"Seriously, how must hate was spewed by the left against Bush during his entire administration? Why wasn't Al Gore blamed for the Discovery Channel hostage situation? Truth is, you just want to twist a mentally disturbed individual's actions in order to score political points. And that makes you part of the problem in this country."
False equivalence strikes again. I don't recall the Al Gore graphic depicting a target over the Discovery Channel. Or him advocating violence. As for the hatred of Bush and his policies, I don't recall that having an entire political party, news channel, and the media in general supporting it. There were also valid points of disagreement. Your bomb threat link seems to be an isolated event for Republicans but common for Democratic candidates. The Kanjorski quote was saying that we should shoot him because of the rather large crime he committed. Not quite the same thing as passing legislation. The arsonist is difficult to tell. And as for Cameron, he's right about Beck. And he wanted to shoot it out with deniers western high noon style. Hardly an assassination. But yes, there are people who aren't conservatives/authoritarians who commit and advocate violence.
As to your other points, advocating political violence is bad. No matter who does it. But remember, Fox news does this 24/7. Republican candidates for office did this routinely. It's considered mainstream political thought in the Republican party. The issue is scale.
And most telling is the urge by the right to distance themselves from the shooter. That they THINK there is a connection is pretty damning.
"Every word should be assumed to have been selected not for its literal meaning, but its emotional impact. In other words: No matter what they say, they don't mean it. They say whatever gets the most impact, not whatever is "correct". If you take a politician (or any other marketing speech) literally, you have a brain deficit."
If they carefully chose their words to have emotional impact and choose to lie and if the emotional impact is negative or encourages people to commit violence, I'm going to assume that they meant it. And hold them responsible. Free speech, like every other right, is not absolute. Which is also the concept behind "hate speech".
As for political correctness, that is a right wing talking point. It's made up. Manufactured.
"And I am strongly against restricting everyone just because there are a couple brain damaged people around. Restrict the damaged, not the sane. That goes for PC as well, btw., but we lost that fight when they made us say "coloured person" instead of locking up the five guys who had mental issue with being called "black"."
Your priviledge is showing. Badly. But if you don't understand why people are entitled to self identify, have equal rights, or why equating people with mental illness or physical disabilities as less than human is wrong, don't be surprised if people think you are an asshole. You are perfectly free to say anything you want, believe anything you want and call anybody anything you want. But you have to be willing to suffer the consequences.
"That's what I said elsewhere -- he's an anarchist, not right-wing Palinbot."
If we assume that is true, that doesn't really help your argument. Because that side has been spouting a signficant amount of anti-government rhetoric for a significant amount of time. Where exactly did he get the idea to take out this particular person? And why?
Based on your assumption you could make the case that extreme views of either spectrum could have pushed him to commit an act of political violence. But we don't have that situation at the present time.
"Your comment stands at +5 insightful, so several people must agree with you, what's the deal?"
Ignoring the fact that mental illness has no relation to violent and certainly doesn't explain the cause any better than saying he was male or the sky was blue, I think it is just a way to "other" the person. If he is different then we don't have to really consider the reasons behind WHY he did what he did. We just assume the label is the reason and continue in our (blissful) ignorance.
"Or maybe the unprosecuted, clear voter intimidation brought to you by club weilding Blank Panther thugs."
Because there was no voter intimidation. Just because Faux News replys the same video clip over and over doesn't prove anything. This group also doesn't have any relation to the group of the 1960's. And it could also fit in a Smart Car with room left over.
"There are plenty of crazies on the right, but claiming the left doesn't have its share goons and enforcers is blind mindedness."
This is called false equivalence. When you have to search for insignificant groups, isolated individuals and the ancient past and compare them to Congressional candidates and their staff, a major political party, a major news network and their staff, candidates for president and vice president and the like, there is just no realistic comparison. One is essentially random while the other is a coordinated and planned endeavor.
"Simple reality is that local government meetings are fairly open events that are not that strict on security."
