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Truth, Ownership, and the Scientific Tradition
number6x writes "The Physics Today website has an article by Robert Laughlin titled "Truth, Ownership, and the Scientific tradition". The article deals with some recent blunders in the scientific community like the falsification of data at lucent covered here on slashdot. The article is mainly about the conflict between the free exchange of ideas that the scientific community needs to survive, and the demand for property ownership that commercial sponsors demand."
I'm still laughing over those french guys who got the papers submitted to the international physics journals. That and their honorary PhD's.
Good question, what *is* going on ?!?
In soviet Russia, Soviet Russia jokes are tired of YOU!
Stick Men
From the article:
This is especially true vis-à-vis the life scientists, who have more money, less oversight, and much more tolerance for imprecision than physicists. Rather than allow ourselves to be defined by the property we generate, I suggest we take the high ground and turn ourselves into the gold standard of truth. This is the way to make physics relevant and important in this "age of biology."
Do I see some bitterness in the physics community? It is seen nowadays as very important for humanity to spend more money on the life sciences and less on physics. And the physics guys do not like it!
Tough.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
One interesting element about these three chaps is that when they had their great ideas there was no way to make money from it so no-one is interested. What we are talking about here are experimental scientists where there is a direct effect of their work. "Blue sky" scientists were less prone to these problems in the past because companies tended not to fund them. With the rise of "corporate universities" and corporate science the drive has been to be more accountable.
Einstein didn't get funding for his research 100 years ago, what would happen if the next Einstein comes along and demonstrates that cold fusion is possible, clean and safe... but is sponsored by Exxon ?
The corporatisation of science means the ethics of corporations now apply. Science will have an "Enron" scenario within the next few years.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I appreciate this man's writing, he is thorough and insightful. His statements about the science world give you an idea about the "empirical" knowledge going around in the scientific community today, some slightly false and some completely fabricated.
I agree with his opinion on scientists under stress, for a paid scientist is just like any other working individual; mindful of their family and bills. He has done an excellent job of humanizing the average Joe scientist.
At that, I literally clapped when I got to the part about physics. He said what I've been saying all along, Physics is the Open Source of the science community.
Keep posting articles from this man, whoever is reading, I would like to see more of his work.
Of all the Universal Constants, here's one I know: Nice guys finish last
Has someone decided to go mad since it's Friday 13th? Is this some kind of automated troll "spamming?"
Stick Men
From the article: "For a research investment to be justified, it must produce value equal to or greater than that of the investment."
I find this extremely questionable. History is full of scientific discoveries and ideas which were not able to produce equal or greater value for long time. Can anyone enlighten me about the value produced by Einstein's research?
Perhaps Ralskys trying to get his own back 8o)
Does engineering eat science's crumbs, or does science serve engineering's beck and call?
Of course the two are inderdependent. To a huge majority of people, most of whom have some kind of say in how resources are allocated, the goals of the scientist, however, often seem esoteric and even blasphemous.
However, the goals of the engineer are very clear: envision, design, implement, sell. Cars, computers, bridges, perfume bottles, guns.
Which is more important, Ms. Voter, the Scientist or the Engineer? Now, don't go thinking too much!
(disclaimer: I'm an engineer)
Machines take me by surprise with great frequency. -A. Turing
Gee, the censorship at kuro5hin has seemed to misplace a large amount of village idiots.
Perchance the slashdot community could take a moment and reflect on how (like open source) this shared experience can be used to control the nuisances on this site.
I propose, and throw my full support towards adoption of kuro5hin standards for IP blocking, and removal of posts.
The removal of posts would be an easy process. If a post is rated a -1 or less, a moderator should be able to elect to delete the post.
This, of course, would no longer be called moderating. It would be editing.
It would truly kick ass to see non T-SPAMMED stories here. (Troll SPAMMED, or Thread SPAMMED)
krystal_blade
It will be easy to motivate our fellow man; there is hardly anything people treasure more than not being annihilated.
There you have it ``innovation'' == ``dishonesty''
Over to you, Microsoft ... :-)
--
What short sigs we have -
One hundred and twenty chars!
Too short for haiku.
from the department-of-redundancy-department.
Why bother.
In the seventies, I was a graduate student in zoology. I thought I saw a distinct change in culture occurring.
On the one hand you had people typified by older zoologists, who were gentlemanly academic putterers, studying animals and publishing papers. Their ambitions seemed to be a full professorship, continuously funded grants, support for their graduate students, and a bit more lab space.
On the other hand you had people typified by younger molecular biologists, who were hard-driving, competitive, and occasionally arrogant. Some of them gave me the impression that commercial success was in the back of their minds--maybe not even far in the back.
I don't mean to suggest this was a zoology-versus-molecular-biology thing. It was more a change in the zeitgeist. During the years I was a grad student I was certain that I was seeing science becoming more and more competitive.
You could see the "methods" sections in papers becoming shorter and more perfunctory, for example. I was aware of at least some cases in which scientists guarded some of their techniques because they WANTED to be able to get results that others could not get.
As anyone who's read "The Double Helix" knows, competition in science was not new. It was, of course, hard to be sure, then and now, how much of this perception was accurate and how much was just my growing awareness of what had always been there.
Naturally, this was a frequent topic of spirited conversation.
I remember saying, "Well, IF my perceptions are correct, one of the things we should expect to see over the next decade or so is an increasing number of scandals involving faked data."
And I really think this is what we've seen.
(Of course I don't have numbers to back this up--faked data is not new, either).
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
There's a big pressure now for people in the Biological sciences to produce something useful. When you put science under pressure like that, you're bound to see lots of people cutting corners, falsifying data, and generally doing things against the great principles of science.
That's a big side effect of corporate funding for science; if some corporation is giving you money to research, say, some new gene, they want viable results and they want them soon. They don't understand that you can't rush science; if you do that, you get an inferior (and often dangerous) product. Hell, just watch an ad for any new allergy medication; the side effects take up most of the ad time.
The real problem is that there needs to be more funding from different sources (government funding, mehtinks?) so that particular labs won't represent the goals of one lone corporation; if you have to answer to many people, you're bound to take your time.
It's a big nasty mess, and one that really needs to be resolved. We can only go on like this for so long before someone fucks up royally and everyone pays for it.
"It never got weird enough for me." - HST (RIP)
Upped signal to noise ratio would imply an increase in the quality of comments (more signal, less noise). Since the crapfloods appear to be better reading than most of the comments on this PoS site, that would appear to be true.
I say, let the corporate sponsors own all the half-assed, under-researched, falsified, or otherwise suspect IP.
Let the scientists use this money to fund real reasearch in which they freely share ideas.
Everybody wins. The corporations have never cared if something really works, only if they can market it. They have their IP, and we have the real research.
I dunno. But its making me regret browsing at -1. People need to get a life.
magnanomous.
I found it fascinating that at only one place in the article, buried at the end of a long and complex paragraph did the author use the terms lies. He frequently used euphemisms such as "creative", but only once he did directly refer to dishonesty. Yet in the end, this sort of scientific smoke is simple dishonesty at its core. Only when a man chooses to surrender his personal integrity, do these problems occur. Our attempt to color them with quiet shades of pastel only makes the behavior more likely.
What does this say about our culture in general and the effect on our scientific community?
I disagree. There is little difference between unfair moderation resulting in deletion and censorship. Sure the comments here have a bad signal to noise ratio but I wouldn't have it any other way.
/. flavour.
