David B,
There’s no proof that the education of scientists is overspecialized (just like there’s no proof that it’s underspecialized) it’s an opinion that I have. Overspecialized, overqualified, and overdone are all adjectives which indicate a perspective. They aren’t strictly quantifiable.
I’ve tried to explain my judgement by giving examples. But if you don’t see the connections to my assertions from my examples then there’s no point in me providing more.
I’ve honestly tried my best to deal with quite a few questions from different people all at once. Sorry, if I wasn’t able to address your concerns. I never felt like I was avoiding anything, only slightly overwhelmed by the number of accusations.
Am I really pissing you off? Seems a bit dramatic to me. Do you think I’m going to be able to explain myself better after you express that? I don’t see any reason to continue trying to explain myself, if all I’ve done so far is piss you off.
'Bye David
Spiritus Mundi,
You’ve made some fine points, but right now, I’m to weary to address them.
This thread is just starting to get interesting to me, but it’s taken too long to get here.
I didn’t realize how strange my opinion would seem to the members of this board. It seems silly to hold a debate on the matter at this point, because I have to explain why there’s even an issue to debate to begin with.
Sorry to bail out on you. You seemed to be making a reasonable effort to understand me.
You can probably tell this hasn’t been very fun for me though.
Correction: there would not be 350 treatments that might have an effect on cancer awaiting FDA approval. Cancer is a complex, subtle, insidious beast, and just about every medical researcher and his brother has come up with something he thinks might hold the key to curing cancer. Given the abyssmal batting average most alleged cancer cures have had in the past, I wouldn’t hold my breath about the 350 treatments awaiting approval.
In other words, you can’t back up your claim. Well, jeez, it only took, what, 4 or 5 go-arounds for you to finally admit that…
No, there isn’t – unless those new examples might actually be somehow linked to the points you’re apparently trying to make.
If you didn’t feel like you were avoiding anything, then you really weren’t paying much attention. People were asking you direct questions and you were ignoring them or trying to worm your way out of them. To me, that looks like avoidance.
Frankly, yes. I feel like I’m talking to a creationist. It has been incredibly frustrating.
It’s ironic that we would simultpost just as I was exiting. Thank you for empathizing a little bit and trying to see what I was saying. You were pretty close, and you did a damn fine job considering the thread you were working with. But I have too much of a sour taste in my mouth at this point to go into clarifications.
a little tidbit from the article:
“…among Generation X in the United States, young men are developing four times more cancer and young women are developing 50 percent more cancer than did their grandparents. National Cancer Institute researchers have shown that rates of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, kidney, brain, thyroid, bone marrow, liver and testes cancer have more than doubled in the general population since the last half of the past century. Why? These changes surely have nothing to do with sudden shifts in inherited genetic defects.”
The Gen X statistic argues against simply living longer as the cause of cancer increase.
A diet high in animal fat is often credited as a leading cause of certain types of cancer. Fat stores carcinogens, including man made carcinogens (from feed sprayed with pesticides).
For those of you who supported DDT, I invite you all to drink a tall, refreshing glass of it (how could anyone guess it might be harmful to the environment? I mean, it’s just a poison isn’t it?).
If you have further questions, you can do your research from there.
This may just be the most ridiculous comment I’ve heard on this board. If you drink enough of anything, including water it will kill you. This says absolutely NOTHING about its overall benefits when used as intended.
The fact of the matter is that DDT has saved millions upon millions of lives. The two drawbacks to it that I’ve heard are that A) it causes eggshell thinning in some migratory birds, and B) some insects are developing a resistance to it.
A) is of no consequence to me compared to the huge benefits mankind gains from DDT. If it’s a case of migratory birds vs tens of millions of children, I’ll take the children, thank you.
The second issue is more troubling. If extended DDT use causes new mutant strains of insects that are more virulent and resistant to pesticides then we need to re-think the use of DDT. But there is much evidence that this effect is actually caused by heavy over-use by farmers, rather than the intended application for DDT of spraying stagnant water to kill mosquito larvae. More study is definitely needed, but that’s not likely to happen once the government bans the chemical outright.
David B, Spiritus Mundi, Dr. Lao, Libertarian, Sock Puppit, waterj2 and many others, hats off to you all. As a person who has devoted his life to scientific advancement I am gladdened to see such capable defense of a field that has done more to promote human understanding than just about any other. IMHO very few scientists fall into the “Frankenstein” category of irresponsible experimentation. Scientific method, when properly embraced, virtually prohibits narrowness of view and unethical conduct.
Overspecialization may contribute mildly to some degree of blinkering, but anyone with a sense of ethics strives against it. M3, your concerns are fairly redundant. The many oversight boards and more especially, peer review, restrict the chances of won ton disregard for public health and safety by a given individual or, to a lesser extent, corporations. To attempt truly exhaustive testing of compounds would be like requiring crash testing of every car that came off of the assembly line. Some things are just not feasible.