The sheer ignorance of people never ceases to amaze me. I thought this was common knowledge. It is scary how little knowledge people truly have of local government. Do they not interact with it at all?
It was interesting to read how little security the US Capital had within my lifetime. You could actually wander the halls of Congress in the 70's. People have no idea how much they have lost due to the rhetoric.
"Or on the other hand, the extreme that blames an entire group of people for the actions of a derranged man that has absolfuckinglutely NOTHING to do with anything that group of people?"
"But don't let the facts get in the way of taking a tragedy and trying to use it to to further your own political preconceptions because clearly THAT is more important to you than the suffering the lives lost today."
You seem to lack some critical thinking skills yourself. Exactly what evidence do you have that the shooter was mentally ill? Are you qualified to make that determination? Are you aware that even if this person was mentally ill, that would make him no more likely to commit a crime than one who wasn't?
So even if we are dealing with a mentally ill person, we still do not know why he committed the attempted assassination and other murders. But I would suggest that we have established an excellent working hypothesis. We have an entire political party with a political strategy of radicalizing their base. They use violent imagery, they lie, they demonize, they dehumanize. This is aided by the media in general and is standard operating procedure for entire networks. One of their targets was the Congresswoman. Do you seriously believe that the shooter just picked this woman at random? Or was it far more likely that he responded to this general level of propaganda, internalized it and decided to act? He may have been more easily influenced because of an underlying condition but he still needed the push.
"Well, this guy is not from the Fox News Right and he's the one killing people."
As you are so fond of saying, citation needed.
It is false equivalence to say both sides are doing it equally. That's the whole point of false equivalence. People are comparing isolated events by isolated people with concerted strategies by entire networks and political parties. The mere fact that the right is trying so hard to distance themselves from the shooter speaks volumes. Even if this person is not associated with the right, that fact alone is extremely important. The people claiming no connection THINK there is a connection.
"Wait... What? Are you telling me that Obama is giving Trillions to the wealthy? Seriously? What's the phrase I'm looking for here.. How do you say.. Oh yes, "[Citation Needed]."
This is truly POE worthy. But if you really want to know, see support of Wall Street bail out, TARP (Bush program), support of tax cuts, Fed policy, free trade policy, health care bill, etc.
Obama is a moderate conservative who very much likes large corporations.
"What caused this incident to happen is a man with apparently quite serious mental problems."
Speaking of a lack of critical thinking skills, you have just become Exhibit A. People with mental illness don't go around shooting people. Mental illness does not equal violence. And equating violent acts with mental problems and mental illness pretty much makes the term useless. It only serves to "other" the person. To excuse us from examining why the act happened. Just like you have proposed. Because even if he is diagnosed with a mental illness, that still doesn't explain the cause of the incident. What made him choose the Congresswoman in particular for an attempted assassination. And commit the act. For that we have a pretty good working hypothesis. The vitriol directed by Republican party and abetted by the media.
"By heating milk before serving it, there seems to be a decline in illnesses, but as we all know, "correlation does not imply causation" so that is not proof of their existence."
But investigation of ghosts and the investigation of the mechanism of reduced illness from milk pasteurization are quite different. You might even call one of them science. It would also not be wrong to dismiss germ theory without evidence. But we have plenty of evidence to dismiss ghosts. The first is that ghost has no coherent definition. The second is that the general concept of ghosts violate known physical laws. Ghosts are very similar to homeopathy. The belief seems to cause the effect.
"The problem with supernatural phenomena is that they can never be science, so the scientific method breaks down when you try to apply it."
That is just plain stupid. If it has an effect on the natural world it can be measured. If it doesn't, it doesn't really matter.
Supernatural is a another way of saying nonexistant. If that isn't what they mean, then they need to provide a coherant definition. Good luck with that.
The problem with ghosts and the like is scientific plausibility. There isn't any. Their existance would violate known physical laws. We have extraordinary proof of those laws. So you would need more than that to prove ghosts. Good luck with that.