I like being able to take the bait from a Troll like you. It gives
Why Evil is Good
I hate victims. Victims are the albatross hung from the neck of society. The
term is not even acknowledged by any other species. I am certain if there are
intelligent beings elsewhere in the universe, they follow the strict principle
of Natural Selection. Only the Strong shall survive. Mankind cannot survive
as long as its virility is diluted by the weak.
Peace-and-Love hippies, retards, cripples, depressives, sickling, addicts
and whiners are all victims of one kind or another. Larger examples of victims
can also be found: the entire nations of Israel and Englund, for example, are
constantly victimized and/or whining about their lack of power in the world. In
fact, the entire continent of Europe is nothing but a festering sewer of whiners
and welfare states. If we, the strongest nation on Earth, had a decent Ruler,
the entire junk-heap of Eurotrash would be burned to create a cloud of such lethal
density it would waft over to Asia and take out the victims that were left over from
World War II. The great black column of suffocating smoke would rise high into the
atmosphere, reaching for the very edges of outer space - a giant, living monument
to our strength. The unviable ashes of the once living garbage would orbit the Earth,
forever reminding future generations of the price of weakness.
World War II. Probably the greatest single era in the history of the planet, barring
the time before Man and Man's distorted, unnatural philosophies of "common good" and
"protecting the innocent". The time of Germany and its rule by a man of great vision.
A man who saw the virtue of evil. Every single class of victim described above was
dealt with in the harshest possible manner. Most people focus on the genocidal aspect
of Hitler's activities but his vision was much wider, encompassing every brand of
weakling from ethnic victims to sexual deviants. Unfortunately the United States,
led by a cripple, had to involve our great military might on the wrong side of the
war. The least Roosevelt could have done was to allow Germany to finish raping
France and reduce Englund to rubble.
We paid for our mistake in World War II. We were punished for choosing the wrong
side in the Great War by a period of non-violent "Cold War". The term "Cold War"
itself is the mark of the true Beast: the peace lover. A true leader - a Ruler -
would have unleashed the full might of our nuclear arsenal upon every nation on the
Earth, banishing them forever to particles of glowing dust blowing through the winds
of history. And look what our lack of action has gotten us: A planet filled with
human garbage, eternal sufferers suckling from the breast of the Mighty.
It is beyond my comprehension. Not only am I forced to allow the weak to survive,
but I - we - are forced to subsidize their pathetic existence. Every cripple
creeping along the sidewalk. Every degenerate elderly woman with osteoporosis who
parks in the handicap parking spot. Every worthless, lazy hippy who cries for peace
and marches on a public university. Every sickling child perpetually hospitalized
because its fetid welfare mother smoked too many drugs during her pregnancy. Every
30 year old retard wiping its nose all over its Scooby Doo coloring book. Every
drunk little whore seeking "justice" in our courts for her rape. All of them,
and more, deserve nothing but death. In the Natural World, every single one of these
leeches would be lion fodder.
Even the "Good Book", the Bible - which is actually nothing more than the sick fantasies
of opium addicts - predicts the outcome of Nature: "The meek shall inherit the Earth".
Yes, I know what you're saying, but you are wrong. This phrase has been twisted by the
weak, the cripple, the Jew to give their pathetic lives some ray of hope. This phrase
does not mean that the Victim will Rule the world. That is laughable. That is impossible.
The meek shall inherit the Earth for the one and only reason that they will be buried in
it.
To the strong who have read this: Thank you. Together, we will conquer. To the weak who
will whine in the comments below: Your days are numbered, trash.
Interestingly, the same thing could be said of computer science and programmers. As a programmer, I have two options:
- I can create intellectual "property" for the benefit of Corporate America(tm).
- I can release the source code of my work so that the whole of society benefits.
Unfortunately, I can make a living doing the first, but not the second. Even worse, should the company patent my ideas, I will be denying others the ability to use even rudimentary algorithms without the paying of exorbitant royalties; not only will I exclude my own work from the benefit of others, but I will be actively destroying the ability of other programmers to make a living.The choices aren't easy. Fortunately for my sake, my company isn't in the intellectual property business. But the type of coding that I would like to be doing (engineering modeling, GUI design, etc...) inevitably involves me assigning any intellectual property rights for my work to a corporate entity.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
(2) If people put their names on a paper, they should define their contributions and be responsible for the results. If they don't want to accept responsibility for parts of a paper because they didn't work on it, they should say so clearly.
Unfortunately, it has become common practice for people to pad their publications through multiple authorships: five people writing five papers each only have one publication each, but five people putting their names on each other's publications have five publications each; so much more marketable for job hunting that works by counting publications.
It doesn't look like much is changing. In response to the Schoen affair, the American Physical Society weasled out of a requirement of academic responsibility by all authors; things are just continuing the way they are. And scientific papers with little more substance than press releases are becoming increasing common, in particular in the biomedical sciences, as companies promise the sky and find them good PR and marketing materials. And editors are afraid to reject that junk.
But since the peer review system and system of academic publications is becoming increasingly corrupt and useless, perhaps on-line publishing of results without peer review will become the norm. Then, it is really word-of-mouth and recommendations by known friends, as opposed to anonymous reviewers, that matter.
if you carefully read lauglin's essay, one of the things he laments is the secrecy behind which coorporate sponsored research takes place. i suppose it would be redundant to mention that the elimination of this secrecy is what patents and copyrights were originally designed to prevent.
patents, exclusive licenses to new inventions, are granted for the sole purpose of encouraging inventors to publish, in full detail, their inventions. without patent protection, for example, texas instruments and fairchild semiconductor may not have ever told anyone how to make an integrated circuit. they would have made the first chips under a cloak of secrecy, sold them as black box devices, and bury the chips in epoxy to protect the secret.
unfortunately, industry, the lawmakers, and even the courts have forgotten the whole idea of patents is to publish. industry wants to call patents property that should belong to the holder and anything that weakens the patent is the equivalent of a 'taking'. congress and the patent office are all to happy to agree. and the courts have screwed the matter up further by taking the position that engineers and inventors are not legally qualified to decide if they are infringing on a patent, and so are not allowed to even look at one when trying to come up with new inventions.
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
Slashdot has a nice filter for each discussion (between the story writeup and the comments). This works better, because what if you wanted to see the -1 comments? (Say you find them amusing or something.) The point is that not all people necessarily like +5 posts more than others; it's most likely that people will, which is why it's the default, but for the rest, there's an option.
Perhaps the filter would benefit from a larger range of ratings... -5 to +5, perhaps. But then they should implement an option of looking at posts rated -5 and posts rated +5. I'd sure like to know what people said that got them rated so low. =P
Sounds like someone got beaten up after trying to take a handicap parking spot from a man in a wheelchair.
So last month, the American Physical Society, representing some 40,000 physicists, expanded the ethical guidelines for researchers, in their Statements on Profession Conducts document. The new guidelines call for more ethics training in science and urge all research institutions to adopt the same set of misconduct procedures. The guidelines also clarify co-authors' roles and duties, making it clear that when you put your name on a paper, your reputation is on the line.
Biologists faced similar scandals during the Gallo and Imanishi-Kari cases in the 90's. Unlike Robert Gallo and David Baltimore, who survived the scandal virtually unscathed, the physicists involved in today's scandals are actually being held accountable.
The above info was compiled from an article that originally appeared here.
Looking for political forums? Check out "The World Forum".
Scientific misconduct is nothing new, but in the long run things work out. The scientific method is inherently self-correcting, but sometimes that takes decades to work out.
