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Book Review: Voodoo Science
The short review of Voodoo Science is that this is not a book that would make a good birthday gift for Alex Chiu or for that matter Deepak Chopra.
Voodoo Science is a happy little bon-bon of a book for the scientifically inclined. Robert Park is the head of the Washington office of the American Physical Society, and has worked inside the beltway helping the U.S. government and others understand the basics of science so they can make appropriate policy decisions. It is depressingly clear how badly they need it.
While there is a certain level of joy to be found in reading about Mr. Park's exploits debunking cranks and frauds, there is a sad realization that prominent legislators have no clue as to the physical laws that are the underpinnings of science. No, I wasn't surprised, but it was depressing nonetheless to see Trent Lott's name on a resolution designed to push through a patent on a "free energy" device, or Tom Harkin using his power to force the NIH to embrace alternative medicine as anything other than a placebo.
While fun, this isn't a perfect book. It is organized a little strangely, with subheadings throwing off the flow of reading, and at a little over 200 pages it seems too short.Park's mission with this book was not to dissect the great scientific frauds of all time, but I thought he could have spent more time on the issues he did bring up and less on trying to understand the Alex Chius of the world. Mr. Park is probably just trying to be polite, but in my reading of Voodoo Science he comes off as being too soft on the very targets of the book.
The case of cold fusion is a perfect example. His recounting of the famous events was right on, but it just fell flat when it came to to point the finger at Pons, Fleischman and the University of Utah for their complicity in fraud before the Utah state legislature. It is akin to writing a book about Enron and saying about Ken Lay: "It is likely he knew what he was doing was possibly improper."
I'd recommend Voodoo Science as a good gift to a younger reader, as it describes foundations of science in an accessible way. As you've probably gathered, an appropriate name for this book might be "The Laws of Thermodynamics and those that thought it didn't apply to them." As such, the book serves as a decent introduction to critical thinking about the physical world around us.
You can purchase Voodoo Science from bn.com. Want to see your own review here? Just read the book review guidelines, then use Slashdot's handy submission form.
You mean those were spoofs? Holy baby Jesus!
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
After all, some mainstream medicines started out as "alternative."
That he wasn't smart enough to discover the amazing Immortality ring! I didn't want to pay for one, but I was lucky enough to find one while graverobbing.
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
For instance, they entirely reject the idea of homeopathic medicine. What they neglect to mention is the hundreds of studies proving the effectiveness of this treatment for everything from hangnails to brain tumors. Furthermore, you don't even need a degree to perform the simpler remedies (for such things as TB or polio).
Geeks don't pay much attention to the health care industry, so let me lay it out for you in a way you'll understand: alternative medicine is the Open Source Software of the medical world. The FAA and the AMA are the Microsofts trying to keep proven-better-but-less-expensive treatments down.
Fight the power.
Holy moley. I've had more gained more in depth knowledge about their books from 2 minute conversations with strangers on the bus.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
But the various Laws of Thermodynamics are just a theory. The theory might be wrong. You can't say a perpetual motion machine is impossible, just that it is inconsistent with current theories about how the universe works.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
My personal experience in the IT world for the past eight years is that general scientific literacy among Americans is on the decline. Ignorance of basic scientific principles, methods and tools from co-workers and customers amazes me on a daily basis. Ex. The metric system. The ability to perform simple conversions such as inches to cm and pounds to kg. Ex. The ability to perform math operations more complex than arithmetic. Ex. The ability to interpret statistical data in a meaningful manner.
Given the sorry state of affairs, it is not surprising that people beleive in perpetual motion machines and other devices that violate the laws of thermodynamics.
Park has a weekly 'What's new' email, where he briefly describes the weeks events, you can read it on the web, or subscribe for the email list.
My own review is here. To me, the most interesting thing about the book was the way it documented how pseudoscience has invaded otherwise respectable organizations like NASA.
Find free books.
Park's book should be read together with another one: Trust Us, We're Experts! (Amazon) by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton. While there is a lot of "junk science" out there, there is at least as much corporate sponsorship behind efforts to discredit real scientific work as such. See also this story about PR efforts to discredit global warming, and my related K5 comment.
Sure, there's a lot of not-real stuff out there -- and a lot of crap being pushed by scam artists/companies -- but that doesn't mean all "alternative" medicine is inauthentic or just placebo effect. Remember where we got aspirin from. Or, if you doubt that naturally-occuring substances ever have any sort of effect, um, consider marijuana or peyote.
Junk science has existed for ages, just look at the expansion of the Global Warmning religion and the tactics of organizations out to fight "Secondhand Smoke".
Even such groups as JEL (Just Eliminate Lies), a sort of truth.com for teens in Iowa, advocate teasing smokers about impotence. This is akin to laughing at obese people and joking about death from a heart attack.
Global Warmning activists, meanwhile, have approached the subject with such religious fervor that "denominations" exist in which they all disagree over small points, yet refuse to even debate the large points, such as a response to the UHIE argument that junk science debunkers have been pleading for them to answer for YEARS.
A while back I did a litter searching to find out a little more about the authors of the Mars and Venus books. Here's a grain of salt to take with them.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
And some crackpot practices (ie trepanning, bleeding, etc) started out as mainstream medicine. Previous performance is not a guarantee of future returns. =P
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
If you really understand gravity, then you're probably the first (yeah, I'm sure some first year physics students can expound about gravity, incorrectly believing that they understand what gravity is and how it works, but the reality is that gravity is mostly an unknown with some guesstimates and postulations [what is the "Speed of Gravity"?] : An invisible, almost magical attraction between objects). As such, the idea that gravity is a wave or a force and therefore can be blocked, or shielded, isn't that absurd. I'm not a physics buff by any measure of the imagination, but it is one of those fascinating fields that can make one curious. IEEE's Spectrum magazine had a fascinating story about how little has actually been proven in the field of quantum mechanics, and it really is stunning.
"...force the NIH to embrace alternative medicine as anything other than a placebo."
What makes you think that alternative medicine doesn't work? Can you prove to me by anything other than purely anecdotal evidence that *mainstream* medicine has anything other than a placebo effect?
Quick disclaimer - I am deeply sceptical about both conventional and alternative medicine. However, I have empirical evidence that both *seem* to work. I've tried conventional medicine, and it seemed to make me feel better. I've tried alternative medicine, and *that* seemed to make me feel better too. I've observed similar effects in other people.
