Antioxidants: A Hot Controversy Defused by Cool Semantics

Recent years have witnessed a rather controversial debate on what antioxidants are and how beneficial they may be in the context of human health. Despite a considerable increase in scientific evidence, the matter remains highly divisive as different pieces of new data seem to support both the pro- and the anti-antioxidant perspective. Here, we argue that the matter at the heart of this debate is not necessarily empirical but of semantics. Thus, the controversy cannot be resolved with the traditional tools of natural sciences and by the mere accumulation of new data. In fact, the term "antioxidants" has been part of the scientific language game for a few decades and is nowadays used differently in the context of different scientific disciplines active at different levels of scientific complexity. It, therefore, represents not a single expression but an entire family of words with distinctively different connotations and associations. The transcendent use of this expression from a basic to a more complex discipline, such as going from chemistry to physiology, is problematic as it assigns the term with connotations that are not corroborated empirically. This may lead to false claims and aspirations not warranted by empirical data. Initially, health claims may not even be indented, yet, on occasion, they are welcome for reasons other than scientific ones. To resolve this debate, one may need to refrain from using the term "antioxidants" in disciplines and contexts where its meaning is unclear, limit its use to disciplines where it is essential and beneficial, and, in any case, become more specific in such contexts where its use is warranted, for instance, in the case of "dietary antioxidants".