experiments were still scientific.
Quote: Originally posted by ziqquratu  
For example, let's say you design a trial to test a new lipid lowering drug. You might say 'we'll look for a decrease in serum levels of LDL". If you get to the end of the trial, though, and find that your patients actually had an increase in HDL, or that people from Canada had a lowering of LDL but nobody else did, you can't say that your drug had these effects! All you can say is you observed them, and you need to go design a trial to test your new hypotheses ("my drug causes an increase in HDL" or "my drug only works in Canadians")!

Yes! You're describing the phenomenon where a scientific experiment sometimes leads to another hypothesis instead of the conclusions you were interested in. The experiment was still scientific. It's your actions afterwards which will determine whether further work is scientific, or pseudoscientific or nonexistent.
Quote: Originally posted by ziqquratu  
Once again, an anecdote may be the starting point for all this, but it cannot be used as a data point!

This is true. I'm not sure why you think an experiment on a single subject necessarily counts as an anecdote, though. At what number of subjects does it become non-anecdotal? Two? Three? What if the experiment was designed to test something completely unique to that subject? Isn't including others strictly unscientific in that case?
Quote: Originally posted by ziqquratu  
I also stand by my statement that "any "experiment" that we're doing "to see what happens" is NOT scientific" - a scientific experiment MUST test a falsifiable hypothesis.

Eh, yes. I'd agree that you also have to have a starting assumption about what happens which you're trying to either prove or disprove. But at their core, all scientific experiments are "to see what happens."
Quote: Originally posted by ziqquratu  
For example, if done under properly controlled conditions, I can with one experiment prove that lithium aluminium hydride can reduce benzaldehyde to benzyl alcohol - but to do that, I need to demonstrate that there was no alcohol there to start; that my LAH was of good quality; that no other reducing agents were present; and so on. On the other hand, should my experiment be negative, I have NOT shown that LAH cannot reduce benzaldehyde - all I have shown is that it DID not. More trials would indeed be needed to confirm THAT result (particularly in light of the prior plausibility of the original hypothesis!).

Yes, yes, exactly. And just because you didn't show that LAH cannot reduce benzaldehyde doesn't mean that your experiment was not scientific. Because of course it was. If a jerk of a lab partner contaminated your LAH, your experiment was still scientific. It's just you're going to get some odd results and not necessarily know why. Where you go with that may be scientific or unscientific. But that doesn't change that your original experiment was perfectly scientific.
Quote: Originally posted by ziqquratu  
As for my definition of pseudoscience, let us once again venture to Wikipedia: "Pseudoscience is a claim, belief or practice which is presented as scientific, but does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status." I hope I've made my case for why acetone's experiment is pseudoscience - it fails to meet the requirements of the scientific method, despite being presented as a scientific experiment (or at least that's what one would have to assume, since he's presenting it on a discussion forum dedicated to experimental science!).

I don't like Wikipedia's definition because they've broadened and broadened it trying to get hacks to shut up on their talk pages. I prefer Merriam-Webster: "a system of theories, assumptions, and methods erroneously regarded as scientific." The key part there being "system." Pseudoscience isn't one faulty assumption or one faulty experiment or one faulty interpretation. Those happen. Pseudoscience is taking those things together and screaming "LOOK SHEEPLE THIS MEANS SOMETHING!"

As long as Acetone is honest when he does eventually see nothing meaningful, no I don't believe he's doing pseudoscience. Otherwise I'd have to assume everyone who did an experiment that turned out not to have meaningful results was also doing pseudoscience, and that doesn't sit right with me.

You can make a point that our prior knowledge about zinc implies this sort of experiment would be meaningless and therefore doing it isn't scientific, but as you said, science isn't about taking things at face value. Maybe there's someone out there who despite overwhelming evidence is trying to test whether it is some other component of nasal sprays other than specifically zinc which causes anosmia, and y'know, good for him. Even if he doesn't have enough have enough subjects that he's certain to get results he can be confident in. Just as long as he doesn't lie about it afterwards.

