Though many clever and novel ideas are later disproven or shown to have specious connections—not unlike spontaneous generation, the theory of humours, leechcraft or alchemy but not plate tectonics, natural selection, the heliocentric solar system, and so on—a hypothesis, regardless of how intriguing or alluring it sounds at first, is something that is to be tested and ought to be taken as such while the verdict is still out. The verdict is still out on a lot of things. Boing Boing’s science correspondent understands the scientific method very well and warns readers to proceed with rigour and caution when entertaining this brief from Discovery magazine regarding a supposition from the University of Copenhagen that environmental pollution, specifically elevated carbon-dioxide levels, may be contributing to the marked increase in the incidence of obesity.
The argument, though untested, holds that breathing an excess of carbon-dioxide turns the blood slightly more acidic and throws off the chemistry of the body and the mind, triggering people to feel hungry more often and be less inclined to sleep properly. This notion has sparked some rather strident opinions on both sides, which underscores, I think, the importance of scientific thoroughness, especially when it has become all too common for pharmaceutical interests, environmental activists, nutritionists and the agricultural lobby to skew results in their favour, and basically setting up competent authorities to act as their pushers. A cornucopian, by the way, who could be characterized either as a denier or an optimist depending on one’s leanings, describes a futurist who believes, either through attrition or innovation, that mankind will not run out of resources any time soon. Traditional wisdom is not necessarily bad science or pseudo-science, but when false connections take root, it can be very hard to disabuse people of those beliefs, especially with a strong marketing force behind them. The idea of the slight change in the pH levels of one’s blood could contribute to obesity (it seems that the whole glass-of-wine-a-day argument and the fitness of French people approached this hypothesis from the other side, and the idea about the acidic of blood making someone prone or immune to disease reminds me of the mysterious survivors of the alien outbreak in the Andromeda Strain, whose blood was too acid to allow the virus to take hold) possibly simplifies the condition, since it seems far more likely that the afore-mentioned peddlers and pushers and a sedentary lifestyle are the causes, and it doesn’t seem quite right to entangle care for the environment with personal health or vanity, though that may prove most effective for bettering both. 