"He grew as a manager as a result, and we ended up being the guys with a good reputation for working well with customers & other teams, and coming up with excellent solutions, and all of us got promotions for our efforts, because this manager realized that we were helping him and making his department look good."
Sorry, but by definition you did not have a clueless or incompetent manager. You had an ignorant manager. You had an inexperienced manager. But he was capable. You provided him with useful information and he used that information effectively. If he had been clueless or incompetent, you would have failed.
"Lehrer cites an example of an ESP experiment by Rhine in which a certain subject did far better than chance at first, and later didn't do as well. Possibly this is just underestimation of errors, publication bias, and regression to the mean. There is also good evidence that a lot of Rhine's published work on ESP was tainted by his assistants' cheating: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Banks_Rhine#Criticism [wikipedia.org]"
This is also a case of a just plain bad hypothesis. A significant result isn't going to provide useful information. And if you do enough trials you will get a significant result. As ESP has no plausible scientific mechanism, any significant result will be dismissed by scientists. And anyone who wants to believe will regardless of negative results.
"Hard sciences simply lend themselves a lot better to repeatability. Where I think we go wrong is assigning the same certainties to the claims of the soft scientists."
This may be true in theory but not in practice. Getting really good data to support or refute a hypothesis is difficult, time consuming and expensive. And generally there is never enough of any of those. Positive, regular and certain results are expected by journals and the world at large. So most data sucks to some degree. And thus so do the results.
Rigorously validated findings that cannot be replicated were never rigorously validated. Well-established, multiply confirmed findings never were. To say otherwise indicates a misunderstanding of the scientific method.
"I can't recall ever seeing something like what you're talking about getting published."
Then you haven't been paying attention. It is common. Even in medicine and clinical trials.
The medication doesn't work on all X but only a subset, then well then we will only apply for approval on the subset using the data. We can always push it for X after approval. Publishing only the positive studies is also a form of this. As is cherry picking research subjects that will be unlike the population who will use the product. There is also the choice of what parts of the results of the trials to publish.
It's all a form of statistical significance hunting. Some of it just happens to occur before the actual number crunching. And everyone can always provide a rational.
Nope. It's singled out because it is considered a vice and it is easy to measure.
"Very few medications that will have you unfit to drive are optional in that sense. If you have a prescription for alcohol due to some medical condition, I think most of society would be quite willing to treat that differently."
Nope. Most narcotics are optional. And they are prescribed in pretty heavy volume. And having a prescription doesn't make any difference to impaired driving.
Unlike prescription meds, illegal drugs, sleep deprivation and others, alcohol is both easily measured and stigmatized. That's why it is singled out.
"I live in Ohio and if the police tried this, it would be a blood bath because people over here will defend themselves and their rights with deadly force if necessary."
Give me a break. I lived in Ohio for ten years. They would roll over and play dead just like most everyone else. Remember that this state has no problem with worthless DUI checkpoints. They love the police.
"That's advocating the devil's position: Personally, I'd rather take the route where being convicted of a DUI ends permanently one's legal ability to drive. One strike you're out."
Aside from the crappiness that is the stats and the fact that people drive without licenses and need them for employment, there is a third method: Ban the sale of alcohol in bars, restaurants, stadiums, etc. If you are selling alcohol to be consumed anywhere people have to drive to consume it, it's a bit hypocritical (and stupid) to then wonder why people drink and drive. You have by definition endorsed it.
We create a system that encourages people to drink and drive and then wonder how to stop it. I don't know if people are stupid or just clueless.
"Come on, so you get into the ER, need treatment right away, you're gonna tell the only doc available to first get some sleep? Don't think so. The hospital/doc should have made sure that the staff is fit enough to even be on watch."
What is the evidence that sleep deprivation is a problem in the real world? There is no doubt that sleep deprivation impairs ability. But does it have a real world effect on surgical outcomes? And can we measure it? Because if we can't, then doing anything about it is a waste of time and money.