Skeptic.net has their book recommendations hidden at this page and their secret front page is at this URL --anyone know when they are adding all of their content back? This was a sweet website before the crash.
The anti gravity experiment article was not run on April Fool's Day, it was run on March 24th, and is quite real. Thanks for playing.
Intel transfer the difficult from Hadware to software, for get more power, programmer need more technology. -- chinaitn
I couldn't leave this review without commenting on this: "...or Tom Harkin using his power to force the NIH to embrace alternative medicine as anything other than a placebo. " statement.
Consider E=MC^2: Matter is energy, and energy is matter. Molecular structures break down as they release energy. Living things absorb energy (calories) by breaking down other materials.
We understand so little about life and energy and yet normally reasonable people are willing to throw out an entire realm of science because it threatens their superiority complex. Some things in this world might just be beyond Newton and Einstein's realm of expertise. To say that alternative medicine is placebo flies in the face of every single person who believes in an afterlife and a soul. Nearly three billion people might be wrong about that belief, but they sure as hell deserve to be credibly examined first.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
Stephen Jay Gould, almost everything he's ever written but particularly The Mismeasure of Man.
Then there's the classic, much older but still frequently cited Charles Mackay's _Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds_ online.
(entire text available courtesy of Gutenberg)
part 1
part 2
part 3
Slashdot protocol dictates that pro-class trolls have "troll" in their name.
May we never see th
OK folks, if you want voodoo then try this site !! I'm sorry that it's not a clickable link but I don't know how to encode them into a Slashdot posting.
www.netwanga.com
And no, I'm NOT connected to the site owners !!
Peter
Look. Everybody knows the stance of the 'other' side, so I won't waste everybody's time pointing out why subtle crap, (sneaking little lies in with patent truth, using ridicule, and re-enforcement of the con artist's trick of making you defend your own folly so that you don't have to face the embarrassment of others realizing you were conned.), like this book are very much in the best interests of mega corps, military infrastructure, control freak governments and the list of regular suspects.
What continually stuns me is that people like
-Fantastic Lad
...and a complete scam. It was about an alleged anti-gravity disc, made from a 12" superconducting ring that looked not unlike a brake pad.
This is far from being consigned to the scam basket (although it may end up there). The easiest way to demonstrate this is to note that NASA has invested in research to try to replicate Podkletnov's results.
The interesting thing about gravity is that it isn't well understood by modern physics. We know how it behaves (we think) but we don't know what causes it really. This makes it equally ripe for psuedo-science as for breakthrough science. In any case, an April Fool's day scam it isn't.
There are a bunch of other links here and a good overview here.
Karma police, I've given all I can, it's not enough, I've given all I can, but we're still on the payroll.
You must mean brake ROTOR
Pad's aren't 12" rings...what kind of car are YOU driving?
See what Nobel Laureate and professor of Physics Brian D. Josephson has to say of Robert Park.
In Washinton Post, Charles Platt comments like so.
For a good commentary on Park vs Cold Fusion, go to the source.
"When I began my physical studies [in Munich in 1874] and sought advice from my venerable teacher Philipp von Jolly... he portrayed to me physics as a highly developed, almost fully matured science... Possibly in one or another nook there would perhaps be a dust particle or a small bubble to be examined and classified, but the system as a whole stood there fairly secured, and theoretical physics approached visibly that degree of perfection which, for example, geometry has had already for centuries."
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I'm sorry but I hear 'voodoo' and I can't help but think PinStruck!
RudeDude
Perl/Linux/PHP hacker
But the Timecube is definately for real.
C-X C-S
Nonetheless I'll address the real issues tangentially mentioned)
Investigating alternative medicine is a good idea: it could lead to the discovery and refinement of useful compounds and techniques. Furthermore, "humanizing" medical care in general is a good idea.
For the curious, the ideas underlying homeopathic medicine run contrary to very basic scientific principles.
This is homeopathic medicine: They take substances with real (usually harmful) effects, then dilute them millionfold. The resulting "medicine" is of course just water, to which they add a bit of sugar - a placebo by any definition.
They claim that the water "remembers" the impression of the substance, an idea straight out of medieval alchemy.
In other words, alternative medicine yes, homeopathy, no.
It is a sad state of affairs, but isn't that the price we pay for humanity's ongoing diversification of labor?
I've known learned people in one scientific discipline who were unaware of the basic principles of another scientific discipline, but still they are competent scientists.
Are we simply at a point in our society's development where it is impossible for everyone to have a basic grasp of all the fundamentals? With the flood of information on the Information Age, can more than a handful of us can be "Renaissance men"?
I went to the city because I wished to live without deliberation.
I can't believe that got modded up.
Geeks usually are more skeptical than most folks, and want to know why things work and ask more questions than your average muggle.
Please, read more about homeopathy, before you spend the big bucks for the sugar pills. Most homeopathic remedies have been diluted to the point of absurdity, and you don't even get many molecules of the supposed "cure".
Read more about it at here and here
Me physicist. Me make rockets.
"Mel Thusian"
MALthusian
Look it up. It's a joke, moderators.
I went to the city because I wished to live without deliberation.
Oh and the fact that my appendix would have ruptured and killed me if my parent hadn't had it removed by a mainstream surgeon in a mainstream hospital in a mainstream manner when I was a tiny kid, is anecdotal evidence of the same.
Hmm... Open Source is a proven alternative to proprietary software wherein it has been reviewed by many industry experts and found to prove equal if not superior performance to proprietary solutions. It is built by experts and common folk and goes through a strenuous process of validation and review.
Alternative medicine is a way to buy things normally requiring a prescription (ie drugs) which have not gone through any strict review process other than proving it will not kill you immediately. Often the long term effects of using them is unknown as are their drug interactions. The only similarity between alternative medicine and open source and alternative medicine is that anyone can produce open source software or alternative medicine.
However, the worst you can do w/ OSS is risk your computer by installing it. Alternative medicine, however, you put in your body.
I find your blanket assumption that geeks don't pay attention to the medical industry upsetting. A full half of my family is in the medical field and I devour medical articles just about as quickly as I do PC ones; both are technology.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
If chrisd would have joined Alex Chiu's Affiliate program, he could have received a couple of dozen Super 21,000 gauss Neodymium Eternal Life Rings from all of the people clicking on the link in the story. He and his closest friends could have lived forever ;)
3. I forgot the third premise
... Profit!