Some of the 19th century "competition" has become the stuff of legends. Edison vs. Telsa to design the national electric grid. Telsa's ideas won out. Edison vs. almost everyone else. The dinosaur pioneers Marshal and Cope. One used the others name for fossilized shit! But in the end the real facts survived and the garbage disappeared.
Fox-int-the-henhouse atory here!
This is not a new idea. Article I section 8 of the United States Constitution provides that Congress may "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. . . " (capitalization in original). This clause is the basis of Congress's power to grant patents and copyrights.
The trade-off is simple: Inventors are given a limited time (currently 20 years from date of the filing of a patent application) during which they may recoup their investment and profit from their work with the reassurance that they may sue to stop anyone who tries to get a free ride off their work by copying an invention and thereby trying to profit from the work of another. In exchange, the patent has to contain "a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains . . . to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention." 35 U.S.C. sec. 112, para. 1.
Section 112 is one of the most litigated provisions in the law. Ever. Each and every word has been exhaustively examined by the federal courts and has been found consistently to carry out the policy of ensuring that once the limited time for recouping an investment has passed, that society as a whole has enough information so that anyone in that technical area ("art") can make and use the invention simply by reading the patent.
What are the alternatives to this regime? There are two that readily come to mind. The first is that if you believe that all scientific knowledge should be immediately available without restriction, then by all means, publish the work and make it freely available to anyone who wants it. No one will stop you from doing that (unless of course you are teaching how to build nuclear weapons, etc., ...). The second alternative is to protect your invention by keeping it as a trade secret.
Trade secrets do little to promote the progress of science. They work more of a hindrance. Those who have chosen this route must ensure that their invention truly remains secret or their protection and ability to recoup their investment is lost or greatly diminished. The principal "progress" occurs when someone decides that the invention is too valuable to not have access to, and decides then to reverse-engineer the invention to discover its secrets. Trade secrets potentially last in perpetuity, so it is theoretically possible that no one will ever learn or benefit from the secret scientific advance.
I am not blind - I know there are substantial problems with patent examinations that allow invalid patents to issue. However, the proper remedy for that is to ensure only good patents issue. How? First, by allowing the PTO to hire enough competent examiners to handle the work flow. The PTO is a self-sufficient agency. It is actually a significant profit center for the government. Much of the money paid into the PTO however is immediately diverted by Congress for other purposes instead of being put back into the PTO to improve the agency. Most recently, Congress drastically increased the size of user fees at the PTO to pay for Homeland Security. I am confident in saying the the diversion of user fees from the PTO is among the Top 3 Gripes of every patent attorney in the US.
The execution may be flawed at times, but the policy is sound. We have advanced much further as a society by granting patents than we would have otherwise.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
could not have said it better myself. how many private APIs will m$ hide for "security" (their own financial) until they get that point??
how many people here doubt that they could become even larger if they shed the fat (webTV), opened up WinBlows, and stopped acting like a hyeena roaming the tech safari? all that without strangling the market or as they like to call it "promoting innovation, so long as we can tax it". when you have 40 bn in the bank, its easy to re-invent yourself in a more useful (less buggy maybe) form factor, see the Fruity competition for remake details and how a fat bank account lets you do that sort of thing.
is even mentioned in the article as why bell labs had great scientific integrity for all those years. if we're going to put up with a monopoly, that does not mean that they cannot operate in the best interests of society (when they don't they are Sherman Acted).
without bell labs, where would computing be today? bsd grew out of unix, from there, and hey, raise your hand if you like TCP/IP protocols and BIND
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
I read at +2 to avoid noise. This way I avoid the spams, but I get to ses spam replies that are modded up. That is very annoying.
I disagree with the author's basic assumption: that the purpose of science is to find a higher truth, for its own sake, and that benefits to humanity are merely tangential spinoffs. I think science's purpose should be to create things that will improve the human condition, especially in fields of inquiry such as biology, where the results of scientific research can have almost immediate, tangible results on people.
I understand the arguments for more or less undirected research, that electricity or quantum physics or [insert science here] would never have been discovered without it. I disagree. Directed research would, I feel, have lead us to all of our modern breakthroughs anyway. It frustrates me, as a student, to see scientists waste time, money and effort on questions that are fundamentally not that important. It is much better to look for an effective HIV protease inhibitor than it is to look for patterns in the mating habits of fruit flies.
My other sig is also a
ok bro, now you've lost me. Xerox screwed up bigtime, but could have been the digiDocument company if they had played their cards right. it is just far more obvious to us today what they had at the time, than it was to the suits. don't mistake this for it not being possible
and this is the same reason that m$ makes webTV, windoze CE, Pocket PC os, Smart (their imagination) phones and whatnot. if m$ had any real sense, they would start longer term R&D dept. well, they have one, kinda, but their current market stance (willing and aple to spy on you, aka Big Brother) is a deterrent to their management incorporating any of the better ideas.
people are often bound by their own pre-concieved notions, and that is especially strong in academia. if you listen to your college professor father (like mine) too carefully, life gets suddenly boring, and you start "jumping thru hoops" and "playing the game". when a company gets monopoly position (like intel basically had for a while) they can leverage that to do serious longterm research.
by the way, kudos for intel's monopoly management, and success in being the gorilla without being a monopoly.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
That it will make it that much harder to believe the real scientific breakthroughs. I mean, if you've got some scientists working a month of after-hours in a lab, and suddenly he comes through with cold fusion or a cure for AIDS. The next day, he's on the phone yammering about how he's done it, but because of the stress/caffeine/lack-of-sleep he can't remember the exact steps to making his project, and it's not quite working today. The scientific communicate will just hum and haw, ignoring his finding until they can be fully substantiated.
Unfortunately, not all experiments are a 100% reproducable result. Sometimes there are outside factors that one doesn't think of (hey, the moon was full and the tide was high), that make an experiment very hard to produce. If scientists aren't trusted and can't immediately able to produce results, they won't be able to get the additional funding that may be required for further research (it worked, but doesn't now, but it worked, so why?).
The problem is also compounded by a public that does not understand the vast gulf between a uncovering a simple correlation and finding a true cause and effect relationship between two things.
Look at how many people still think that high power lines cause cancer after the guy who did the original study admitted to lying about some of the numbers. How many millions of dollars in property value were lost by the average Joe Homeowner near power lines because that jackass "researcher" had to put his ideology before reality? He found random statistical clustering and got people to believe in a fake cause and effect.
In fact, not only are scientists susceptible to ideology, in my experience working in a scientific field, they can be MORE prone to ideological degeneration than most people. You listen to them talk about their field of expertise and can be impressed, then they comment on politics and you want to run screaming into the night plotting how best to take up arms against the mad scientist.
--- Ban humanity.
ok dude, i like your opinions about the value of scientific purity, and openness. but i think that your head is buried in a lot of historical sand.
the Military-Industrial complex of the last 50 years has been driven by university research, and there was no "tradition" of giving without expecting a return. there is always a return, at minimum some gov. controls (see stem cells) at maximum, total control (see manhattan project @ U Chicago).
please limit you traditions to historical fact.
this comment is the result of what i call Academic Demetia. typical professor here, thinks that they give him all that money solely for the purpose of his enjoyment of the truly kewl geek toys that normal people can't afford (well, cept for the atom smasher i installed in my Volvo).
wake up fella, the government owns more whores like you than you could find if you put LA, Amsterdam and Tel Aviv together and shook it up, and declared perpetual night. which is apparently, the sum of your historical knowledge, lemme guess, you didn't like "memorizing facts"????
end disgruntled history major rant.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
In case you missed it, it's laughlin, not lauglin. One thing to consider when reading his opinion is he did win the nobel prize.
