Cancer Drug Found; Scientist Annoyed

sporkme writes "A scientist was frustrated when the compound she was working with (called PPAR-gamma) destroyed her sample of cancer cells. Further research revealed that the substance was surprisingly well suited as a cancer treatment. Lab test results on mice resulted in the destruction of colon tumors without making the mice sick." Quoting: "'I made a calculation error and used a lot more than I should have. And my cells died,' Schaefer said. A colleague overheard her complaining. 'The co-author on my paper said, "Did I hear you say you killed some cancer?" I said "Oh," and took a closer look.' ... [They found that the compound killed] 'pretty much every epithelial tumor cell lines we have seen.'" Update: 02/15 17:27 GMT by KD : As reader CorporalKlinger pointed out, PPAR-gamma is a cellular receptor, not a compound; and this news is not particularly new.

Comments

Tag Article Thusly:

[Gabrill]

Best Headline ever!

Re:Tag Article Thusly:

[ccarson]

This is why we need more women in the work place. It's mistakes like this that really advance man kind.

Re:Tag Article Thusly:

[Phisbut]

I saw this quote somewhere :

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny ..."

It applies quite well here.

Re:Tag Article Thusly:

[kzinti]

Isaac Asimov

Re:Tag Article Thusly:

[JungleBoy]

Haha, the title totally sounds like it was stolen from The Onion.

Re:Tag Article Thusly:

[timbck2]

It looks more like a "The Reg" headline than a Slashdot headline...

Re:Tag Article Thusly:

[UnknowingFool]

For a second there, I thought I clicked on the wrong bookmark and was on The Onion.

Re:Tag Article Thusly:

[niktemadur]

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny ..."

Actually, I'm kinda partial to that other classic: "Who ordered THAT?!!"

Re:Tag Article Thusly:

[iq in binary]

That would be Isaac Asimov.

And I think he just might have been proved wrong!

It should be, with 2 words changed:

"The most exciting phrase in science, the one that heralds in a new era rife with scientific discoveries is not "Eureka!"; but "GOD DAMMIT!".

Re:Tag Article Thusly:

[MrNaz]

Whatever happened to "Hey guys, watch this!" ?

Moo

[Chacham]

Cancer Drug Found; Scientist Annoyed

Um, no. The "Scientist Annoyed" came first. Indeed, had she not been annoyed she it may not have been brought to her attention that she suceeded.

A scientist was frustrated

And stop saying scientist. She is a researcher. The articles calls her a researcher. I'll bet she will even call herself a researcher. And, she is relevant because she was researching.

Re:Moo

[Gabrill]

Forgive my ignorance, but what's the difference? If it's the source of his or her funds, I'm going to be severely disappointed.

Re:Moo

[cavehobbit]

Umm, last I understood it, scientists ARE researchers...

Re:Moo

[jimstapleton]

uhh, you know that a researcher is a scientist right? Last I checked, scientists researched things to figure out how they worked... and researchers did the same damn thing. The Ph.D. if you think that is a requirement, is not.

Re:Moo

[dantal]

I don't know if I have ever read such a whiny post. Aren't biological researches scientists? The sure better be following the scientific method. Yes she was annoyed first, but she was annoyed. So quit whining a post something meaningful.

Re:Moo

[SatanicPuppy]

I would consider myself a scientist, because I am interested in and conversant with science and the scientific method...In my case mainly physics, with a solid grounding in inorganic chemistry and biology.

I am not, however, a researcher specializing in one aspect of scientific inquiry.

It's becoming an important distinction these days because so many "scientists" who are no better qualified than I am, are none-the-less using their status as "scientist" to question the results put out by scientists with in-depth knowledge backed by significant practical experience in the study of their specialty (e.g. a researcher).

Re:Moo

[drinkypoo]

And stop saying scientist. She is a researcher. The articles calls her a researcher. I'll bet she will even call herself a researcher. And, she is relevant because she was researching.

Yes, and that research was relevant because it was part of science... [Origin: 1300-50; ME

By the way, I'm a scientist too. I use the scientific method, and my "faith" (if you can call it that, and I think you can) is in science. But wait, I am employed as a Graphic Artist! Holy shit, I guess you can't call me a scientist either. I guess I am just Man-who-uses-science.

Re:Moo

[Heem]

at least they did not say Scientologist.

Re:Moo

[mikael]

The seniority system goes something like this:

research director
scientist
research assistant/researcher

The research director can approve projects for research.
The scientist can propose projects for research - also supervise the project
The research assistant/research carries out the work required to complete the project

Re:Moo

[91degrees]

Hey. Allow them some artistic licence. It's amusing that her first reaction to something that in retrospect is so useful was annoyance, and arranging the headline this way illustrates this a lot better than a strictly accurate one would.

Re:Moo

[Kadin2048]

Not true; what about theoreticians? They'd probably be pretty offended to be left out of "scientists," although they don't do a whole lot of "research" at least in the traditional sense. (Some do, though, but with theoretical stuff you have to have a fairly loose definition of 'research,' since a whole lot of it resembles 'preparing for publication.')

"Research scientist" is probably a better term for the woman in TFA; "scientist" alone is so vague as to be almost unusable. It's just 'someone doing science,' and could be pretty much anyone from a grad student to a Nobel laureate; it doesn't say anything about what type or kind of science they're engaged in, or what their goals are.

Re:Moo

[pionzypher]

What would you define as a scientist if Katherine Schaefer(G-cache) isn't one?

How would she be considered irrelevant? She's the one who stumbled on this after all.

Re:Moo

[Chacham]

Last I checked, scientists researched things to figure out how they worked.

Guess you never watched The Adventures of Superman, or the Simpsons.

To them, Scientists invent things, and than try to figure out why it worked. :)

Re:Moo

[Chacham]

and arranging the headline this way illustrates this a lot better than a strictly accurate one would.

But the headlines conveys that she was annoyed that a drug was found. That's not why she was annoyed at all. She was annoyed because her specimen was destroyed. When she put two and two together (via prodding) and realized that the compund worked she was very happy. So, to meet your goals the headline should have read "cancer killed in accident; researcher annoyed", but even that would be sensationalistic.

Re:Moo

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm...last time I checked scientists aren't engineers

Re:Moo

[TobyRush]

The seniority system goes something like this...

I'm officially an instructor at a college, but most non-academicians call me a professor, since to most people that means "person who teaches at a university," even though the pecking order is:

professor
associate professor
assistant professor
instructor

It appears that the researcher/scientist distinction is about the same; i.e., to the general public, they're all "scientists."

Re:Moo

[Chacham]

The main point is that she is a researcher, and she was doing research. So "researcher" is the more appropriate term.

Saying "research" discovers something conveys that understanding can yeild success.
Saying "science" discovers something conveys that Science discovers things.

The former promotes study, the latter a religion. If we were dealing with predictions, "scientist" is usually the more appropriate term, because a reasearcher predicting is a guess based on experience, a scientist predicting is the application or evolution of theories (via the Scientific method). So, i'd take a scientists prediction with more weight than that of a researcher.

However, when it comes to discoveries, scientists have a bias towards the Scientific method and may have a bias toward current theories. A researches simply researches.

This applies to a drug as well. A scientist saying he found a drug could easily be an application of theories. A researcher saying he found a drug means he took notes of and shows actual application.

To the point, the researcher finds the empirical evidence that the scientist uses. They may be the same person (as is the case many, if not the majority of, times). But they are definitely different roles. And the term in the article was referring the the role, not necessarily to the person.

Re:Moo

[91degrees]

Not sure about sensationalist. It's misleading. Deliberately so. But I don't see it as malicious. You need to read the article to work out what it's about, and headlines are there to draw you into the article. Ultimately it's just a very dry joke. Not one that will have you rolling on the floor, but something that should have people chuckling as they understand the context.

Re:Moo

[soft_guy]

Right. So you are trying to promote "researcher" as a more elite term than "scientist" where in the general publics' mind it going to be like "Oh, he's not a scientist - he is merely a researcher."

Re:Moo

[Literaphile]

Some people take everything seriously.

Re:Moo

[Intron]

So let's just settle it. We will call scientists who don't know what they're doing "researchers" and scientists who do know what they are doing "engineers".

Re:Moo

[Anonymous Coward]

Scientists create and prove/dissprove hypothesies
  Inventors invent things.
  Engineers plan and build things that have already been invented.

  There's usually a little bit of overlap.

Re:Moo

[GuyverDH]

Yet we call people in the medical industry who don't know what they are doing "Doctors"?
Although they still associate the term "Medical Practitioner" with Doctor, as they can have a "Practice". When do they stop practicing and actually start "doing"?

I'm only joking in part, as todays line of "I'm a specialist in x field, I don't know anything (or much) about y field" is leading us to doctors who can't treat common ailments because they are too busy trying to find some obscure disease to relate to a common symptom.

Re:Moo

[Dunbal]

Scientologist.

      Tom Cruise thinks that colon cancer is caused by a negative mental attitude. All this onco-gene stuff is BS.

Re:Moo

[Chacham]

Ah, i see, it's trying to cell a story of a dead (t)issue.

Re:Moo

[Dunbal]

Yet we call people in the medical industry who don't know what they are doing "Doctors"?


      Speak for yourself. A medical degree implies both a thesis and 10,000 hours of study. 4,000 more hours than a lawyer. I damned well deserve the title.

      And although I really couldn't care less about the biochemical nuances of intracellular signaling except as cozy lectures to sleep through, on a physiological level I know EXACTLY what I'm doing. A bleeding woman came into my practice this morning, blood pressure 70/40, pulse 103, groggy, cold, clammy. Think fast - how much blood has she lost?

Re:Moo

[GuyverDH]

First, I am not claiming that there are not good doctors still out there. You may be one of them.

I am claiming that there are too many doctors that are too focused on their specialty that they ignore anything else.

I walked into a big city doctor's office with multiple fractures in my hand. After the doctor has multiple x-rays taken, reviewed by him, and several others, he proclaims that I have a bad sprain.

I then go to another doctor (small town, generalist family doctor), he takes one x-ray, with my hand moved to a slightly different position, and finds the fractures, I'd say there's something definitely wrong with today's ideas of specialists.
There's not enough generalists to go around.

Re:Moo

[Zugok]

Scientist is a discipline of thinking, researcher is role. I would think the correct title would be scientific researcher.

Debate and flame.

Re:Moo

[Anonymous Coward]

In Microsoft it goes something like this..

PM (Decides the scope of the feature - ie., punts bugs as by design or postponed mostly)
Lead (glorified team secretary)
SDE, SDE/T (blue collar worker - nowdays it is usually student workers to get around limitations on open headcount and budget cutting - one step up from slavery)

Pretty much developers are blue collar workers :)

Re:Moo

[Dunbal]

I then go to another doctor

      That explains it. I'm a small town (pop 6500) family doc ;)

Re:Moo

[bkr1_2k]

So you're blaming the doctor (who probably has to see 15-20 patients an hour in a big city ER) for the fact that he didn't see any fractures in your xray? Did you see them? If not, blame the x-ray tech, not the doctor.

That said, I generally agree. Too many doctors these days don't listen to their patients and don't treat the problem, they treat the symptoms. Don't even get me started on the pharmaceuticals backing this trend.

Re:Moo

[Mister Whirly]

Ah yes, but the negative attitude is caused by the souls of dead space aliens who were brought to Earth, 75 million years ago, by an evil galactic ruler named Xenu in an attempt to solve galactic overpopulation. The cost for ridding yourself of these "body thetans" is $440 per hour, according to a recent price-list.

Re:Moo

[nomadic]

Speak for yourself. A medical degree implies both a thesis and 10,000 hours of study. 4,000 more hours than a lawyer. I damned well deserve the title.

Wow, what's with the hostility here? And where's the 10,000 hours come from? Are you counting rotation? If so that seems a little unwarranted...

And please don't tell me you use your title outside of your professional environment.

Re:Moo

[Anonymous Coward]

So the second doc put you in a cast, charged $300, and you felt better. Who says there were really fractures?

Re:Moo

[markbt73]

She IS a scientist. I'm a scientist. If you know how science works, and you test hypotheses to eliminate the ones that don't work, you're a scientist. Track down a short in an electrical system, and you've just conducted a scientific inquiry. Now you're a scientist too.

The title "scientist" carries with it no inherent authority; this is as it should be. It is the people who shout "Science is a religion" who attempt to give weight to the title of "scientist." And to say that someone "is not a scientist" and discount her work because of it, or to say "this is true because scientists say so," is to fall into the logical trap of an appeal to authority. Appeals to authority are necessary to prop up religions, but in the realm of science they are considered a fallacy.

If anything, we need to use the term "scientist" MORE freely, because it drives home the point that science is democratic, available to all, "open-source" if you will. To make arbitrary statements about who is or is not a "real scientist" is to place science on a pedestal and reinforce the idea that it's "hard," and lend credence to the fallacy of an appeal to authority.

Re:Moo

[autophile]

Actually, the seniority system is something like this:

God
Research Director
Scientist
Research Assistant / Researcher
Experimental Animal
Grad Student

--Rob

Re:Moo

[Dunbal]

Wow, what's with the hostility here?

      No hostility. Facial expressions don't get transmitted well in a text medium, remember? ;)

      I don't even use my title IN my professional environment. Better to strive to be good than insist on a title.

      Med school is 6 years over here. Not 4 or 5. You don't count rotation? What were you doing during rotation? I sure as hell was learning a lot. Then again, in the 3rd world with the staff shortages we have, the lack of malpractice suits, and the (sigh) lack of informed consent - med students get a LOT of hands on experience down here.