Step 3:
"The good reader is a rarer swan than the good writer."
YHL, HAND.
I saw an article a few years ago, I think it was in Scientific American, about a researcher who placed a number of volunteers in an fMRI and had an acupunturist stimulate what he held to be a "vision point" in the subjects' foot. Amazingly enough, there was a sigificant change in activity of the subjects' visual cortex. However, in some people, the amount of activity increased, while in others it decreased. When this was pointed out to the acupunturist, he said, "Of course. Yin and Yang." He then proceed to correctly identify with something like 90% accuracy which subjects' activity went up and which ones went down.
The moral of this story is don't discount what you don't understand; it's unscientifc.
"A witty saying proves nothing." --Voltaire
better luck next time
I absolutely cannot believe the level of level 2+ comments from supposedly intelligent people here who think there's something to homeopathic and alternative therapies. Most of them obviously haven't read Park's book, nor would they probably care to.
As for homeopathy, this is a practice that relies on diluting chemicals or extracts in water until there's no possibility of that chemical being in the liquid administered, relying on the "water memory" of the chemical for efficacy. Despite never having been shown to be efficacious in double-blinded clinical trials, it's ridiculous from the view of chemistry, physics, and what we know of the universe, due to a little problem called Avogadro's number (about 6.3x10^23, the number of molecules in one mole of a substance). Each of these serial dilutions of extracts causes the concentration to descend so far below avogadro's number that there is no chemical in what is administered. Park demonstrates in the book, using simple high school chemistry (which obviously many here are having difficulty remembering) that homeopathy, as practiced by the homeopathic industry, is simply the drinking of water.
It all has to do with a little something known as proof of efficacy, the most important part of any clinical trial. As one doctor said regarding the recent governmental report on "alternative" medicines (to paraphrase), "There are only two kinds of medicine -- that which works and that which doesn't. If something that's considered to be alternative is shown to work then it's adopted. If not, it is not."
People, there is medicine and there is quackery. The double-blind clinical trial is the only way of distinguishing between the two, and even then conditions have to be constructed carefully to insure accurate results. Thank God the FDA doesn't rely on the anecdotal evidence of family members, the testimonials of paid spokespeople, or the promises of the herbal supplement industry.
The FDA was created to help people see through all this snake oil & empty promises, but now, through exemptions for "herbal supplements" pushed through congress, led by Sen. Orrin Hatch, we have a renaissance of this sort of lies and deception of the populace. Unlike homeopathic remedies, herbal supplements many times do have powerful agents in them. Only because of their designation as a food and not a drug, they get around FDA requirements for purity, consistency, and efficacy. Because of widely varying concentrations of agents including ephedrine and hormones, and a level of quality that runs the gamut due to a complete lack of quality control, we have a multibillion-dollar industry whose products have been reported to cause strokes, heart disease and liver damage. In one report in the LA Times last month it was reported that the makers of an herbal supplement in Utah were adding crystal meth to their weight loss product, causing a spate of strokes & heart conditions in middle-aged people before being caught & shut down.
It's a tragedy, and it's a needless danger created because the average person has little more than an elementary school level of understanding of science. And I can't believe that so many of you are gullible enough to be taken in by these hucksters. Please, read and study before putting drugs in your body that aren't approved by the FDA.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
based on just the success of t. townsend brown's experiments 50 years ago, how could anyone really think that the world has come no farther in the pursuit of gravity and energy than burning fossil fuels, and general aerodynamics? we know so little (in the popular realm) about gravity, yet we are convinced that we know so much, and that what we know only limits our abilities, rather than freeing us from the forces of gravity.
one thing that we do say we know is that the force of electromagnetism is substantially stronger than that of gravity. given the idea that they are similar forces, why is it so hard to believe that electromagnetism could be used to negate the forces of gravity?
this stuff is all fairly simple really, but then look at the pursuits of today, with string theory and all of this overly dreamy, complex theoretical eleven dimensional horse hockey (to quote sherman potter) and science buys it. it all stinks to me. the economy is the grandest scientific pursuit, and everything else that's considered revolutionary will be squashed if it's a threat. http://www.seaspower.com/
(1) He considers himself a genius.
(2) He regards his colleagues, without exception, as ignorant blockheads....
(3) He believes himself unjustly persecuted and discriminated against. The recognized societies refuse to let him lecture. The journals reject his papers and either ignore his books or assign them to "enemies" for review. It is all part of a dastardly plot. It never occurs to the crank that this opposition may be due to error in his work....
(4) He has strong compulsions to focus his attacks on the greatest scientists and the best-established theories. When Newton was the outstanding name in physics, eccentric works in that science were violently anti-Newton. Today, with Einstein the father-symbol of authority, a crank theory of physics is likely to attack Einstein....
(5) He often has a tendency to write in a complex jargon, in many cases making use of terms and phrases he himself has coined.
To a first approximation, mainstream medecine has been peer reviewed, and alternative medecine hasn't. The only way for alternative medecine to become mainstream is to be peer reviewed, at which point it either fails and remains alternative, or it passes and becomes mainstream.
Isn't it funny how all the alternative medecine backers want it accepted without being peer reviewed? Quite interesting...
Infuriate left and right
But where's the floating brakepad?!?
I've got to have one!
That was absolutely brilliant. Bravo.
"...
Cold fusion -- the suggestion that hydrogen nuclei can be made to fuse together and thereby generate considerable energy at near room temperature, using an electrochemical process instead of the usual very high temperatures -- was a claim that seemed initially very unlikely to be true, though not totally ruled out. After some workers found themselves unable to reproduce the results initially claimed by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann in 1989, a high degree of scepticism arose in the scientific community, especially after the publication of an official report declaring the absence of any evidence that fusion had taken place.
It is interesting to look both at Park's account of the history of cold fusion and at that of the protagonists, presented in a video documentary Cold Fusion: fire from water (available from www.infinite-energy.com). Park impresses on the reader the fact that if the process that generates the heat is really fusion then one would expect to see fusion products. He fails to mention here, as the video does, that the small amount of such products anticipated, given the amount of energy generated, was eventually observed, and in just the right quantity. All mention of positive results, such as the experiment where, by what appears to be a sound method, it was found that the energy generated was considerably in excess of anything that could be explained conventionally, is collapsed into a paragraph where Park notes that many claims are soon withdrawn because of errors being found (as also happens in ordinary science).
