Efficiency and/or necessity is how this is different from most of those things. Obviously this comes down to a question of opinion and values, as all matters of public policy eventually do, but for me, emission controlls on cars are necessary and effective. Everyone being able to walk down the street without hacking up a lung is worth the cost of car buyers having to pay for the emission controls, and it's effective too. ISPs keeping records on the other hand doesn't seem like it will work, and I'm not convinced it's necessary. I've never heard anyone credibly say that law enforcement is powerless to stop child predators because the ISPs don't retain all their data.
That's an interesting point, I hadn't considered the Nazi doctor's research. After reading up on the subject, I'd have to conclude that we should, in fact, throw out any data derived from such unethical research. In fact, that's already been done. Quoting
The Nazi data on hypothermia experiments would apparently fill the gap in Pozos' research. Perhaps it contained the information necessary to rewarm effectively frozen victims whose body temperatures were below 36 degrees. Pozos obtained the long suppressed Alexander Report on the hypothermia experiments at Dachau. He planned to analyze for publication the Alexander Report, along with his evaluation, to show the possible applications of the Nazi experiments to modern hypothermia research. Of the Dachau data, Pozos said, "It could advance my work in that it takes human subjects farther than we're willing."14
Pozos' plan to republish the Nazi data in the New England Journal of Medicine was flatly vetoed by the Journal's editor, Doctor Arnold Relman.15 Relman's refusal to publish Nazi data along with Pozos' comments was understandable given the source of the Nazi data and the way it was obtained.
Even if Dr. Reiter had not been a Nazi, it is not clear why he deserved having his name attached to the arthritis syndrome. Dr. Reiter's report was not the first, and he drew a serious, erroneous conclusion about his patient's diagnosis. Dr. Reiter initially concluded that the syndrome was caused by a spirochete, which he found in the military officer's blood, and named it spirochetosis arthritis. But when the symptoms failed to respond to the then-standard anti-syphilis drugs, Dr. Reiter abandoned his belief in a spirochetal cause and concluded that his patient had something else -- now known by his name. In 1965, Dr. Verna Wright, a British rheumatologist, repeating a comment made 12 years earlier in another scientific report, wrote: "Reiter's paper made a negligible, if not somewhat misleading, contribution to the subject."
Throwing out Reiter's research on the subject wouldn't change anything, and anyway there's no indication his research on that syndrome was unethical.
Back to peta though, it is a bit unfair of me to say they're hypocrites for accepting medical treatment derived from animal research, especially in the case of life-saving medicine.
However if one country has a colony on the moon; the whole MAD equation changes. Suddenly instead of "everyone dies", the result is "hey, if everyone on earth dies; I and my 144000 other colonists on this base will own everything!!!!"
Lets worry about that if and when world leaders start moving themselves, their upper command, and a bunch of hot women to the moon.
Not to mention the ability to do research on virus strains as weapons without any fear of the subject 'getting loose'.
Couldn't you do that for a small fraction the cost in, say, a submarine equipped with a self-destruct device? Even the ISS seems like it would be cheaper.
And of course the cheapest of all would be to take the cheapest option and just put it in a less populated area and plan on nuking it if it gets out. If you're making a doomsday virus weapon, you might be less concerned about the serfs' lives in rural Iowa and more concerned with keeping down costs.
Egypt is not a monarchy, it's a normal 20th century dictatorship ruled by a president.
Whose son Gamal is in line to succeed him. Just like Syria and North Korea are not monarchies, nor was Iraq going to be one after Saddam died and Qusay took over for him.
Sometimes the devil you don't know is slightly more attractive than the one you do. Plus there's probably some national pride mixed up in there telling them that "where those other guys messed up, WE will surely succeed, because (insert country here) IS NUMBER ONE!!!"
Depends on whether or not he went to high school in the US. My geography teacher was the tougher one in my high school. She had us color in preprinted maps of the world. The easier geography teacher's final was pretty much just "Label the continents on this map of the world."