      For example I graduated as a GP with 130 surgeries to my name, well over half as assistant surgeon and 2 as primary surgeon (don't ask!). I've done many things, from inserting a Tenckhoff, to doing paracentesis, inserting chest tubes, Foleys, nasogastrics, lumbar punctures, arthrocentesis, defibrillation, cardioversion - you name it. Not seeing it done. Actually DOING it myself. I know in western countries MOST of this stuff is saved for residency - SECOND YEAR at least. Not here. It's sink or swim - sometimes to the detriment of the patient, but mostly not. Surely rotation counts as study hours... unless you were playing "escape from the hospital".

Re:Moo

[Dunbal]

Who says there were really fractures?


      The doctor did. Society still grants explicit authority to doctors in medical issues. Only another doctor, or a forensic pathologist on behalf of a court, can say otherwise. NOT YOU.

      Lying to a patient and making stuff up in order to charge him cash goes against everything the medical profession stands for. When you've spent your entire life studying in order to be given this privilege, you don't do things that can result in having your license taken away. It's hard enough to avoid making stupid mistakes. Only a fool would do what you propose.

Re:Moo

[reason]

"Interested in and conversant with" doesn't make you a scientist (in my opinion as a research scientist). Nor does a science degree. Do be a scientist you have to do science (i.e. scientific research).

Re:Moo

[jc42]

Actually, her annoyance makes a bit of sense, when you read the explanation that she was researching Crohn's Disease, not cancer. Her research involved producing Crohn's-like inflammation in the cell cultures and testing compounds for their effect on the inflammation. She was using cancer cell lines because they live in vitro longer than normal cells. It makes sense that she would at first be annoyed when her cultures died instead of just having the level of inflammation change.

Such things are not at all uncommon in biological research, of course. One of the ongoing difficulties is recognizing that a "failed" experiment might have some significance for something that you weren't studying (and is usually outside your expertise).

Re:Moo

[jc42]

[I]n the general publics' mind it going to be like "Oh, he's not a scientist - he is merely a researcher."

That would be right in line with the public's use of the phrase "just a theory" as a dismissive put-down of a guess, contrary to the scientific use of "theory" for the best-supported explanations.

Actually, my favorite example is the media's use of "quantum leap" to mean "a really huge change", when to physicists a quantum change is the smallest change possible. A while ago, I read about a company's "quantum leap in profits", and my immediate thought was to wonder why an annual profit that changed by $0.01 was a news story.

There's nothing much we can do to control the public's (or the media's) misuse of scientific terminology. All we can do is demand that technical people use their own fields' terminology correctly.

Re:Moo

[jc42]

Umm, last I understood it, scientists ARE researchers...

Well, the most famous scientist of the previous century, Albert Einstein, wasn't primarily a researcher. Yes, in his early days, he did lab work, as pretty much any budding scientist will do. But his work that made him famous was all theoretical mathematical physics, done with little more equipment than pencil and paper (and brain). He primarily studied the results of the researchers, and came up with theories to explain those results.

The terms "science" and "research" are related, of course, and often go together, but they refer to different kinds of activities. You can do either without doing the other. So the phrase "scientific research" isn't redundant.

When doing either, it does help a lot if you're familiar with the other.

Re:Moo

[syousef]

It's becoming an important distinction these days because so many "scientists" who are no better qualified than I am, are none-the-less using their status as "scientist" to question the results put out by scientists with in-depth knowledge backed by significant practical experience in the study of their specialty (e.g. a researcher). ...and the problem here is what exactly? It's not the science at all. The science can and must stand up to scrutiny even by a dimwit who doesn't understand it. The specialised research must be able to construct a suitable counter argument. The only problem is FAME, NOT JOB TITLE. People are more willing to believe a more recongised individual even if they're a complete moron or ditz.

Re:Moo

[nomadic]

No hostility. Facial expressions don't get transmitted well in a text medium, remember? ;)

True, and ironically I meant to say that as mildly as possible. I was just surprised at the segue into lawyers.

Med school is 6 years over here. Not 4 or 5.

But it's undergrad, right? You don't have to do a 4 year university degree first, right?

You don't count rotation?

As actual studying? No, that's more along the lines of on-the-job training.

What were you doing during rotation?

Never did it; I'm no physician.

I sure as hell was learning a lot.

Oh, not denying that, I'm just saying that when you add it into your tally of time you spent studying it artificially inflates the number. It's already an impressive educational achievement, I don't think you need to pad the numbers.

Re:Moo

[bhiestand]

I always thought quantum leaps had something to do with traveling through time to occupy another person's body. Damn you for shattering my dreams!

There's nothing much we can do to control the public's (or the media's) misuse of scientific terminology. Perhaps we could send people who are actually qualified to teach science to high schools? I mean we can't make people any smarter, but we can make them understand terminology, and good teachers can make a difference...

Re:Moo

[WilliamSChips]

I don't think God has any official titles at any universities or corporations. ;)

Re:Moo

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if you count the change of state of a quantum particle then the leap may be arbitrary large when it comes to entangled particles.

Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

Never heard this kind of thing before, and the subsequent "it'll be 10, 20, whatever number of years away before you can use it yada yada".

Homeresque

[commisaro]

"To pull a Homer": To succeed despite idiocy

Re:Homeresque

[ZonkerWilliam]

Prefer to call it Serendipity

Re:Homeresque

[drinkypoo]

"To pull a Homer": To succeed despite idiocy

Idiocy? What's your PhD in?

Re:Homeresque

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been involved in enough cancer research to know that just because you have something that
kills your tumor cells, you haven't found "the cure". The story is interesting, but not as interesting
as the people reporting it want it to be.

Re:Homeresque

[jonadab]

> "To pull a Homer": To succeed despite idiocy

Oh, you mean like pulling a Maxwell Smart? (Kids these days. Sheesh.)

Now that is a true nerd

[drinkypoo]

You can tell she is a true nerd because instead of saying "holy shit I cured cancer" she said "god damn it, now I have to start over."

Re:Now that is a true nerd

[hal9000(jr)]

Yeah, you gotta love candor like that. Admitting she did't immediately see the signigance of her miscalculation is priceless--human.

Re:Now that is a true nerd

[Kjella]

Well, 99% of the time that'd be true. We know of plenty things that kills cancer, because it kills cells altogether and you can probably think of a dozen off the top of your head. The discovery isn't "damn, my cancer cells died" it's "wtf, the other cells are still alive".

Re:Now that is a true nerd

[drinkypoo]

Well, sure, just like dishwashing detergent kills HIV. It just also happens to kill the host if you take it intravenously. I just don't bother to involve the obvious and mundane in my comments if I can avoid it, because, well, it's obvious and mundane. This is news for nerds, right? I'm a nerd and I produce comments meant for other nerds of similar proclivity.

Re:Now that is a true nerd

[db32]

There is an old saying that says the greatest achievements have not been heralded in by a cry of "Eureaka" but by the confused statement "Well, that wasn't supposed to happen".

Re:Now that is a true nerd

[Chris Burke]

Well, sure, just like dishwashing detergent kills HIV.

YES! Finally the answer to my prayers!

It just also happens to kill the host if you take it intravenously.

Shit! I need to read faster! Call 911 for me...

Re:Now that is a true nerd

[Anonymous Coward]

Columbus to the crew: Hey guys! Are you sure these people are Indians?

Re:Now that is a true nerd

[jonadab]

> Well, sure, just like dishwashing detergent kills HIV.

Sure, but Clorox cures both HIV *and* cancer!

You have to wonder

[antifoidulus]

if the creator of Viagra had a similar epiphany

Re:You have to wonder

[EXMSFT]

Indeed. He thought he had failed, but continued his research with a stiff upper lip.

Re:You have to wonder

[ettlz]

No, his wife had the stiff upper lip. Later, he got round to wondering what the hell he thought was doing in the first place.

Re:You have to wonder

[caffeinemessiah]

Actually Viagra was invented to treat angina, at which it was a spectacular failure. The better-known use of Viagra was actually a side-effect that appeared in (if I remember) 80% of test subjects. So even Viagra was a sort of accident.

Re:You have to wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone watched "High Tech Sex" on the history channel last night. For real, they were just talking about this. Ha.

Re:You have to wonder

[vorpal22]

Even more strange, but along the same lines, is the new and coming drug, Bremelanotide. It was created with the intention of being an artificial tanning agent, at which it succeeded, but a large number of the test subjects, both male and female, reported highly increased sexual arousal during the tests.

It's fairly far along in clinical trials and seems very promising, making it the first recognized effective pharmaceutical aphrodisiac.

Re:You have to wonder

[renesch]

And how many of those 80% were women?

Re:You have to wonder

[false_cause]

They missed one 'gina but hit millions of others.

Re:You have to wonder

[elgatozorbas]

Indeed, and even this side effect was only suspected when none of the test persons returned their unused "ineffective" pills after the experiment.

Re:You have to wonder

[dr_dank]

It was created with the intention of being an artificial tanning agent, at which it succeeded, but a large number of the test subjects, both male and female, reported highly increased sexual arousal during the tests.

It's a cruel joke when you look like an overgrown carrot and have a raging boner.

Re:You have to wonder

[Atrox666]

The inventor of LSD also had an epiphany like that ..then things started to melt.

Re:You have to wonder

[sacrilicious]

along the same lines, is the new and coming drug, Bremelanotide. It was created with the intention of being an artificial tanning agent, at which it succeeded, but a large number of the test subjects, both male and female, reported highly increased sexual arousal during the tests.

I just have to ask: was the pun intended with the phrase "coming drug"? :)

Re:You have to wonder

[witte]

I live in a cold climate with moderately ugly women.

Where can I get some of this ... Bremelanotide you speak of ?

Re:You have to wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

[You have to wonder] if the creator of Viagra had a similar epiphany

Well, I'm sure it made him sit up straight.

Re:You have to wonder

[ignavus]

Especially if you are a woman.

Alexander Fleming said it best

[Hoi Polloi]

"Damn it! Who let the bacteria colonies get moldy? All of my staphylococcus samples died and now I have to start all over again."

Re:Alexander Fleming said it best

[Harmonious Botch]

Actually, Flemming's contribution was not that he saw something. Several other scientists - even back in the 1800s - had observed that one form of microbe killed off another. Flemming was apparently the first one to realize what this meant, and to follow through on it. He is more a parallel of the researcher's colleague than of the researcher in TFA.

Re:Alexander Fleming said it best

[TeknoHog]

The name's Cillin. Penis Cillin.

Oh, wait.. wrong Fleming.

A science teacher once told me

[Trails]

"Most important discoveries are not accompanied with a 'Eureka!', rather with a 'Hmmm, that's odd....'"

Re:A science teacher once told me

[A_Non_Moose]

"Most important discoveries are not accompanied with a 'Eureka!', rather with a 'Hmmm, that's odd....'"

My thoughts exactly.

Only now, I think we can also add "Aw, DAMMIT!" to the lexicon.

Re:A science teacher once told me

[Thagg]

The Economist had an article about barely-critical nuclear bomb testing, where the designers implode small pieces of plutonium for research, not intending to get any kind of explosion. They said that sometimes they got a little more than they expected, and this is called a "whoops". And -- sometimes it's bigger than that, and they call that and "uh-oh"

Thad

Re:A science teacher once told me

[Citizen of Earth]

"Most important discoveries are not accompanied with a 'Eureka!', rather with a 'Hmmm, that's odd....'"

Hmmm, that's odd...

I found a cancer drug, darn it

[guruevi]

Probably afraid (s)he's going to get sued now because they violated a cancer-cure patent? Well, but just as a lot of 'inventions' and breakthroughs, they happen by accident.

Or maybe they're not happy because now they can't earn money anymore looking for the ultimate cancer-killer (how would you feel if a program was made that automatically created perfect code by letting your manager put in all his wishes).

Re:I found a cancer drug, darn it

[Volante3192]

She wasn't even looking for a cure for cancer, but rather a cure for an intestinal disease. She just used cancerous cells in the trials because they're quicker to grow and more resistant to experiment.

Re:I found a cancer drug, darn it

[Archangel Michael]

"how would you feel if a program was made that automatically created perfect code by letting your manager put in all his wishes"

That would be fantastic! It would prove that mutually exclusive wishes can be programmed in. "I want it red" followed by "I don't like red" followed by "I wanted it red", followed by "I told you not red".

Now if a program could code that, I would pay top dollar for it. Seriously.

Re:I found a cancer drug, darn it

[Anonymous Coward]

hahaha if a manager put in all his wishes you'd get the most mangled piece of confusing garbage you've ever seen in you life :)

Re:I found a cancer drug, darn it

[Wite_Noiz]

"Never hide the truth"
"Don't tell anyone about this"

"...
I can't do that, Dave."

Re:I found a cancer drug, darn it

[soft_guy]

So, someone filed a patent on curing cancer so that when someone finally does it they can sue them. The only problem was someone else filed a patent on curing disease. That guy, it turns out, was screwed because of a patent granted on "beneficial effects".

Re:I found a cancer drug, darn it

[CUatTHEFINISH]

"It would prove that mutually exclusive wishes can be programmed in." "I would pay top dollar for it. Seriously."

echo off

echo I want it red

color 04

echo I don't like red

color 00

echo I wanted it red

color 04

echo I told you not red

color 00

There is your mutually exclusive wishes programmed in a batch file. Where is my top dollar? ;) (I love selective hearing)

Re:I found a cancer drug, darn it

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps a program that injects your boss with a psychotropic drug. That way you can make the program do what it's supposed to do, and they'll see what they want to see at any given moment.