This device legitimises the dismissal of all positive results, and so also the corollary "cold fusion is no closer to being proven than it was the day when it was announced". This is a seriously misleading statement.
There are scientific arguments against cold fusion, but equally there were arguments against continental drift. The fact that theories have been proposed to provide a mechanism seems not to impress Park as much as the argument made by Douglas Morrison of CERN, that one should be "suspicious" if one cannot get the same result in an experiment every time. Perhaps he would find such a circumstance less suspicious if he were a material scientist rather than a high-energy physicist.
..."
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Is the Microsoft banner atop slashdot also a spoof or have we been assimilated?
The main problem right now is what I would call "balkananisation" between the user and top researcher. Most doctor and vets I know of know very little in genetic or even on what is going on in generic research. Heck there is even one which thougth homeopathy was as good as allopathy(sp?) because this was "commercialised by a great renown firm". How pathetic is that ?
My favorite reference for "Cold Fusion" in particular and bad science in general is
It certainly has all the detail one could ever want on the topic, and provides some nice insight into how these things go.What is the connection?
wants to be the first monkey to touch the monolith
It seems like a lot of the crowd around here are most interested in science when it leads to something with the trappings of modern technology. This has very little to do with the scientific method, though.
/.-ers happily denouncing alternative medicine practices because they lack FDA-sanctioned double-blind studies to support them. What is being overlooked is that the scientific method need be applied in the same way to denounce a principle as it would be to assert it. All the lack of studies say is that we cannot state with any certainty anything, positive or negative, about the effectiveness of these treatments.
I hear my fellow
Everyone is very happy to speak of pseudo-science, but to attack a alternative treatment without being willing to apply scientific method to it is an indulgence in pseudo-science. We've got a situation of considerable chauvinism in the scientific community. The fact that a system of treatment has been used for hundreds of years by Chinese peasants means only that it will never be examined scientifically. Me, I've got no agenda but curiousity. I imagine some of these alternative medical treatments will work (Accupuncture seems to have an inside track), while others will be easy to eliminate (homeopathy comes to mind, along with those as-seen-on-tv copper-magnetic bracelets). But it would be nice to see science applied braodly, and not only to the tech/medical regimes idea of legitimate areas of study.
So the head of the "Mind-Matter Unification Project", a senior writer for "Wired", and an article from "Infinite Energy" magazine panned the book?
You don't say....
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
Personally, I don't see why people pick on voodoo (or more properly, vodun) so much.
It is no less odd than the popular abrahamic faiths (christianity, judaism, islam) or most any religion for that matter.
Why not say "Christian Science" to mean what the book's title means? Because it'd piss people off, that's why. So why piss off practitioners of vodun instead?
What is the connection?
He says in the book that there's is no valid scientific reason anymore to send people into space when sending robots has turned out to be a much more cost effective way to do scientific research in space, and that the people coming up with scientific motives to justify the huge cost of manned projects like the ISS are basically grasping at straws (e.g. "It will help us understand the effects of weightlessness on the human body").
He has a point. Much as I hate to say it, humans are ill-suited for space exploration and should stay here. We weigh too much, require too many accoutrements such as life support systems, and we generally aren't willing to consider one-way trips.
The scientific community have ALWAYS used *Experts* and publications to *Debunk* that which threatens them or threatens the foundations they have stood for and risked their reputations for.
Remember if the original scientists would not have endured the debunking attempts of the Catholic Church, we would still live on a flat earth at the center of the universe!
There are new theories almost every day and there is no reason to take a book's word that its impossible to find or create a force that "appears" to nullify the force of gravity or to draw energy from another dimension. Sona-lumenience [sp] (I supposed I'll be de-frocked and ridiculed because I can't spell big scientific terms!) was just a theory a few months ago and now *that* appears it might be a new form of fusion!
Give me a break, Let people experiment in peace. If the entrenched scientists of the world continue to "poo poo" every new idea then the money sources dry up and WE HAVE NO NEW IDEAS.
You're kind of biting the hand that feeds you, arent you? If you can't prove a theory is correct, you automatically beat your chest and tell as many people as possible a dozen reasons why it can't possibly be "real science" and the curious who don't want to look stupid wander away. What you *should* do is make the most honest attempt to verify the person's research to veerify and support his theory. If, after you have tried and it still doesnt work, have a meeting or discussion with the person about his results. Don't waste your time turning him/her into a laughingstock just to make yourself look bigger or to feather your own bed.
Isn't it true that Pons and Fleishmann were hired to continue their research by an Japanese indutrial company? Wasn't it true that even SRL was conducting experiments to duplicate the effect of cold fusion?
Note: I'm in no way connected with the cold fusion research -- but scientists doesn't dismiss research on hearsay, as Robert Park has been shown to do in his book (see Dr Eugene Mallove's review of Parks book).
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There is a great part where Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, the MS Antitrust Judge, is given a case from someone who is sueing the patent office for not giving a patent on his perpetual motion machine. Judge Jackson appoints a special master, a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, to look into it. The special master says he should be granted the patent. Jackson, with a good showing of common sense, tables the report and decides to look into it himself. He contacts three physics departments, all of whom point out the flaws in the machine, and he rules against the patent case.
The person gets congresional support for a special law from congress forcing a patent, but it is killed by John Glenn. Don't have my book on me, but it makes a great story.
The definition of alternative medicine. = "A variety of therapeutic or preventive health care practices, such as homeopathy, naturopathy, chiropractic, and herbal medicine, that do not follow generally accepted medical methods and may not have a scientific explanation for their effectiveness."
Let's not forget the other definition: "the practice of medicine without the use of drugs; may involve self-awareness [syn: complementary medicine]"
Notice the part about "variety of therapeutic or preventive health care practices" kind of lump-sums all spiritual and well-being folks in with that. Everyone who believes in miracles and prayer-healing falls under that umbrella. Nearly everyone who believes that we have a soul also believes that the soul can be sick just like the body can. In addition to all of that, don't forget that non-physical sicknesses such as depression and stress can be linked to physical ailments.