[Edited on 6-14-2014 by Etaoin Shrdlu]

Praxichys - 15-6-2014 at 04:29

Quote: Originally posted by numos  

If he wants to see the effects of "a" [zinc sulfate] on "b" [his body] then he is doing science.


This whole thread makes me want to test the effects of "a" [a hammer] on "b" [my computer].

If you call yourself a scientist, do not be offended by even the worst manifestations of the definition. Monkeys do science all the time. Nobody ever said that all science has to be useful.

That said, unless you can run a trace metals analysis on your zinc sulfate, don't eat it. Go buy something USP grade. The goal is not to think you can but more to be sure you did.

acetone - 15-6-2014 at 11:14

Quote: Originally posted by Praxichys  
Quote: Originally posted by numos  

If he wants to see the effects of "a" [zinc sulfate] on "b" [his body] then he is doing science.


This whole thread makes me want to test the effects of "a" [a hammer] on "b" [my computer].

If you call yourself a scientist, do not be offended by even the worst manifestations of the definition. Monkeys do science all the time. Nobody ever said that all science has to be useful.

That said, unless you can run a trace metals analysis on your zinc sulfate, don't eat it. Go buy something USP grade. The goal is not to think you can but more to be sure you did.


Science is srs bsns.

blogfast25 - 15-6-2014 at 12:59

Quote: Originally posted by arkoma  

From this it would seem to me that "yes" Zinc can be purified to a pretty damned high standard, at least from Lead and Antimony contamination and PROBABLY from Cadmium with dried EtOH. I won't go on a limb and say this meets "food grade", but I would be interested to see what purity level careful recrystalizations of zinc SULFATE assayed to. 99%+ I would imagine.


Question remains: would you want to ingest zinc sulphate that was recrystallized when previously it contained lead, antimony and/or cadmium?

Ever heard of co-crystallisation? Occlusion?

Bottom line is that recrystallizing is probably just fine but to ingest recrystallized stuff in this case 'probably fine' might not be good enough. At least not w/o post-recrystallization analysis of trace elements...

ziqquratu - 15-6-2014 at 22:09

Firstly, Etaoin, you seem to be willing to credit acetone with having a lot more detailed processes in mind than he has presented here. I find myself less willing to be so charitable. Were that the case, I feel he would have responded as such - describing what controls he planned to use and so forth - when first challenged about it. And, as I noted, I think that his comments about doing science "my way" also cost him credibility.

Also, just like I believe that laying out a detailed argument is defence against straw man arguments, I also think it unwise to ascribe to a person qualities that they have not exhibited - in this instance, evidence of any effrot to plan a truly scientific experiment. Worst case they can come along and correct you.

So, let us accept the more narrow endpoints you identified. Firstly, mood elevation is an extremely subjective outcome - and experiments which measure it tend find it is associated with a placebo response greater than that of (almost?) any other commonly used endpoint. That doesn't make it worthless as an endpoint - as acetone pointed out, there's always antidepressants. It does mean that if you're going to use it, you've got to control extraordinarily well for that extreme placebo effect.

As for improving physical strength - certainly this can be measured objectively (although the statement itself is quite fuzzy - does this mean increased muscle mass, ability to lift heavier things, or whatever? Also, measuring these things could possibly confound the results - if you think the zinc will improve your ability to lift weights, for example, you may test yourself once a week by lifting weights. This practice would itself improve your ability to lift weights!)
Quote:

But if there's an objective, repeatable response... Let's say acetone is anti-miraculously the only person in the world allergic to zinc gluconate. The only way he can determine this is by comparing his state on zinc gluconate to his state off zinc gluconate.