Re:I found a cancer drug, darn it

[Dunbal]

"how would you feel if a program was made that automatically created perfect code by letting your manager put in all his wishes" That would be fantastic!

      It certainly would. At least all the managers would be kept busy by it, and we could actually get on with doing some work...!

Re:I found a cancer drug, darn it

[DamnStupidElf]

That would be fantastic! It would prove that mutually exclusive wishes can be programmed in. "I want it red" followed by "I don't like red" followed by "I wanted it red", followed by "I told you not red".

One word:

<blink>

Re:I found a cancer drug, darn it

[bkr1_2k]

Or see the program trying to eat them... but that's pretty damned funny too.

Re:I found a cancer drug, darn it

[DavidTC]

It's not a patent violation to experiment with patented things. In fact, it's encouraged. Research is pretty much excluded from patents, unless it's a patent on a process within research.

Of course, if you get anything useful out of it, you're going to have to license the patent to use it.

Re:I found a cancer drug, darn it

[Anonymous Coward]

Got a quantum computer? I think you'll need it in order to implement Heisenberg's Design Uncertainty Principle :-)
I can imagine the markup tags now: <div style="color:schroedinger::red">...

Re:I found a cancer drug, darn it

[zippthorne]

What you're asking for is some kind of electric monk.

Typical science

[jimstapleton]

for all the logic and deductive reasoning they use, it ends up being pure chance and blind luck that gives us some of the best discoveries.

And how many problems could have been solved by now, if instead of someone saying "Hey, this isn't doing what I wanted it to do!" instead they said "Wow, not doing what I wanted it to do, but this effect is pretty darn useful too!"

Re:Typical science

[EXMSFT]

My mom always said (Forrest Gump inferrence somewhat intended), "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade". It's true. This is actually how the microwave oven was born, as well as many other inventions.

Re:Typical science

[Duct Tape Jedi]

for all the logic and deductive reasoning they use, it ends up being pure chance and blind luck that gives us some of the best discoveries.

And how many problems could have been solved by now, if instead of someone saying "Hey, this isn't doing what I wanted it to do!" instead they said "Wow, not doing what I wanted it to do, but this effect is pretty darn useful too!"


And this is exactly why there needs to be more "research for the sake of research" regardless of whether there is any potential direct commercial value from it.

Re:Typical science

[roman_mir]

what, they tried using a large microwave parabolic antenna to squeeze lemonade and invented a microwave? To celebrate they mixed some alcohol with orange juice, wanted to warm it up in the microwave and discovered napalm?

So what you are saying is that if life hands you a lemon, use napalm?

Re:Typical science

[jimstapleton]

my favorite is rubber

Dangit, I spilled the sticky useless-tree-goo on the stove...

Wait a minute, this new stuff is interesting...

Re:Typical science

[Anonymous Coward]

only an idiot on /. would refer to a lifetime of research as "blind luck."

Like it or not, chemists/biologists/pharmacuetical scientists work their asses off looking for that one compound that works without killing the patient. It takes A LOT of time; most of the research leads to dead ends. That fact DOES NOT mean that the one instance of success is "blind luck." Rather, it is the inevitable conclusion for of a tenacious and intelligent research team.

Re:Typical science

[jimstapleton]

What would you say about a person who uses insults in his arguments about someone else, and takes a comment about ONE SMALL ASPECT of a situation and then insinuates it's in regards to the whole situation? What would you say about yourself I wonder?

I've done plenty of science in my day, and there's nothing magical about it, there's a lot of work involved, and sometimes it can be EXTREMELY tedious and annoying. However occasionally steps are made due to blind luck. A mistake in a calculation or a step of procedure not quite correctly followed. I know it's happened to me before, though never in something quite this important.

I never said all success was blind luck either, I said that this one case was the result of blind luck. Maybe (probably) it would have happened without the luck, but it could have been days, months, years, even never, if they came out saying the results were inconclusive without realizing there was a slight detour they could have taken on their journey to get to their destination.

There really is an art to science.

Re:Typical science

[somepunk]

Which is why the core of science isn't deductive, but inductive reasoning. There's just no way to obtain all the axioms (if they even exist) and deduce all valid statements. You have to observe how things work in real life, make generalizations, then deduce the consequences of your generalizations and verify against real life again. Its usually referred to as the scientific method.

Re:Typical science

[$RANDOMLUSER]

You mean how Charles Goodyear accidentally invented the vulcanization process. One of my favorites too.

Re:Typical science

[Bloke down the pub]

Well if it's a case where you spend years looking for X and instead find Y - as in TFA - I'd say that was more down to luck than brains & endurance.

Furthermore, since you always find something in the last place you look, I save time by searching in reverse order.

Re:Typical science

[UglyTool]

And this is exactly why there needs to be more "research for the sake of research" regardless of whether there is any potential direct commercial value from it.

Say what you will about Microsoft (I voted with my money, and got a Mac), but they are doing exactly this. Microsoft Research was set up for basic research in computer science, and covers topological quantam field theory as well as many other fields. Not for the immediate financial incentives, but, I guess, just because.

This is from the current (print) issue of Scientific American, and has not been posted on the 'net yet.

Re:Typical science

[greginnj]

And this is exactly why there needs to be more "research for the sake of research" regardless of whether there is any potential direct commercial value from it.

I disagree; "research for the sake of research" (aka pure research) is overrated as a source of progress. Look at all the Eureka stories we've been discussing, from TFA to the older ones -- most of them are cases of applied research leading to new uses, via error or serendipity. Even Archimedes (the original Eureka moment) was trying to detect fraud, not come up with a new law of hydrostatics.

What we NEED, I would argue, is more researchers who have in-the-trenches practical experience, even (preferably!) in fields other than their own, so they're prepared to recognize those new uses. A little more Heinlein, a little less Asimov. A failed result in one research program is a wild success in a completely different practical application.

The history of Post-Its is illustrative -- Spencer Silver invented a very poor adhesive for 3M in 1968; Arthur Fry figured out that it could be used for re-usable bookmarks in 1974. How much more money would 3M have made during those intervening years if Silver was a better lateral thinker?

A second part to the story, not shown in the Wikipedia article, claims that Fry initially ran into opposition from a marketing director, who didn't see any market for the semi-sticky notes. Fry, clearly a man who had what it takes, distributed pilot batches to the secretaries at 3M, with a note telling them to contact the marketing director for refills...

Silver was the guy doing 'research'. The concept of 'adhesive-on-paper-substrate' (e.g, masking tape) existed already for decades. The closest Fry came to innovation was the idea of using a poor, rather than a strong, adhesive (Silver's ) on a paper substrate -- but he had the practical experience both to see an application, and to get it to the light of day.

Re:Typical science

[Nutty_Irishman]

for all the logic and deductive reasoning they use, it ends up being pure chance and blind luck that gives us some of the best discoveries. More like the: "If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be research -- Albert Einstein".

Seriously, research is 90% failures, and 10% success. Most researchers don't sit down and say: "I know that C exists, all I need to do is show that A->B->C and then I can write a paper and be famous for finding the connection". It's more like A->B, then C doesn't work, so they try other things (D,E,F). Most of the time they find some odd peculiarity that led to A->B->Z which they never thought of in the first place. They write the paper showing A->B->Z and never mention that C-X didn't work and everyone thinks they're a genius for thinking of A->B->Z in the first place (which is very often not the initial hypothesis they had).

This whole design is why the Model T got the title "T" instead of A,B, etc.

Re:Typical science

[jZnat]

How the hell did you deduce he was talking about Microsoft from that quote?

Re:Typical science

[Dunbal]

and everyone thinks they're a genius for thinking of A->B->Z in the first place

      Then 5 years down the line, someone comes and proves that actually Z->L->A->B...

Re:Typical science

[Atraxen]

I'm really wary of this either/or approach. We need both! To use an analogy - an army with either only front line troops or logistics/occupation forces will hold no new ground. The pure research folks push forward the front, and the integrated science and engineering folks make the connections that solidify the progress made to date. There's space enough for all of us (being a basic scientist myself who also crosses the line into looking for applicability).

Re:Typical science

[gstoddart]

for all the logic and deductive reasoning they use, it ends up being pure chance and blind luck that gives us some of the best discoveries.

And? You act is if there's a better way to find things; logic and deductive reasoning keep them from randomly casting about to see if your new widget might calm llamas in thunderstorms. You would advocate maybe taking every failed experiment and trying to see if it does any of a thousand other things you're keeping a list of?

And how many problems could have been solved by now, if instead of someone saying "Hey, this isn't doing what I wanted it to do!" instead they said "Wow, not doing what I wanted it to do, but this effect is pretty darn useful too!"

There have been a very large amount of things which have been discovered in exactly that manner. I suspect more than a few common household items exist because something didn't work in an experiment, and someone did notice the utility of the behaviour.

But, for that to happen, you first have to get to the "not doing what I wanted", and, have the unexpected effect be identifiable and noted as being interesting. If it had simply failed, and didn't show anything which looked like it would be useful for anything, why would they pursue it any more? Failing in a way that you can recognize that it did something completely novel, and have people who can recognize it as such, is way more difficult.

You make it sound like it's a failing of science that they don't always find effects they're not looking for. Only occasionally do you get those kind of results that make you go "wow, look at this".

Cheers

Re:Typical science

[EXMSFT]

Exactly. Oh wait. You misunderstood. The microwave and the lemonade were unrelated...

Re:Typical science

[jimstapleton]

Stop being a troll and reading more into this than I said. I've already countered every point you made long before you clicked the reply button, in response to other posters.

Re:Typical science

[gstoddart]

Stop being a troll and reading more into this than I said. I've already countered every point you made long before you clicked the reply button, in response to other posters.

Well, I didn't do it to troll, it seemed an odd sentiment.

While I started my response, there were no other responses to your post, and I wasn't reading them.

Chill dude, maybe multiple people just felt compelled to respond to that.

Cheers

Re:Typical science

[UglyTool]

How the hell did you deduce he was talking about Microsoft from that quote?

I'd be lying if I said I knew what the hell you were talking about. I just pointed out a recent example I saw concerning a company doing research for the sake of research.

I didn't deduce anything from anywhere, I just brought up an example relevant to the discussion.

As good as it sounds...

[Xserv]

What's the REAL period REAL people would have to wait before this could be even remotely used with a human? 5-10 years PLUS FDA appoval??

Obviously, much more testing would need to be done but anything to battle cancer is a good start.

Xserv

Re:As good as it sounds...

[operagost]

The question is: which phamraceutical company would dare to jump on this first? After all, they don't make their money on cures but on treatments. Curing patients makes them non-customers and is bad for business.

Re:As good as it sounds...

[somepunk]

Killing cancer cells in a culture is hardly magic. A nice big dose of (fill in the blank) will do very nicely. Now try it without killing the subtly different noncancerous cells, not just in the short term, but no long term after effects either. This is not automatically a panacea. Maybe it is, but that will take time and testing to determine. You can't escape doing the work, folks.

Sure, it might be a good idea to put terminal patients on an accellerated track, but you can still open yourserlf up for consequences that are worse than the disease.

Re:As good as it sounds...

[LurkerXXX]

Actually PPAR-gamma, as well as other related compounds have been used in a number of clinical trials for other diseases such as Alzheimer's. Some of the risker clinical trials (Phase I/II) have already been done, so the safety of the compounds in humans is already known. That takes off a good bit of time and expense in drug development when you don't have to test a new drug to make sure it doesn't kill people.

Re:As good as it sounds...

[LurkerXXX]

er, sorry, make that PPAR-gamma activating drugs have been tested. Didn't mean to leave that part of the sentence out. PPAR-gamma is already present in the cells, you just need to crank up it's activity.

Re:As good as it sounds...

[jbeaupre]

Good point. So it may be available by prescription (not the commercial kind, but the "Hey pharmacist, mix me up a batch of ***" kind.) Throw in some doctor justifying its use under "compassionate use" for someone who is terminal and you could see papers on its effectiveness pretty quick.

Re:As good as it sounds...

[Joebert]

Just because somthing is curable doesn't mean you can't get it again.
The cure would become the treatment.
Buy stock in Phillip Morris & pray this gets FDA approval.

Re:As good as it sounds...

[stratjakt]

Bullshit, people will always be getting cancer.

I might buy into your logic if this was some sort of cancer-innoculation that would wipe the disease from existance. Might, but wouldn't. We've done that with a ton of other diseases, and they make fine money selling the innoculations.

My point is, there's money to be made selling a treatment, cure or innoculation. Equal money, it's just a matter of adjusting the price points.

Re:As good as it sounds...

[cnettel]

I'm getting quite tired of this. For the pharmaceutical industry as a whole, you're right (at least more so). For an individual company, the choice is to compete with the halfass treatment from their competitor, or to come out with a (patentable) cure, where they are quite able to completely claim all the market for that specific cancer form. There is really nothing that stops them from asking an even higher price for the cure.

This applies when you have the options for the same disease/condition. It's a quite different thing that there can be great profit in treating mild conditions that affect many, than curing (relatively) rare conditions. But, again, curing those prevalent conditions could be even more profitable, at least if there is some existing competition in the space of available treatments (or even better: you come up with the cure while a competitor has a, now useless, patent on a treatment).

Re:As good as it sounds...