Well this was just entertainment fluff. I mean, its about a movie. Were it more weighty issues, like public policy or health, people would verify it first.
Insightful? Right, because this exact post isn't made every single time facebook gets mentioned here on slashdot, and isn't obvious in the first place.
For the last time: there are reasons people still use facebook. There are bad things but there are also good things about it. If people are still using facebook, it isn't because they haven't realized they could stop using facebook.
For me personally, that's of little importance next to a president lying to the country.
It was not adultery that was the issue, it was having a sexual encounter with an intern, a subordinate of his. In business, this would usually result in termination of employment.
I don't think sex between two consenting adults should result in termination of any employment, but especially when talking about the presidency, that's a non-issue. I don't care if Clinton was a sleazeball personally.
And it wasn't that he lied to "the country," he lied to the United States Senate.
I was parodying the right wing response with the "Clinton... lied to the country" bit, not actually saying that Clinton lied to the country. And if anything, that to me makes Clinton's lie even more inconsequential in comparison.
Bush relayed and acted on intelligence. Intelligence that Congress also examined. They voted based on the intelligence that they had access to (which is ALL of it), not based solely on Bush's word. If members of Congress chose to ignore intelligence to the contrary, that doesn't make Bush a liar.
Congress also examining the evidence doesn't change anything about what Bush said to the country. Maybe they were guilty too, doesn't change anything with reguards to Bush.
When you overlook the deficiencies of one group (D) because you fear the deficiencies of the other (R), you're equal to those you despise on the other side, who do the exact same things in reverse.
That assumes the deficiencies in the particular R or D you're supporting are equal to the reverse. Obama isn't perfect, sure, but it would be a waste of time to try to convince me that McCain Palin would have been equivalent.
Lets look at the TSA under Obama and his leadership, which is, as far as I'm concerned 10 times worse than anything Bush did, not that Bush wasn't dangerous (he was).
... Well? You sounded like you were going to bring up an example there. I'm guessing the pornoscanners is what you're talking about.
The real danger is that Obama is only 1/2 though is first term, and has potentially six more years to screw with us. Bush is no longer here, and no longer scares me. By Focusing on how horrible Bush was, while ignoring that Obama has for all intents and purposes kept Bush Era rules around and even extended them, does us all a great disservice.
I disagree. Focusing on cleaning up some of Bush's legacy could help exactly WITH the Bush Era rules that are still around. Had we focused on cleaning up after Bush initially, we could have, say, repealed the patriot act.
Instead we let Obama make us forget about Bush so the comparisons between him and his predecessor would be harder to make, which really let him off the hook. Who started the Iraq and Afghanistan war? I'm pretty sure we've always been at war with them, so who can blame Obama for not ending them?
this is exactly what drives me nuts about the left-wing crowd. When Bush detains people indefinitely and launches "targeted drone attacks" (assassination by UAV) and engages in warrantless wiretapping and "National Security Letters" and so on, it's a dangerous, outrageous and evil assault on freedom and the American way of life. Until their candidate takes the Oval Office and expands all those programs and it's... supposedly some great progressive step forward for American society, or something. At the very least, it's no longer an outrage or an imminent threat to us all. Who knew things could become so different by switching a letter beside someone's name?
I'm not sure how turning a blind eye to their guy is left wing specific. That's pretty much all sides ever. It's not even political, that's just human nature. "My Bobby got bullied by your kid! What's that? "Bobby only got beat up when he tried to steal your kid's lunch money at knifepoint"? Oh that's ridiculous! He doesn't even OWN a knife that I know about!"
Example from the right "Clinton got a blowjob and then LIED ABOUT IT!!! A sitting president lying to the country! I never!" Years later: "Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction to get us to invade Iraq? I don't think that's true. We either did find weapons of mass destruction, or he didn't say that, or we didn't invade Iraq."
At any rate, I can't speak for most left-wingers, but while I'm annoyed that Obama hasn't waved his presidential magic wand and made the patriot act go away etc, he hasn't passed patriot act II, which I suspect was a possibility under McCain/Palin.