There are two related issues here. Money and talent. It costs money to staff hospitals. If you don't want sleep deprived staff, you have to be willing to spend more. And most of the time it will be wasted. And there is a down side. More doctors means fewer patients per doctor which means less experience. Which means you will have less sleep deprived doctors (in theory-plenty of people don't get enough sleep on 9 to 5 hours) with less experience doing surgury. Which also means more complications. Which is worse?
I suspect that there are many surguries that an experienced doctor could do in their sleep. And since it's a team event, problems are less likely to happen. Ever driven a car through heavy traffic and not remembered exactly what you did?
"Grad schools wont accept you without a 3.0 undergrad and many Doctoral programs wont accept you without a 3.25."
That simply isn't true. Many will accept students with a 2.5 GPA. It depends on the school and the program. It also depends on what you your grades are based on. In any case, some of the best grad students (and professionals) I ever met had undergraduate GPA's below 3.0. Grad schools that rely heavily on just that number are foolish.
"These systems merely flag unusual patterns and say, "Hey, you might want to take a look at this.""
And I suspect that most people who read the article don't believe the system will be sold or used this way either. It will most likely be used as proof of cheating. Witness the quote in the summary stating the decrease in cheating. Pretty much says it all.
"Handing in cell phones is not going to go over well. iPhones all look the same. Too many mix ups when returning phones."
Works just fine when taking college level entry tests. The choices are turn in your electronic devices (get a receipt), don't bring them into the testing building or take the chance of having your score invalidated for having one on your person.
And if anyone is really worried about students texting answers or cheating then I suggest a test that doesn't suck.
Slashdot Mirror
"Seriously, how must hate was spewed by the left against Bush during his entire administration? Why wasn't Al Gore blamed for the Discovery Channel hostage situation? Truth is, you just want to twist a mentally disturbed individual's actions in order to score political points. And that makes you part of the problem in this country."
False equivalence strikes again. I don't recall the Al Gore graphic depicting a target over the Discovery Channel. Or him advocating violence. As for the hatred of Bush and his policies, I don't recall that having an entire political party, news channel, and the media in general supporting it. There were also valid points of disagreement. Your bomb threat link seems to be an isolated event for Republicans but common for Democratic candidates. The Kanjorski quote was saying that we should shoot him because of the rather large crime he committed. Not quite the same thing as passing legislation. The arsonist is difficult to tell. And as for Cameron, he's right about Beck. And he wanted to shoot it out with deniers western high noon style. Hardly an assassination. But yes, there are people who aren't conservatives/authoritarians who commit and advocate violence.
As to your other points, advocating political violence is bad. No matter who does it. But remember, Fox news does this 24/7. Republican candidates for office did this routinely. It's considered mainstream political thought in the Republican party. The issue is scale.
And most telling is the urge by the right to distance themselves from the shooter. That they THINK there is a connection is pretty damning.
"Every word should be assumed to have been selected not for its literal meaning, but its emotional impact. In other words: No matter what they say, they don't mean it. They say whatever gets the most impact, not whatever is "correct". If you take a politician (or any other marketing speech) literally, you have a brain deficit."
If they carefully chose their words to have emotional impact and choose to lie and if the emotional impact is negative or encourages people to commit violence, I'm going to assume that they meant it. And hold them responsible. Free speech, like every other right, is not absolute. Which is also the concept behind "hate speech".
As for political correctness, that is a right wing talking point. It's made up. Manufactured.
"And I am strongly against restricting everyone just because there are a couple brain damaged people around. Restrict the damaged, not the sane. That goes for PC as well, btw., but we lost that fight when they made us say "coloured person" instead of locking up the five guys who had mental issue with being called "black"."