[maxume]

In the case that no existing pharma company jumped in, it seems to me that there is a reasonable chance that someone not currently in the business of treating people for cancer would see the enormous opportunity for profit and go ahead a start a new business with the goal of curing the many tens of thousands of people who get cancer each year.

Re:As good as it sounds...

[Dunbal]

A nice big dose of (fill in the blank) will do very nicely.

Water

Re:As good as it sounds...

[lachlan76]

There is only one thing worse for the company than curing diseases - someone else curing diseases.

Re:As good as it sounds...

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. That's why pharmaceutical companies don't make things to wipe out diseases. Like polio vaccines. Oh wait, yes they do.

You are a tin-foil hat wearing moron.

Amazingly not a dupe.

[Grendel Drago]

How odd; I was all ready to yell "DUPE!", but this isn't yet another DCA story. So, for this one, we have that it kills human tumors in vitro, and mouse tumors in vivo. We don't know if it's safe to give to humans. (Maybe we do; I haven't pulled the research paper yet.) Ah, well. Here's a picture of the molecule if anyone wants it.

"Oh"

[robably]

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny..." "
-- Isaac Asimov

Re:"Oh"

[Tablizer]

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny..." " -- Isaac Asimov

"Oh f*ck!" is probably more accurate.

Re:"Oh"

[Mex]

Thanks, seeing that same phrase posted 5 times in this article was not nearly enough. But six times, that should hold 'er!

Re:"Oh"

[robably]

My pleasure. I posted it first, though (Slashdot comments don't appear in date order). The other thing is, who on Earth modded it Funny? Did they even read it?

Re:"Oh"

[Mex]

Sorry, I didn't mean to sound aggressive, specially if you posted it first. I was a bit puzzled by the "Funny" mod, too :)

Asimov

[jamie]

"The co-author on my paper said, 'Did I hear you say you killed some cancer?' I said 'Oh,' and took a closer look..." (Katherine Schaefer)

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science is not 'Eureka!' but 'Hmm, that's funny'..." (Isaac Asimov)

Re:Asimov

[VJ42]

I thought exactly the same thing. I'd guess that many of the most important scientific breakthroughs are accompanied by "huh, what happened there, it's not supposed to do that". Genuine "Eureka!" moments are probably few and far between (though just as important).


To whichever mod modded jamie down, you just killed your karma. Modding /. staff down means you won't be getting mod points again for a very long time...
I kid, I kid, of course /. employees would never abuse their positions like that. ;-P

Re:Asimov

[jamie]

Modding /. staff down means you won't be getting mod points again for a very long time...

To the contrary -- when I saw someone modded me Redundant, I went back and checked, and in the 4 minutes it took me to paste in my Asimov quote, others beat me to it. So the moderator was exactly correct. I put another Redundant on myself because I deserved it.

And the code I'm working on this week will ensure that that moderator -- who modded the same as an admin, before the admin -- will get more influence in our system in the weeks to come, not less :)

OK, now I will click Submit, and then mod myself Offtopic, which this comment clearly is!

Re:Asimov

[VJ42]

As I pointed out, I was only joking, but it's good to know you're working on fixing the moderation system, little nuggets like that should be posted more often as people are always complaining about the mods and mod system. My personal "fix" is just my use of mod points, I try and upmod only; I try not to downmod anything short of a goatse or GNAA troll (then again I always read at -1 or should that be "Full", so I always see everything anyway).
I hope we get to see and hear more about the work you've been doing behind the scenes in the next few weeks. IMO it's about time for another /. metadiscussion

To the first mod that sees this, feel free to mod me offtopic, as pointed out it is. I'm already posting without my Karma bonus so I ask only this: if you see something worthy of an upmod, moderate that first.

"Oh, you wanted to *cure cancer*!"

[Anonymous Coward]

"I misheard you. Sure, I've been able to do that for years. Here you go."

Re:"Oh, you wanted to *cure cancer*!"

[QuestionMark Greater]

"All this time I've been trying to cure plaster."

Like other famous finds in history

[winnabago]

Many famous breakthroughs in history have been accidents or errors. Penicillin comes to mind. Maybe this will be a story we are all telling our grandkids someday.

Re:Like other famous finds in history

[ReidMaynard]

Top Ten Accidental Discoveries

Didn't we cure cancer 3 weeks ago?

[o517375]

dichloroacetate (DCA) was the drug. See link:
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg19325 874.700-cheap-safe-drug-kills-most-cancers.html

Re:Didn't we cure cancer 3 weeks ago?

[Anonymous Coward]

DCA is overhyped. This probably is too, but all to the good. Cancer is extremely complex and has many different forms, we're never going to find a single "cure" for it, just ever more effective treatments.

Re:Didn't we cure cancer 3 weeks ago?

[DimGeo]

Or maybe just nobody wants to start doing something about the discoveries. Even more, I'd think there are powerful people ready to pay big money to suppress them. Let's see what happens 20 years down the road. Maybe these will be forgotten. I hope not.

Terrible article, facts wrong

[rhombic]

Reuter's science writer should get the credentials revoked. Gawd, I wish I never RTFA'd the article.

"She was testing a compound called a PPAR-gamma modulator. It would never normally have been thought of as a cancer drug, or in fact a drug of any kind."

PPARg modulators are huge drugs, some of the most highly perscribed therapeutics for type II diabetes.

"Most of the drugs like Taxol affect the ability of tubulin to forms into microtubules. This doesn't do that -- it causes the tubulin itself to disappear. We do not know why."

So you dosed in enormous doses of a compound, and it killed cells. Every type of "cancer" cells they tested died. They haven't tested primary cell lines (non-cancerous cells). Nor have they tested any tox in mice. They've got no mechanism of action. WTF??? I can kill cancer cells in the lab with large doses of damn near anything. High concentration table salt will kill cancer cells. Doesn't make NaCl an anti cancer agent. Crap. Spit. I hate write ups like this.

Re:Terrible article, facts wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not doing to much better. "RTFA'd the article", so you read the fucking article the article?

Re:Terrible article, facts wrong

[Retric]

RTFA again "It also killed colon tumors in mice without making the mice sick, they reported in the journal International Cancer Research."

Re:Terrible article, facts wrong

[SatanicPuppy]

So headline should have been, "Cancer cured for 10th time this decade...In mice."

This is cool and all, and very interesting, but I've seen a lot of cool and interesting stuff that works great in mice that's fallen flat in human testing. Maybe this will be the one that finally does it.

Re:Terrible article, facts wrong

[cplusplus]

They haven't tested primary cell lines (non-cancerous cells). Nor have they tested any tox in mice.

Maybe you missed the part of the article where they state, "It also killed colon tumors in mice without making the mice sick, they reported in the journal International Cancer Research."

Re:Terrible article, facts wrong

[xtracto]

You should read TFA, no, not the one linked there but the one published by the researcher. it is available here. Of course you can only enter if you have a subscription OR your university has access to it. Mine has, and I took the time to take a look to the article :

"PPAR Y inhibitors reduce tubulin protein levels by a PPAR, PPAR and proteasome-independent mechanism, resulting in cell cycle arrest, apoptosis and reduced metastasis of colorectal carcinoma cells"

Measurement of metastasis in vivo

Male severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) mice, 6 weeks of age, were maintained in a specific pathogen-free environment. Experiments were performed according to the guidelines of Yokohama City University. At day 0, 2 106 HT-29 cells were injected into the spleen. After inoculation, the mice were randomized into 2 treatment groups (each with n = 6) and 1 control group (n = 6). Starting at day 1 and daily thereafter, T0070907 (1 or 5 mg/kg/day) or control (1% DMSO vehicle) was administered orally. These concentrations were chosen based on initial pilot experiments to detect morbidity based on T0070907 alone. At 1 or 5 mg/kg/day, no increased morbidity (based on grooming, activity and food intake) was noted in mice with or without injected tumor cells. Four weeks later, the number and size of metastatic lesions in the liver were determined. Tumor volume was calculated as previously described. and in the conclussion:

hese results demonstrate that treating CRC cell lines with high doses of PPAR inhibitors leads to disruption of microtubule function, alterations in cell morphology, cell migration, cell cycle arrest and apoptosis. In addition, definitive antitumor effects are seen in vivo, after oral administration in a CRC mouse model. So yeah, they tested in mice and yeah it looks promising. Of course it might not be as "newsworthy" as media wants to make it look. Hundreds of similar articles can be obtained via scoups.com any day :)

Re:Terrible article, facts wrong

[Lumpy]

NEWS FLASH:

Lab researcher discovers that high concentrations of 1 mole Hydrochloric acid kills cancer!

"I dumped 30ml's of it in the petri dish and after 5 minutes all the cancer cells were not only dead but GONE!"

Her assistant was not available for comment as he was screaming "MY EYES!" in the chemical shower.

Re:Terrible article, facts wrong

[LordEd]

In other news, mice thank mankind; postpone taking over the world

Re:Terrible article, facts wrong

[ShrapnelFace]

Your point is well taken. In fact, it's a well known fact that it is widely held opinion that a high dosage of radiation, administered across most of the Middle East, could very well resolve some of the problems we are having with terrorism. Turns out that Terrorists are like Cancer, and if we'd only administer radiation treatment, we'd be free of the problem and in full remission.

Re:Terrible article, facts wrong

[kalirion]

The solution is quite simple. Develop a retro-virus which turns humans into mice, cure the cancer, and then work on turning the healthy mice human again.

Re:Terrible article, facts wrong

[Dunbal]

and if we'd only administer radiation treatment, we'd be free of the problem and in full remission.

      But first we have to test it on someone. Since you seem to be in a hurry to kill millions of innocent people in order to get to a few thousand, you've just been volounteered for "special" Cobalt therapy...enjoy - and don't forget your sunglasses.

PPAR-Gamma is a cellular receptor, not a compound

[CorporalKlinger]

It might be wise for whomever posted this to read the article more completely before publishing. PPAR-gamma is a receptor found within/on cells, NOT a separate "magic compound." This is old news, anyway - PPAR-gamma's effects with respect to cancer have been well understood for months now.

Source:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=g ene&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=Graphics&list_uids=5468

Notice how it says "implicated in cancer"? That information has been there for quite some time. Time for people to stop posting this antiquated junk as "new news."

So are a fair percentage of "last words"....

[StressGuy]

that and "hey y'all, watch this!"

Re:So are a fair percentage of "last words"....

[andyh3930]

Mod parent funny

Re:So are a fair percentage of "last words"....

[Anonymous Coward]

...those words are probably more popular among Darwin award candidates.

From TFA

[guruevi]

As the compound is already patented, her team will probably have to design something slightly different to be able to patent it as a new drug.

FTW. I found a cure for cancer, sorry patented. And for AIDS too, sorry patented. I found a cure for all sickness and death, sorry patented.

Re:From TFA

[jbeaupre]

IANAL, but understand that they can still patent it. It's called a method patent. Think of it as patenting using a screwdriver as a chisel. You don't own the patent for the original invention, but you own the new found use. Then things get really interesting...

Re:From TFA

[aicrules]

I would suggest the easy way: patent it as a internet delivered cure for cancer!

Re:From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Start working on a cure for patents.

Further investigation

[rbarreira]

Further investigation later revealed that the substance she had been using was in fact sulfuric acid...

It's from Asimov, I believe.

[Grendel Drago]

It's an Isaac Asimov saying, as far as I know (though I haven't seen a primary source). "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discovery, is not 'Eureka' (I found it!), but 'That's funny...'"

Re:It's from Asimov, I believe.

[Manchot]

It may be the case that new discoveries are often made with a "That's funny," but it's certainly not the most exciting phrase in science. 99.999% of the time, it just means that something's been screwed up.

Re:It's from Asimov, I believe.

[roscivs]

I don't have the exact source either, but if it matters, I can confirm that I have read this in an actual Asimov-written book.

Re:It's from Asimov, I believe.

[nutshell42]

Winston Churchill once said, Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most times he will pick himself up and carry on.

Re:It's from Asimov, I believe.

[Trails]

Yeah I think you're right.

My recollections of high school are a bit... er... hazy, but I believe the teacher was quoting someone else at the same time.

Patents

[paladinwannabe2]

Thanks to patents, it might be- apparently the compound that kills these cells is already patented. Whoever held the patents is now sitting on a potential goldmine- and they didn't even have to invest in it through research and development.

Re:Patents

[Anonymous Coward]

The patent in question would need to address cancer-cure related claims for a serious problem to exist. Which leads to my confusion over this problem...

If the applicant claimed cancer-cure properties, then the researcher was performing redundant work as it was apparently obvious to the applicant. More importantly, we would have known the compound's value at the moment the patent was granted.
But, if the applicant was just making a random claim: shouldn't all patents (I mean all of them) have a cancer-cure claim? You know, just to cover that possibility.

And if that's the way things work in the USPTO, then all new chemical compounds later found to be terribly carcinogenic were necessarily claimed to be cancer cures. That contradiction probably happens all the time and terribly undermines the validity of the application process (read: all patents).

My impression of this situation:
1. Describe a compound (Markush variations = more bang for the buck).
2. Claim that that compound can be used to do everything.
3. Wait for someone to prove any of the infinite claims.
4. Profit.