No argument that some hypotheses can be proven with a single experiment - this is a point I made myself. However, in order for something like that to be possible, there needs to be very clear cause and effect. So, it's easy enough to prove someone is allergic to (say) zinc gluconate - scratch tests are predicated on this - because the response is (more or less) immediate and distinct (i.e. it's damned hard to mistake an allergic reaction for something else!). If the response you're measuring is delayed by an hour, though, it's less reasonable to assume it was caused by the challenge; a day is pretty suspect, and a year? Forget it. Likewise, an allergic reaction or a specific pattern of birth defects are good endpoints for establishing causality; common or subjective effects (such as a headache or mood elevation) are not, because they can be caused by so many things. These less reliable endpoints and long time scales can, of course, still be used, but they require more rigorous controls by far (and even the simple cases still require controls - for example, a compound which causes an allergic response in all patients, and one that never does - if the experiment is to be scientific!).
Quote:

It's your actions afterwards which will determine whether further work is scientific, or pseudoscientific or nonexistent.


I disagree. Your methods before and during the experiment determine whether your work was scientific or not; what you do with the results more likely shows what your ethics are like. It doesn't matter if you, the only person on the planet who knows about your experiments, die in a car crash before you can tell anyone about it or do anything with your results - if your work failed to meet the requirements of science it was pseudoscientific. As you note, it is "a system" which is defined as pseudoscientific - it has nothing to do with what is done with said system (such as promotion), but rather that the system itself bears the trappings of science, but is not scientific. And the most common manifestation of that seems to be poorly designed studies which fail the requirements to be scientific (and also, a single experiment can be a system!).

Thus, I continue to stand by my defining acetone's proposed experiment (in the absence of any evidence that he plans to use proper controls etc.) as pseudoscientific - no scientific method, performing experiments in a way which cannot falsify the hypothesis, and so on.

I should note, though, that analysis of the results is, of course, integral to the scientific method (and is in fact part of the experiment, but I want to lay it out separately here), and messing up at this point can also render an experiment pseudoscientific. If you deliberately choose the statistical test which shows your results in a positive light, that's pseudoscience. Also, if you make a genuine, "honest" mistake - maybe you just don't know about statistics and you use whatever your software told you to use, thinking it would be suitable - that's NOT pseudoscience, but it's still bad science.
Quote:

I'm not sure why you think an experiment on a single subject necessarily counts as an anecdote, though. At what number of subjects does it become non-anecdotal? Two? Three? What if the experiment was designed to test something completely unique to that subject? Isn't including others strictly unscientific in that case?


An experiment on a single subject, or with a single trial, need not be anecdotal - my LAH or thalidomide scenarios, or your allergy example can all be scientific. The difference between anecdote and science is the use of a suitable control - which can be the subject themself, if you're measuring a unique response! Anecdotes (at best) describe observations - they are accounts of the past, and may (often!) leave out important facts which bear on the observations described. Scientific experiments make predictions in advance, and then attempt to falsify those predictions under conditions designed to take into account (control for) the very factors the anecdote may have left out. If you don't have a working hypothesis, can't make a prediction, or design an experiment which cannot falsify the hypothesis, you're not doing science.
Quote:

I'd agree that you also have to have a starting assumption about what happens which you're trying to either prove or disprove. But at their core, all scientific experiments are "to see what happens."


I will concede that you can phrase all scientific enquiries as seeking "to see what happens", but that this is NOT sufficient to make an enquiry scientific. You must be "seeing what happens" in the context of a valid hypothesis and set of predictions. As in, "I hypothesise that, should I drop this rock into that puddle, I will hear a splash. Let's try it and see what actually happens." Without the entire first sentence - the hypothesis and prediction - you're not doing science.

Ultimately, I'm trying to make the point that an experiment is scientific or not based only upon the methods used. It doesn't (necessarily) matter if you expect useful results; if the thing has been studied before; what you do with the results; or how you promote your conclusions. To be classed as science, all you have to do is follow the scientific method. You don't even have to do it well - there's a whole heap of bad, sloppy, poor quality science out there! But if your hypothesis or predictions are unfalsifiable, or if your experiment can't test them, you're in the land of pseudoscience.


A final note to Praxichys:
Quote:

If you call yourself a scientist, do not be offended by even the worst manifestations of the definition. Monkeys do science all the time. Nobody ever said that all science has to be useful.