I don't think having a publication in which to submit those results is going to change much though. For one thing, no one wants to be the guy who expected one thing, got a few results to the contrary, published that negative result, and then it was later proven that result was wrong and the researcher was right initially. Especially when it can negatively impact your results. "We have this grand model, and we may have disproven part of it."
Moreover, the number of controls you're willing to do to ensure your negative result is true is usually about half the number of controls you'd be willing to do to prove your positive result is true. The number of controls you NEED to do to ensure your negative result is real is often double the amount of controls you'd need to do to prove a positive result.
Lastly, negative results are often one small part of what would be a larger story. That larger story might be interesting, and negative results can definitely lead you to new interesting theories, and those do get published, but publishing single negative results often are useless.
I just got a negative result last week. It's an RNAi experiment, I attempted to reduce the amount of one gene in a cell type, hoping to see a specific change in that cell's behavior that would back up my model for what's going on in that cell. I didn't see that change (phenotype). Testing whether or not I'm successfully knocking down the gene is much more difficult compared to observing the phenotype. One explanation is that I didn't actually successfully reduce that gene, so I'm trying again and hopefully will see the phenotype. If that doesn't work, it may be that I was knocking the gene down, but the gene is not involved in that cell behavior. That would be mildly interesting to me, but very few other people are expecting that gene to be involved in that process, if anyone else is, and I'm not interested in spending several hundred dollars just to show that uninteresting result.
This does leave me open to the possibility that I wasn't successful in knocking down the gene either time but it is involved in the process. I'll have to determine then whether or not we have the money and time to spend on potentially nothing.
If we do the test and see that we are knocking down the gene and still not getting the phenotype, one could still ask whether or not there's residual amounts of that gene floating around. Testing that would be even more difficult and expensive. There's no way we're doing that test, but unless we were to do the test, we couldn't say "this gene is not involved in this process." And again, even then, no one would care about that result.
To the end of "Readers decide what research is the most relevant and important" rather than editors. "This is good science but we think it just isn't interesting to enough people, so we aren't going to publish it and you'll have to publish it in a lower tier journal" is a less than ideal situation, especially when which journals you publish in makes a difference on your CV.... or am I responding to a nonsense, off topic post?
"I don't agree with what these other groups say, so instead of rebutting based on logic, I'm going to call their convictions and motivation into question."
People have rebutted them with logic before. Thing is, you can't effectively counter "Look at my boobs and don't eat meat" with logic. And you're not going to convince any PETA people to give it up by arguing about it on slashdot.
Anyway, I was stating that I had more respect for environmentalists than PETA, I don't really need to give detailed explanations for my opinions of groups every time I give them, do I?
Note that if you read TFAs, the police were using sex to infiltrate "anti-racist groups". Oh the humanity!
I was startled at that too, but a little research suggested they -might- have cause. "Police infiltrating groups of people who are interested in violence and use 'anti-racism' as an excuse" might have been a more accurate description.
Or it might not, I really don't know anything about the subject, just that there could be a more legitimate reason than police are pro-racism.
What things seem like to you is no reflection on what's actually happening, unless you respect others, and remember that they hold their beliefs as strongly as you hold yours.
I'm not convinced. I think most people who are making a big fuss about chickens being eaten are doing it mostly to feel superior. Which is why they do stupid pointless protests rather than convincing us or leaving us alone.
No, I can't respect that on any level. I can't respect their protests either. I can't respect their hypocrisy, killing animals when it's convenient. I can't respect arguing against animal testing for medicines, but still taking the fruits of that research to save their own lives.
Judging by the pictured guy, you might not want to sleep with the activists.
Now the animal rights activists, PETA, they generally seem more attractive and concerned with hygiene. Plus I'd feel less bad about lying to get in bed with one of them. On average. I'm sure there are plenty of environmentalists who are doing it just to feel holier than thou, but it seems like -all- the animal rights activists are.