Re:Patents

[Anonymous Coward]

The patent application (no patent yet) can be viewed here:
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=P TO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2F srchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220030134859%22.PGN R.&OS=DN/20030134859&RS=DN/20030134859

From the app, it looks like this stuff can cure just abaout anything:

"diseases such as senile osteoporosis, postmenopausal osteoporosis, disuse osteoporosis, steroid-induced osteoporosis, fracture, osteogenesis imperfecta, rachitis, senile arthrosis, obesity, emaciation, type I and type II diabetes mellitus, arteriosclerosis, lipid metabolism disorder, pancreatitis, autoimmune diseases, glucose metabolism disorder, diabetic neuropathy, diabetic complications, hyperuricemia, leukemia, functional disorders in retinoid related receptors, liver dysfunction, anemia, cancers, inflammation, Basedow's disease, heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, eating disorders, hypertension and renal diseases."

the cure's owned

[Anonymous Coward]

"As the compound is already patented"

no one gets this without paying the powerful

The focus is to narrow!

[Buddy_DoQ]

This happens to me quite often, I will dig into a project trying to solve some major issue or another (Wi-Fi's down again!) and hours later I've solved it. The problem is I've already forgotten the original issue and found three others that are really quite trivial. Sometimes I look up and notice, sometimes I just keep working away, creating new issues and solutions with complete disregard for the original major issue. It's like my focus becomes so narrow, that I can't see the bigger picture without someone else stepping in.

This is where a good project manager should step in. "You do realize you've been painting the same tiny bit of trim for the past three hours, right?"

Re:The focus is to narrow!

[maxrate]

Not trying to start flame... WiFi down AGAIN? - My cheap-o Linksys has been running for 3 years straight - not a blip.

Re:The focus is to narrow!

[Buddy_DoQ]

It's a multi-campus district wide wireless distribution. A combination of crappy firmware on the POE, the switches, and one point even the Apple airports, has left our wireless less than 100%. It's a constant battle against the forces of outsourced call centers and ceiling tile dust! However, since the latest rebuild, it's been up a month now. *knock on wood*

But good for you and your Linksys! I've also had zero issues with my d-link at home, almost a year strong now! However, I'm thinking it's time to roll out gigabit wired, only the neighbor and her regular payment of chocolate chip cookies is keeping the home wi-fi going, really (and the Wii as well, naturally).

Forest before the trees

[frdmfghtr]

Something about not seeing the forest with all these damn trees in the way comes to mind...

Relevance in vivo to be determined

[w.p.richardson]

PPARs have been under investigation for a variety of ailments for some time by pharma companies (specifically, diabetes; some of these drugs were recalled from the market). Whether or not this discovery will translate into an actual effective drug is not even remotely close to being established.

Seems like every week we get one of these "cure for cancer" stories. It's great that the research is ongoing, but the breathless headlines are premature.

Where is the kaboom?

[zappepcs]

There is supposed to be a kaboom! or some bells ringing or something... Finally, a cure for cancer and the reaction seems just a little too ho-hum.

Shouldn't someone be shouting holyfsck and doing back flips up and down the halls of the AMA?

Maybe we're just shell shocked, or quietly waiting for the sticker shock?

Re:Where is the kaboom?

[JabberWokky]

There are loads of ways to kill cancer. You could put it on a frying pan. Or dose it with strong acid. Or poke it with little tiny cell sized swords. There are even a number of chemicals that target cancer pretty well. They are used under the general term chemo-therapy. There's also radiation used as a way to kill cancer. The problem is, just like this chemical will likely have, they have some nasty side effects. It's been known as a potential treatment for awhile now... and it may be better than current treatments. Or it could be worse. Or it could work well in conjunction. Something like killing cancer cells in a living body is a pretty difficult thing, even after you have a chemical that does it. You have a long way to go from a pipette and petri dish to a series of treatments.

.

People are working on it. Lots of people. Cancer sucks not because there aren't treatments, but rather because the treatments aren't very good right now. Like HIV treatments, they are slowly getting better. This may well help, but it's just another in a long series of steps.

--
Evan

stuff is patented: Sorry, can't cure cancer today!

[denis-The-menace]

"Schaefer's team plans more safety tests in mice. As the compound is already patented, her team will probably have to design something slightly different to be able to patent it as a new drug."

Another plus for having a "Great" patent system.
You have cancer? Go to China or India.
After a few years of people doing this,
China and India will be as rich as the USA was 5 years ago.
(Today, the USA is actually poorer!)

BREAKING NEWS

[hardburn]

That's great. A fantastic new cancer treatment, and the "BREAKING NEWS" on MSNBC is about Anna Nicole Smith.

Re:BREAKING NEWS

[Anonymous Coward]

That's great. A fantastic new cancer treatment, and the "BREAKING NEWS" on MSNBC is about Anna Nicole Smith.

Hmmm... I think I see what you're saying...

There's a connection between the dead bimbo, PPAR molecule thingy, Barbados, cancer cells, unknown father of a baby, and mice.

I need a car analogy here...

Re:BREAKING NEWS

[Dunbal]

There's a connection between the dead bimbo, PPAR molecule thingy, Barbados, cancer cells, unknown father of a baby, and mice.

      A Bahamian mouse claims that Hugh Hefner is the father of its baby after a "meeting" at a Playboy photoshoot. The mouse is dying of cancer, and wants Hugh to pay for treatment with the PPAR thingy? Can I get that job at the Inquirer now?

Re:BREAKING NEWS

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure the crazy astronaut and her friends and family were thrilled that Smith died. Got the astronaut off the news quick!

...and the newspapers wonder why their circulation is down...

watch the Sankyo stock go balistic

[dominux]

http://advance.quote.nomura.co.jp/meigara/nomura2/ quote.cgi?F=english/edchart&QCODE=4568&MKTN=T it would appear that they have the patent on PPAR-gamma modulator http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20030134859.html

We need a new meme

[paiute]

For the love of RB Woodward's wine-guzzling ghost, I am sick of stories about compound X and how it is the next big thing and how it kills cancer cells stone dead in a Petri dish.

Every other compound you can order from Aldrich will kill cancer cells in vitro. So will a ball peen hammer. Drano, playground sand, double-acting baking powder. Pledge will kill them and leave a lemony-fresh scent.

When this compound gets to stage III clinical trials and does not leave a trail of bodies and does show some efficacy, then you can post the story.

Until then, Netcraft confirms it. These cancer cells are dying.
In the Soviet Union, cancer cells kill new drugs.
etc

Re:We need a new meme

[DeadChobi]

Why don't you actually read the article? They tested the modulator in mice and found that it killed cancer cells in them with no ill effects. So the important part of the article is not that it kills cancer cells. It's that it kills cancer cells without major damage to other cells.

Way to go, captain obvious!

Re:We need a new meme

[JabberWokky]

Yes, just like many other promising cures that work in a lab. It's not that it's not good news, it's just that there are lots of examples of this happening. Every so often one proves to be better than the current treatment methods. If you read scientific journals (my wife is a research chemist), they are full of promising things like this. Few pan out. Maybe this one will... which is why they are testing it.

.

--
Evan

Re:We need a new meme

[paiute]

Why don't you actually read the article? They tested the modulator in mice and found that it killed cancer cells in them with no ill effects. So the important part of the article is not that it kills cancer cells. It's that it kills cancer cells without major damage to other cells.

Way to go, captain obvious!

Read it. Why don't you read a thousand or so J Med Chem articles and browse PubMed for a decade or so and get back to me. Then you might know that a mouse is a Petri dish with whiskers. Killing cancer cells, even if it were true that you could put all the other types of primate-specific cells in the dish with them and they were not harmed, does not tell you how the chemical will interfere with the huge number of subtle intra- and extra-cellular messenger-receptor processes that keep your system humming.

And it's Dr. captain obvious to you.

Re:We need a new meme

[lordofthechia]

Every other compound you can order from Aldrich will kill cancer cells in vitro. So will a ball peen hammer. Drano, playground sand, double-acting baking powder. Pledge will kill them and leave a lemony-fresh scent. Yes but which one would you like to have applied to your colon in the event of Colon Cancer? Sure the ball peen hammer would be way out, Drano? Ow! Playground sand.... hmm... bean bag colon. Pledge would be an interesting option.

Now what I want to know is why arent' we seeing more scented cures for cancer? "Would you prefer lemon, pine, or new car smell Mr. Johnson? Keep in mind your insurance doesn't cover pine".

Re:We need a new meme

[radtea]

For the love of RB Woodward's wine-guzzling ghost, I am sick of stories about compound X and how it is the next big thing and how it kills cancer cells stone dead in a Petri dish.

Furthermore, most cancers in mice can be cured with the biochemical equivalent of a dirty look.

Humans are exceptionally long-lived for mammals. The average mammal lives about a billion of its own heartbeats. Humans live two billion. this massively delayed senescence is due in part to effective tumour-supressor genes. From an evolutionary perspective, this may have to do with grandparents/elders being the primary inter-generational transmitters of culture, knowledge and tradition.

The upshot is that cancers that can survive in humans have already bypassed internal defences that would drop-kick most mouse cancers out of the stadium. So we see lots and lots of compounds that cure cancer in mice but have almost no effect in humans, even though they are non-toxic.

Using mouse models is still reasonable for preliminary testing and understanding of pathways, but the popular press treating mouse results as more than mildly interesting is not generally justified.

Re:We need a new meme

[ckedge]

I suggest thusly:

Eureka!

Think of the corny old 60's movies where the guy in the lab coat goes "Eureka!" and pow - his car can fly. Exactly the kind of "out of thin air we've solved everything".

Of course this might have some humor value:

They're magically delicious!

Re:We need a new meme

[BluedemonX]

RE: Yes but which one would you like to have applied to your colon in the event of Colon Cancer?

I've been on this intarweb thing long enough to know that there's NOTHING SOMEONE won't apply to his or her colon.

Re:PPAR-Gamma is a cellular receptor, not a compou

[Bohnanza]

I thought the same thing, but TFA says: "She was testing a compound called a PPAR-gamma modulator". So it's the /. editors who messed up.

Duh

[Gerocrack]

Damn it, why do I keep getting more energy out of this reactor than I put in? Piece of junk...

Re:Duh

[Tablizer]

Damn it, why do I keep getting more energy out of this reactor than I put in? Piece of junk...

Prior art: Iraq war

Don't Be Daft

[Petersko]

"for all the logic and deductive reasoning they use, it ends up being pure chance and blind luck that gives us some of the best discoveries."

Oh please. You make it sound like the researcher was walking down the street one day with a dish of cancer and somebody bumped into her with the right chemicals. Like it was the scientific equivalent of "You got chocolate in my peanut butter!"

The decades of previous work, including her education and work experience, worked steadily towards her being a cancer researcher who was following a logical chain that brought cancer cells and compound together for the discovery. If any of it was blind luck it was perhaps a tiny little sliver at the end. Really not even that was luck. After all, even though the results were unexpected, clearly she was on the track to something. No luck required.

I think it's insulting to her dismiss the roles that logic and deductive reasoning played in arranging these circumstances.

Re:Don't Be Daft

[jimstapleton]

sorry, but had she not made the calculation mistake (LUCK) she would never have gotten the result.

Maybe she was working down the right path, but she likely would not have gotten to this step without the luck.

additionally, the other part of my comment, according to the paper, she almost dropped it right there, and wouldn't have published/presented the results except one of her coworkers heard her complaining and said something that made her put two and two together.

I wasn't saying the whole thing was blind luck, but it is sheer ignorance to discount the fact that quite a bit of what happened, even if it was "at the end" was blind luck.

Re:Don't Be Daft

[Anonymous Coward]

She wasn't a cancer researcher. RTFA:

"Schaefer was looking for drugs to treat the inflammation seen in Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, both of which cause pain and diarrhea."

Re:Don't Be Daft

[el_chupanegre]

We could all learn from you. She's going to make a ton of money, and your trying to hit that. Kudos.

Re:Don't Be Daft

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA. Seriously. She was not a cancer researcher. Someone got chocolate in her peanut butter.

Re:Don't Be Daft

[Doubt the System]

She presumably had years of education and work experience. She was also presumably exposed to logic and deductive reasoning, although none of us is in a position to say how often or well she employed them. In this example, however, what did all these resources do for her?

1: She wasn't working on the problem she solved, so if all the buildup led to this, she spent all those years running very hard down the wrong path. All the buildup should have led to the solution she was seeking, not an answer to a different problem.

2: When she stumbled on an answer to an obvious problem, even if it was not the one she was trying to solve, she nearly missed the point; in fact she would have if someone else hadn't pointed out the obvious to her.

Applying logic and deductive reasoning to the above, I'd say the woman in question didn't get much use out of her education, her work experience, logic, or deductive reasoning. It was pure dumb luck, as well as a very good illustration of the point that education and work experience by themselves don't make someone capable of anything.

Re:Don't Be Daft

[QuestionMark Greater]

You have to agree that some of science's interesting advancements have come from unintended experimental results. That's what science is, right? Testing hypothesis. Scientists aren't sure what is going to happen with their experiments. If they did, then there wouldn't be much value in them. And sometimes those results still have value even though they prove to be inconsistent with the original hypothesis.

The article makes it very clear that the results of Dr. Schaefer's tests were unintended:

1) She was experimenting on drugs to treat inflammation. Not cancer at all.
2) Heck, the experiment wasn't even carried out as planned. It was based on a miscalculated quantity of the compound.
3) She may not have furthered her investigation of the compound had she not mentioned her disappointment, that the cancer cells died, in passing to a colleague.
4) It appears that the mechanism of how the compound kills the cancer cells is now understood, but not why.

I think the comment of "typical science" is condescending to the community and the efforts involved with scientific advancements. But I think the analogy of "you put your peanut butter in my chocolate" isn't too far off the mark in this case.