For example migranes, Parkinsion's Disease and even Immune System problems can occur.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
Beat Pioneer! Sorry, had to throw that in there (A2H '89)
sulli
RTFJ.
Humans are ill-suited for all sorts of things that we do every day. Scuba diving, mountain climbing, crossing oceas, flying across continents, mining, handling hazardous materials, living in extreme climates. Because we felt doing these things were desirable or important to our long-term well-being, we devised means to accomplish them. Now they're second nature. Manned space exploration is really the same way. We've only really been at it for around 50 years; it's hardly time to give up already.
Besides, I've always believed that the only really vital goal of space exploration is to eventually set up permanent manned colonies. Robots can assist in gathering information and manage the prep work. But if you ever want to get all our eggs out of this one little basket then you'll have to send people out there sooner or later. We might as well get ready.
Furthermore, your reference to Avogadro's number is ignorant. We actually don't understand dilution very well, but we do know that the simplistic model you assume (one in which you simply divide the moles of active agent by moles of water) does not describe the results of multiple dilutions very well at all. In actual fact, molecules often "clump" together, with more or less unknown effects on their agency inside human beings.
The tragedy, and needless danger, is created by know-it-all types who dismiss anything they don't understand rather than acting like grown-up scientists and doing research.
Oh yeh, and
As one doctor said regarding the recent governmental report on "alternative" medicines (to paraphrase), "There are only two kinds of medicine -- that which works and that which doesn't. If something that's considered to be alternative is shown to work then it's adopted. If not, it is not."
If you believe this, why all that piss, wind and vinegar about homeopathy? In the treatment of allergies and osteoarthritis, homeopathic remedies have been widely adopted. Around 32% of French and 42% of English general practitioners regularly refer patients to homeopaths. Because, presumably, they care more about making people better than about looking good in front of the Science Police.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
And how come Robert Park doesn't mention the tokamak hot fusion fiasco? Could it be it's too close to home? Could it be it's competing for research funding?
Making fun of scientists on the cutting edge is nothing new, let's take just one example:
"A Severe Strain on the Credulity
As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even to the highest parts of the earth's atmospheric envelope, Professor Goddard's rocket is a practicable and therefore promising device. It is when one considers the multiple-charge rocket as a traveler to the moon that one begins to doubt ... for after the rocket quits our air and really starts on its journey, its flight would be neither accelerated nor maintained by the explosion of the charges it then might have left.
Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in Clark College and countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react ... Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools."
There are of course countless more examples. Go read some history of science.
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Uhm . . . actually, that one's correct. Water in gaseous rather than liquid form, mind, but water just the same.
OK, I wonder about this everytime I see a similar statement, so now I'm going to ask. What's the big deal with "getting our eggs out of this basket?" Species emerge and become extinct all the time. Why do people think humans will be any different? I guess the thing that really puzzles me is why anyone worries about the fate of the nebulous "human race." You and your loved ones will be long dead. If the sun goes nova, the ones on outer colonies will surive, but those here on Earth are dead, anyway, so it can't just be compassion for fellow beings.
So someone tell me why it's so important that humanity not die out?
I knew a "crank" inventor with real reproducible results. He called his invention the "Zero Bandwidth Transmitter" - a contradiction in terms by standard definitions. However, his invention was based on a DSP and the prototype units could transmit a high quality voice signal for many miles while producing zero interference as measured by official FCC compliance monitoring equipment. In other words, he had really invented a "Spread Spectrum Transmitter". Unfortunately, his work was repeatedly thrown out of the patent office because of his insistance on using his own idiosyncratic vocabulary to describe the invention. (And yet silly patents abound.) He eventually ran out of money, leaving him bitter and disillusioned.
But then how will we show the world we pee the farthest?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Until very recently, bumblebees were unable to fly according to our best models of aerodynamics.
> > Blue sky? It's a result of all the water in the air.
e Sky/blue_sky.html for more detail. Oddly enough, it was Einstein who showed this.
>
> Uhm . . . actually, that one's correct. Water in gaseous rather than liquid form, mind, but water just the same.
No - it's light scattering off of oxygen and nitrogen molecules - see http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/Blu
Homeopathy involves taking substances so diluted with water that, according to modern chemistry, not even a single molecule of the original substance actually remains. Quinine, on the other hand, is taken in large enough concentrations that you can easily taste the impurities in the water. Thus, Quinine is not nearly dilute enough to work according to the theory of homeopathy... but it works just fine according to the practice of conventional medicine.
...due to a little problem called Avogadro's number (about 6.3x10^23, the number of molecules in one mole of a substance). Each of these serial dilutions of extracts causes the concentration to descend so far below avogadro's number that there is no chemical in what is administered.
What on earth does Avagadro's number have to do with anything, and why do you refer to it as a "little problem"? It's nothing more than the conversion factor between Atomic Mass Units (AMUs) and kilograms, and is used to define the "mole" (the number of 12-AMU carbon atoms needed to amass 12 Kg of carbon). It is most certainly NOT an efficacy threshold for drug concentration, as you implied above.
Hmmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
The point should be made that there never was a "scientific" reason to send people into space, except to physically test the "theory" of gravity from orbit. By the time a "scientist" actually got to go in a spaceship, there was plenty of empirical testing (like hitting golf balls on the moon) -- not that it was needed.
There are lots of other reasons to go into space that NASA doesn't want any part of. One is entertainment, another is natural resources, another is exploration. Possible others include waste disposal, colonization, and Vogon poetry. The only real reason to go to space that the government supports is television.
Probably one of those spam mail order doctorates.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
why not?
You'd be happy to see a nuclear war, but what about when Jesus comes...then you'd want to be somewhere else I bet.
Species emerge and become extinct all the time. Why do people think humans will be any different?
---snip
So someone tell me why it's so important that humanity not die out?
because it is the goal of every (successful) species to attempt to survive. In the grand scheme of things, there is no special reason for humans to continue existing, but to humans, this is the most important thing (once it is no longer important, then you are probably not going to last much longer).
Anyhow, despite the general human need to explore and expand their "turf", I would vote right now that manned space exploration this early _is_ wasteful. Send machines for the time being; at some point, as technology improves, it may be worth it to lug ourselves up there too, but not yet. To me, sending people now seems more a political statement than anything else.
that since they're actually water, they can't hurt you!