Who are the other two? And particularly the person who actually NEEDS AOL?
There's plenty of reason people would intentionally subscribe to AOL
-Convinced that they are supporting America by paying to AOL -Own stock in Time Warner and want to make sure stories like these aren't "100% of people subscribing to AOL are doing so on accident" -Only buy newspapers 10 years too late and don't realize AOL isn't the current hottest thing -Collected 2 tons of the free subscription discs and are still coasting off of free trials -Like chatting online with other people who are equally dumb -Perfected a keylogger that spreads through AOL 12 years ago, too lazy to make a new one -One of the only online services that still supports windows 98, and why would I upgrade from windows 98? -Doing it "ironically" -Nostalgia -Free subscription to Time or some other magazine/news service that for some reason is still associated with AOL -Hipsters convinced it will eventually cycle back through to being the next big thing again, want to be able to say they were there before it was cool again -Schizophrenia
Of course there are no real scientific studies to show why people who have never been exposed sometimes die of lung cancer, but George Burns lived to 100 and died from fluid buildup in his skull from a fall in the bathtub.
When talking about public health or the climate, anecdotal stories are really just amusing and nothing more. Why some smokers don't die of cancer, it's a statistics game. No one is saying 100% all smokers will die of cancer.
Evidenc on smoking and cancer, I found this study which found smoking was an increased risk factor for penile cancer. I went to that one since all the hits for lung cancer were references to references to studies, and I got tired within 5 mins of searching for the original studies.
There are also thousands of chemicals in cigarette smoke. Benzo(a)pyrene is one that is a carcinogen and causes cancer.
That to me is pretty strong evidence: smokers are more likely to die of cancer than non smokers, and there are chemicals in cigarettes that cause cancer. No one has shown that chemicals inhaled from the cigarette cause DNA damage in human lung cells and those then become cancer cells, but that would be a hideously expensive experiment just to tell us something we already know.
The situation seems similar to climate change: it's impossible to trace carbon from tailpipes or powerplants to the atmosphere and prove that they are raising the temperature. Nonetheless, we are emitting a lot of carbon, the last few years have been warmer than average, and carbon soaks up more heat.
This [medicalnewstoday.com] article from Medical News Today says it's a widely accepted notion and goes on to say more research is needed.
This [cancer.org] article from Cancer.org says there is strong evidence that the two are linked, and that more research is needed.
Researchers saying more research needs to be done is not a safe indication that something is uncertain. Find me a research paper that -doesn't- suggest more research is needed, and I'll show you a paper by a retiring scientist. We always put that on there: there's always more research to do, and always more grants to apply for.
Suggesting that your paper is the last thing that needed to be said on a given area of research is usually not true, would be quite arrogant, and is not a good career move.
Okay, but now you're shifting the topic. Skepticism about global climate change is one thing. Skepticism about Al Gore's motivations are another, so I'll ask again: why bring up Al Gore in a serious discussion about climate change or ways of stopping it?
Why do people always have to bring up Al Gore? He may or may not be a hypocrite. Either way, it matters very little compared to climate change.
If your doctor tells you that you have lung cancer and need surgery, only an idiot would focus on the fact that your doctor smokes and is a hypocrite, and use that as an excuse to keep smoking and not get the scary and painful surgery.
Because it was a government program, because it seems like a political cop out rather than dealing with the problem, because it focused on making money change hands between buisiness people rather than directly reducing carbon emissions, and / or because you're one of those people who trust oil and gas lobbyists rather than scientists?
I mean, I always assume that if I have doubts on something, I should explain myself. I guess the mods today like baseless skepticism though, so I'll pander to that:
For every story on slashdot, my response is "Yeah right, this is fucking BULLSHIT!"