Your priviledge is showing. Badly. But if you don't understand why people are entitled to self identify, have equal rights, or why equating people with mental illness or physical disabilities as less than human is wrong, don't be surprised if people think you are an asshole. You are perfectly free to say anything you want, believe anything you want and call anybody anything you want. But you have to be willing to suffer the consequences.
"That's what I said elsewhere -- he's an anarchist, not right-wing Palinbot."
If we assume that is true, that doesn't really help your argument. Because that side has been spouting a signficant amount of anti-government rhetoric for a significant amount of time. Where exactly did he get the idea to take out this particular person? And why?
Based on your assumption you could make the case that extreme views of either spectrum could have pushed him to commit an act of political violence. But we don't have that situation at the present time.
"Your comment stands at +5 insightful, so several people must agree with you, what's the deal?"
Ignoring the fact that mental illness has no relation to violent and certainly doesn't explain the cause any better than saying he was male or the sky was blue, I think it is just a way to "other" the person. If he is different then we don't have to really consider the reasons behind WHY he did what he did. We just assume the label is the reason and continue in our (blissful) ignorance.
"Or maybe the unprosecuted, clear voter intimidation brought to you by club weilding Blank Panther thugs."
Because there was no voter intimidation. Just because Faux News replys the same video clip over and over doesn't prove anything. This group also doesn't have any relation to the group of the 1960's. And it could also fit in a Smart Car with room left over.
"There are plenty of crazies on the right, but claiming the left doesn't have its share goons and enforcers is blind mindedness."
This is called false equivalence. When you have to search for insignificant groups, isolated individuals and the ancient past and compare them to Congressional candidates and their staff, a major political party, a major news network and their staff, candidates for president and vice president and the like, there is just no realistic comparison. One is essentially random while the other is a coordinated and planned endeavor.
"Simple reality is that local government meetings are fairly open events that are not that strict on security."
The sheer ignorance of people never ceases to amaze me. I thought this was common knowledge. It is scary how little knowledge people truly have of local government. Do they not interact with it at all?
It was interesting to read how little security the US Capital had within my lifetime. You could actually wander the halls of Congress in the 70's. People have no idea how much they have lost due to the rhetoric.
"Or on the other hand, the extreme that blames an entire group of people for the actions of a derranged man that has absolfuckinglutely NOTHING to do with anything that group of people?"
"But don't let the facts get in the way of taking a tragedy and trying to use it to to further your own political preconceptions because clearly THAT is more important to you than the suffering the lives lost today."
You seem to lack some critical thinking skills yourself. Exactly what evidence do you have that the shooter was mentally ill? Are you qualified to make that determination? Are you aware that even if this person was mentally ill, that would make him no more likely to commit a crime than one who wasn't?
So even if we are dealing with a mentally ill person, we still do not know why he committed the attempted assassination and other murders. But I would suggest that we have established an excellent working hypothesis. We have an entire political party with a political strategy of radicalizing their base. They use violent imagery, they lie, they demonize, they dehumanize. This is aided by the media in general and is standard operating procedure for entire networks. One of their targets was the Congresswoman. Do you seriously believe that the shooter just picked this woman at random? Or was it far more likely that he responded to this general level of propaganda, internalized it and decided to act? He may have been more easily influenced because of an underlying condition but he still needed the push.
"Well, this guy is not from the Fox News Right and he's the one killing people."
As you are so fond of saying, citation needed.
It is false equivalence to say both sides are doing it equally. That's the whole point of false equivalence. People are comparing isolated events by isolated people with concerted strategies by entire networks and political parties. The mere fact that the right is trying so hard to distance themselves from the shooter speaks volumes. Even if this person is not associated with the right, that fact alone is extremely important. The people claiming no connection THINK there is a connection.
"Wait... What? Are you telling me that Obama is giving Trillions to the wealthy? Seriously? What's the phrase I'm looking for here.. How do you say.. Oh yes, "[Citation Needed]."
This is truly POE worthy. But if you really want to know, see support of Wall Street bail out, TARP (Bush program), support of tax cuts, Fed policy, free trade policy, health care bill, etc.