Personally, I'd be inclined to argue that ALL science is useful - any advance in our knowledge of the natural world is valuable, although it may not - and may never - have a valuable application. However, I think everyone should be offended by "the worst manifestations of the definition". Those manifestations put out low quality, inaccurate or outright fraudulent work, and then valuable, limited resources must be expended in trying to replicate or disprove them so that the field (whatever it is) can advance past them. Not to mention the more significant harm done by crappy medical research - how many people have died because of, for example, Wakefield's MMR fraud? Or, for that matter, how many suffered or died based on Merck's apparent cover up of data showing incresed cardiovascular events thanks to Vioxx? Dodgy science - and dodgy scientists - already get a pretty smooth ride, and should be called out far more often and, in many cases, suffer far more significant consequences. I doubt that you'd be so complacent if you discovered that your doctor, for example, was one of the bad apples in his field.

Also, the fact that monkeys do science ("I hit the tree with a stick, and fruit fell off. I believe I can get fruit using this stick!" *hits tree with stick, fruit falls* "I conclude that sticks can be used to get fruit from trees" is not a bad scientific experiment) makes it all the more depressing that so many humans do it so badly.

EDIT: I note after posting (of course!) that my monkeys lack a control. But then, all they need to do for a controlled experiment is whack the tree with their hand instead of the stick, then they've shown (or not) that the stick was indeed responsible for dislodging the fruit.

[Edited on 16-6-2014 by ziqquratu]

arkoma - 15-6-2014 at 22:59

Quote: Originally posted by blogfast25  
Quote: Originally posted by arkoma  

From this it would seem to me that "yes" Zinc can be purified to a pretty damned high standard, at least from Lead and Antimony contamination and PROBABLY from Cadmium with dried EtOH. I won't go on a limb and say this meets "food grade", but I would be interested to see what purity level careful recrystalizations of zinc SULFATE assayed to. 99%+ I would imagine.


Question remains: would you want to ingest zinc sulphate that was recrystallized when previously it contained lead, antimony and/or cadmium?

Ever heard of co-crystallisation? Occlusion?

Bottom line is that recrystallizing is probably just fine but to ingest recrystallized stuff in this case 'probably fine' might not be good enough. At least not w/o post-recrystallization analysis of trace elements...


I didn't suggest acetone, or anyone else, consume it. I was merely trying to approach answering the OP's original question using published data. This thread seems to me to have degenerated into a debate over the scientific method.

forgottenpassword - 16-6-2014 at 00:58

Where have you got the idea that it is contaminated with lead, cadmium and antimony from?

Texium - 16-6-2014 at 04:24

Quote: Originally posted by UnintentionalChaos  
Zinc compounds are probably the last non-food grade thing I would consider eating. Zinc tends to co-occur in ores with lead, arsenic, and cadmium, the last of which is quite similar chemically and hardest to remove. Food-grade zinc supplements are absurdly cheap, such as http://purebulk.com/zinc-gluconate-powder.html#.U5iggvldWSo


From back here, where it was originally brought up.

forgottenpassword - 16-6-2014 at 04:35

He's not trying to purify zinc ore, he's trying to purify reagent grade zinc sulfate.

blogfast25 - 16-6-2014 at 04:51

Quote: Originally posted by forgottenpassword  
He's not trying to purify zinc ore, he's trying to purify reagent grade zinc sulfate.


Impurities in the ore often get carried over into the end-product. Almost always, in fact.

'Reagent grade' is a very elastic term.

forgottenpassword - 16-6-2014 at 07:36

The certificate of analysis from his reagent grade material will tell us exactly what impurities are present. When he provides that it should be an easy matter to purify it to a grade suitable for consumption. Tests for heavy metal contamination are easily performed, and very sensitive.

Etaoin Shrdlu - 16-6-2014 at 10:41

Quote: Originally posted by ziqquratu  
Firstly, Etaoin, you seem to be willing to credit acetone with having a lot more detailed processes in mind than he has presented here. I find myself less willing to be so charitable. Were that the case, I feel he would have responded as such - describing what controls he planned to use and so forth - when first challenged about it. And, as I noted, I think that his comments about doing science "my way" also cost him credibility.