Slashdot Mirror
Efficiency and/or necessity is how this is different from most of those things. Obviously this comes down to a question of opinion and values, as all matters of public policy eventually do, but for me, emission controlls on cars are necessary and effective. Everyone being able to walk down the street without hacking up a lung is worth the cost of car buyers having to pay for the emission controls, and it's effective too. ISPs keeping records on the other hand doesn't seem like it will work, and I'm not convinced it's necessary. I've never heard anyone credibly say that law enforcement is powerless to stop child predators because the ISPs don't retain all their data.
That's an interesting point, I hadn't considered the Nazi doctor's research. After reading up on the subject, I'd have to conclude that we should, in fact, throw out any data derived from such unethical research. In fact, that's already been done. Quoting
The Nazi data on hypothermia experiments would apparently fill the gap in Pozos' research. Perhaps it contained the information necessary to rewarm effectively frozen victims whose body temperatures were below 36 degrees. Pozos obtained the long suppressed Alexander Report on the hypothermia experiments at Dachau. He planned to analyze for publication the Alexander Report, along with his evaluation, to show the possible applications of the Nazi experiments to modern hypothermia research. Of the Dachau data, Pozos said, "It could advance my work in that it takes human subjects farther than we're willing."14
Pozos' plan to republish the Nazi data in the New England Journal of Medicine was flatly vetoed by the Journal's editor, Doctor Arnold Relman.15 Relman's refusal to publish Nazi data along with Pozos' comments was understandable given the source of the Nazi data and the way it was obtained.
Luckily in your case, Reiter actually didn't contribute anything:
Even if Dr. Reiter had not been a Nazi, it is not clear why he deserved having his name attached to the arthritis syndrome. Dr. Reiter's report was not the first, and he drew a serious, erroneous conclusion about his patient's diagnosis. Dr. Reiter initially concluded that the syndrome was caused by a spirochete, which he found in the military officer's blood, and named it spirochetosis arthritis.
But when the symptoms failed to respond to the then-standard anti-syphilis drugs, Dr. Reiter abandoned his belief in a spirochetal cause and concluded that his patient had something else -- now known by his name.
In 1965, Dr. Verna Wright, a British rheumatologist, repeating a comment made 12 years earlier in another scientific report, wrote: "Reiter's paper made a negligible, if not somewhat misleading, contribution to the subject."
Throwing out Reiter's research on the subject wouldn't change anything, and anyway there's no indication his research on that syndrome was unethical.
Back to peta though, it is a bit unfair of me to say they're hypocrites for accepting medical treatment derived from animal research, especially in the case of life-saving medicine.
However if one country has a colony on the moon; the whole MAD equation changes. Suddenly instead of "everyone dies", the result is "hey, if everyone on earth dies; I and my 144000 other colonists on this base will own everything!!!!"
Lets worry about that if and when world leaders start moving themselves, their upper command, and a bunch of hot women to the moon.
Not to mention the ability to do research on virus strains as weapons without any fear of the subject 'getting loose'.
Couldn't you do that for a small fraction the cost in, say, a submarine equipped with a self-destruct device? Even the ISS seems like it would be cheaper.
And of course the cheapest of all would be to take the cheapest option and just put it in a less populated area and plan on nuking it if it gets out. If you're making a doomsday virus weapon, you might be less concerned about the serfs' lives in rural Iowa and more concerned with keeping down costs.
Shit... for all our recorded history, we thought it was a moon, but it was actually a death star?
We DESERVE to be blown up if we didn't notice. Landed on it and everything.
Guess I'll have to update my privacy settings again.
Egypt is not a monarchy, it's a normal 20th century dictatorship ruled by a president.
Whose son Gamal is in line to succeed him. Just like Syria and North Korea are not monarchies, nor was Iraq going to be one after Saddam died and Qusay took over for him.
So then yes, a typical dictatorship as GP said.
Sometimes the devil you don't know is slightly more attractive than the one you do. Plus there's probably some national pride mixed up in there telling them that "where those other guys messed up, WE will surely succeed, because (insert country here) IS NUMBER ONE!!!"
No, he probably means Malaysia
Depends on whether or not he went to high school in the US. My geography teacher was the tougher one in my high school. She had us color in preprinted maps of the world. The easier geography teacher's final was pretty much just "Label the continents on this map of the world."