Obama is a moderate conservative who very much likes large corporations.
"What caused this incident to happen is a man with apparently quite serious mental problems."
Speaking of a lack of critical thinking skills, you have just become Exhibit A. People with mental illness don't go around shooting people. Mental illness does not equal violence. And equating violent acts with mental problems and mental illness pretty much makes the term useless. It only serves to "other" the person. To excuse us from examining why the act happened. Just like you have proposed. Because even if he is diagnosed with a mental illness, that still doesn't explain the cause of the incident. What made him choose the Congresswoman in particular for an attempted assassination. And commit the act. For that we have a pretty good working hypothesis. The vitriol directed by Republican party and abetted by the media.
"By heating milk before serving it, there seems to be a decline in illnesses, but as we all know, "correlation does not imply causation" so that is not proof of their existence."
But investigation of ghosts and the investigation of the mechanism of reduced illness from milk pasteurization are quite different. You might even call one of them science. It would also not be wrong to dismiss germ theory without evidence. But we have plenty of evidence to dismiss ghosts. The first is that ghost has no coherent definition. The second is that the general concept of ghosts violate known physical laws. Ghosts are very similar to homeopathy. The belief seems to cause the effect.
"The problem with supernatural phenomena is that they can never be science, so the scientific method breaks down when you try to apply it."
That is just plain stupid. If it has an effect on the natural world it can be measured. If it doesn't, it doesn't really matter.
Supernatural is a another way of saying nonexistant. If that isn't what they mean, then they need to provide a coherant definition. Good luck with that.
The problem with ghosts and the like is scientific plausibility. There isn't any. Their existance would violate known physical laws. We have extraordinary proof of those laws. So you would need more than that to prove ghosts. Good luck with that.
"These days you'd get sued six ways from Sunday if you gave someone an IQ test as a pre-requisite for employment."
Hardly. As long as it tied to the job requirements you can give intelligence tests. And personality tests.
Hell, tests that routinely discriminate are routinely given by employers with no legal downside. While technically illegal, it's very hard to prove.
"He grew as a manager as a result, and we ended up being the guys with a good reputation for working well with customers & other teams, and coming up with excellent solutions, and all of us got promotions for our efforts, because this manager realized that we were helping him and making his department look good."
Sorry, but by definition you did not have a clueless or incompetent manager. You had an ignorant manager. You had an inexperienced manager. But he was capable. You provided him with useful information and he used that information effectively. If he had been clueless or incompetent, you would have failed.
Wise employees realize the difference.
"Lehrer cites an example of an ESP experiment by Rhine in which a certain subject did far better than chance at first, and later didn't do as well. Possibly this is just underestimation of errors, publication bias, and regression to the mean. There is also good evidence that a lot of Rhine's published work on ESP was tainted by his assistants' cheating: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Banks_Rhine#Criticism [wikipedia.org]"
This is also a case of a just plain bad hypothesis. A significant result isn't going to provide useful information. And if you do enough trials you will get a significant result. As ESP has no plausible scientific mechanism, any significant result will be dismissed by scientists. And anyone who wants to believe will regardless of negative results.
"Hard sciences simply lend themselves a lot better to repeatability. Where I think we go wrong is assigning the same certainties to the claims of the soft scientists."
This may be true in theory but not in practice. Getting really good data to support or refute a hypothesis is difficult, time consuming and expensive. And generally there is never enough of any of those. Positive, regular and certain results are expected by journals and the world at large. So most data sucks to some degree. And thus so do the results.
Rigorously validated findings that cannot be replicated were never rigorously validated. Well-established, multiply confirmed findings never were. To say otherwise indicates a misunderstanding of the scientific method.
"I can't recall ever seeing something like what you're talking about getting published."
Then you haven't been paying attention. It is common. Even in medicine and clinical trials.
