Those sons of bitches, I’m gonna deliberately spray a load of CFCs into the atmosphere just to annoy these planet-loving fucknuts.
And you just know these fuckers are eating CAFO meat!
D’oh! ::shakes fist at OP::
What we do is, we get some hackers to break into some academic 'puters and some belonging to technical journals, create a “legend” that will pass at least preliminary inspection. We invent, say, Dr. Buster Gigo, Ph.D, Professsor Emeritus of Phoenix University Climatological Institute. And then we quietly circulate the rumor that Prof. Gigo has some preliminary research results that suggest a very powerful argument against the existence of AGW. But its not complete, needs work, a few hundred thousand dollars would do the trick, deposited in the Cayman Islands Weather Studying Place…
Bacon and nutella for everybody!
Mmmm, bacon and nutella. You know, that reminds me of when my eldest was conceived, mmmm.
Anyway, I digress. I will have you know that I, Dr. Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts, have a Ph.D. in cinematography and have specialized in costume change. During my studies I noticed a correlation between hotness and the amount of, mmmm… coverage, on certain stars, I mean celestial bodies. For on a few grand, say 50, I woulds be willing to head west to check her, I mean it, out.
And have tattoos.
I think I just developed a brocrush on L. G. Butts, Ph.D. … is there a support forum or thread for people like me?
Mmm. Companies have their eye on the bottom line, government has its eye on the next election and on its own prevailing ideology, each might exert its own kind of pressure on a funded scientist. We have several egregious examples of the latter from the Bush Admin.
Now that the cat’s out of the bag… Beautifully done. Using an alternate name so the mouseover wouldn’t give the game away was a nice touch.
True enough, but there is still a place in government for exploratory non-profitable research, just as there is for the arts. Businesses are always concerned with profit, unless they have so much money they can and choose to blow some of it on experimental projects. Currently Google is really the only company who does, and their field is relatively limited. Generally speaking, chasing avenues of research that aren’t going to guarantee a return is a bad way to run a business, but is arguably quite necessary for the nation as a whole.
But the connection is (hopefully*) much less direct in the case of government. The grants that are passed down are passed down from the NSF or the NIH, where are reviewed by bureaucrats scientists, which continue from one administration to the next, regardless of whether its Republican or Democrat. Now these bureaucrats may have biases of their own as far as which to fund, but this has more to do with what they consider good science, or their own pet interest in research areas. It is much less in terms of wanting a particular answer out of the research.
*Of course some people on the right trying to change this by actively attempting to defund research that doesn’t agree with their ideology (RU486, global warming, etc.). But this is a relatively recent phenomenon, that is being rightfully criticized.
Indeed. Parties may come and go, but bureaucracy endures without regard for politics.
I dunno. NASA is getting cuts to it’s budget, right? Those cuts are rooted in politics.
Well, yes, if the politicians are assholes enough.
Dammit, I’m trying to be optimistic over here.
Such bullshit. I’m an industry scientist and impartial to a fault. I’m currently repeating a succesful experiment that could be the crux of the entire project (at great expense and time) because I’m unhappy with the results of four mice. Out of close to 200. My colleagues are the same.
If my project fails, I sulk and I move on to another. My career isn’t over. I’m not beholden to the capricious world of grants and funding. I’m not suggesting that academic scientists are fundamentally dishonest; if the whole world were as honest as scientists then we wouldn’t be having this bullshit climate science debate in the first place.
You get to throw out a hypothesis like “companies can’t be impartial” and sit back smugly while patting yourself on the back. It’s my job to actively attempt to disprove my hypotheses.
And it’s the company’s job to please the shareholders. You might produce good research, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be skeptical of what happens to good research that either doesn’t aid or actively works against the bottom line.
Also, it’s not a hypothesis. It’s bullshit, because we’re in a bullshitting forum.
Of course it’s a hypothesis. Are scientists sometimes wrong? Of course. But, at least we make attempts to test things out.
If it makes you feel better, my wife considers my insistence on proper use of the terms “hypothesis” and “theory” insufferable.
Well sure, but as I implied, it’s not the scientists I’m concerned about. Scientists generally do science because science is awesome, regardless of who they work for (though there are those rare few who’ll falsify data, the blaggards). I’m more concerned with the people whose job it is to act on the results.
Nobody cares. If enough of us say a word means a thing, it means that thing. Most of us stopped caring what you think when we graduated high school, and you were no longer a source of supplemental lunch money.