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I've seen two threads so far attacking Palin on the fruit fly issue. Public funding of open ended research is, and always has been, a black hole for our tax dollars. The claims these researchers make about the research they are performing is usually fanciful at best. The request for cash will always have some current health issue attached to it like breast cancer, Lupus, HIV/AIDS or Autism. It's a good ploy. If lawmakers oppose the grants, they oppose research on HIV/AIDS or Autism. One never hears these people state that the research they would like to have funded will have some entirely commercial application like growing hair or giving old guys woodies. Now we are to fund a study of the reproductive cycle of fruit flies, OK. But prove that the study has merit before my tax dollars are dumped into it. If all we are really doing is creating commercial products that control fruit flies, let the restaurant and bar industry pay for the research. I would like to see accountability before my money is spent. How about you?
Please keep to the original subject. Their are probably twenty other threads available for Bush bashing. Please not here.
"We employ a passive, post-hoc justification for our activities to compensate for the lack of a valid system of performance metrics. We take a narrow view of our responsibility to society in the transformations that we cause. We have no foresight or planning operation in place that would tell us how to define, measure, or achieve greater success."
"No group of humans is completely honest: dishonest window-cleaners steal DVD-players; dishonest scientists invent data. Both—if not caught—profit from their dishonesty. There is no question that we need mechanisms for making dishonest research less likely and for investigating cases that arise, but how much, at what stage, and who should do it?"
"My main concern is not that some doctors and some researchers are dishonest, because in any profession there will be some dishonest people. My main concern is that within the medical profession there is a failure to deal with the misconduct and that is illustrated in the examples I will present."
Pure science is the stuff of miracles and must be continued. I have a friend whose daughter is working on a project that was called nonsense and is now bearing fruit. She is engineering microscopic robot like cancer detector/destroyers. It is incredible technology/science and it comes against common sense, common sense is limiting in discovery, so I am for broadening, not limiting our scientific research where we can.
Pure science is the stuff of miracles and must be continued. I have a friend whose daughter is working on a project that was called nonsense and is now bearing fruit. She is engineering microscopic robot like cancer detector/destroyers. It is incredible technology/science and it comes against common sense, common sense is limiting in discovery, so I am for broadening, not limiting our scientific research where we can.
I'm sure your friend's daughter is very bright.
The question was about accountability.
What fruit is it specifically bearing?
When will the human studies begin?
Everyone doing publicly funded research will make the same claims about their research. Why is this different?
lawmakers oppose the grants, they oppose research on HIV/AIDS or Autism. One never hears these people state that the research they would like to have funded will have some entirely commercial application like growing hair or giving old guys woodies. Now we are to fund a study of the reproductive cycle of fruit flies, OK. But prove that the study has merit before my tax dollars are dumped into it. If all we are really doing is creating commercial products that control fruit flies, let the restaurant and bar industry pay for the research. I would like to see accountability before my money is spent. How about you?
No one tried to come up with a drug to grow hair. That drug is a biproduct of research on blood pressure medication. Back in the day, my dad was supposed to have an operation to widen an artery, but it was risky and I was still a kid and my mom was dead, so he chose to enter into an experimental drug trial instead, to try to work out the blood pressure problems he had his whole life. He had lost his hair fairly young and at the age of 50 he started growing his hair back and we teased him, but it was just the combination of blood pressure meds. About ten years later, Rogaine came out and he was still around to see it because he had taken the blood pressure meds. So what you see as nonsensical, was life saving research.
Everyone doing publicly funded research will make the same claims about their research. Why is this different?
The research is being conducted on humans, however, the US will not be able to profit, because she is being funded by an EU consortium because we did not have the money. They have started working on brain cancers because they are often not operable, etc. But the point is that 20 years ago, someone had to do that pure science to get to the stage where they can apply. It is not soundbite science. I just always think of what the transistor did and that took thousands of years of scientific thinking to get to.
No one tried to come up with a drug to grow hair. That drug is a biproduct of research on blood pressure medication. Back in the day, my dad was supposed to have an operation to widen an artery, but it was risky and I was still a kid and my mom was dead, so he chose to enter into an experimental drug trial instead, to try to work out the blood pressure problems he had his whole life. He had lost his hair fairly young and at the age of 50 he started growing his hair back and we teased him, but it was just the combination of blood pressure meds. About ten years later, Rogaine came out and he was still around to see it because he had taken the blood pressure meds. So what you see as nonsensical, was life saving research.
If a legitimate medical innovation grows hair or give old guys woodies, I say great! That is as long as some sort of accountability is in play. Everyone doing publicly funded research says the same things. It could cure AIDS! What is different about the fruit fly study?
The research is being conducted on humans, however, the US will not be able to profit, because she is being funded by an EU consortium because we did not have the money. They have started working on brain cancers because they are often not operable, etc. But the point is that 20 years ago, someone had to do that pure science to get to the stage where they can apply. It is not soundbite science. I just always think of what the transistor did and that took thousands of years of scientific thinking to get to.
Think of it as a building process. Someone had to learn how to study cells once they realized they existed. Big deal, we can look at cells under a microscope, but that took a long time to get to. Then they started just looking at the cell and identifying stuff, no real "product", then studied how the cell works, no real product, then how the whole cell reacted to this or that stimuli or solution, some medical products there (intravenous etc), then how the parts of the cell works together, etc. and so on, until now they can get all the way down to the building blocks of the cell and can you imagine all the permutations of things that can be learned now? So each study adds to the body of knowledge, that maybe your daughter or grandson will use to create a therapy for schizophrenia. but you have to get all the parts. It cannot be discounted. Your product is knowledge.
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