No question about it: I have a lot of tools. In fact, I am a tool-aholic; I even wrote about it here. When a visitor remarks, “Gee, you have every tool in creation,” I respond, “Well, not quite, but if you see something I don’t have, tell me, and I’ll get it.” I’ve always been this way, woodworking and metalworking, since childhood, but now I need a separate shop building to house it all!

A few weeks ago, I was rebuilding a garden tractor and needed to cut some threads into a worn axle to add a grease fitting. No big deal. All it takes is a drill press and a cutting tool called a threading tap, and a bit of accumulated skill. But, horror of horrors, my old tap wasn’t up to the job; the axle was too hard. I found a nice set of the correct taps on Amazon, and, voila, the next day, the package was in my hands.

To my surprise, bold letters on the package stated: “KNOWN BY THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA TO CAUSE CANCER BIRTH DEFECTS OR OTHER REPRODUCTIVE HARM.”

I thought, “Damn, here I am, a research chemist for over 40 years, and I didn’t know that tool steel coated with titanium nitride was a carcinogen!” Should I be angry at my professors for this blatant deficiency in my education?

It got worse when I opened the package. It contained a little plastic box with an equally alarming notice: “CANCER OR REPRODUCTIVE HARM”!

This was a warning that none but the most credulous fool could take seriously. The only way this tool steel tap could cause internal disease would be if it were ground into tiny nanoscale particles and eaten! And even then, I am not so sure.

But, of course, Gavin Newsom and the magnanimous state of California were not protecting me from the tool steel taps but the little plastic box they neatly came in. A small polyethylene box! While I should have immediately donned protective gloves, face shield, and an N-95 mask, all I could do was laugh! Chicken Little could not have done a better job of handwringing.

I looked up how Prop 65 in California established these warnings, but I will not bore you with the details. (Anyone can look it up for themselves.) Some aspects of this law had good intentions and good results. However, applying such warnings to a little polyethylene box containing a few pieces of tool steel can only result in a complete loss of credibility to California’s judgment. Reasonable people cannot take seriously such hyperbole.

The warning’s very wording can only be offensive to a scientist, starting from that first definitive declaration: “KNOWN.”

As a scientist, I have made measurements that supported one theory or another. I have shown that a new process I developed produced a valid result by setting up a null hypothesis (what we call failing to reject the null hypothesis, but never mind about that). I have made experimental observations that were consistent with a particular conclusion. But never (and I mean never) did I assert that a state of “knowing” ever resulted from my laboratory.

Science simply does not think or speak in terms of knowing. A scientist has two jobs and two jobs only: measurement and uncertainty. That’s it. You make a measurement, and you define its uncertainty.

Sometimes, you can draw a conclusion from the measurement, sometimes not. But “knowing” is simply not something you can claim. To do so leads to the fallacy some politicians (especially on the left) call settled science. I taught my students that the very idea of settled science was better left to the realm of religion.

Kamala Harris, when California attorney general, was the greatest defender of the worst excesses of Prop 65, which are brought primarily by environmental and consumer groups that benefit financially from settlements that businesses pay. In one such case, Harris stated, “My office will continue to enforce Proposition 65….” In 2018, a California judge ordered that coffee carry the same warning labels as the small box that my taps arrived in. Even the LA Times conceded that “there is little gain, and possibly some harm, in issuing cancer warnings that don’t convey relative risk.” Exactly my point.

Despite her recent tacking to the center, we can depend on the California-kookoo to force an agenda that would send Bernie Sanders over the moon: statehood for Puerto Rico and DC, ending the filibuster, packing the Supreme Court, eliminating the electoral college, “reimagining” police, removing the border... I could go on, but you already know this. Come to think of it, the Harris campaign needs its own warning label: KNOWN BY THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES TO BE A CHARLATAN.

Dr. Bruno, a scientist retired after more than 40 years in research, amuses himself writing books and editing scientific journals, along with wood and metal working.