And as many people have stated earlier, isn't too far off the mark in many scientific discoveries.

It sounds like the offense is more in reponse to the insuation that typical scientific progress is due to complete chance. Which I agree is not true.

The seed of this discovery did indeed occur by chance. But I think it is safe to assume the continued research of this compound as a cancer treatment will not continue by randomly mixing it with chocolate and peanut butter. This is where the expertise and experience of Dr. Schaefer and her colleagues will come in handy.

Who knows? As they continue researching this, they may stumble up a breakthrough for inflamed colon's afterall. Or a sugary treat more delectable peanut butter cups.

Re:Don't Be Daft

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

I thought it was just a truism when people say "you make your own luck" but when I read comments like this I realise that it has non-trivial information after all.

Re:Don't Be Daft

[jimstapleton]

I by no means meant that as condescending. As I've stated, I've been in science, and this kind of thing (though not anything nearly as useful) has happened to me.

I also made the point of taking the problematic result and making use of it. So much of science comes from these mistakes or accidents and making use of them, that it is "typical science". Until recently there hasn't really been enough redily accessible data to make synthesis/assimilation of existing data able to produce a lot of results.

It's a mixture, you have your accidents, your logic, your analysis, and your data. Put them together right and you get something useful, as often as not, something quite different than what you were after.

It's not condescending, and someone who thinks it is, has too much of an ego to be a good scientist. Reality shapes you and your results, not vice versa, thus you must accept reality and work with it to maximize your creations.

Re:Don't Be Daft

[jimstapleton]

"You make your own luck" is about something slightly different.

Things can happen out of your control/planning [effectively luck], how you handle them is what making your own luck is all about. A Person cannot rationaly be expected to access resources they don't have available, and use/obtain resources they have no clue exists - making your luck is properly handling the situation once these resources or the knowledge of their existance becomes available.

Re:Don't Be Daft

[Dunbal]

Applying logic and deductive reasoning to the above,

      Applying logic and deductive reasoning, I would put my life in the hands of any experienced sergeant before trusting any armchair general.

      How easy it is for you to criticize her from the comfort of your den.

Re:Don't Be Daft

[Doubt the System]

Even armchair generals can easily see obvious mistakes made by experienced soldiers in the field during the battle, when they have the opportunity to review the records of what happened.

The facts speak for themselves; I'm just pointing them out. For all her experience, she did not find anything relevant to the problem she was attempting to solve, and did not, on her own, recognize an obvious potential solution to another well known problem. The fact that another researcher, on hearing her comments, pointed it out suggests the idea wasn't that difficult to arrive at.

If I were an 'experienced' sergeant who got results of that caliber, I don't think I'd want to turn my back on any of the men forced to serve under me (although, of course, such an obtuse sergeant would probably not perceive the danger).

Your comment, while pithy, ignores the facts. I am not asking you to trust your life to my observations; simply pointing out an example of obvious failure within the existing system. Yet your comments suggest you would trust your life to someone with 'experience', even if past experience of their actions suggests they may be incompetent. What leads you to conclude that one type of experience is more valid than the other?

Re:Don't Be Daft

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Example: someone came in to me at work and asks me to solve problem X. Just at that moment I was reading a paper on how to solve problem Y in a completely different domain. But then I realised problem Y is algorithmically same as problem X, even though they're apparently papers about different fields. What in incredible stroke of luck, I could just implement something straight out of the paper. I had no idea someone was going to ask me to solve problem X when I started reading the paper. I was incredibly lucky. Not only did I solve the problem, the solution was novel and is now patented.

I like to read random papers on subjects that don't obviously relate to my work. Obviously someone who doesn't read such papers isn't likely to have the same stroke of luck. So the luck is, to some extent, of my own making.

That's what I mean by "making my own luck". It doesn't seem too different from this cancer related discovery. If you do research in a field, and keep your eyes open, you're much more likely to make a serendipitous discovery in that field than someone who doesn't do research in that field.

Re:Don't Be Daft

[Shotgun]

Way to go, Petersko. My middle school principal told me that luck is just where preparation meets opportunity.

Re:Don't Be Daft

[CAIMLAS]

Uh, first off, she wasn't researching cancer. She was researching indigestion or something like that. She just happened to be using cancer cells.

Second, the compound she was working with has already been patented, and therefore can not be used to cure cancer. In other words, someone else already found this out; she just stumbled on some previous research which invalidated using that specific compound any further.

Re:Don't Be Daft

[trifish]

has already been patented, and therefore can not be used to cure cancer

I'm not quite sure why the fact that it's patented should mean it can't be used to cure cancer.

Re:Don't Be Daft

[CAIMLAS]

Because it's been patented by the large pharmacutical companies which make the marginally successful but wildly expensive cancer drugs and treatments currently on the market. If they were to sell the patent, or to utilize it themselves, they'd effectively be getting rid of their revenue.

Re:Don't Be Daft

[trifish]

People would sue them to oblivion if they should sell them harmful and pseudo-effective drugs when MUCH better and MUCH less harmful drugs can be used instead. At least here in Europe we have such laws that protect us from bastards like you desribed.

Funding cut

[plopez]

Watch her grants get cut since she is reporting a result she didn't write into the grant application.

hee, hee, don't wash up.

[swschrad]

penicillin was found the same way... contamination on the sample cells. instead of washing up, fleming looked further.

this probably means the coffee cups in cubicles will be allowed to grow another couple inches of fur, but to the delight of kid hackers everywhere... don't wash up.

Patents

[brian0918]

From the article: "As the compound is already patented, her team will probably have to design something slightly different to be able to patent it as a new drug."

So is the public at large now generally accepting the beliefs that not only are biological compounds patentable, but that slightly changing them results in something sufficiently different to also be patentable?

I had a similar problem.

[91degrees]

I tried making a perpetual motion machine, but it just kept getting faster and faster. I mean what use is a device that creates free energy? And it's just damn irritating when the fundamental laws of physics stop applying.

Re:I had a similar problem.

[Volante3192]

In this forum we obey the laws of thermodynamics!

Re:I had a similar problem.

[smellsofbikes]

Don't laugh: if you spend time looking at some of the patents for perpetual-motion machines (*always* quality entertainment) many of them include brakes to keep them from overspeeding.

Needless to say, the brakes seem to last a long time.

Re:I had a similar problem.

[carlmenezes]

What he means is....attach a fan to your perpetual motion machine in the summer :)

Nice!

[SQLz]

Smoke em' if you got em boys.

Re:Nice!

[Dunbal]

Smoke em' if you got em boys.


      They said cure for cancer, not COPD, stroke, heart disease and all the other things smokers die from. Very few smokers actually get lung cancer, compared to all the heart attacks and chronic bronchitics out there.

So even with rocket science

[Programmer_In_Traini]

So even with professions that goes in the rocket science section it still works by trial and error.
forget all the calculations and fancy formulas, most breakthroughs are still done by "mistake"

Re:So even with rocket science

[TobascoKid]

forget all the calculations and fancy formulas, most breakthroughs are still done by "mistake"

I think it's more a matter of the successful mistakes get better reporting as the "it was a mistake" makes for a better story.

Yes.

[Garrett Fox]

Yes. As I understand it, the drug was originally developed to increase blood flow to the heart. It missed.

Re:Yes.

[soft_guy]

Don't ask the guy who invented Viagra to shoot you in the heart because he might miss.

Just Like Penicillin

[Doc Ruby]

Penicillin, the panacea of the last generation of medical science, was discovered accidentally by Alexander Fleming. Now a cancer cure, our era's "holy grail", has perhaps been found in a similar accident.

It seems that the "error" part of the scientific method's "trial and error" process is even more important than the planned "trial" part.

Maybe we should have more scientific research conducted like jazz, which is sometimes described as "gracefully exploiting errors".

Re:Just Like Penicillin

[Anonymous Coward]

You, my friend, are definitely reading too much Wikipdia.

Re:Just Like Penicillin

[feronti]

Ah yes! We definitely need more globetrotter algebra

Re:PPAR-Gamma is a cellular receptor, not a compou

[IainMH]

Time for people to stop posting this antiquated junk as "new news." n00b

Hey hey calm down

[rbarreira]

Can you please calm down a bit and realise that even if the article is wrong, this is still potentially valuable if the scientists believe it?

why the AMA?

[nietsch]

What does the American Modelers Association have to do with it?

Re:why the AMA?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're being facetious, I hope.... http://www.ama-assn.org/

Scientist Vs Researcher

[TobascoKid]

Seeing as the move to get people to call crackers crackers and not hackers never worked, I really doubt trying to get people call researchers researchers is every going to take off, especially as all researchers are, by definition, scientists anyway.

Anyway, why will changing the name stop ill-qualified challenges? One researcher in one branch of science could still challenge another researcher in another branch.

Re:Scientist Vs Researcher

[Bloke down the pub]

all researchers are, by definition, scientists anyway.

Great news - I'm researching ancient Greek, but I always wanted to be a scientist really.

Re:Scientist Vs Researcher

[Maximum Prophet]

This had bothered me since 8th grade English class when I was told that we were going to do research, and I envisioned white lab coats and studying things that had never been done/seen before. What a letdown it was when the teacher told us we were going to spend our time in the library studying what other people had done. Let's put the "re" back into research. What you are doing is true research, what scientists do is original search. (ok, they have to do a lot of research first to see what's already been done before they start to do the original stuff)

Re:Scientist Vs Researcher

[JohnFluxx]

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.

But I would count historians as scientists. Why wouldn't they be?

Re:Scientist Vs Researcher

[Anonymous Coward]

But now you REALLY know why. Discoveries such as this are what you will find.
Many years after the fact. Another cure sitting on the shelf. The moral being
that before you buy into any media hype this or that does or doesn't work
(e.g Vitamin E, Echinacea, Curcurmin, etc) do your own SEARCH of EXISTING RESEARCH.

Its out there and it doesn't match what the media hypes, and often doesn't match
textbook teaching either.

LOL! Please type the word in this image: humility

Re:Scientist Vs Researcher

[jc42]

I would count historians as scientists. Why wouldn't they be?

Actually, some historians are scientists, and others aren't. It depends on whether they're using scientific methods in their research. In the field of history, there is a lot of very valuable research that doesn't require scientific methods. Just digging around in archives for old records, collating them, and publishing summaries on narrow topics can be extremely valuable to other historians. Finding survivors of events, interviewing them, and writing down their comments can be valuable non-scientific historical research.

A similar thing happens in some scientific fields. There is a lot of valuable biological data from non-scientists who have merely done a lot of observations of something where they live and written down detail notes. Thus many people have left behind detailed, dated records of what sort of birds and other animals were visiting their backyard feeders. Astronomy depends on a flock of amateurs constantly scanning the night skies and reporting changes. You don't need to be a trained scientist to do this; you just need to be a good observer who is willing to put in the time (and maybe buy some equipment). You can get a subspecies or a comet named after you, while the scientists get theories based on your data named after them.

History and some sciences can really benefit from massive low-level data collection. The science is in the analysis of the data, not so much in the collection of the data.

Re:Scientist Vs Researcher

[izprince]

Yeah, but what about the cracker ass crackers?

Re:stuff is patented: Sorry, can't cure cancer tod

[drinkypoo]

Another plus for having a "Great" patent system. You have cancer? Go to China or India. After a few years of people doing this, China and India will be as rich as the USA was 5 years ago.

Amen! By the same token, I think that if you're an individual valuable to business or scientific progress living in the US, and you don't like to see what the US is doing with its power, you have a responsibility to either enter politics, or leave the country.

Otherwise you're just lending your power to the country with whose actions you disagree, and I find that more than a bit hypocritical.

Scientists have often wanted to be apolitical, but even refusing to take a specific political stance is itself a political statement. It's simply impossible. Be part of the solution, or... you know the rest.

Aether anyone?

[dgbrownnt]

Not nearly as annoyed as Michelson and Morley were, I'm sure ;-)

(Gotta love how science works sometimes)

Fluxalicious

[Tablizer]

"Damned Flux Capacitor made my car shoot up strait through the garage roof and float around. Took me three @#&*! days to get the damned thing down and another 8 to fix the garage."

Very True. Discovery of Teflon is another example.

[g2devi]

"Dr. Plunkett was under contract with the DuPont Company and was doing research on methods of creating non-toxic refrigerants that would have very specialized uses; however, upon beginning his original experiment he realized that he had a problem . When he went to open the tank of gaseous tetrafluoroethylene, no gas came out of the cylinder; instead the only thing that came from this was a great curiosity . What perplexed Plunkett was that the weight of the tank indicated that there should be a given amount of the fluorocarbon present in the tank, and that it simply hadn't leaked out. This puzzled Plunkett and caused him to investigate what was actually still in the "empty" tank; however, it was not until he sawed the tank open that he realized what had taken place. Inside the tank he found a white, waxy powder and concluded that these individual gas molecules had bonded together to form this incredible solid, teflon, that had some very promising chemical properties."

Source: http://users.wfu.edu/starbt5/Serendipity%20Project /website/Serendipity.htm

Wow, Slashdot, welcome to two weeks ago!

[Electric Eye]

This was all over the news Feb 5. Slow day, huh?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070205/sc_nm/cancer_d rug_dc_4

Getting hungry, Jimmy?