Physics is a field with a unique conflict. It is captured best by the actions of the father of modern physics, namely Galileo. He was both the founder of the open source nature of physics and the high priesthood of physics. He used to set up his telescope in the town square and let people come and take a look. He spread physics to the people. On the other hand there was his lifelong running conflict with the church. (Whose doctrine he was subverting). The result was that he had to try and shape physics as a keeper of absolute truth, as a religion which would replace or surpass the religious doctrines of the time. That dimension of physics is still present today in the way in which common people view physics. (Pretty much as a high priesthood in my opinion). Robert Laughlin (for all his nobel prize winning intelligence) is trying to protect the "religious mystery" of physics from being sullied. Nothing more.
So what do I think? I think the age of physics as a religion should be coming to an end and happily so. I think it is time that the true nature of physics was revealed. And who knows where it will go from there? It would hardly be in danger of dying. Physics will merely be something very different in the future. Laughlin's attempt to hold physics back from its natural evolution is the most certain way of killing it. Already I can see how physics is stagnating in the halls of power and if nothing moves it forward, I think its death is assured.
Yeah, three sentences, and a link to Reuters. Way to "cover" the story, Slashdot.
Where do you think engineering got its grade ? Without the equation of physic and science engineering would not go past the "try and retry again randomly until it looks OK". Engineering IS NOT independant of science. It is one of its Offspring : application of scientific law (be it physics, mathematic or biology).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The article rightfully points to one of the hallmarks of civilization, as "representative government" (the word representative having as its underlying "idea" the idea of progress and happiness, not raw animal gratification of greed or whatever) and ... "banking."
Where the so-called detached "scientific community" per se has gone wrong, has been in its consent to ... sorry to go here boys, our modern "I-believe-in-Disneyland" form of banking. (What is wealth? ... profit?).
Admittedly, one of the ./'s got on the right track, with a prediction that "our" scientific community (which is really an anti-science, anti-humanity mob) will one day face its ... Enron.
The largest force in the world today, is bar none, the power to emit fraudulent debt, by a political process of hairdoo-synchronistic LBO's and offshore bank accounts for a few people, euphamistically called "US corporations." Enron, and Worldcomp or whatever, have been ... urged along ... in an incremental way, by our fraudulent and anti-scientific anti-progress I-believe-in-Disneyland Trent-Lott-happly-plantation system of political economy and banking.
But, you cry ... fraud in banking has nothing to do with fraud in science.
Consider the history of science: Kepler, had published his discovery of gravity 80 years before the magi of all fraudsters, Newton, took claim to it, with financing by British East India Company mobster-bankers. I believe our failure started with a failure to be truthful about the history of science. Consider our failure today, to recognize Kepler and his progeny, such Leibniz (whose calculus does not presume that the differential and its simultaneous integral can be created from within a fixed domain called coordinate space) and Gauss, and their modern progeny, even as far as Vladimir Ladma, says it all.
Edward Rosen of Chicago has done a translation of Copernicus' "Minor Papers." In one of his letters, Copernicus makes as good a case as can be made, against our modern IMF-Federal Reserve "I-believe-in-Disneyland" form of banking, or Trent Lott's "happy-plantation" form of political economy. (Copernicus was a political organizer! as well as a scientist.) It is no wonder to me, Kepler dedicated his discovery of gravity, to Copernicus. Could it be that Kepler too, joined with Copernicus, in the political effort to restore sensible banking to Eastern Europe? Consider for starters, the wars which followed, per Copernicus' prediction.
But, who can dare to say anything of the "scientific repurcussions" ... of our modern form of banking ... by mobsters.
ingled out5 437m enu=news.weirdworld.sexlife :(
.sig files as well. Not a big deal.
/msg datebot Why aren't women drawn to my l33t Linux skilz?
;-)
/bots have become pretty
)
haha
I must read more now
county: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=20721&cid=467
Ignore the superfluous comma.
does that seem accurate to you?
All of them =)
thx
*** First_Incision is now known as fi-away
I can't say, bc. I didn't read it.
Should I?
Yes, you should
Haha!
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_686841.html?
It almost looks real.
The one problem is that shoeboy is LOLing too much and Vladinator isn't doing it enough.
I'm kind of insulted. It represents me as a pathetic drunk with delusional fantasies that I'm liked by females, and that seems entirely untrue
gratuituous kylie pictures. Proof Allah(SWT) and Mohammed (PBUH) are REAL
It does seem entirely untrue that you're liked by females.
bc at least you are worthy of parody
hehe
some of us are become stalinesque non-persons.
airbrushed out of trolling history
abu and I didn't even get noticed
craig&osm&trollaxor prolly still like you, dmg
"Where's the part where Barry Corrington slags on Jin Wicked for half an hour then kisses her ass when she logs in?"
Has Jin ever been in here?
Read the rest of this comment...
[ Reply to This ]
This Person is an IMPOSTER (Score:-1, Offtopic)
by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13, @09:18AM (#4880139)
This person is IMPERSONATING ME. He set up this account just to pretend to be me, just like the person with the "Scott Lockwood" account did. Please don't pay attention to him!
Mr. "Quick Star" and Mr. Fake "Scott Lockwood", I have a message for you: get ready for a world of hurt. The first lesson is free.
Have you ever seen the movies Where the Heart Is and Anywhere but Here starring Natalie Portman? How about the classic Meg Ryan romantic comedies When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle? Well, THAT'S the style of Martial Arts I practice. I've perfected the ruthless and efficient OLSEN TWINS FASH-SLAP STANCE!
How about the the classic Sci-Fi cult hits Plan 9 from Outer Space and The Rocky Horror Picture Show? Well, I know the martial arts from THOSE movies too! Let me show you THE PATHETIC TRANSVESTITE ALIEN STANCE!
I've also recently started to learn the martial arts from several new movies such as Jackass: the Movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie. I really look forward to learning the martial arts from the upcoming movie Eight Mile starring my FAVORITE HERO EVAR, Eminem (a.k.a. Slim Shady & Marshall Mathers), so you'd better watch out for my ANGRY WHITE NIGGER STANCE!!!!
I'm also learning even more martial arts from this web page [realultimatepower.net] [realultimatepower.net], including the deadly KUNG-FU NINJA JESUS ATTACK STANCE! Hi-YAH!!!
I'm working to improve my rythm [klerck.org] [klerck.org], flexibility [rotten.com] [rotten.com], stealth skills [fartbuster.com] [fartbuster.com], self-confidence [yahoo.com] [yahoo.com], and critical thinking [timecube.com] [timecube.com] skills, so you'd better watch out, because very soon I will perfect my ultimate attack, THE LARD-LIKE ANTISOCIAL DEPRESSIVE ASSHOLE SPAMMER IMPOTENT PAEDOPHILE FELCHING FLATULENT WIGGER SUMO-SAMURAI CHILD-ABUSE RESTRAINING-ORDER UNWASHED BASTARDIZED ANAL IMMATURE CATHOLIC GOATFUCKER STANCE!!!!
If that doesn't scare you... just wait and see. You'll get yours soon enough.
As Nietzsche said, "If you stare too long into my ass [klerck.org] [klerck.org], beware, for my ass [klerck.org] [klerck.org] might start to stare back into you."