For most of this, I'm not arguing one way or the other. I think telling someone he's conducting pseudoscience without evidence is just as bad as claiming some kind of "my way" flexible definition for the method. However, I can understand the kneejerk reaction to personal experimentation (because many people who do it ascribe effects without anything like sufficient evidence), and I can also understand the kneejerk reaction to state that "well I'm doing science my way" (because this might just as well refer to conducting a limited study versus a very in-depth one).

I do not like to see people being told they're doing pseudoscience without so much as an inquiry onto what sort of experiment is planned. Then, if it was a terrible design, alterations could be suggested without the personal tone. There's no conclusive evidence he's really going to design a scientific experiment. There's no conclusive evidence he isn't, either. There's no conclusive evidence he's even finalized the design yet.
Quote: Originally posted by ziqquratu  
Also, just like I believe that laying out a detailed argument is defence against straw man arguments, I also think it unwise to ascribe to a person qualities that they have not exhibited - in this instance, evidence of any effrot to plan a truly scientific experiment. Worst case they can come along and correct you.

Or, in this instance, evidence of complete disregard for the scientific method. That hasn't been exhibited either. I try to assume good faith when it comes to the genuinely curious. Maybe Acetone hasn't designed an experiment that will tell him anything. Maybe he doesn't know how. Maybe he does know how and has overlooked something. Maybe he hasn't even thought as far as experimental design yet. Maybe it would be nice to ask about it and give pointers rather than ripping apart a hypothetical terrible experiment which exists only in our own minds.

No argument that acetone's endpoints are extremely subjective and difficult to measure, especially in one person. I believe I mentioned that myself. I just wanted to point out that he did have more narrow predictions than that he'll get some kind of physiological response.
Quote: Originally posted by ziqquratu  
No argument that some hypotheses can be proven with a single experiment - this is a point I made myself. However, in order for something like that to be possible, there needs to be very clear cause and effect. So, it's easy enough to prove someone is allergic to (say) zinc gluconate - scratch tests are predicated on this - because the response is (more or less) immediate and distinct (i.e. it's damned hard to mistake an allergic reaction for something else!).

This is the crux of the matter right here. The only reason you know there won't be clear cause and effect is because you know taking zinc is very unlikely to show clear cause and effect. Pretend you don't, and reevaluate the situation. Testing something on one subject can be perfectly scientific even if you have reasons to suspect you might not get useful data. It could be a useless experiment but still a scientific one. It's when you say "oh my, thirteen days after taking the first dose I didn't get a migraine, zinc is so great for you" that you hit pseudoscience.
Quote: Originally posted by ziqquratu  
I disagree. Your methods before and during the experiment determine whether your work was scientific or not; what you do with the results more likely shows what your ethics are like.

Of course pseudoscience has nothing to do with other people; I certainly think that in the context of research, concluding something you have no evidence for is pseudoscientific whether you tell someone or not.
Quote: Originally posted by ziqquratu  
As you note, it is "a system" which is defined as pseudoscientific - it has nothing to do with what is done with said system (such as promotion), but rather that the system itself bears the trappings of science, but is not scientific. And the most common manifestation of that seems to be poorly designed studies which fail the requirements to be scientific (and also, a single experiment can be a system!).

The important part is that in addition to methods, pseudoscience must incorporate beliefs in some way (i.e., conclusions). Experiments are just investigations carried out according to a certain methodology; they fail that criteria unless the design of the experiment itself is according to unscientific precepts (like "controls render results invalid").
Quote: Originally posted by ziqquratu  
Thus, I continue to stand by my defining acetone's proposed experiment (in the absence of any evidence that he plans to use proper controls etc.) as pseudoscientific - no scientific method, performing experiments in a way which cannot falsify the hypothesis, and so on.

And I'll point out again just for emphasis that you have no idea what his experiment is. Has he even shown himself to be unwilling to discuss his design, beyond being extremely put off after being jumped all over initially for things he didn't even say? I know I'd be irritated as all hell if I asked about reagent synthesis with a one-sentence summary of a question I was intending to investigate later, and had a bunch of people jump in just to tell me that I was obviously asking that question the wrong way.