[spun]

Jimmy: Uhh, Mr. McClure, I have a crazy friend who thinks it's wrong to call yourself a scientist if you don't have a sciencey type degree. Is he crazy?
Troy: Nooooo, just ignorant. You see, your crazy friend never heard of "The Scientific Method." Just ask this scientician.
Scientician: Uhhhh...
Troy: He'll tell you that anyone who makes observations, creates theories based on them, tests the predicitons of those theories, and modifies the theories based on the tests is a scientist. Don't kid yourself, Jimmy. If that scientician ever got the chance, he'd study you and everyone you care about.

Re:Getting hungry, Jimmy?

[skoaldipper]

A Troy McClure reference! Quick, someone hook spun up with some karma kudos. Warp factor +5 Mr. Scott! Engage!

Re:Getting hungry, Jimmy?

[spun]

Look at my uid. I've been here since before the karma cap. I neither need karma nor does being modded down hurt me in any way. Thanks for playing, though. Here's a copy of our home game, "Snide comments from the peanut gallery." Enjoy!

Re:Getting hungry, Jimmy?

[drxenos]

Best slam ever.

Re:Getting hungry, Jimmy?

[k1e0x]

"modifies the theories"

uhh, really? What kind of science are you doing? Its ok.. apparently you also don't really understand it.

For the record.. there is no modification. you either prove or disprove it. It is fact or not, you don't slightly alter it to fit. I think your confusing "theory" and the modern "nifty idea"

Re:Getting hungry, Jimmy?

[spun]

The scientific method is an iterative process. What I wrote is a shorthand for this:
      1. Define the question
      2. Gather information and resources
      3. Form hypothesis
      4. Perform experiment and collect data
      5. Analyze data
      6. Interpret data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypotheses
      7. Publish results

Sorry if I was not clear. But modifying theories is part of the scientific method. Not as in, "I'll fudge my theory to fit the facts," but as in, "That iteration of my theory didn't correctly predict this occurance. Based on my observations, the theory needs to be modified thusly. Let me see what new predictions it makes and test for those."

Re:Getting hungry, Jimmy?

[Cervantes]

Look at my uid. I've been here since before the karma cap. I neither need karma nor does being modded down hurt me in any way. Thanks for playing, though. Here's a copy of our home game, "Snide comments from the peanut gallery." Enjoy!

pwned.

Sucker.

spun(1352) owns teh intarwebs for 5 minutes.

Re:Getting hungry, Jimmy?

[skoaldipper]

-1 Troll tag for handing out gratitude to a poster? Did you miss my sig? Where's the slashdot love?

Re:Getting hungry, Jimmy?

[mrscorpio]

I figured you'd get your share of karma just for your e-mail address.

Re:Getting hungry, Jimmy?

[skoaldipper]

I admire both Linus and Tannebaum. They were cult leaders to me during the early infancy of linux and my adoption to it. The email address is fictitious of course, but left there as a historical reference and tribute. I figure someone will scratch their chin and eventually google on the significance of that relationship (if not known already).

Re:PPAR-Gamma is a cellular receptor, not a compou

[operagost]

Actually, I bet it was supposed to be an Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulatorrrrrrr...

You forgot...

[eheldreth]

"Hey, hold my beer!"

Re:You forgot...

[gbobeck]

"Damn thing don't wur"

or

"Trust me, I'm an expert"

Re:You forgot...

[Johnny5000]

how about "what does this button do?"

seems like history repeats itself

[someone1234]

Penicillin was discovered similarly. Anyway, there have been so many cancer drugs discovered in the last 5 years i still wonder cancer isn't declared extinct.

Re:seems like history repeats itself

[Dunbal]

Penicillin was discovered similarly.

      Oh yeah, and it was "discovered" by Alexander Fleming in 1928, despite having been discovered in 1923 and published in 1927 by this guy. It only goes to show...

Re:seems like history repeats itself

[PigIronBob]

In think we've come pretty far, considering my daughter will receive her free cervical cancer vaccine sometime this month.

Re:seems like history repeats itself

[zuiraM]

Quite a number of these compounds are probably effective.

But then there's the question of safety, short-term and long-term, effective administration, cost effective production, etc..

And then there's the extensive clinical trials that have to be conducted, approval processes, etc., as well as the patent issues.

It takes years for something to go from discovery to clinical trials, and then years more to go from trials to availability. Business as usual, and much of it for a good reason.

There's probably a few effective, safe drugs in the pipeline that *will* materialize, but it may take years to decades before they are available.

And cost may still prevent this from being interesting. I mean, if you have a treatment resistant bacterial infection, it *is* possible to extract the bacteria, sequence them, and engineer a bacteriophage that is then injected into your bloodstream. This kills the infection. But it isn't generally done, as it costs too much. ISTR this is being offered in Russia, but at some pretty extreme prices, since it's all time-and-resource-intensive manual work in the lab.

If you can pay to have a medical research facility at your disposal, working on curing you, chances are they will be able to deal with a lot of things that would ordinarily have been incurable or even untreatable. But it isn't cost effective, and they don't make as much money from it as they would from developing generic treatments for the masses, so it just isn't done very often.

Annoyed but not mad

[rjschwarz]

Because we don't need any more mad scientists around.

Not idiots, really.

[Grendel Drago]

You know, I'm not ready to call Roy Plunkett an idiot for discovering Teflon. Everybody makes mistakes; geniuses just capitalize on them.

Re:Not idiots, really.

[Evilest Doer]

Or, as Louis Pasteur said, "Chance favors the prepared mind."

Re:Not idiots, really.

[Dunbal]

Or, as Louis Pasteur said, "Chance favors the prepared mind."


      Or as Confucius said: They eyes cannot see what the mind does not understand.

Re:Not idiots, really.

[WilliamSChips]

Or as Confucius said: Man who stands on toilet is high on pot.

There's no contradiction.

[Grendel Drago]

There's no contradiction in the statement that most discoveries come from screwups, but most screwups don't lead to discoveries. (I can't actually back up the first half of that statement, of course; I'm just paraphrasing Asimov.) It's like saying that most serial killers are male, but most males aren't serial killers. Or that most prostitutes are women, but most women aren't prostitutes. Or that most suicide bombers are Arab, but most Arabs aren't suicide bombers. (Anyone I haven't offended yet with one of my examples... ?)

Mouse Cancer

[trongey]

I can't believe they keep pouring so damn much money into research for curing mouse cancer. I mean, who cares if mice have cancer? They only live a couple of years anyway.
Why don't they use some of this money to find cures for human diseases or world hunger, or something?

Re:Mouse Cancer

[Bastian]

This might have been meant as a joke, but there's a healthy dose of truth to it. There's enough physiological difference between mice and humans that you can't trust research on them to be applicable to humans. This is why animal testing has to be followed up with extensive human trials before a drug can be released to the market.

For example, many animal trials (mice in particular) didn't show cigarette smoke to be nearly as much of a cancer risk as it is for humans. This research data was in turn used by Big Tobacco in their defense back when they were still trying to pretend that smoking isn't so bad.

Similarly, penicillin's release to the market was delayed because it had a tendency to kill lab animals.

Re:Mouse Cancer

[Lil'wombat]

I've always wondered how many promising drugs have never seen the light of day because they performed poorly in animal models.

Alright - I Concede I Didn't RTFA Well Enough

[Petersko]

As others have pointed out, she wasn't doing cancer research. However, I would point out that whatever she WAS doing, she was working with cancerous cells.

Regardless, I maintain it was much less luck than determined methodology that brought this forward. A fortunate event happened at the tip of decades of buildup.

Re:Alright - I Concede I Didn't RTFA Well Enough

[jimstapleton]

And if you had bothered reading what I said, you would have noticed that I never once said that the decades of research never happened. I simply said this step probably wouldn't have happened without that simple piece of blind luck.

A result in her field of study: that would be determined methodology. But this was luck. Any scientist would admit that, but you are probably and engineer or lawyer, correct?

Re:Alright - I Concede I Didn't RTFA Well Enough

[Anonymous Coward]

It was luck, but a kind of luck that wouldn't have come by to your average Joe.

Re:PPAR-Gamma is a cellular receptor, not a compou

[Anonymous Coward]

PPAR-Gamma is a cellular receptor, not a compound

If it's not an element, then it's a compound. Unless it's a mixture.

Re:stuff is patented: Sorry, can't cure cancer tod

[ChrisMaple]

People have been going to Mexico for more than 30 years for cancer "cures" not available in the U.S.. Mexico is much smaller than either India or China, yet all this medical travel has yet to make Mexico notably better.

Good About Patents

[WED Fan]

I know what the response will be, but one of the good things about patents is...

They allow companies to charge licensing fees for products based on their discoveries, which in turn provides money and further incentive to find new compounds and uses for existing compounds. Generating more money for more...

Without the money motivation and OWNERSHIP, we would rely upon government to be the source of all research money. Then you'd have to wrangle with desk-bound government boobs and politicians (the ones in power at the moment) to get your funding.

The current U.S. government, as headed by GWB has pulled all government funding for certain types of research. That leaves private funds. Do you really want to give the next President, or the next one, or the next, complete control over your research purse strings? Sure, we might get one that is totally cool, but history shows, we'll elect an asshole afterwards.

Yes, I know, in an ideal world, we wouldn't need patents, people would discover for the fun of it and donate it all for the betterment of the world. But, we don't live in that fairy-tale world, and it won't happen in our lifetime.

Patents expire, medicine gets cheaper, and we all get our purple and blue pills at lower cost, eventually.

To paraphrase: U.S. patents are the worst thing going, except for all the other systems.

She was lucky

[WrongDecision]

Agreed. She was lucky. "Luck is when preparation meets opportunity" -somebody intelligent said that, damned if I know who.

Good news, everyone!

[JoshDM]

I've solved that pesky owl problem, but inadverdently cured cancer. I hope you don't mind.

Re:Good news, everyone!

[Shadyman]

O RLY?

Nothing to see here

[Anonymous Coward]

CAncer? naw, nothing to see here please move along.

Re:PPAR-Gamma is a cellular receptor, not a compou

[pclminion]

So you're saying I shouldn't find out about things on Slashdot because I could just look in one of a billion scientific journals? Oddly enough, I think most Slashdot readers aren't hardcore scientists and don't spend their time reading scientific journals (seeing as WE CAN'T without paying subscriptions). So if we don't read it here, where SHOULD we read about it? I haven't seen this in the mainstream news.

Quit being an elitist asshole.

Re:PPAR-Gamma is a cellular receptor, not a compou

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention that mice != humans. In most lab tests humans react differently to drugs than mice. Mice are just retarded, convienent, and a way to tell the general public something that they would never otehrwise put in their body is safe. "Well, the retarded mouse ate it and is still alive..And still retarded..."

Good night, and good luck.

[tut21]

To preempt typically thoughtless comments from self-appointed experts, every story on Slashdot should end with the phrase "this news is not particularly new."

Re:PPAR-Gamma is a cellular receptor, not a compou

[WwWonka]

Sorry, but I haven't read the latest issue of "PPAR-gamma Receptor Weekly", so this IS news to me!

Although I probably will pick up the current issue with the special tribute to Anna Nicole.

The headline is accurate, too

[iamacat]

The scientist is still annoyed, because the compound is already patented, and thus will not be profitable as a cancer drug. Therefore, they will work on making another, possibly more toxic or less effective, formula rather than pushing for a human trial.

Re:The headline is accurate, too

[LeDopore]

What we need here is a new incentive program for therapy discovery. In a blog post of mine I've outlined a way we could reward researchers for discovering cures, not just for finding new patentable molecules.

Take a look and see if you can find any holes in my idea, and leave comments either here or on the blog if you have any more ideas.

Thanks!

Re:The headline is accurate, too

[Anonymous Coward]

The scientist is still annoyed, because the compound is already patented, and thus will not be profitable as a cancer drug. Therefore, they will work on making another, possibly more toxic or less effective, formula rather than pushing for a human trial.

Plus, it appears to be effective. Actually curing a condition instead of just treating the symptoms could get you sued or worse.

Re:The headline is accurate, too

[StikyPad]

Therefore, they will work on making another, possibly more toxic or less effective, formula rather than pushing for a human trial.

Or possibly less toxic or more effective. The argument is not that they have to keep working -- they should do that anyway -- but rather that unused patents should be revoked.

Re:The headline is accurate, too

[nanoakron]

Where the fuck do you get your cynicism from?

Yeah, that's right - all cancer researchers are only out for a quick buck and fuck every possible cure that gets in their way.

Yeah, cancer researchers are holding back the true cures until we pay them enough.

Yeah, cancer research laboratories don't employ people suffering from cancer themselves. It's only the lay public that suffer from cancer, not scientists and stuff.

You fucking retard.

Re:The headline is accurate, too

[Anonymous Coward]

"You fucking retard." Yet another reason to stay away from Slashdot...

Re:The headline is accurate, too

[jc42]

Actually curing a condition instead of just treating the symptoms could get you sued or worse.

Heh. I've heard comments from drug-company people effectively admitting this. The most common seems to be the explanations from a number of companies for why they've stopped making vaccines. The problem is that vaccines aren't profitable. You sell one or two doses to a customer, the customer is cured, and you get no repeat business. They don't seem to see anything questionable in this explanation.

When I first heard this idea years ago, I thought it was a sick attempt at a joke. Eventually I learned that it isn't actually a joke at all; it's how companies act.

It does remind me of the ongoing complaint from many professional comedians: Satire is a very difficult sort of humor to do well, because no matter how crazy your satire is, the real world soon undercuts your joke by doing something even crazier. In particular, they complain that politicians keep saying and doing things that they'd never have dared to put into their satire. I've also heard them making similar complaints about the management of big corporations. Scott Adams (Dilbert) has made such complaints, for instance. (But he also observes that he will never run out of material, because management keeps coming up with ever more insane actions that readers send to him.)