Does anyone actually verify anything any more?
Well this was just entertainment fluff. I mean, its about a movie. Were it more weighty issues, like public policy or health, people would verify it first.
giggle... snicker... chortle...
Insightful? Right, because this exact post isn't made every single time facebook gets mentioned here on slashdot, and isn't obvious in the first place.
For the last time: there are reasons people still use facebook. There are bad things but there are also good things about it. If people are still using facebook, it isn't because they haven't realized they could stop using facebook.
Clinton lied while under oath.
For me personally, that's of little importance next to a president lying to the country.
It was not adultery that was the issue, it was having a sexual encounter with an intern, a subordinate of his. In business, this would usually result in termination of employment.
I don't think sex between two consenting adults should result in termination of any employment, but especially when talking about the presidency, that's a non-issue. I don't care if Clinton was a sleazeball personally.
And it wasn't that he lied to "the country," he lied to the United States Senate.
I was parodying the right wing response with the "Clinton... lied to the country" bit, not actually saying that Clinton lied to the country. And if anything, that to me makes Clinton's lie even more inconsequential in comparison.
Bush relayed and acted on intelligence. Intelligence that Congress also examined. They voted based on the intelligence that they had access to (which is ALL of it), not based solely on Bush's word. If members of Congress chose to ignore intelligence to the contrary, that doesn't make Bush a liar.
Congress also examining the evidence doesn't change anything about what Bush said to the country. Maybe they were guilty too, doesn't change anything with reguards to Bush.
When you overlook the deficiencies of one group (D) because you fear the deficiencies of the other (R), you're equal to those you despise on the other side, who do the exact same things in reverse.
That assumes the deficiencies in the particular R or D you're supporting are equal to the reverse. Obama isn't perfect, sure, but it would be a waste of time to try to convince me that McCain Palin would have been equivalent.
Lets look at the TSA under Obama and his leadership, which is, as far as I'm concerned 10 times worse than anything Bush did, not that Bush wasn't dangerous (he was).
... Well? You sounded like you were going to bring up an example there. I'm guessing the pornoscanners is what you're talking about.
The real danger is that Obama is only 1/2 though is first term, and has potentially six more years to screw with us. Bush is no longer here, and no longer scares me. By Focusing on how horrible Bush was, while ignoring that Obama has for all intents and purposes kept Bush Era rules around and even extended them, does us all a great disservice.
I disagree. Focusing on cleaning up some of Bush's legacy could help exactly WITH the Bush Era rules that are still around. Had we focused on cleaning up after Bush initially, we could have, say, repealed the patriot act.
Instead we let Obama make us forget about Bush so the comparisons between him and his predecessor would be harder to make, which really let him off the hook. Who started the Iraq and Afghanistan war? I'm pretty sure we've always been at war with them, so who can blame Obama for not ending them?
this is exactly what drives me nuts about the left-wing crowd. When Bush detains people indefinitely and launches "targeted drone attacks" (assassination by UAV) and engages in warrantless wiretapping and "National Security Letters" and so on, it's a dangerous, outrageous and evil assault on freedom and the American way of life. Until their candidate takes the Oval Office and expands all those programs and it's... supposedly some great progressive step forward for American society, or something. At the very least, it's no longer an outrage or an imminent threat to us all. Who knew things could become so different by switching a letter beside someone's name?
I'm not sure how turning a blind eye to their guy is left wing specific. That's pretty much all sides ever. It's not even political, that's just human nature. "My Bobby got bullied by your kid! What's that? "Bobby only got beat up when he tried to steal your kid's lunch money at knifepoint"? Oh that's ridiculous! He doesn't even OWN a knife that I know about!"
Example from the right
"Clinton got a blowjob and then LIED ABOUT IT!!! A sitting president lying to the country! I never!"
Years later:
"Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction to get us to invade Iraq? I don't think that's true. We either did find weapons of mass destruction, or he didn't say that, or we didn't invade Iraq."