This is a big advantage over untested herbal supplements which may or may not do anything, and may or may not interact with other drugs.
Conspiracy theory for the day: homeopathy is A Cunning Plan to keep the softheaded away from untested NON-placebo stuff.
My video compression blog
A very recent discovery on the effects of dilution (contrary to common sense) has found that some dilutions actually increase the concentration & the effectiveness of the active chemicals through polarization/clumping effects. Water is indeed very strange stuff sometimes.
Also, NASA (search archives newscientist.com) at is working on several antigravity/shield experiments involving superconducting rings - it is not a fraud.
You're assuming that there will eventually be a benefit. That's an unsafe assumption. All your other examples gave an benefit immediatly, either in objective benefits, eg obtaining valuable minerals, or the person who paid for the experience enjoying themselves. With the execption of two billionaires, neither is true with manned space. We've spent 40 years doing nothing useful that couldn't be done with non-manned space. There is no sign that this will change, in fact with increasing sophisticated robotics, it's less and less likely to be changing.
because it is the goal of every (successful) species to attempt to survive.
This is incorrect. You're confusing outcome with intention. It's the goal of every individual of a species to survive. The survival of the species itself is a consequence of that.
Thinking about evolution in terms of intentions is incorrect and leads to erroneous conclusions quite easily. (E.g. "if we're all just monkeys then what's to stop us from acting like monkeys?", "Shouldn't we then just kill all animals except dogs/sheep/cows", etc.) Drawing moral perogatives is exactly what you should not do with evolution. What happens and what should happen are two very different things.
He has a point. Much as I hate to say it, humans are ill-suited for space exploration and should stay here.
Anyone attempting to justify human spaceflight on economic or scientific grounds will run against the inevitable conclusion: robots can do it much better and much more cheaply than we can.
But that's basically irrelevant. Regardless of the economic arguments, as long as there is an opportunity to go, there will be people who want to do it. It is a significant part of human nature to explore the unknown and push the frontiers -- there's no economic or scientific reason to climb mountains, cross the Antarctic, or anything similar. Exploration of all kinds -- and space exploration in particular -- galvanize the entire human imagination in ways that very little else on Earth does. Why else would people be lining up to follow Dennis Tito's example in blowing a large fraction of their personal wealth -- not to mention putting their lives at significant risk -- just to see what Earth looks like from orbit?
Personally, I think that if launch costs could be reduced by a factor of 10, we would see nonprofit, private organizations conducting space exploration with corporate sponsorship, in the same way that other contemporary exploration activities occur today ...
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Anecdotes about failure in science are irrelevant. For every negative anecdote, there are hundreds of thousands of everyday anecdotes supporting science. Look at what you're typing on. And around your business/house. It's all due to scientific principals. (unless you live in a mud hut, which peoples ignorant of science are far more likely to do. )
The history of science is one of unrivaled success.
I find it amusing that a lot of so-called scientists who criticize (like Park) have probably not achieved the breakthroughs that the Josephsons of this world have. Perhaps it is that open-mind that allows some scientists to make those breakthroughs?
I like it.
What if your 'crank' actually happens to be correct?
--Every single one of your 5 points could easily hold true for an inventor with a valid new idea, up to and including the last point. (New concepts require new terms, for crying out loud!)
But, like every other zealous Skeptic out there, this little problem can be easily overlooked by simply riding the head of delusional self-congratulatory steam which comes with dogmatic self-hypnosis. --No different than the New Age nut: Only look at the 'Hits' and ignore the 'Misses'.
The article you posted is a prime example of the closed minded bullshit Skepticism is.
-Fantastic Lad
The Earth is one teeny, tiny planet, in one solar system among hundreds of billions, in one galazy among.... well, you get the idea. In our solar system alone, there are vast quantities of resources, energy, and space, far more than can be found on our planet, not to mention that these resources can be exploited without trashing our own planet in the process. Should we turn our back on all that? I can't see a single good reason why we should.
Is manned spaceflight the best way to study the atmosphere of Jupiter? Probably not. Is this an argument for ending any and all manned space exploration in perpetuity? Of course not. Imagine our race had never left the oceans, and were no in the position of exploring dry land. Some would say "Why bother? We've got everything we need right here in the ocean." Others would say "We can send automated probes to learn whatever we want... besides, what are we going to do - dry stuff out and watch what happens?" There s a new world to be explored and experienced.
wants to be the first monkey to touch the monolith
Not to mention quick on the pickup.
And yet he's published nothing of any substance on his new age beliefs. Where are the references for his experiments showing a mind-body relationship.
/ 02 2200sci-quantum-mechanics.html
He also seems to be ignorant of the work of David Wineland, who showed experimentally that consciuosness is not required to collapse a wave function. Not even a macroscopic is needed. A single particle is all that is required.
And article detailing Wineland's experiment was published Jan. 20, 200 in Nature.
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science
No it's not. Not even close.
But if you ever want to get all our eggs out of this one little basket then you'll have to send people out there sooner or later.
Perhaps when it's cost effective and there's a compelling reason to do so. In the interim I say we stick with the robots and keep improving on those.
I realize that many people want to go into space. I also realize that I don't want to subsidize their space operas with my tax dollars. Right now the cost of sending people to Mars is horrendous, and the payoff almost solely in PR. Certainly not worth all the robots we *might* have sent in place of the people.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
But that's basically irrelevant. Regardless of the economic arguments, as long as there is an opportunity to go, there will be people who want to do it.
And so long as they do it on their own dime, without dipping into my tax dollars, more power to 'em.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Lets not even go that far. What is TIME really? What is CHARGE really? What is SPACE? And those Physics Majors who think this is a joke should think again before hastily answering. Evidently you need N+1 dimensions to describe an N dimensioned entity. One would think therefore that we would never completely understand the universe. For if current theories do not provide for boundless objects, are we to explain the universe in these terms; if we assume the universe to have bounds, then it begs to be asked what exists beyond the limit.
The fields of psychology and psychiatry refer.
Obviously should be Jan. 20, 2000! Sorry!
I think it's fair to say that the tokamak research has generally stay much closer to following the standard scientific procedures of research, peer review, etc. than cold fusision researchers did (sketchy research, science by press conference, ec).
So the writer of the New York Times Editorial did not understand and came to a poor opinion of a valid scientific idea. What is that supposed to prove?