-- Vlad
I just LOVE Vladinator's site [sexuallymu...dchild.org] [olsentwins.com]. Especially the "flab" [sexuallymu...dchild.org] [olsentwins.com] section, where I learned to use a fold of my own stomach-flab as a Martial Arts weapon. Oh and the "aborted fetus" photos!
Of course, don't forget to read Vladinator's entrails [sexuallymu...dchild.org] [olsentwins.com]. Here you will find how truly difficult it is to decide what to do on the weekends... have an orgy party? A faggot party? Go to the the mall naked and get arrested for public indecency? Have a sleepover and get woken up by Nigerians on the phone?
In short, if you haven't seen Vladinator's site [sexuallymu...dchild.org] [olsentwins.com], you don't know what you're missing!
I just LOVE Vladinator's site [sexuallymu...dchild.org] [olsentwins.com]. Especially the "flab" [sexuallymu...dchild.org] [olsentwins.com] section, where I learned to use a fold of my own stomach-flab as a Martial Arts weapon. Oh and the "aborted fetus" photos!
Of course, don't forget to read Vladinator's entrails [sexuallymu...dchild.org] [olsentwins.com]. H
Read the rest of this comment...
[ Reply to This ]
Amherst-Fag and the Whoring of Karma (Score:-1, Offtopic)
by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13, @09:18AM (#4880142)
From: cptroll
To:
Subject: Re: [k22320inchfan] Have I gone soft?
Date sent: Mon, 16 Oct 2000 13:01:08 -0400
Send reply to: k22320inchfan@methlab.nothing.org
(This is CP0024)
Marc Stauffer wrote:
>: True. I still think karma as a persistent user property ought to be
>: eliminated. It's fine to score individual comments, and even to award a
>: special +1 comment bonus to selected "good posters", but karma as a prop for
>: the self-esteem of pathetic geeks, or as a game, is dumb. At the very least,
>: karma should not be displayed, not even one's own karma. And if it's going
>: to exist, it ought to be aged so that my recent activity is treated as a
>: better predictor of the value of my next comment than something I wrote a
>: year ago.
Bah, I'd hate this, but then I'm too much a karmawhore at heart. But if we could somehow increase the amount of quality moderation (to get rid of brainless drivel, not just spam) and rely on our abilities to craft quality-sounding trolls, then I wouldn't complain too much if we got rid of karma altogether and got rid of the +1 bonus along with it. Originally, the +1 bonus was reserved by just a few, but now every lamer and his dog has it. It's lost all meaning.
>What this doesn't solve, however, is the inherent problems
>with moderation. Not with the system, mind you, but with the
>users. There needs to be stricter policies, e.g. no
>usernames displayed when you moderate, or something along
>those lines, and the penalties for crummy mods need to be
>higher. In fact, people need to be banned from moderating
>more often since they simply suck at it.
I'd been thinking along the lines of hiding usernames during moderation, if nothing else than to help us trolls with recognizable usernames who get unfair moderation simply for being trolls in general than just on a particular post. I can see several0 problems, though:
1) It won't stop the most dedicated of trollbusters who will keep a separate window open as AC where they can see people's usernames. These are the moderators who most need to be stopped, and yet this restriction won't do so.
2) It will add a social cost to moderating itself. People might just start throwing their points at crap just to get back to normal mode where they can see who's talking. But it could cut both ways.
3) It'll increase the amount of noisy replies screaming: "Moderators! Don't you realize streetlawyer/flatpack/etc. is the one saying this?!?!?!" We don't need that.
4) You'd have to hide
(This is CP0024)
Read the rest of this comment...
[ Reply to This ]
The Information You Requested (Score:-1, Offtopic)
by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13, @09:19AM (#4880147)
SIR:
This is TealMicrodot [kuro5hin.org] again, still filling in for my friend, the original Microdot, who is having some trouble with an IP-Ban at the moment. He was right about the rampant censorship happening here. Deleted accounts, IP bans, comments being entirely deleted rather than just hidden, weird stuff going on so that certain comments are visible when not logged in but invisible to logged in users -- this is Democracy? We have proof of all of this, and we're compiling all the evidence we get.
Anyway, here's the hyena information you requested:
Female [att.net] hyenas are virtually indistinguishable from males [geekizoid.com]. Their clitoris [the-clitoris.com] is enlarged [geekizoid.com] and extended to form an organ of the same size, shape, and position as the male penis [lpsg.org]. It can also be erected. Their labia [socialistworker.org] have folded up and fused to form a false scrotum that is not discernibly different in external form or location from the true scrotum [forkbomb.net] of males.
It even contains fatty tissue [att.net] forming two swellings easily mistaken for testicles [iniquitydaily.com]. Authors of the most recent paper on spotted hyenas found the appearance of males and females [godaddy.com] so close that sex could only be determined with certainty by palpation [goatse.cx] of the scrotum. Testes could be located in the scrotum of the male compared with soft adipose tissue in the false scrotum of the female.
Read the rest of this comment...
[ Reply to This ]
VLADEQUACY RAW & UNCUT 5 (Score:-1, Offtopic)
by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13, @09:19AM (#4880152)
[dmg] and then I will be in Tokyo/south Korea in April
[dmg] Who are you anyway Lumpen ?
[bc] you are drunk ever 36 hours
[dmg] I am not sure I should be giving this information out.
[Lumpen] Just a fan, dmg.
[county] Well, I need to stay sober for now, because I have a date!
[First_Incision] why am I always sober? I should take up this drinking thing.
[county] Yes, do.
[First_Incision] maybe I just need to get used to it. I could never drink enough to get drunk. Once I could feel stupidity creeping up, I could never bring myself to continue.
[county] Strange.
[dmg] county: did you get your date from reading the excellent dating advice available here on #adequacy ?
[county] Once I can feel stupidity creeping up, I can't bring myself to stop.
[county] dmg, I actually lied about having a date.
[Lumpen] does #adequacy have a dating-advice bot?
[dmg] county: its IRC
[dmg] you can lie if you want
[First_Incision] Lumpen: it should!
[First_Incision] zuul, dating?
[zuul] first_incision: wish i knew
[First_Incision] zuul, women?
[zuul] bugger all, i dunno, first_incision
[First_Incision] zuul, men?
[zuul] men are really just boys with financial responsibilities
[dmg] zuul, should I visit a whore ?
[zuul] dmg: wish i knew
[county] I witnessed an shocking display of female pettiness and cruelty today. It put me off.
[Lumpen]
[First_Incision] zuul, linux
[zuul] hmmm... linux is a big POS half rate OS that encourages pirates and blatant faggotry!!!!!
[bc] perhaps you aren't skillful enough
[First_Incision] there you go!
[bc] if you can use these skills to make lots&LOTS of money, they will be drawn to those skills
[Lumpen] Not skilzful enough?
[dmg] zuul, bsd
[zuul] rumour has it bsd is dying
*** bc has quit IRC (Connection reset by peer)
*** Sulla (gallus@modem-2446.porcupine.dialup.pol.co.uk) has joined #adequacy
[Lumpen] But I installed the Linux on my home b0xen all by myself!
[Lumpen] You should just reopen Adequacy. The joke has gone on long enough.
[First_Incision] Perdida has her Iniquity "Daily", but I can't seem to finish an article for it.
[Lumpen] Iniquity?
[First_Incision] www.iniquitydaily.com
[dmg] adequacy is dead. Red ink flowed like a river of blood! you didn't have to be Kreskin to see that it was dying. Fact: adequacy is dead.
[county] perdida has a scoop site?
[county] Oh heavens, do spare us.
