Glen Tickle, a comedian and Senior Editor at Geekosystem, recently received a lovely gift: a note card with a recipe for a chemical-free weedkiller.

A note card recipe! How grandmotherly!

Except there is nothing chemical-free about it. And Dawn dishwashing liquid was nothing my grandmother ever used, when it came out it was so quasi-futuristic and chemical-company new that it might as well have had a platinum blonde in a shiny costume for its advertisements:

 
Dawn came out in 1973, it was created by Procter&Gamble, a chemical company. What is so 'natural', much less chemical-free about that? To those of us around then, it spoke of a bold technology future, not retreating into some mythical organic past. Dawn to existing dishwashing soap was basically what we thought women would become - fembots. Credit: Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. Link: Wikipedia

I've ridiculed this recipe a few times, asking people who think herbicides are harmful what would happen if they drank a cup of dishwashing liquid, but that was always pretty much the end of it. Ridiculing people who have been duped into anti-chemical hysteria is not much fun, it is the science equivalent of making fun of someone who sent their life savings to a TV preacher. And believing dishwashing soap isn't a chemical isn't dangerous, the way people who promote anti-vaccination and anti-GMO (The California Mentality) beliefs are dangerous.

But if someone else takes the time to do a point-by-point refutation and put it on the Internet, I am all for supporting it. So here you go, the list of chemicals in that popular chemical-free weed killer.

H/T My entire Twitter feed, since everyone linked to it.