Great point. I just wanted to take time out for my favorite explaination for the blue sky, that the sky is blue because it reflects the blue in the water.
Hard_Code - I apologise if I have just missed a display of sarcasm. But I just don't understand your claim. What is the scientifically (?scienticly?) substantiated analog of chi? Also, if you do call atoms "magic gnomes" you speculate for them biological attributes (thought, cute little hats) that you can't support with experiments. Similarly, if you call planets "big cookies" you are attributing to them qualities that can't be supported. It's better to stick to plainer theories.
I was trying to not comment on this old canard, but this is the third comment in this thread saying this and I couldn't take it any more.
When exactly is "very recently"? "Best models" according to whom?
It is true that under one simple approximation of fluid mechanics -- the one attributed to Bernoulli that discounts non-linear effects, which makes it easy for high-school students to analyse -- insects' wing-loading is too high to be explained. This doesn't even come close to being "our best models of aerodynamics".
If you didn't learn simple fluid mechanics in high-school, blame it on your pathetic school system. After all it's just plain conservation of energy and momentum. If you feel like doing some research, look up the Navier-Stokes equation -- from the 19th century.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
Humans are ill-suited for all sorts of things that we do every day. Scuba diving, mountain climbing, [...]
Yes, scuba diving and sending people into space, etc. are very interesting and perhaps to the romantically inclined, even noble, but the point here is "are they science?" They are not in and of themselves science -- they are just clever applications of engineering. At best they could conceivably be used as tools for asking a scientific question. But NASA's manned missions have shown little emphasis on science.
:).
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Manned flight didn't make any money at all for 50 years! There are hundreds of examples of people pushing the bounds of science without regard for profit which turned out to be very benificial to humanity in the long run.
Making a profit should not be the main goal of human activity. The main goal of humanity is to push the bounries of knowledge, art, and reason. We should be working towards a better future, not just making a buck next quarter.
Would you have vetoed Columbus's voyage because there was likely no profit in it?
Anarchists never rule
What is this "science" you speak of? Does it encompass the entire body of human knowledge? Can it create the works of Shakespeare or Picasso? Can it solve the mideast crisis?
And your selective quoting of "Our study has no major implications for clinical practice because we found little evidence of effectiveness of any single homeopathic approach on any single clinical condition." is positively Orwellian. This was a meta-study of 89 separate studies, most of which analysed the effects of homeopathy in different conditions. Given that, it is quite obvious that it would never find effectiveness of any single homeopathic approach, because that wasn't what it was looking for. You wouldn't find evidence of this kind for penicillin if you took a metastudy of its use in 89 different conditions.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
A bunch of people mentioned this fakester. I caught his show when channel hopping one night. "Christ on a bike!", I exclaimed, "This is the kind of bollocks people were routinely debunking as fraud a hundred or so years ago!"
Scott Kurtz of PVP did a brilliant pisstake of this guy at the start of April.
"Information wants to be paid"
In what way does having manned space flight work towards a better future? There is nothing worthwile going on in manned space. The ISS is teaching us nothing. The shuttles much vaunted ability to returns stuff from space to earth has been almost totally unused. Because of the shuttles inability to reach geosync orbit, satellites have to have incredibly complicated systems to get them out of the cargo bay and into orbit, which has resulted in a terrible reliability rating, for example Leasat F3, and it's STILL more expensive than a rocket such as the Delta III. If NASA cancelled the shuttle and all manned space flights, and put their resources into unmanned space they could achive much more, and cost less. The military realized this a long time ago, which is why they don't use the shuttle any more.
I would have vetoed Columbus's voyage because the man was an idiot who totally miscalculated the size of the earth. However, if he HAD achived his goal, which was a quicker and easier route to India, then it would have had objective benefits immediatly. There are no benefits on the horizon for manned space flight.
The thing you are ignoring here, is that your level of ignorance is YOUR problem. I have no vested interest in how blind you choose to be.
So, please post an experiment by which we can all test your claim.
See above. You'll figure it out when you're ready, though it doesn't sound like it'll happen this life time. No matter. I suspect you'll be working on your next rather sooner than you might like to believe.
Seriously, you need to see someone to help you with whatever bizarre beliefs you've picked up. You sound like a new-age cult memeber. When was the last time you talked to your own family?
Make no mistake: Cults are dangerous in the extreme. They abridge free thought and strongly discourage curiosity and questioning. (Much like normal society, and certainly any religous movement you care to point at.) I assure you, there are VERY few people of my type out there. Though, those I do run across are nearly always individuals of great power, influence, intellect and charisma who have or do hold one or more respected stations in the regular world. (Though they often take breaks from it. The effort to maintain the mask is difficult. Castaneda called it, "Controled Folly", and he was right on the money.)
Part of the challenge of higher awareness is not just in seeing the illusion for what it is, but in still being able to function within it. It's rather like having the cheat codes to life, but suddenly no longer being able to truly care about the game.
Now here's an exercise for you: See if you can't figure out why 'proving' these things to people of normal stature is foolish, dangerous and selfish in the extreme. --The thousand temple massacre in China over the last five years might supply an indicator or two. But beyond such a simple aspect, consider that abridging free will is a serious no-no for the good guys.
I've raised a few cautioning eyebrows from those I know regarding my outspoken activities for exactly these reasons. I hold back a great deal. Try this on for size: Providing proof effectively forces a belief structure, and this abridges free will.
--I know that may sound like a cop-out to somebody coming from what you believe to be a perspective of pure scientific reasoning, but believe me, through my own experiences I know that providing proof that the world is not what it seems, can really hurt people. I've pushed before and I've seen just how much damage can be caused when one is not ready to receive. --Luckily, those I've dealt with had the fortunate ability to 're-boot' their brains after a couple of weeks. I've watched people actively erase entire experiences from their memory in order to carry on with their normal lives. Remarkable. Luckily, they also didn't try to wring my neck, though this is not at all uncommon either. Fight or flight.
However, there is nothing wrong with providing invitations to knowledge. Those who are ready to start looking can benefit enormously when somebody tells them that, yes, it's okay to question the current paradigm. There are certainly powerful negative forces out there more than willing to manipulate truth, abridge free-will and generally keep people chained up in ignorance.
