Reason to become a Scientist #1

Reason #1: So you can tell poisonous salad from non-poisonous salad in your local supermarket.

A trained botanist in Hanover, Germany was buying some pre-packaged salad when he noticed the abundance of common groundsel (senecio vulgaris, also known as Ragweed). He alerted the store, who removed all the salad and sent a sample to the University of Bonn for testing.

They detected 2,500 micrograms of poison in 150g of salad (and in a brilliant bit of journalism, Reuter's online points out that this is 2,500 times more than the recommended amount of daily poison).

Scientists 1: Retailers, Farmers and Journalists 0.