This is what happened … I searched for the link to the original article and without realising it was in a locked thread, I hit the quote button for my OP so I could reply to it.
I'll go and put it in the current thread now.

Mark

Post from the locked thread has now been deleted.
Sorry for the inconvenience.

Mark

The BBC science department.

I don't know if anyone else watched 'The Wonders of Life ' last night, but it was that there Brian Cox explaining how all life exists thanks to physics, while wandering round an Philippine jungle being harassed by Orang Utans.

One computer graphic illustration in the show was the design of the DNA double helix. The BBC science department's graphic designer obviously thought "wouldn't it be cool if instead of plain old molecules in the strand of the helix, we had the name of it, so people know what it is". Not a bad idea, you'd have thought, but you should remember : graphic designers are graphic designers partly because they weren't very good at science in school.

In front of several million people on prime time BBC TV, in HD and (unless they edit it) on forthcoming various format digital releases, the BBC science unit and it's most popular presenter labelled the fundamental reproductive system of all life on planet Earth 'Dioxyribonucleic Acid'.

Oh dear.

Brian has had to issue a public apology on twitter

As a mere graphic designer, and therefore completely hopeless at all things science-related, can you explain what the error was? In layman's terms, please, because my little graphic designer's brain might explode if you get too technical.


</sarcasm>

Deoxy and not dioxy

Deoxy denotes loss of an oxygen atom from the ribose sugar.
Dioxy would probably denote the addition of two oxygen atoms.

Is this not just a case of designers that can't spell - a well-known fact BTW.
I don't suppose Prof Brian Cox saw the graphics until the show was broadcast ready.

Ah, now that must explain why I don't seem to be very good at my job: I can spell and I know a bit of science.

My nose. It's making breathing quietly really rather difficult this morning.

Saline drops.

In which case, why not double check your spelling - particularly of words you aren't familiar with.

However someone else should have double-checked everything before it was broadcast (Producer Director?) Ultimately someone other than the person who actually produced the graphics is responsible. And how do we know that the mistake wasn't made earlier in the production chain and the person producing the graphics was following an incorrect brief?

But it's not a spelling error. The word is spelt perfectly - it's just not the right one.

Are you sure? IIRC the reduction reaction means an oxygen atom is expelled. There's no such thing as "dioxyribonucleic acid" and wouldn't occur due to the structure. Moreover if you search for it, people are obviously referring to DNA. "DiNA" just does not exist.

There's no such chemical as 'Dioxyribonucleic acid'.

To be pedantic, if there was then that could be the right spelling. There are systematic names for any number of chemicals that don't exist!

Incidentally, event the rubbish spell-check on FireFox wants to correct it correctly. It's on my screen now with a big wiggly red line under it.