[Lumpen] It looks like the most recent article on iniquitydaily was posted about a month ago.
[First_Incision] yeah
[Lumpen] Lame.
[First_Incision] And it was a k5 reject
[cyn-away] bc knows more about it
Read the rest of this comment...
[ Reply to This ]
Amherst-Fag and the Slashdot Bitchslap (Score:-1, Offtopic)
by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13, @09:20AM (#4880160)
From: Ceee Peee
To: k22320inchfan@lists.io.com
Subject: Re: [k22320inchfan] Experiment in whoring...
Date sent: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 10:03:49 -0800 (PST)
Send reply to: k22320inchfan@lists.io.com
(This is CP0005)
It's good to see you making a go at it again, but I'm
confused as to why you're trying to whore up a
bitchslapped account, because no matter what your
karma is, you'll never stop defaulting to -1 (just ask
warren). Your only option would be to start a new
account -- "DMG" is still available....
James can answer you better than I, but Jon Erikson is
definitely not dead. I'm surprised to confirm that
there aren't any comments on his users.pl page, but I
guess this week belongs to Dan Hayes.
(This is CP0005) [www.ngngx]
[ Reply to This ]
VLADEQUACY RAW & UNCUT 9 (Score:-1, Offtopic)
by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13, @09:20AM (#4880163)
[luisa|||] i don't know if i can ever be that weak and female
[luisa|||] i.e. find a guy worth that loss
*** luisa|||| has quit IRC (Ping timeout: 300 seconds)
[county] Why is it weak to confess your feelings to the one you feel for?
[luisa|||] because then they've got you in the knees
[luisa|||] why should i always be the one who cares the most?
[luisa|||] and on top of that, have to cop to it?
[Linux] hey grewat, big cop bust outside
[county] Because, luisa, somebody has to, and if it's them, you'll reject them.
[county] I'm not seeing many other options. How about you?
[Linux] shouting and threatening tones
[Linux] I am going to go walk the dogs past the bust while drunk
[county] What bust?
[Linux] dunno
[Linux] they are shouting at drunks, I think
[county] Who?
[Linux] maybe there will be death
[Linux] cops
[Linux] many of them
[Linux] 8 cars at least
[luisa|||] eek
[Linux] maybe I'll get shot
[county] There are 8 cop-cars full of cops shouting at drunks?
[Linux] yes
[Linux] two drunks by the sound of things
[luisa|||] county, if i find a guy i consider my equal
[luisa|||] it would all work out
[Linux] they are right past the corner of my building
[luisa|||] wait
[luisa|||] eight cops, two drunks?
[luisa|||] that is Not Right.
[Linux] i think so
* luisa||| waits for a cool song to come on
[county] You've never met a guy who you consider your equal?
[Linux] luisa|||, are you actually listening to radio broadcasts of popualr music?
[county] I suppose that makes sense, actually. Most are probably your superior or inferior.
[county] I think it's fairly obvious which side I fall on.
[luisa|||] you could be inferior
[luisa|||] but you probably know lots of things i don't
[luisa|||] and you also are more productive in daily life
[county] I am so far beyond you, luisa.
[county] Come on.
[luisa|||] i love cheesy 80s music
[luisa|||] nah, you are just different
[luisa|||] the measure would be if i made you feel weak and helplessly resentful
[luisa|||] that's inferior
[luisa|||] and only assessable face to face
[Linux] luisa|||, you spin me twice 'round, baby.
[county] If you made me feel weak and helplessly resentful? Haha.
[luisa|||] well, anyone who feels like a lesser person probably is
[luisa|||] or at least is not worth bothering with
[em] you guys still going on about this? God.
[county] Only a few people have made me inferior, and none of them were at all like you.
[luisa|||] it is friday night and neither of us are out carousing, em
[luisa|||] whatever did you expect would occur?
[em] neither am I.
[luisa|||] but you are at uni
[county] em, have you been drinking?
[em] well, I went to a chamber chorale concert.
[em] county: not a drop
[em] maybe I should.
[county] Probably. It makes you more tolerant.
[luisa|||] anyhow, county, it is all moot
[luisa|||] i am not going to bed with you
[luisa|||] so the question of whether you are inferior or not will never come up
[county] I'm not going to bed with you. What of it?
[county] Anyway, it has come up, and it's been settled. I'm superior.
[luisa|||] if you feel that you are
[luisa|||] i do rather want to go to bed
[luisa|||] but i just finished supper
* em wonders if he has anything edible in the fridge.
[luisa|||] i have lovely soup i made from random ingredients
[Linux] katsup is a vegeta
Read the rest of this comment...
[ Reply to This ]
Amhesrt-Fag and the Excellent Karma (Score:-1, Offtopic)
by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13, @09:21AM (#4880165)
From: cptroll
To: k22320inchfan@lists.io.com
Subject: Re: [k22320inchfan] tell me when to stop
Date sent: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 13:38:49 -0500
Send reply to: k22320inchfan@lists.io.com (This is CP0039)
(This is CP0040)
Thanks, but you should give me a holler first, since I'm rarely bellow 40
(I was at 44 after a capricious 5-point mod-down with another -1 on top);
so +10 is overkill. While I'm beating this gift horse in the mouth, let
me complain that my bobo comment is still languishing at -1 and won't be
archived.
I'm still waiting for michael to get off his ass and accept this one:
2000-11-28 00:39:58 Yahoo, Mein Kampf, and Child Pornography
(yro,internet) It's been sitting in his queue for a day now.
=?iso-8859-1?q?Lunchtime=20Troll?= wrote:
>I had mod points on two accounts and I gave them all
>to Anne Marie as I saw that
>obsessed with her. Are there any other accounts that
>need a boost for the next time I have points?
>
>++tlt
(This is CP0040) [www.u]
[ Reply to This ]
Creating "property" vs advancing the art (Score:2)
by gillbates (106458) on Friday December 13, @09:29AM (#4880229)
(http://www.angelfire.com/il/macroman
For each of us aspiring to a technical career, there comes a moment when we must choose between creating knowledge and creating property. Both choices are legitimate and important, but only one is science.
Interestingly, the same thing could be said of computer science and programmers. As a programmer, I have two options:
* I can create intellectual "property" for the benefit of Corporate America(tm).
* I can release the source code of my work so that the whole of society benefits.
Unfortunately, I can make a living doing the first, but not the second. Even worse, should the company patent my ideas, I will be denying others the ability to use even rudimentary algorithms without the paying of exorbitant royalties; not only will I exclude my own work from the benefit of others, but I will be actively destroying the ability of other programmers to make a living.
The choices aren't easy. Fortunately for my sake, my company isn't in the intellectual property business. But the type of coding that I would like to be doing (engineering modeling, GUI design, etc...) inevitably involves me assigning any intellectual property rights for my work to a corporate entity.
[ Reply to This ]
it should really be quite simple (Score:3, Interesting)
by g4dget (579145) on Friday December 13, @09:38AM (#4880276)
(1) If it's published in a scientific, peer-reviewed publication, it must contain all the information to be reproducible; if it requires special materials for reproduction, the authors must make those evailable. Publishing irreproducible results goes by a different name: public relations and marketing, either for a company or a career; it has no place in science.
(2) If people put their names on a paper, they should define their contributions and be responsible for the results. If they don't want to accept responsibility for parts of a paper because they didn't work on it, they should say so clearly.
Unfortunately, it has become common practice for people to pad their publications through multiple authorships: five people writing five papers each only have one publication each, but five people putting their names on each other's publications have five publications each; so much more marketable for job hunting that works by counting publications.