If you want to brush up on your philosophy quickly, I recommend reading “Philosophy, Who Needs It?” by Ayn Rand. I also recommend that you brush up on your scientific method. Far too much of your reasoning was inductive and the brick bats that you received were justifiably in order. It is your sort of thought that continues to dog honest scientific effort without contributing to it. All of the brou ha ha over stem cell research is a superb example. This promising new field of medical miracles is besieged by endless religious intervention. All this, while human suffering goes on unabated by the advances this field will indubitably bring.
That so many have taken offense to your specious reasoning should be a strong indicator to you that you may need to rethink your drink. That you are unable to take it on the chin and admit you might have overstepped yourself only points up the weakness in your “logic”. To try and bow out of a thread you have started without allowing for some resolution of your viewpoint with that of the other contributors is callow. You have pretty much guaranteed that I will not be reading many of your threads in the future.
Zenster,
Since you addressed me directly, I will venture a reply (even though apparently you’ll be ignoring my threads).
I’m tempted to judge from your post that you are a scientist or science teacher. The fact that you equate new chemical compounds with churning cars off of the assembly line, only underscores to me why I started this thread.
If you think that the scientific method "properly embraced" is sufficient for moral action, then it's obvious to me that you've ignored the parts of the history of science you'd rather not see(unless you have a rather convenient idea of "properly embraced"). Once again (if you are a scientist), this viewpoint would only prove to me why I felt there was something worth debating.
I bowed out of explaining the main contentions of this thread because of the hostile nature that some people recieved it with. It became plain to me I was addressing the wrong audience. You don't discuss the finer points of quantum theory with fundamentalists, and you wouldn't discuss the cheapest way to strip mine with Greenpeace.
It seems that implying that the practice of science could somehow be less than perfect (the nerve!) is asking for a huge burden of proof to be place on your shoulders in this forum. It's a rather boring and time consuming burden I would rather not take up. Since I'm not an evangelical creationist, I don't have a mandate from heaven to convince you folks of my point of view. Nobody really presented an argument that made me change my mind, so I'm not obliged to "allow for some kind of resolution" with their views either.
I got bored and I left. Like it or lump it.
I usually don't point out spelling errors since I make plenty of them myself (due to hasty typing), but since you might have the actual words confused, I'll make an exception. It's "wanton" as opposed to "won ton"(were you hungry when you posted?).
So, due at least partly to the technological advances of the past century, there is more cancer? After studying cancer in depth for years, and making finacial windfalls available to anyone who can show negligence is responsible, we still don’t know why. Would you prefer to undo the advances of science until they are each, in turn, declared completely free of risk for all mankind?
As for drinking a glass of DDT, is that the standard that you would apply to all pesticides? I would venture that the deficiencies in your science education are not just philosophical.
The reason that you are shouldering a “huge burden of proof” is that you are advocating radical changes in the way science is practiced. Most people do not accept the need to change drastically without sufficient evidence. That’s just human nature.
What parts of the history of science? You keep spouting off about this without any evidence to back up your claims. You seem to think that somehow you can force scientists to be immune to the basic factors that influence the actions of others. You also seem to want to make scientists responsible for the moral failings of others.
FWIW, DDT is a relatively benign chemical to vertebrates. I believe a person could drink a glass full of it without any serious effects. It works directly against insect neurology, which uses somewhat different chemical pathways than vertebrates.
That being said, the buildup of the chemical in food chains caused eggshell formation problems with top level avian predators. (Note: it did not kill the adult birds who were carrying the chemical load) I for one, cannot blame researchers for not considering this potentiality.
I mean, its not like how management practices of the first three-quarters of the Twentieth Century caused the collapse of the New England cod fishery, or how the factory ships of the 1950s and 1960s killed more whales each year than the entire fleet of American whalers did during Nineteenth Century.
Science isn’t to blame. Good old natural greed is explanation enough for most of the environmental problems we have today.
Oh, and cruel as it may sound, many of the people who are contracting cancers today would have been dead of diptheria, typhus, or bacterial infections before they reached the age of five if they had been born a hundred years ago. People die. If medical science has made once common causes of death rare, then other diseases increase in frequency. Higher cancer rates can also be attributed to earlier detection techniques. We can spot many cancers early enough to treat them, so we don’t have to wait for an autopsy to disclose their presence. Besides, how many lung cancers do you think were called “consumption” on the victim’s death certificate.
Ha ha, I’m chuckling now. Now that I’ve given up, it’s so much easier.
You guys are so uptight about this. You'd think I was trying to say the holocaust was a hoax or something.
Relax.
I'm not knocking the discoveries of science, I just think they're applied for short term benefits and sometimes (quite despicably) for the benefit of a very few.
There's no evidence other than the status quo. I was never trying to come up with some remarkable hidden secret of science that nobody had heard of, just trying to present my viewpoint on the state of the world. If you're happy with the status quo, fine. I'm not, but I'm not going to spend my time convincing you otherwise.
Why not try to underscore it to everybody else, since you never did clarify what the heck you were trying to say.
Oh, give it a rest. You bowed out 'cus you couldn’t provide the evidence to back up your claims. You’re not fooling anybody with this holier-than-thou crap.