But basically, it works like this: The Universe is a school for the soul. People will advance when they are ready. Pushing them ahead messes up the lesson. -And this in itself is a lesson, one which I am currently trying to learn myself. When I learn it properly, I suspect I will be able to perform without causing ripples except where I specifically intend them. Right now, I tend to have too much passion and an urge to say more than I should.
-Fantastic Lad
Someone should review that Why People Believe Weird Things book by the guy from the Sceptic Society. -Gonz
I don't know about you, but I get allergies, and moving from Eastern North America to Western North America merely changed which annoying plant byproducts I was exposed to. They're finally starting to make antihistamines that have more beneficial effects than annoying side effects (yay, Zyrtec!), but if your main choices are between taking drowsiness-causing antihistamines every 4-12 hours or wimpy not-very-useful ones (did Seldane ever actually work?) or mildly-digestive-upsetting homeopathic remedies every 1-2 hours, sometimes I'll go for the homeopathic and sometimes I'll go for the chemicals. Or you can go with Allergy shots, which are somewhere in between the homeopathic and allopathic flavors of medicine - for some people they really help.
For "flu", it's often helpful to get flu vaccinations, but sometimes they don't cover the flu you actually get, and Modern Scientific Medicine's advice usually runs to "Bummer, man, it's viral - stay in bed and drink chicken soup like your mom told you./i>" I've found that "Alpha CF" from Boericke & Tafel can often take me from feeling really really lousy to merely not feeling very good, which is enough to be worth driving to The Quackery Shop for ; other people like a preparation that probably isn't spelled Oscillococcinium. If it doesn't work for you, don't take it.
Meanwhile, the FDA's fundamental principle is that a bunch of guys with guns paid for by your tax dollars know more about medicine than you do, and that that therefore they should throw you in the clink for using or selling medicines that they haven't approved, just like their buddies at the DEA or Prohibition Agency can. Sorry, wrong answer - it's my body, and if I feel like buying Dr. Feelgood's Super Snake Oil, that's my business. Often, of course, they're right - there's a lot less bad medicine on the market because of them, and they've usually done a really excellent job of enforcing quality control on the big drug companies. But they ought to be acting like Consumer Reports or Underwriters' Laboratories, not like omniscient cops. And they've also done a huge amount of harm
FDA practices also limit the real scientific work done by the herbal medicine people, since scientifically acceptance-testing those products is expensive and patenting plant-based medicines is difficult. This pushes the whole herbal-medicine and alternative-medicine world more toward quackery, because the herbal players can't compete in the scientific-medicine market and aren't allowed to print real scientific testing results on their products even if they bother testing them.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
So if you know the reference quantity, and know the molecular weight of the medical substance, you can figure out how many molecules are in a drop of liquid medicine or a tablet. If the dilution starts to get pretty high, it's no longer simple division, because the number of molecules you have is an integer, so you need to apply probability and statistics to determine how many of those molecules were in the pill *you* got, and whether it's likely to be Zero or not. I forget the reference quantities, and obviously the divisibility is much different for a simple molecule like sodium chloride than for a complex plant mixture where each type of molecule might be a few thousand atoms, but that's just a scale factor - if something is 3X, your pill has a lot of stuff in it, if it's 20X, you might or might not have the interesting molecule in it, because that's about the limit, and if the preparation is 30X you're more likely to win the Powerball Lottery than to have a molecule of Foobaricus Magicus in *your* pill or dropperfull unless there are product contamination problems. "Clumping" doesn't really help - it increases the chances that some pills/drops will have a higher dose and others will have none at all.
Now, the effect of the concentration is still a discussable item, though the "more dilution makes the medicine stronger" is one of the quasi-religious tenets of homeopathy that make it a quack theory rather than science. Obviously if there are no molecules at all of your materia medica, it's not going to have any effect beyond the placebo effects or the effects of the dilutant. (Unless, of course, you actually believe, as one gushing enthusiast wrote, that the energy the molecules left behind after diluting them all away is what really causes the powerful effects. And she was talking about a 10X product, where there actually was still a trivial but non-zero concentration of material in it.) But within the more common ranges I've seen on products I've used, usually 2X-6X, there really is stuff there, at quantities you could do scientific testing on, or at least lots of trial&error if you're not the scientific sort, to determine what works best.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I find books that make blanket statements like
n ques.htmo meopathic.org/
this on foolish at best.
After 25 years averaging 5 sinus infections per year, (at 3 to 4 days in bed with each one),
a Homeopathic healer gave me ONE dose - August 2002 will be 18 years with NOT ONE sinus infection.
The best ENT specialists in Seattle could not help, but a properly chosen homeopathic remedy
cured me.
Links for reasonable information.
http://www.homeopathic.com/intro/te
http://www.homeopathyusa.org/
http://h
http://www.bastyr.org
Richard
We create our society every time we interact with each other. What kind of society did you create today?
"You and your loved ones will be long dead. If the sun goes nova, the ones on outer colonies will surive, but those here on Earth are dead, anyway, so it can't just be compassion for fellow beings.
So someone tell me why it's so important that humanity not die out?"
I don't quite follow the last part of your argument. Why does a doctor bother treating people who aren't his loved ones, or developing cures for diseases he'll never have? Out of a desire to do good, and a general desire to perpetuate the human race.
It's unlikely that the sun will go nova anytime soon (or, depending on who you ask, ever). Far more likely is that a sizable chunk of orbiting rock will slam into the planet, or that some nutcase with an axe to grind will precipatate a full-blown nuclear or biological distaster.
Both of those things could could certainly happen within my lifetime, though I certainly hope they don't. If they happened now they could easily leave a sizable portion of the human population dead, and a large chunk of the planet uninhabitable for a long time to come.
Under those circumstances I'd prefer that the human race didn't disappear or end up back in the dark ages. Even if no one I know and none of my descendants are personally involved.
This is the part that I was referring to. A doctor may treat strangers or help people he may never meet, but those people can be helped!! That is the thing that puzzles me. People who refer to the human race not dying out are not talking about evacuating the planet so its inhabitants will be safe, they're saying it's OK if everyone on Earth dies, cause we have this other colony that will perpetuate humanity. That's what doesn't make sense to me. Assume we have a thriving colony on Mars: I sincerely doubt that if most people on Earth were told that they would be incinerated tomorrow they would take much solace in the fact that the species would still be able to go on.