It doesn't look like much is changing. In response to the Schoen affair, the American Physical Society weasled out of a requirement of academic responsibility by all authors; things are just continuing the way they are. And scientific papers with little more substance than press releases are becoming increasing common, in particular in the biomedical sciences, as companies promise the sky and find them good PR and marketing materials. And editors are afraid to reject that junk.
But since the peer review system and system of academic publications is becoming increasingly corrupt and useless, perhaps on-line publishing of results without peer review will become the norm. Then, it is really word-of-mouth and recommendations by known friends, as opposed to anonymous reviewers, that matter.
[ Reply to This ]
uncovering the purpose of patents, copyrights, etc (Score:5, Insightful)
by The_Rook (136658) on Friday December 13, @09:38AM (#4880280)
if you carefully read lauglin's essay, one of the things he laments is the secrecy behind which coorporate sponsored research takes place. i suppose it would be redundant to mention that the elimination of this secrecy is what patents and copyrights were originally designed to prevent.
patents, exclusive licenses to new inventions, are granted for the sole purpose of encouraging inventors to publish, in full detail, their inventions. without patent protection, for example, texas instruments and fairchild semiconductor may not have ever told anyone how to make an integrated circuit. they would have made the first chips under a cloak of secrecy, sold them as black box devices, and bury the chips in epoxy to protect the secret.
unfortunately, industry, the lawmakers, and even the courts have forgotten the whole idea of patents is to publish. industry wants to call patents property that should belong to the holder and anything that weakens the patent is the equivalent of a 'taking'. congress and the patent office are all to happy to agree. and the courts have screwed the matter up further by taking the position that engineers and inventors are not legally qualified to decide if they are infringing on a patent, and so are not allowed to even look at one when trying to come up with new inventions.
[ Reply to This ]
Ethics Guidelines for Physicists (Score:4, Informative)
by Drog (114101) on Friday December 13, @09:54AM (#4880365)
(http://www.scifitoday.com/)
As stated, the physics community has been scarred by two scandals recently. First the Berkeley scandal last July, in which scientists retracted their claim to have created element 118, after realizing that the crucial data analysis by Dr. Victor Ninov could not be confirmed. Then last September, nanotechnology superstar Dr. J. Hendrik Schön, of Bell Labs, was found guilty of falsifying data on the properties on superconductivity and organic electronics. He was fired and more than a dozen published papers were retracted [www.cbc.ca]).
So last month, the American Physical Society [aps.org], representing some 40,000 physicists, expanded the ethical guidelines for researchers, in their Statements on Profession Conducts [aps.org] document. The new guidelines call for more ethics training in science and urge all research institutions to adopt the same set of misconduct procedures. The guidelines also clarify co-authors' roles and duties, making it clear that when you put your name on a paper, your reputation is on the line.
Biologists faced similar scandals [ucsd.edu] during the Gallo and Imanishi-Kari [nybooks.com] cases in the 90's. Unlike Robert Gallo [amazon.com] and David Baltimore [mit.edu], who survived the scandal virtually unscathed, the physicists involved in today's scandals are actually being held accountable.
The above info was compiled from an article that originally appeared here [scifitoday.com].
[ Reply to This ]
* Re:Ethics Guidelines for Physicists by tbmaddux (Score:2) Friday December 13, @11:23AM
1 | (2) | 3 (Slashdot Overload: CommentLimit 50)
When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite. -- Winston Churchill, on formal declarations of war
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That life scientists would be physicists if they went to 'that' level of tolerance.
n.b. it's also far from pratical is not impossible.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
It seems to me that RMS needs to come up with a GPL for scientific discoveries and inventions.
The human genome should have been GPL'd not BSD'd
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
(Of course I don't have numbers to back this up--faked data is not new, either).
Since 1982, the frequency of faked data incidents has grown by 79%.
(Ok, I made that result up myself, so what?)
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
Laughlin:
"This secrecy increases the opportunity for impropriety and thus makes the knowledge inherently less reliable than comparable knowledge produced in the open."
Me (Code = Knowledge therefore):
"Code, like Knowledge, produced in secret is inherently less reliable than comperable code produced in the open."
Newton's principia proved all of its results using classical geometry yet Newton actually used calcus, "fluxons" to derive the ideas.
Newton became enamored of alchemy in later years and spent a great deal of effort on it.
I'm not sure what it proves except that not all scientists work for the simple good of humanity, even if they wind-up accomplishing it.
I agree that corporate pressure is going to force some people to falsify documents, make false claims, etc., but those are the same people that would have done it under other pressure (e.g. Cold Fusion).
Science doesn't have the "corner" on honest people that will sacrifice everything for the truth. Neither does engineering, computer science, whatever. People are going to do bad things no matter what field they're in and the field is supposed to have ways (e.g. peer review) to alleviate and correct those problems.
I could just as easily say that the media causes these problems by publishing stories that have not gone through even minimum peer review - because in the media, accuracy is always second to newsworthiness and speed.
The facts behind the charges were pretty solid, as were the determinations. So why were they exonerated? As you can read here, less than a week before a 2-day congressional hearing was scheduled to review the allegations of scientific fraud, the National Institutes of Health reopened the inquiry and this time found "significant errors" in the paper, but "no evidence of fraud, conscious misrepresentations, or manipulation of data" by the authors. As you'll read in that article, the scientists basically thought that any government intrusion would be too much, and so the convictions were suddenly overturned. Ever since, this has been an example of how the scientific community was unable to police itself.
Looking for political forums? Check out "The World Forum".
Where did you ever get the idea that researchers are not able to look at issued patents? Patents are public documents. Many companies require that their researchers keep abreast of the patent landscape.
As to the *not legally qualified*, does the engineer or inventor have a legal background? Generally not. They are scientifically qualified, no doubt, but patents are legal documents, not scientific papers. Would I trust an engineers to cut my hair. No, I'd go to a stylist that specializes in that field. Would I go to the guy on the corner to tend to my money. No, I'd go to the bank. In the same vein, would I trust an engineer to give me legal advice on the scope/meaning of a patent? No, I'd go to a patent attorney.
Has anything really changed in the field of science since the "Betrayers of the Truth" book was written?
Ok, maybe the people holding the purse strings, but that is about it. The pressure has always been there to "publish or perish" in the academic scientific community.
Now, why is that? Well, it was all about grants. When I worked in academia (pre 1989), the grants were doled out by the various funding bodies. Their criteria was based on what you had published (seemingly) at least as much as what valid science you proposed. It was very much an old boys network.
An example is in order here: The group I was with, was putting in for a 5 year multi-million dollar operating grant. A good portion of the proposal had some very weak science, but was included largely by the political power of the department head (against the sound judgement of many lower technical peons). The funding body sent a site visit team, who were made up of renowned researchers in the various areas of expertise. The review went okay except for the "weak science" area, which got lambasted by the reviewers... the net result was that the grant was not funded. Sounds correct so far (the system was working), right?... Well, "our" group leaders got together to post-mortem the review and decide how to proceed. So what did they do? Examine the weak science? NO! They proceeded to critique a bunch of the examiners by looking at their CV's and how many papers they had published. Then they formulated an appeal on this basis, trying to influence as many of their high level contacts as possible. Net result: They got a grant (thankfully, they left the weak science bit out).
I left academia shortly thereafter...
Now I ask, has anything changed? I am not so sure?
I think they got it backwards.