At any rate, I can't speak for most left-wingers, but while I'm annoyed that Obama hasn't waved his presidential magic wand and made the patriot act go away etc, he hasn't passed patriot act II, which I suspect was a possibility under McCain/Palin.
I don't think having a publication in which to submit those results is going to change much though. For one thing, no one wants to be the guy who expected one thing, got a few results to the contrary, published that negative result, and then it was later proven that result was wrong and the researcher was right initially. Especially when it can negatively impact your results. "We have this grand model, and we may have disproven part of it."
Moreover, the number of controls you're willing to do to ensure your negative result is true is usually about half the number of controls you'd be willing to do to prove your positive result is true. The number of controls you NEED to do to ensure your negative result is real is often double the amount of controls you'd need to do to prove a positive result.
Lastly, negative results are often one small part of what would be a larger story. That larger story might be interesting, and negative results can definitely lead you to new interesting theories, and those do get published, but publishing single negative results often are useless.
I just got a negative result last week. It's an RNAi experiment, I attempted to reduce the amount of one gene in a cell type, hoping to see a specific change in that cell's behavior that would back up my model for what's going on in that cell. I didn't see that change (phenotype). Testing whether or not I'm successfully knocking down the gene is much more difficult compared to observing the phenotype. One explanation is that I didn't actually successfully reduce that gene, so I'm trying again and hopefully will see the phenotype. If that doesn't work, it may be that I was knocking the gene down, but the gene is not involved in that cell behavior. That would be mildly interesting to me, but very few other people are expecting that gene to be involved in that process, if anyone else is, and I'm not interested in spending several hundred dollars just to show that uninteresting result.
This does leave me open to the possibility that I wasn't successful in knocking down the gene either time but it is involved in the process. I'll have to determine then whether or not we have the money and time to spend on potentially nothing.
If we do the test and see that we are knocking down the gene and still not getting the phenotype, one could still ask whether or not there's residual amounts of that gene floating around. Testing that would be even more difficult and expensive. There's no way we're doing that test, but unless we were to do the test, we couldn't say "this gene is not involved in this process." And again, even then, no one would care about that result.
To the end of "Readers decide what research is the most relevant and important" rather than editors. "This is good science but we think it just isn't interesting to enough people, so we aren't going to publish it and you'll have to publish it in a lower tier journal" is a less than ideal situation, especially when which journals you publish in makes a difference on your CV. ... or am I responding to a nonsense, off topic post?
Translated:
"I don't agree with what these other groups say, so instead of rebutting based on logic, I'm going to call their convictions and motivation into question."
People have rebutted them with logic before. Thing is, you can't effectively counter "Look at my boobs and don't eat meat" with logic. And you're not going to convince any PETA people to give it up by arguing about it on slashdot.
Anyway, I was stating that I had more respect for environmentalists than PETA, I don't really need to give detailed explanations for my opinions of groups every time I give them, do I?
Note that if you read TFAs, the police were using sex to infiltrate "anti-racist groups". Oh the humanity!
I was startled at that too, but a little research suggested they -might- have cause. "Police infiltrating groups of people who are interested in violence and use 'anti-racism' as an excuse" might have been a more accurate description.
Or it might not, I really don't know anything about the subject, just that there could be a more legitimate reason than police are pro-racism.
What things seem like to you is no reflection on what's actually happening, unless you respect others, and remember that they hold their beliefs as strongly as you hold yours.
I'm not convinced. I think most people who are making a big fuss about chickens being eaten are doing it mostly to feel superior. Which is why they do stupid pointless protests rather than convincing us or leaving us alone.
No, I can't respect that on any level. I can't respect their protests either. I can't respect their hypocrisy, killing animals when it's convenient. I can't respect arguing against animal testing for medicines, but still taking the fruits of that research to save their own lives.
Judging by the pictured guy, you might not want to sleep with the activists.
