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Friggin Tractor Beams

CoorsLight said:
Please define "science" as you used it in this sentence.

I ask because reporting results constitutes a tiny fraction of what a scientist does. Moreover, if you were to read some scientific articles or grant proposals, you'd find that results make up a small proportion of those as well. There is much more emphasis on putting results or interpretation of results in context with the work of other researchers, and then "selling" the significance of the results in a present study, or, more disturbingly, selling the significance of expected results in a proposed study.

The modern scientific publishing and funding paradigm has produced a disingenuous approach to research. In fact, a recent article in PNAS estimated that, IIRC, 40-60% of peer-reviewed work is either erroneous or fabricated.

Science should be treated with skepticism. Not because the scientific process is fundamentally flawed, but because humans are.
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i think youre saying, what I was saying
 
Profit profit profit, it's always about profit. Money, every da,Ned thing in this country is money. It's the only thing...out greed is destroying everything...
 
CoorsLight said:
The modern scientific publishing and funding paradigm has produced a disingenuous approach to research. In fact, a recent article in PNAS estimated that, IIRC, 40-60% of peer-reviewed work is either erroneous or fabricated.
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you're not shitting...i've worked in big corporate and gov R&D on a technical level for about 16 years now and in most places with a high incentive to develop new or tweak existing product, there is a veritable revolving door of director-level geniuses and almost every time, the inside dope about the office is doods fudging data..

CoorsLight said:
Science should be treated with skepticism. Not because the scientific process is fundamentally flawed, but because humans are.
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word.
 
afm199 said:
O I understand what science means. Verifiable results. My point is that some areas are better left alone. My parents grew up before antibiotics. Mom lost all her teeth and almost her life to Scarlet Fever, which no one has heard of today. My dad lost two of his four siblings. And today flesh eating bacteria and TB that can not be cured are the results of antibiotics. Still a good tradeoff but losing its appeal. And the dark side of antibiotics and vaccines is that humanity lost an entire vector that kept the population stable. Remember, when you look at a population graph, it's flat line from ancient pre-history to about 1850, when it becomes a radical J curve. The population of the earth went from a stable 40-300 million to 7 billion in the blink of an eye. (I understand that antibiotics are later than that, the population curve is pretty much the oil production curve, but it really took off in 1950 or so.)

When I was born there were around 2 billion people. In my lifetime! LA was a city not a sprawl, and there were forty miles of desert to San Bernardino, not a built up urban area. Today the urban planners want to go vertical to use less space. It's not a pretty world. Stick your head out the door and look at traffic. Tons of carbon into the atmosphere daily. Rare commodities being used to build consumer toys and forever gone. Water pollution from agriculture expanded to feed not only the US but the rest of the world.

Am I blaming science? In a real sense, yes. Research without forethought and ethics is just as dangerous as shooting a gun in a crowded room.
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+1

At some point it seems like EVERYthing man invents gets used for the "wrong" purpose.

For instance; Is there anyone here who believes that the planet is better off 7 billion rather than 300 million people ? ok, next question.... what the f*ck did you THINK was going to happen once antibiotics were put into common use ? :wow
 
Shotline said:
Hey Kevin, will you give me one of your paintings?
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Yes.

Drive down and take one. Your choice of any completed work

Oddly enough I've been looking towards doing a show where every single piece, Is free.
 
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JackTheTripper said:
So you're saying your "free" painting comes at too much of a cost. :p
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To be honest, Kevin didn't give the response I expected. And if his response was a sincere one, then I would have a new found respect for him.

I just found his comment that everything is about profit and greed is destroying everything to be naive and disingenuous coming from someone who seeks to make a profit from their work. However, if he is willing to give away his labors and forgo profit upon request, then my evaluation of him and his motives may be in error.

While the pursuit of profit may be misplaced at times and greed for it's own sake is abhorrent, profit and greed, properly harnessed, are what keep us moving forward both technologically and as a society.
 
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Shotline said:
To be honest, Kevin didn't give the response I expected. And if his response was a sincere one, then I would have a new found respect for him.
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hahahah - I bet you he is being sincere

I mean, have you seen his new paintings, even the trash man wouldn't take them (i kid I KID i kid) I really respect and enjoy Kevins works
 
kevin 714 said:
Ship it? No. Come And get it yourself yes.


I'm surprised you think I would have answered differently, or that I wasn't sincere. Seeing as how everyone else saw that I was being sincere, I would say your expected reaction, is a reflection on yourself, And not me.

Trust me, I don't paint for money.
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Reflect on me, perhaps. The cynic in me would say that since you know that I live in Idaho and an invitation to come and pick up a painting was less than sincere as you would have no realistic expectation that I would do so. The optimist in me hopes that perhaps you forgot that I live outside of CA and I would be over to take you up on the offer.

Perhaps you are one of those individuals that thinks the world would run just fine if we would only share everything equally and sing kum-by-ahh around the campfire every night. However I suspect that you are more of a realist than that.

However that is all beside the point isn't it. My purpose in making the post I did was to show you the ridiculousness of your statement about profit and greed. I suspect that you have sold some of your paintings in the past and for more that it cost you to produce them. Thus you made a profit. While profit may not be your overriding reason for creating your paintings, it is an aspect in their creation, otherwise you would give all of them away (or at minimum only the cost of the supplies to create them).

Anyway, this has been off topic for this thread. Can we get back to Ernie trying to show everyone how much smarter and wiser he is than everyone else?
 
afm199 said:
Kid, you know how much outgas there is in the manufactured modular units used as offices and homes? How many un needed medications are prescribed daily to adults and kids? How many adulterants and modifiers there are in almost any food that is canned? How many antibiotics have been used in farm animal production and the impact on antibiotic resistant bacteria and their increase? How much the Gulf of Mexico has been degraded by fertilizer runoff? There's a fucking endless list of the "benefits of science", and if you think it's all great, you need to take another look.
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And yet, with all that, the average lifespan keeps increasing......hmm fancy that..
 
Reli said:
And yet, with all that, the average lifespan keeps increasing......hmm fancy that..
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As do the number of obese, emphysemic, diabetic heart patients who need 10 pills a day to survive. Currently half the population is obese and the number is growing. Great to have plenty of cheap food, no? And great to make billions for the pharma industry. If I was a cynic ( god forbid) I'd almost say the current developments simply insure a growing and stable pool of people to keep big pharma in business big time. O, and the health care to keep those people alive has gotten so expensive that it is a major life expense now. Imagine what it will be in twenty years. :)

Yes, lifespan has increased. That surely must be an indicator of how good life is.
 
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