Re:The headline is accurate, too

[Grail]

Modern scientific research motivated as much by pure science as it is by profit. If you spend millions of dollars researching the cure for cancer, you can bet your sponsors want to see some return on investment. If someone else has already patented the particular receptors that you wish to use, you're going to spend so much in licencing that patent, there'll be nothing left to pay dividends.

Which of course leads to the issue of patenting proteins and genes, but this is not the forum for that discussion.

Re:PPAR-Gamma is a cellular receptor, not a compou

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse us for getting overly excited about a cure for cancer. Sorry for pissing you off.

I really love your approach to the mistake. Hopefully you manage people where you can use this approach on them. I'm sure you'll be repaid with loyalty and many respectful comments behind your back.

rofl

[DuroSoft]

the story is somehow 3x funnier then the headline. ROTFLMAO

Where is that system used?

[Per Abrahamsen]

I have never heard it before. The universities use a different system (with a lot of titles, culminating in full professor), and the non-university research centers we collaborate with have a simple two tier system ("researcher" and "senior researcher").

Re:Where is that system used?

[mikael]

For the academic profession, the seniority system seems to be as follows (from Wikipedia:

professor
reader
senior lecturer
lecturer
postdoctorate research fellow/researcher
research assistant

From the industrial sector, there seem to be many different seniority systems. My first posting was from looking at biotechnology companies, but from
looking at New Scientist job pages, the followsing are also available:

Director
Section Leader
Team Leader
Senior Research Scientist
Scientist
Laboratory Manager
Technician/Laboratory Analyst

Re:PPAR-Gamma is a cellular receptor, not a compou

[skoaldipper]

My understanding is that PPAR-y is a gene receptor (as well as say alpha and delta). Cancer research with the PPAR-y receptor dates back to at least 2000 afaik. What msnbc, reuters and other new outlets fail to mention (in my estimation) is what that "magic compound" is. But it is a compound. That patent accepts various agents to qualify as such, which she addresses and are probably specific mixtures to incite those gamma receptors. I have heard of various PPAR-y research over the years, including PPAR-y receptor modulator agents like tocopherols (vitamin E) for colorectal cancer and retinoids (vitamin A) for breast cancer, or even chemicals for other PPAR-y disease associations. I am not a chemist, but doesn't even tocopherol (for example) contain phenol chains (which that patent requires for one such PPAR-y compound mixture)?

How 'Unwanted side effects' labeling begins

[Provocateur]

Caution: Unwanted side effects may occur. Such as tanning. Consult your doctor or pharmacist.
 

Viagra: A failure with angina,

[bshroyer]

But a brilliant success with...

Honestly, I can only think of one word that rhymes with "angina."
Ironic. Whatever.

Scientist or Engineer

[Petersko]

"A result in her field of study: that would be determined methodology. But this was luck. Any scientist would admit that, but you are probably and engineer or lawyer, correct?"

Neither. Merely an ordinary fellow with strong leanings towards science AND engineering. I know little or nothing about law, except where I have broken it.

My drug CAN do everything!

[paladinwannabe2]

It looks like that was indeed the strategy. According to the AC who posted after you, this chemical is being patented for treating every serious disease known to mankind. And this is without any research verifying those claims. Something seems very wrong here- if you can patent a chemical doing anything without testing it, why not just create a computer program that creates some ridiculously huge number of organic compounds, patent them all, and wait for someone to find one of them that does something?

Not sure how to feel

[tacokill]

I don't know whether to laugh at your comment or cry. On one hand, I laugh because we "accidentally" discover things all the time and this is a good thing. Then I realize we were trying to make an artifical tanning agent --- and I cry.

Seriously, is ALL pharmaceutical research on tanning, boners, and other non-life threatening shit? How about we tackle the stuff the KILLS PEOPLE first, huh? (Nah, there's too much money in the other stuff...)

Truly, a sad statement on affairs, if I've ever seen one.

Re:Not sure how to feel

[mlyle]

The tanning agents are being researched because they have the possibility of preventing a heck of a lot of cases of skin cancer-- by protecting people against the sun BEFORE damage occurs. Also, people might go outside to tan themselves less with an alternative.

(But even if you're going to the beach, there's a benefit and prevented skin damage by taking this first, other than your boner showing through your swim trunks).

So, it's not quite so silly, eh?

Re:Not sure how to feel

[vorpal22]

Seriously, is ALL pharmaceutical research on tanning, boners, and other non-life threatening shit?

No, not all, of course. At the same time, is it necessary that every pharmaceutical endeavour be focused on HIV, cancer, H5N1, etc? Artificial tanning agents and drugs for erectile difficulties are important to many people. Saying that they're not worth researching because there's life-threatening shit could continue to be extrapolated ad nauseum to the point where we could say that it's absurd that business people focus on business, which in many cases isn't really necessary, and instead should have gotten careers in medical research to cure ailments.

Funny sign in a research lab

[rwyoder]

I used to know two people who worked as assistants to a PhD in a corporate research lab. They told me they had a sign hanging in their lab that read: "If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be research."

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

In defence of bloggers

[LeDopore]

So, does that mean you think the professional journalists are doing a fine job?

At the very least, their incentives are to scare and sensationalize. Don't criticize something until you have something better to replace it with.

Re:Very True. Discovery of Teflon is another examp

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Heard a variant of that from a teaching fellow. In that version it wasn't quite so straightforward:

F4C2 is horribly toxic. They had a big tank of this compressed gas and had set up the wall of glassware (with great care) for some experiment. They hooked it up, opened the valve, and nothing came out. (Yet the weight, as above, indicated that the tank WAS still full.)

The concern was that the valve was clogged, and that the tank still contained the poisonous gas under high pressure. So any attempt to open it - or even closely examine the valve - could lead to the sudden release of the gas and the death of all in the room and many in the building. Yet how could they dispose of it? And what HAD happened, anyhow?

(This was like a blown fuse in an electrical lab: The initial trouble is just a symptom of something underlying, which needs to be investigated, if only to prevent a recurrence.)

Eventually, after much deliberation, one of the experimenters took his life in his hands and cut open the tank, discovering the white powder.

They immediately realized it had polymerized (probably due to a contaminant) and were hot on the trail of a new and very interestin/useful plastic - starting with a large sample which told them what useful properties it would have and knowing exactly what the monomer in question was.

= = = =

Discovery of nylon was a similar accident: A solution was left on a window sill and turned cloudy when exposed to light. Fortunately the chemist decided to examine it to figure out what had happened rather than just dumping it - and thus were born synthetic fabrics.

Re:PPAR-Gamma is a cellular receptor, not a compou

[oblivionboy]

I completely agree with you. How is this being known for months "old news"? While I appreciate the level of expertise at /., its comes at the price of amazing hubris.

Similiar

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I am just too dumb, is this compound similar to the news out of the University of Alberta?
Small molecule offers big hope against cancer

blind luck plus ability to recognize.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

"for all the logic and deductive reasoning they use, it ends up being pure chance and blind luck that gives us some of the best discoveries." ...You make it sound like the researcher was walking down the street one day with a dish of cancer and somebody bumped into her with the right chemicals. ...

The decades of previous work, including her education and work experience, worked steadily towards her being a cancer researcher who was following a logical chain that brought cancer cells and compound together for the discovery.

But sometimes you DO have a "blind luck" event - which someone with the right education can recognize and develop.

An example (which I heard from Emmett Leith, one of the inventors of practical holography) was the discovery (not invention) of the neodymium/glass laser.

Laser researcher (in the "rod of synthetic ruby" days) was home for vacation and took a flash picture using a strobe-light flash on a camera. He happened to notice a red blink from an ashtray. So he fired the flash at it:

  Flash ... Blink!
  Flash ... Blink!
  Flash ... Blink!

Asking for and receiving the oddball ashtray, he took it in to the lab, along with the flash camera, called everybody together, and ran the demo:

  Flash ... Blink!

After everybody else had seen and confirmed the phenomenon they smashed the glass and spectroanalyzed the fragments, discovering the neodymium impurity (which had provided the gain - interacting with the total internal reflection of the ashtray surfaces which provided the resonant cavity).

Then they were successful at making lasers out of rods of neodymium-doped glass - much cheaper than synthetic ruby.

Suprised nobody has quoted L. Pasteur

[hey!]

Dans les champs de l'observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés... In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.

please try to stay on topic

[sweatyboatman]

who modded this insightful? at best it's offtopic.

Annoyed, but...

[Tavor]

The scientist should be annoyed, but most great discoveries happen by accident. Of the top of my head, this sounds very similar to the discovery of Penicillin.

Damn, now I feel like an ass

[spun]

Oh, man, I'm sorry. I thought you were being facetious and I didn't see the -- between the post and the sig. If I'd known that was your sig, I'd have known you weren't being facetious. Again, sorry I came down on you.

Re:Damn, now I feel like an ass

[skoaldipper]

No worries brother. I rather enjoyed your comment actually. I'm never facetious, just mostly uninformed.

Re:stuff is patented: Sorry, can't cure cancer tod

[Gryle]

Be part of the solution, or... you know the rest.
...be part of the precipitate?

Hours of studying

[spineboy]

I would say the 10,000 hours is a bit low for just medical school. Here's my calculation of hors spent learning/training.

Let's see I did 4 years med schoool (80 hours a week), 5 years of residency(90-120 hrs/week) and a 2 year fellowship (70 hours/week)
So I get 80hrs*44weeks*4years=14,000 hours medschool (10k classroom/reading + 4k time in clinical teaching rotaions)
residencey 100 hrs*48 weeks *5 years =24,000 (Surgical training+studying)
fellowship 70hrs*50weeks*2 years=7000 hours (Advanced Surgical training+studying)

45,000 hours of studying/training to call myself a certain type of surgical subspecialist

So let's see normal person works 40 hrs/week * 50 weeks = 2000 hours/year = Great I've studied medicine as much as some people (21 years) who get to retire, and I'm just starting.

Re:Hours of studying

[Dunbal]

I would say the 10,000 hours is a bit low for just medical school.

      Truly masterful, the way you immediately spotted the dissection plane and just took his argument apart. Complete hemostasis, too. I guess a lot of people really have no idea of the hours we GLADLY put in to this career ;)

      Kudos ;)

Re:Hours of studying

[nomadic]

Alright, you're including the time you spent studying, which I don't know if I would, because that's going to be different for every person. And my issue with the hostility was the swipe at lawyers, which I didn't understand at all, since nobody had brought them up.

Re:Hours of studying

[Anonymous Coward]

"4 years med schoool (80 hours a week)"

Not any med students I know. 7 days x 11 hours/day year-round for 4 years? Not even close.

mod parent FUNNY

[grolschie]

Excellent post! Thanks dude! :-)

Wow

[drachenstern]

You had to harm seven puppies to make water? What's your secret?

I want to be able to make things without killing prepubescent mammals.

Have you tried geese with the end result of golden eggs?

Many things kill cancer cells but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at biological research institute and know how much frustration can there be.
There many chemicals that can kill cancer cells but we need something kill the cancer cell without killing the host (the person). Chemotherapy can kill most of the targeted cancer cells but damages some of the our health cells while they are at it. That is why people that is using chemotherapy lose their hair, nails, and are sick to their stomach since these are similar protein "docks" as the cancer cell.
What cancer researchers are doing is trying find a chemical or method to kill only the cancer with harming the host which a tall order since we have only scratched the surface of our cells. Each type of cancer has a different method of creation and destruction so we need to understand both before we can prevent the cancer from happening and once it forms kill it.

Re:PPAR-Gamma is a cellular receptor, not a compou

[Anonymous Coward]

It may well be a cellular receptor but clearly the article is not talking about the use of a receptor. It is talking about a "modulator".... something that is acting on the PPAR-gamma receptor. The link you provided covers the gene being modified by the compound.

The "correction" to the story is incorrect, I believe.

Wasn't penicillin found in a similar manner?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some scientist was growing bacterial cultures in petri dishes... "Hmm... Darn it, some mold got in here and is killing my samples. Oh, wait! There might be a use for this..."

He gets his cynicism from the world around us

[JudgeFurious]

Yeah that's right - all cancer researchers are only out for the good of the human race and even if they have to starve themselves and live in personal poverty it's cool because they're doing something more important than pleasing the shareholders of the drug company they volunteer their time to.

Yeah, cancer researchers will do anything they can to get a drug to the people who need it. They usually give it away at cost to save peoples lives right?

Yeah, cancer researchers only employ people who have a vested interest in finding a cure for cancer before they die because they all have cancer and it's not just a job to even a small handful of them. In fact many of them go out of their way to get cancer just so they can heighten the sense of urgency around the lab.

Shithead.

PPAR-Gamma *modulator* is Still a Story

[darkonc]

It's actually a PPAR-gamma Modulator, not PPAR-gamma, itself. The Poster messed up, and the editors didn't catch it. In other words, this really is still a story. (and for people not into molecular biology, it would have probably been a story anyways)

Re:stuff is patented: Sorry, can't cure cancer tod

[drinkypoo]

That actually IS the one I am thinking of. Be part of the solution, or drop out and become irrelevant instead of hanging around and being part of the problem instead. Get busy living, or get busy dying. Why be a member of the living dead? (Stood and watched as the feds cold centralized...)