No, but making claims does ask for the burden of proof to fall upon those shoulders. Yours were apparently too weak to carry the load.
Yeah, those damned facts get so annoying, don’t they?
I’m not too shocked, considering that you came in here with your mind already made up without any apparent input from facts.
Funny, it doesn’t seem like you left. Seems like you’re still here whining about people who asked you for evidence to back your claims. But maybe it’s just some phantom and not really you.
But since you have nothing better to add to the thread, you’ll do it this time. What a guy!
If I’m fooling nobody with this “holier than thou crap”, why did you respond? …Your response was for my benefit then? Didn’t I say goodbye to you? Do you like torturing yourself? I thought I was pissing you off.
I wasn’t even addressing you, but still you butted in to say what you’ve already said. At first I felt bad for pissing you off, but now if you’re still pissed, I’m just mildly amused, because you have no one to blame but yourself.
If you think I’m whining now, you’re giving yourself too much credit. Watching you jump up and down like an enraged chihuahua is actually pretty amusing.
Yes, I know this is a public forum, but I still think it’s possible to address people in particular. I don’t have a problem with you responding. I was just pointing out how uneccessary and gratuitous it was.
I didn’t say anything when you responded to my first goodbye with your cheap putdowns, because I knew you’d have to have the last word. But then somebody else came in and addressed me directly about why I’d left. That was primarily why I was responding, not to defend my initial contentions.
Now I’m responding to you because I no longer have any shred of doubt that you’re being a jerk. I tried being nice and trying to see your point of view, but apparently that only emboldened you to attack me more. I love the way that you mix calls for evidence with ad hominem attacks, it really leads to a great debate. At least you’ve finally shut up about the cancer rates.
Hanging around after my posts and pretending like you’re reading my mind is just immature. You remind me of a mocking 12 year old. I’ve never been treated that way by anyone on this message board. If you don’t agree with me fine. But you seem to have a problem with me personally. Maybe you should keep THAT to email.
Not going to get involved in the micro-flame war. . . .
Anyway, I’ve just finished The Axemaker’s Gift by James Burke and Robert Ornstein, a fascinating look at the history of scientific thought. In any case, their final chapter “Forward to the Past” seems to reflect a little on the supposed topic of the thread.
The author’s primary point in the book is the need for inclusion. Scientific knowledge, and the tools for generating new knowledge, have always in the past been the closely guarded secrets of the elite few; from the Royal College of Medecine in the sixteenth century to the scribal bureacracies of ancient Mesopotamia.
The author’s also describe the need, based upon environmental conditions that we could not have comprehended previously, for greater communication and a renewed focus on free exchange of information among not just among the “Axemakers” of our societies but also the general populace. They believe that the internet, with proper free access, can become the greatest tool society has yet created for the distribution and exchange of scientific knowledge. In essence, with the web-based inclusion of arrational “fuzzy thinking”, we will all become the ones creating and expanding our knowledge.
Which is probably not at all what m3 was thinking of (MORE SCIENISTS! AAAGH!:)).
Of course I am – in your eyes. Because I keep asking you for evidence. Damn me!
When? All you’ve done is try to avoid the points and whine when people kept asking you for evidence.
ROFL! I find it highly amusing that you whine about all of these things, and then are admittedly happy that I stopped asking you for evidence and talking about actual facts. You really must like to have your own errors pointed out to you.
The only problem I have with you is that you continue to whine about the way you’ve been treated, but ignore the fact that you were the cause of all of your own problems because you were completely unclear on your points, refused to back them up, made statements that were untrue, etc. And then you say goodbye and continue to hang around to bitch and moan about how horrible I am for daring to point this stuff out. You could act like an adult and simply back up your claims or admit you were wrong. But you won’t.
David B,
You completely seem to ignore the fact that I didn’t have a real problem with any of the other posters, just you.
You were needlessly agressive and didn’t give serious consideration to my examples. Other people, while disagreeing with me, seemed to think I was at least trying to present a coherent case. Some people even read my post pointing to links that specifically presented evidence linking pesticide with cancer (yes I did finally find some for you).
If somebody made a claim that housing inmates on death row was actually more costly than housing him for life I would expect evidence. If somebody claimed that killing people was morally wrong even in the hands of the government, it would be silly to expect evidence for that claim. I wasn’t initially trying to make a “facts and figures” kind of argument. If there’s some kind of quantifiable way to measure and prove whether science is over or underspecialized please point it out. If you can’t point this out, then I think your expectations are rather grandiose.
Since science is practiced by fallable humans, I think the burden of proof would be to show that the level of specialization couldn’t be more ideal. If you have proof for this, go ahead and show me. If you could back that up, I think I might actually see your point(whatever it is), and stop “whining.” I don’t think you can though, we don’t have some kind of specialization meter that we can index with “helping to achieve the long term goals of humanity” meter.
Would you like to show me an ounce (or watt or kilometer) of specialization?
Also, I’m curious about just what you think I said that was “untrue.”