(For the record, the question is "Does methyl farnesoate cause exclusively female populations of tadpole shrimp to spontaneously develop males?," and you're damn right I don't have enough tanks to investigate properly.) ;)
Quote: Originally posted by ziqquratu  
I should note, though, that analysis of the results is, of course, integral to the scientific method (and is in fact part of the experiment, but I want to lay it out separately here), and messing up at this point can also render an experiment pseudoscientific. If you deliberately choose the statistical test which shows your results in a positive light, that's pseudoscience. Also, if you make a genuine, "honest" mistake - maybe you just don't know about statistics and you use whatever your software told you to use, thinking it would be suitable - that's NOT pseudoscience, but it's still bad science.

No argument here. I think we have similar viewpoints on this; except I don't think bad experimental design necessarily means pseudoscience either. Nobody knows everything; I don't think it matters whether you failed to account for something because you had no idea it existed or because you genuinely thought it wouldn't be a problem. I'll absolutely agree it can mean bad science.

I think I touched on most of what I'm leaving out here; if you feel otherwise I will be happy to respond specifically.
Quote: Originally posted by ziqquratu  
I will concede that you can phrase all scientific enquiries as seeking "to see what happens", but that this is NOT sufficient to make an enquiry scientific. You must be "seeing what happens" in the context of a valid hypothesis and set of predictions. As in, "I hypothesise that, should I drop this rock into that puddle, I will hear a splash. Let's try it and see what actually happens." Without the entire first sentence - the hypothesis and prediction - you're not doing science.

Sure, I agree as far as experimental design goes. By now I'm fairly certain that's not even what we're arguing about.
Quote: Originally posted by ziqquratu  
Ultimately, I'm trying to make the point that an experiment is scientific or not based only upon the methods used. It doesn't (necessarily) matter if you expect useful results; if the thing has been studied before; what you do with the results; or how you promote your conclusions. To be classed as science, all you have to do is follow the scientific method. You don't even have to do it well - there's a whole heap of bad, sloppy, poor quality science out there! But if your hypothesis or predictions are unfalsifiable, or if your experiment can't test them, you're in the land of pseudoscience.

Ultimately, it seems we're not split over what makes an experiment unscientific, but what makes this experiment unscientific. I believe it very well could be scientific, you believe it very well won't be. You want evidence for the former, I want evidence for the latter. I suppose we should both avoid drawing conclusions until Acetone does lay out his plans, if he does at all.

smaerd - 16-6-2014 at 13:30

I have no idea what the hell this thread is really about, or what it turned into after about 7 posts. Psuedoscience not psuedoscience, walls of useless text, surprised this isn't in detritus yet... Edit - wow people arguing about theoretical hypothesis' of a theoretical experiment. My goodness, I'm about to eat some zinc sulfate just to put an end to it.

To answer things in a facile manner. Some chemical mixtures can be purified through recrystallization alone to be safe enough to be ingested. It's entirely conditional. What is the source of your zinc sulfate(how was it prepared and from what)? What are it's contaminants(has any analysis been performed)?

For example, "Can I recrystallize ascorbic acid and eat it safely?"
2 quick cases.

1) Ascorbic acid came from oranges and was assessed to be 95% pure by GC/MS analysis with the only other contaminants being other sugars. Sure, this could be recrystallized and be deemed edible if done properly.

2) Ascorbic acid was believed to be synthesized by the reichstein process from sorbose where a previous experimenter following a similar procedure to your own received a 50% impure yield. Would I trust a simple or three simple recrystallizations without any analysis? Nope. Especially not without knowing what solvent it was recrystallized from.

The idea of food-grade chemicals is fairly laughable to myself personally, this is the first time I have encountered such terminology. What matters most is whether the chemical is what it is supposed to be in a pure manner without hazardous contaminants. The chemical must also be biologically benign or beneficial in the amount ingested as "food".