The medication doesn't work on all X but only a subset, then well then we will only apply for approval on the subset using the data. We can always push it for X after approval. Publishing only the positive studies is also a form of this. As is cherry picking research subjects that will be unlike the population who will use the product. There is also the choice of what parts of the results of the trials to publish.
It's all a form of statistical significance hunting. Some of it just happens to occur before the actual number crunching. And everyone can always provide a rational.
"Many would argue that "freedom of movement" directly implies we have a right to drive."
They would. And the courts have not agreed. You can go anywhere you like, as long as you can walk.
"Alcohol is singled out because it's a choice."
Nope. It's singled out because it is considered a vice and it is easy to measure.
"Very few medications that will have you unfit to drive are optional in that sense. If you have a prescription for alcohol due to some medical condition, I think most of society would be quite willing to treat that differently."
Nope. Most narcotics are optional. And they are prescribed in pretty heavy volume. And having a prescription doesn't make any difference to impaired driving.
Unlike prescription meds, illegal drugs, sleep deprivation and others, alcohol is both easily measured and stigmatized. That's why it is singled out.
"I live in Ohio and if the police tried this, it would be a blood bath because people over here will defend themselves and their rights with deadly force if necessary."
Give me a break. I lived in Ohio for ten years. They would roll over and play dead just like most everyone else. Remember that this state has no problem with worthless DUI checkpoints. They love the police.
"That's advocating the devil's position: Personally, I'd rather take the route where being convicted of a DUI ends permanently one's legal ability to drive. One strike you're out."
Aside from the crappiness that is the stats and the fact that people drive without licenses and need them for employment, there is a third method: Ban the sale of alcohol in bars, restaurants, stadiums, etc. If you are selling alcohol to be consumed anywhere people have to drive to consume it, it's a bit hypocritical (and stupid) to then wonder why people drink and drive. You have by definition endorsed it.
We create a system that encourages people to drink and drive and then wonder how to stop it. I don't know if people are stupid or just clueless.
"Come on, so you get into the ER, need treatment right away, you're gonna tell the only doc available to first get some sleep? Don't think so. The hospital/doc should have made sure that the staff is fit enough to even be on watch."
What is the evidence that sleep deprivation is a problem in the real world? There is no doubt that sleep deprivation impairs ability. But does it have a real world effect on surgical outcomes? And can we measure it? Because if we can't, then doing anything about it is a waste of time and money.
There are two related issues here. Money and talent. It costs money to staff hospitals. If you don't want sleep deprived staff, you have to be willing to spend more. And most of the time it will be wasted. And there is a down side. More doctors means fewer patients per doctor which means less experience. Which means you will have less sleep deprived doctors (in theory-plenty of people don't get enough sleep on 9 to 5 hours) with less experience doing surgury. Which also means more complications. Which is worse?
I suspect that there are many surguries that an experienced doctor could do in their sleep. And since it's a team event, problems are less likely to happen. Ever driven a car through heavy traffic and not remembered exactly what you did?
"Grad schools wont accept you without a 3.0 undergrad and many Doctoral programs wont accept you without a 3.25."
That simply isn't true. Many will accept students with a 2.5 GPA. It depends on the school and the program. It also depends on what you your grades are based on. In any case, some of the best grad students (and professionals) I ever met had undergraduate GPA's below 3.0. Grad schools that rely heavily on just that number are foolish.
"These systems merely flag unusual patterns and say, "Hey, you might want to take a look at this.""
And I suspect that most people who read the article don't believe the system will be sold or used this way either. It will most likely be used as proof of cheating. Witness the quote in the summary stating the decrease in cheating. Pretty much says it all.
"Handing in cell phones is not going to go over well. iPhones all look the same. Too many mix ups when returning phones."
Works just fine when taking college level entry tests. The choices are turn in your electronic devices (get a receipt), don't bring them into the testing building or take the chance of having your score invalidated for having one on your person.
And if anyone is really worried about students texting answers or cheating then I suggest a test that doesn't suck.