Now the animal rights activists, PETA, they generally seem more attractive and concerned with hygiene. Plus I'd feel less bad about lying to get in bed with one of them. On average. I'm sure there are plenty of environmentalists who are doing it just to feel holier than thou, but it seems like -all- the animal rights activists are.
Who are the other two? And particularly the person who actually NEEDS AOL?
There's plenty of reason people would intentionally subscribe to AOL
-Convinced that they are supporting America by paying to AOL
-Own stock in Time Warner and want to make sure stories like these aren't "100% of people subscribing to AOL are doing so on accident"
-Only buy newspapers 10 years too late and don't realize AOL isn't the current hottest thing
-Collected 2 tons of the free subscription discs and are still coasting off of free trials
-Like chatting online with other people who are equally dumb
-Perfected a keylogger that spreads through AOL 12 years ago, too lazy to make a new one
-One of the only online services that still supports windows 98, and why would I upgrade from windows 98?
-Doing it "ironically"
-Nostalgia
-Free subscription to Time or some other magazine/news service that for some reason is still associated with AOL
-Hipsters convinced it will eventually cycle back through to being the next big thing again, want to be able to say they were there before it was cool again
-Schizophrenia
Of course there are no real scientific studies to show why people who have never been exposed sometimes die of lung cancer, but George Burns lived to 100 and died from fluid buildup in his skull from a fall in the bathtub.
When talking about public health or the climate, anecdotal stories are really just amusing and nothing more. Why some smokers don't die of cancer, it's a statistics game. No one is saying 100% all smokers will die of cancer.
Evidenc on smoking and cancer, I found this study which found smoking was an increased risk factor for penile cancer. I went to that one since all the hits for lung cancer were references to references to studies, and I got tired within 5 mins of searching for the original studies.
There are also thousands of chemicals in cigarette smoke. Benzo(a)pyrene is one that is a carcinogen and causes cancer.
That to me is pretty strong evidence: smokers are more likely to die of cancer than non smokers, and there are chemicals in cigarettes that cause cancer. No one has shown that chemicals inhaled from the cigarette cause DNA damage in human lung cells and those then become cancer cells, but that would be a hideously expensive experiment just to tell us something we already know.
The situation seems similar to climate change: it's impossible to trace carbon from tailpipes or powerplants to the atmosphere and prove that they are raising the temperature. Nonetheless, we are emitting a lot of carbon, the last few years have been warmer than average, and carbon soaks up more heat.
This [medicalnewstoday.com] article from Medical News Today says it's a widely accepted notion and goes on to say more research is needed.
This [cancer.org] article from Cancer.org says there is strong evidence that the two are linked, and that more research is needed.
Researchers saying more research needs to be done is not a safe indication that something is uncertain. Find me a research paper that -doesn't- suggest more research is needed, and I'll show you a paper by a retiring scientist. We always put that on there: there's always more research to do, and always more grants to apply for.
Suggesting that your paper is the last thing that needed to be said on a given area of research is usually not true, would be quite arrogant, and is not a good career move.
Okay, but now you're shifting the topic. Skepticism about global climate change is one thing. Skepticism about Al Gore's motivations are another, so I'll ask again: why bring up Al Gore in a serious discussion about climate change or ways of stopping it?
Why do people always have to bring up Al Gore? He may or may not be a hypocrite. Either way, it matters very little compared to climate change.
If your doctor tells you that you have lung cancer and need surgery, only an idiot would focus on the fact that your doctor smokes and is a hypocrite, and use that as an excuse to keep smoking and not get the scary and painful surgery.
Because it was a government program, because it seems like a political cop out rather than dealing with the problem, because it focused on making money change hands between buisiness people rather than directly reducing carbon emissions, and / or because you're one of those people who trust oil and gas lobbyists rather than scientists?
I mean, I always assume that if I have doubts on something, I should explain myself. I guess the mods today like baseless skepticism though, so I'll pander to that:
For every story on slashdot, my response is "Yeah right, this is fucking BULLSHIT!"