So did you create your zinc sulfate from a zinc/aluminum alloy? or did your reagent grade distributor do that? Was it assessed as 99.9% pure? Do you know how to perform simple qualitative and/or quantitative tests for the abundance of heavy metals? is that enough for you, or would you rather have some assurance through something like atomic absorption spectroscopy or similar? Is it worth the cost, or does cost not matter? Keep in mind Isaac newton considered raw mercury metal as 'food-grade', guess we all have a different palette for our metals and inorganic compounds :P.

What an incredibly vague thread with some rather curious ideas tucked behind it...

[Edited on 16-6-2014 by smaerd]

Etaoin Shrdlu - 16-6-2014 at 13:49

I reported the massive digression from topic so the mods can remove/split it. Sorry, Acetone. I might not have started the derailment but I surely helped carry it along.

aga - 16-6-2014 at 13:54

The original Question is clear.

This is in the Beginnings section, not the Advanced beyond Understanding Biochemistry section.

It is becoming tedious the rate at which Beginnings is being judged Detritus by people who clearly should be either reading the Question, or confining themselves to the sections where their Advanced-ness makes them more productive.

Posts HERE deemed Underneath someone's Level can also be ignored, which should be the simpler option, requiring less typing.

In answer to the OP, i do not know, neither have i learnt anything from all the Warnings.
By what % does recrystallisation purify a substance, no idea.
Which Types of Impurities are carried over with solvent x,y,z also no idea.
How to use a chain of different solvents to eliminate possible impurites, no idea.
What processes may help eliminate dangerous impurities, no idea.

People here DO have an idea, and i wish they would use that knowledge more, rather than choose to be angry and aloof.

Us NOOBs here in Beginnings would appreciate some share of that knowledge.

[Edited on 16-6-2014 by aga]

arkoma - 16-6-2014 at 15:25

Quote: Originally posted by aga  
The original Question is clear.

This is in the Beginnings section, not the Advanced beyond Understanding Biochemistry section.




we are BEGINNERS

[Edited on 6-17-2014 by arkoma]

AJKOER - 16-6-2014 at 15:42

With respect to using ZnSO4 as a Zinc supplement, no. The issue is how much of the Zn becomes bio-available.

I have used (some would say over used) Zn supplements for over a decade. I have found it very effective in preventing virus based colds, flu,..and in treating anything I still managed to contract. It basically interferes with the ability of a virus to reproduce. Max dose per my research is around 1 mg for each pound of weight, but there is some research suggesting only 25% of this dose if over 60 years old (reports of neurological issues, like shaking). I personally take half the max dose, unless addressing the start of a cold. I then consume 50 mg of Zinc every six hours with vitamin C (the best of which is Ester C that remains the longest in the blood system, in my opinion).

I recall reading that high Zn levels in the prostate even reduces the likelihood of cancer in that organ, but some argued it would be hard to achieve such levels (I suspect some bias in this reporting as the current Zn supplement is even more bio-available, and there is just too much big money being made in other more expensive and dangerous therapies).

I do not recommend Zn lozenges, however, due to low levels of Zinc and the presence of sugar, which actually suppresses ones immune system. Sugar is also claimed to be the super food of cancer cells (yet another reason to avoid high consumption of sugar/starch or alcohol).

[Edited on 17-6-2014 by AJKOER]

Bert - 16-6-2014 at 17:08

Hi everyone-

There is a bit of gold mixed in with the dross here, and it IS in "beginnings".

I don't want to detritus, erase or lock the thread. It HAS gone far afield, with apparent hard feelings by some.

Perhaps some could edit their posts a bit for civility, and everyone could either drop it or address the OP's question? There's nothing I can see worth getting bent out of shape or use of colorful language here!

acetone - 17-6-2014 at 02:36

I do not care about the fate of this thread anymore. I got what I was looking for. People have replied that

1. Some people have replied that I can consume reagent grade Zinc Sulfate after 3 or more crystallizations

2. Some people have replied that do not eat reagent grade ZnSO4 at any cost due to dangers of heavy metal contamination

forgottenpassword - 17-6-2014 at 03:56

If you are satisfied with vague and contradictory answers, why did you bother asking the question at all? If you provide the certificate of analysis for your reagent grade zinc sulfate it will be possible to answer your question very easily.

acetone - 17-6-2014 at 05:59

Quote: Originally posted by forgottenpassword  
If you are satisfied with vague and contradictory answers, why did you bother asking the question at all? If you provide the certificate of analysis for your reagent grade zinc sulfate it will be possible to answer your question very easily.


