The BBC generally provides solid reporting on contemporary issues and modern events. Sometimes, however, I read articles on their website which are just stupid.

This article, for example, describes how "one of the alleged 21 July bombers would have learned about rates of reaction in substances when he studied chemistry at college."

This in itself is a fairly innocuous statement, but the entire content of the article seems to focus on an imaginary shock and horror at the fact that the "'Bomb plotter' studied chemistry".

Notes from the GNVQ intermediate chemistry course taken by [Yassin] Omar were recovered from his north London home.

When [he] had taken the course, the syllabus included rates of reaction and "looking at the effects of temperature, the use of catalysts, to increase the rate of reaction".

"They would find out if they increase the concentration, that would increase the rate," [his old teacher] said.

Well, so what? The anonymous journalist stops short of explicitly suggesting that such topics should be removed from the National Curriculum and banned from schools, but he might as well have done with the implication.

I suppose if you're going to start trimming down the chemistry curriculum for fear of producing bombers — because, of course, they can't find out basic facts anywhere else — then we might aswell just convert all our newborns to Islam so the extremists don't have any targets left. No?