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The introductions of new, widely-adopted technologies are often accompanied by fears of possible deleterious effects from the use of such devices, everything from concerns that telephones would spell the end of regional accents to parental admonitions not to sit too close to the television (lest you ruin your eyes!). Usually these fears are largely allayed after a few years, as the technologies improve and become ubiquitous, and evidence of the feared negative effects fails to materialize. Nonetheless, even though the microwave oven has been a standard household appliance for several decades now, rumors continue to linger that microwaves somehow change the molecular structure of consumables and therefore make food products heated in them unsafe to eat. The sample experiment represented below is an expression of that sort of rumor, but it is pure junk science, both in its methodology and its conclusions: First of all, there's some doubt as to whether the photographs displayed above actually depict a real experiment rather than some digital fakery, as the Day One and Day Five photos appear to be remarkably consistent in camera angle, lighting, positioning, background elements, and everything else save for the appearance of the dying plant: Regardless, water heated in a microwave oven is no different in structure or energy than water heated with a gas flame, on an electric stove, or over a wood fire: It's just water, plain and simple. More important, though, is the awareness that drawing valid scientific conclusions from experimentation involves conducting multiple trials under carefully controlled conditions, something not in evidence here. The extraneous factors that could have produced the exhibited results (i.e., one live plant and one dead plant) exhibited above are legion. For example: Rather than simply speculate, though, we performed the same experiment in a more controlled manner. We started out with three each of three different types of plants: one member of each set was given water that had been boiled on a gas stove, water that had been boiled in a microwave oven, or water that had not been boiled at all. All the water used in the experiment came from the same source, the same vessel was used for boiling water both on the stove and in the microwave, and all three types of water were stored in identical containers. The water given to all of the plants was at room temperature. The plants were kept in a carefully controlled environment that protected them from our pets and equalized (as much as possible) their exposure to environmental factors and watered in the manner described above for a period of time identical to that of the original experiment. As evidenced by the photos below (taken while the plants were briefly removed from the environment in which they were tended and placed in a setting better suited to photography), at the end of that time period all three plants in each set were fairly thriving. When a non-participating observer was asked to indicate (blindly) which plant in each set he thought had fared the best, in two cases he selected plants that had been given microwave-boiled water, and in one case he selected a plant that had been given unboiled water: As for the coda to the example quoted at the head of this page, there have been some cases in which the use of microwave-heated blood in medical procedures has been cited as causing serious problems, but not because microwave heating corrupts the DNA. Rather, conventional microwave ovens can heat blood too quickly and/or too unevenly (resulting in hemolysis), so standard (and slower) blood warming procedures are generally preferred or mandated.
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