It could easily be
"The conflict between the free exchange of ideas that the scientific community demands, and the property ownership that commercial sponsors need to survive".
We like to see the business community as demanding and unreasonable, and we like to see the scientific community as altruistic and open, but in the real world, business is based on not losing money and most science can (possibly) proceed without community-wide coordination.
First, Laughlin does not mention military research. This is by and large closed. (Not all of it is closed! I know many great glassy-systems people from the Naval Warfare in DC). Far more money is spent on military research than University research in the US. Many talented people in physics go to work for the military because there are not enough University positions. This is a shame because what frightens me more than what some of you have already brought up, "What if Einstein did not get funded?" rather, what if Einstein did get funded, but by the military and all his ideas became clasified, locked away never to be seen and shared among the academic community.
My second point is that there are many, many more people in Physics now than there were 50 years ago. It used to be that a Physics Ph.D. was a gateway to numerous good job opportunities for the bright and hardworking. Now a Ph.D. is not. For the American citizen, this is a good thing. You get young smart people working hard to achieve one of the few tenured professorships opening up and those 95% or more who do not make it are tossed out on the scrap heap just as they turn old enough to stop spinning out new ideas. Oh, and you don't have to pay them much and by and large they don't get health care or any kind of job security. They are called post-docs. They are hired for a prescribed number of years, typically 1-3 and they are ubiquitus in physics today. It is estimated there are 30,000 of them in the US alone. On the order of 300 jobs open up for tenure track professorships at research universities per year in physics. About 1600 Ph.D's are granted in physics per year. (See www.aip.org when their site is back up).
The people I know getting tenure have done this, moving all over the world every year or two, for about 10 years before getting a tenure track position.
But by treating people so poorly, many smart young people are turned away. And this is the worst possibility of all. If Einstein did turn up today but decided to go get a job as a computer programmer because the field of physics was already so croweded, and the people treated so poorly, that he says to himself, "I don't need that kind of grief. Let one of those poor bastards figure out relativity."
Of course, Einstein would have done physics anyways. It was in his personality. But how many great minds become discoraged and leave a dysfunctional system?
a war on terrorism? How can we end a war on a method?
Can't wait to see the MS "spin control" on this one. "Well, when you factor in long term preferences and TCO, you see that what he really meant to say was..."
Your Servant, B. Baggins
The article is trying to argue that open source science is better than closed source science. The problem with the arguement is that closed source science gets strong feedback. That is, bs won't hold up when trying to create a product with it, and the company will ultimately fail. However, open source science in universities doesn't have as strong a feedback mechanism. At a university, the product is the published paper, and it results in funding for the university to do more research and for profs to get tenure. Therefore, there is as much temptation to falsify data at a university, but it's more difficult to catch the fraud. This is because when someone publishes a paper, it gets circulated and most people assume it's correct since it's usually difficult and expensive to reproduce the data. Therefore, a lot of papers are complete bs, but the authors get more funding from the govt and private grants anyway because nobody checks to see if the data is reaaly accurate. I would go so far as to say some profs have made a career out of this sort of thing.
Vote for Pedro
Actually, patents prevent people from profiting off reverse engineering a product and selling a knock-off product. The fact that you need to reveal your ideas to the public is because it's the only good way to stake your claim to an idea. The fact that the knowledge becomes public domain is a side effect really.
Vote for Pedro
This scaffolding is reliable and strong because it is lovingly maintained in public by the community of science, not because it is in anyone's self-interest to do so.
If it's not in anyone's self interest to do so, then why does anyone do it? People do it because it *is* in their self-interest. In fact, that's what the rest of the article seemed to be about: that it is in our self-interest to promote openness in science.
I'd have emailed this obvious oversight to the author of the article, but it seems that either him or the publisher do not value openness. A way to reach the author, or a suitable proxy, was not given.
-Todd
If aspiration is a virtue, achievement cannot be a vice.
Your comment on the media reminded me of the Quantum Afterburner episode. The QA was a silly idea put forward by Marlan Scully about a year ago in Physical Review Letters (050602) and I am still wondering why it was accepted. Within days it was covered by Physics World, New Scientist, Science and TRN News. The respective reporters obviously had absolutely no idea what they were writing about! As you say - in the media, accuracy is always second to newsworthiness and speed. It will be interesting to see how the funding bodies (NSF, ONR, AFOSR etc.) will view this when Scully has to report that after all his QA won't do what it's supposed to, i.e. save gas. He expected to have a working device within "a year or two". If he forgets to inform us of his progress I intend to remind him of his obligation to do so.
"The corporatisation of science means the ethics of corporations now apply. Science will have an "Enron" scenario within the next few years."
This is GREAT! There are a mere handful of Enrons. But nanny-state governments, and the universities that get their money from nanny-state governments, EVERY YEAR do far in excess of the crimes of Enron. (And bear in mind Enron is paying the price: the company is dead. In all the years of coverups and faulty accounting and backroom deals by governments, when was the last time one of them collapsed completely. The closest recent example is the 1993 Canadian Progressive Conservative Party, and that was just an administration rather than a government itself).
So if I had my choice between science following the ethics of corporations, where 99.9% of them act very carefully with the money they know is a limited resource and the 0.1% who are dissenters fail miserably; and the ethics of governments, where 1.3 trillion is "saved" when the U.S. military pays its staff one day early, and the Canadian government spends over $1 billion dollars on a gun registry that can't even register 30% of the lowball 7 million estimate by the same government only to blame the overruns on their opposition.... I'll take the corporation every time, and never look back.
Cyno wrote:
/. for quite a while, and the competition is fierce.
Exxon and all oil companies and all capitalist nations would lose control. That's a very very very bad thing in the eyes of any exec in any oil corp as well as the current US administration.
That is the one of the most absurd comments I've read in
Of course the interest of oil companies is hiding such an invention, but the interests of the US (and all technologically advanced nations) are the complete opposite.
why are litereally billions poured into fusion research if the US does not believe oil and coal should be replaced ? why does Japan, the EC and the US invest in plasma research ? you may criticize the internal distribution of money within that field, or the results obtained, but saying the US does not want oil replaced is plain nuts. and contrary to evidence (there is a whole bloody department of the US admin for this issue alone, the DOE, look it up, it's not a secret)
criticize where critic's due (and the US does deserve that, many times), credit where it's due. Don't let hate overcome common sense.
Working for necessity's mother.
In my experience, the author is quite right. The day biology `gets audited' a lot of ugly stinking stuff will be exposed. How many professional `biologists' can even define life? So much pretense!
A huge portion of funding for biology goes into `research' which only purpose is to justify itself, and that generates no novel knowledge but only kills trees to print worthless `papers' and foster these pseudo-researchers' careers.
Dura veritas, sed veritas. Hard is the truth, but it is the truth.
Once again, we see the need to push science to Version 2.0. See you there!
``L'imagination au povoir.''
It's a Bad Thing when the citizens can't understand the law even if they want to.
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
But what happens to a capitalist society when you have free energy? We were talking about a hypothetical situation in which cold fusion were possible. All other forms of energy have severe costs and/or environmental impacts, all of which aid capitalist nations. Free energy, on the other hand, would take a lot of money out of the governments' pockets. How would it pay for roads? New taxes, which are not easy to pass. Any government would be stupid not to research free energy because the first one to discover a clean free energy source has a significant advantage over the rest, especially if it knows what to do with it. And if your government wasn't researching free energy you might think something was wrong. Anyway, what I was saying is that free energy is not in the best interests of capitalist governments. The status quo is.