Klarinet Archive - Posting 000308.txt from 2000/02

From: George Kidder <gkidder@-----.org>
Subj: Re: [kl] alcohol and mouthpieces
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 08:46:21 -0500

At 04:41 PM 02/06/2000 -0600, you wrote:
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "George W. Kidder III" <gkidder@-----.org>
>To: <klarinet@-----.org>
>Sent: Sunday, February 06, 2000 4:00 PM
>Subject: Re: [kl] alcohol and mouthpieces
>
>
>> I can vouch for the damaging effect of very strong ethanol (95%) on a
>> (fortunately cheap) plastic mouthpiece - it cracked it! I do not know
>what
>> the effect would be on hard rubber, or whether a more reasonable
>> concentration (say 50%) would have done anything, or whether the alcohol
>> used in the pre-loaded wipers (iso-propanol, I think) would be as
>damaging.
>> Don't have enough cheap mouthpieces to experiment on!
>>
>
>
>How do you know it was the alcohol and not something else? Without doing a
>detailed analysis that might include examination by an electron scanning
>microscope and a gas chromatograph and perhaps some other tests, you cannot
>know this. Even testing a sizable sample of plastic mouthpieces would
>really prove it as the experimenter *may* be doing something in conjunction
>with the experiment that biases the results.
>
>Anecdotal evidence can only act as a springboard for further scientific
>investigations. In and of themselves, they can prove nothing.
>
>
>Dee Hays
>Canton, SD

All I can say is "Picky, picky." It should be clear from my message that
this was an "experiment" with N@-----.
There was no doubt of the fact that it had cracked. I would have to agree
that strict logic does not require that there be a connection between these
events in anything other than time, with this small sample size.

To expand on this, at the risk of going off topic. You contend that "Even
testing a sizable sample of plastic mouthpieces would [not] really prove it
as the experimenter *may* be doing something in conjunction with the
experiment that biases the results." (I supplied the word "not".) In
elementary science courses, we teach that scientific "proof" is always
provisional - that is, we propose an hypothesis and seek to disprove it as
well as we can. When we fail to disprove it, we accept it as provisionally
true, reserving the right to change our views if further evidence is
brought forward. It seems to me that your contention amounts to saying
that since in this case we cannot do the impossible (prove it true) we
should not be allowed to do the experiment! This is tobacco company logic.
Science would be in a bad way if everyone thought this way.

As to the SEM and the GC (and any other instrument you can name, for that
matter), these may (or may not) be of use in attempting to determine the
MECHANISM of the cracking, but have nothing to add to the FACT of cracking,
which has already been demonstrated.

Finally, I am well aware of the difference between scientific investigation
and anecdotes, having spent my professional career as a working scientist.
I did not pass off my observation as science, and I am sorry if you read it
this way.

Winter must be longer and colder in Canton than in Maine.

>
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-----------------------
George Kidder
MDIBL
gkidder@-----.org

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