By asking the question I came to know that one of the impurities in zinc can be cadmium which as you know is a toxic metal and this info is good enough for me. I will not take the risk of ingesting something which may contain cadmium as one of the impurities.
What is this certificate of analysis which you are asking about? Finally there is no contradiction or vagueness, different people provided their points of view. It was up to ME to decide what to with the info that they provided.

arkoma - 17-6-2014 at 06:06

Off Topic, sort of
Quote:
Tobacco smoking is the most important single source of cadmium exposure in the general population. It has been estimated that about 10% of the cadmium content of a cigarette is inhaled through smoking. The absorption of cadmium from the lungs is much more effective than that from the gut, and as much as 50% of the cadmium inhaled via cigarette smoke may be absorbed.[62] On average, smokers have 4–5 times higher blood cadmium concentrations and 2–3 times higher kidney cadmium concentrations than non-smokers


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadmium#Safety

Edit--just found this interesting, that's all^^^

[Edited on 6-17-2014 by arkoma]

Etaoin Shrdlu - 17-6-2014 at 09:35

Acetone, if you really have a reagent grade chemical, the supplier should provide a certificate of analysis on request. It will show the purity in a basic percentage at least, and pretty much always includes heavy metals analysis.

acetone - 17-6-2014 at 12:00

Quote: Originally posted by Etaoin Shrdlu  
Acetone, if you really have a reagent grade chemical, the supplier should provide a certificate of analysis on request. It will show the purity in a basic percentage at least, and pretty much always includes heavy metals analysis.


OK I will try asking him.

VeritasC&E - 19-7-2022 at 22:51

So... would recrystalizing ZnSO4 in pure Ethanol a few times (as it seems to have been suggested) make it pharma grade / eliminate heavy metal traces?

Tsjerk - 20-7-2022 at 00:01

Maybe, maybe not, without analysis you won't know. Just to summarize this thread.

VeritasC&E - 20-7-2022 at 02:57

Does anyone on the forum have trace metal analytical capabilities?

I (or anyone who cares to) can carry out a pre-agreed recrystalization process, send the sample to the person who can do the analysis, and results published here for the general knowledge of whoever is curious to know how efficiently zinc (in the form of sulphate) can be purified from heavy metals using recursive recrystalization alone.

yobbo II - 22-7-2022 at 03:24

God be with the good old days when petrol contained lead

https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/historical-lead-from-pet...

You can get kits for testing for heavy metals etc.

https://www.simplexhealth.co.uk/product/quick-test-kit-for-c...
Are 'food grade' chemicals safe to eat?
Yob


[Edited on 22-7-2022 by yobbo II]

Fulmen - 22-7-2022 at 11:06

@Veritas: That's not going to work. All you can prove is that that one particular batch made by you using specific raw materials was good. There is no magic process that can guarantee a perfect product. Everything depends on proper analysis.

VeritasC&E - 24-7-2022 at 12:29

Quote: Originally posted by Fulmen  
@Veritas: That's not going to work. All you can prove is that that one particular batch made by you using specific raw materials was good. There is no magic process that can guarantee a perfect product. Everything depends on proper analysis.


I can specifically throw in say 100ppm of the corresponding salt of each known impurity (Cd, Hg, As, Pb, Cu, Ag, Co, Ni, Mn, Fe, etc.) into the starting material (the rest being 5N Zinc) to see how each is impacted, thus serving as a generally applicable proof of concept (of course HOW recrystalization is performed has a good impact, but it will prove what recrystalization certainly CAN do, and which impurities it is least efficient at churning out of the initial material).