I don't think any working scientist would deny that it's easier to publish work that fits with prevailing viewpoints and paradigms than to publish work that goes against them. That's perhaps not a problem - after all, if your one experiment flies in the face of well-established existing theory, is it more likely that (a) you've discovered a fundamental flaw with an enormous body of research, or (b) your findings were a Type I error?
But this notion that there's a conspiracy to keep out dissenting views seems a little nutty to me. Sure, big-shot scientists get their egos invested in their theories. But balanced against that is the fact that almost every scientist I know lives and breathes for the surprising or counterintuitive discovery or for the mysterious (replicable) anomaly that needs to be figured out -- that's why they went into science in the first place. Most scientists I know love to play the contrarian. You may need to produce more evidence if you're totally coming from left field, but you'll get an audience when you do.
First there's the games theory problem. Stop everyone from Saudi Arabia from boarding airplanes, and the killers will put locally recruited types like John Walker Lindh onto airplanes.
As long as you're using concepts from game theory, let's introduce the concept of "zero sum." Because it's not just that profiling doesn't work - profiling may actually worsen security.
At any given point in time, a security checkpoint has fixed amount of resources to scrutinize passengers. Under profiling, you are devoting greater manpower to searching the Arabs' bags than you would under no profiling. That means that you are actually devoting less resources to scrutinizing the pregnant Irishwomen's bags than you would under no profiling. So if the bad guys can make an educated guess about who does and doesn't fit the profile, profiling actually helps them.
Although this sounds like a good idea, I don't think it would actually help. The major argument for the Bayh-Dole Act is that it gives universities an incentive to move patented discoveries into the applied realm where they may do some good; otherwise the patents languish underutilized. A major argument against it is that federally funded research ought to be in the public domain. Your plan would create the worst of both worlds: federally funded research would be protected by patents but never get turned into useful products.
Besides, most universities reinvest a large portion of their licensing money into research anyway, so the cycle is largely self-feeding already.
Parent said "Asking Universities to provide access to their discoveries would reduce the value of their discoveries on the open market..." and then: "They should be trying to pursuade drug manufacturers to ship more reduced/free products to these third world countries."
Private industry is heavily dependent on licensing publicly funded discoveries from universities (search on the phrase "technology transfer" at any research-oriented university to see examples). Universities could include in those licenses the stipulation that drugs created from the patents be made available for free or low cost to developing countries. A carefully crafted stipulation in a licensing agreement would be unlikely to drastically reduce the market value of a discovery, since the drug companies would not have been making much money in those countries anyway.
Sure, drug companies could voluntarily do that on their own, but a for-profit company is unlikely to voluntarily do anything that could imaginably restrict their profits, even if only by a small amount. Because of their nonprofit status and public service mission, universities are more likely to get the ball rolling.
Actually, there is already quite a bit of public money invested in biomedical research. The NIH budget is about 28 billion dollars (one of the major reasons why the U.S. is a world research leader, by the way).
Currently, universities are encouraged to patent innovations created with federal funding and make money off those patents, thanks to the Bayh-Dole Act. This statement calls on universities to open up their patents when doing so could help the developing world. It does not appear to call for any changes in how public money is spent -- only in what is done with the products of that public investment.
Seriously, I'm normally a gadget freak. I love anything I can tinker with, especially if it appeals to my creative side. But I somehow managed to call up enough restraint a few years ago to get the tiniest decent-quality camera I could find (a Minolta Dimage Xt, just a little larger than an Altoids tin), and I couldn't be happier. When I'm at a party, family event, wandering a random city on vacation, etc. I can just stick it in a shirt pocket, enjoy myself, and pull it out to take snapshots whenever I feel like it. I don't have to lug around a huge bulky camera in a huge bulky bag, which would be such an annoyance that I'd probably end up leaving it at home (or setting it down somewhere after taking a couple of posed shots and not touching the damn thing all night).
Is my tiny auto camera perfect? Of course not. It takes pretty decent quality pictures, but it's not pro quality, and the shutter lag is annoying. But realistically, a camera that takes a bazillion vivid megapixels with no lag isn't going to do me any good if I don't have it handy when something funny, surprising, or interesting happens.
Odds are, you will never agree with any candidate's views 100% of the time, unless you are the candidate. Even then, you won't agree 100% of the time, judging from past politicians.
Let me add that odds are you will agree with one candidate more than the other(s). Voting isn't about getting everything you want on every single issue. That doesn't happen in a democracy -- you'll have to become dictator of your own nation to realize that little fantasy. Voting is about moving the country in a more positive direction, and that is an eminently realistic and achievable goal.
I'm frankly getting sick of the "no good option" argument, just like I have a low opinion of people who can't bother to get informed about the issues. True, there may not be a candidate that you agree with 100%. But there are always real differences among the candidates, and chances are very good that if you give it a little consideration you will find that one is preferable over the other(s).
Remember in 2000, people who made the argument that Bush and Gore weren't any different from each other? (Sometimes accompanied by the argument that 3rd party candidates had no hope of winning, so there was no point going that direction either.) Consider the last 6 years, and ask yourself if they were right. Would the US be in the same place if Gore were president? (Of course, different people will reach different conclusions about whether that would be a better or worse place. But it's pretty hard to argue that it would be the same.)
If you don't feel informed enough to make a choice, don't justify your laziness with a false dichotomy of uninformed vote versus no vote. Get off your lazy, whiny butt and do your duty -- yes, your duty -- as a citizen. Inform yourself and cast a vote.
How (precisely) does someone get to the point of knowing enough about developing nukes that his notes are classified as sensitive, without actually trying to build those nukes himself?
...blasted airport officials for raising bogus legal and technological arguments.
Haven't these guys learned anything since 9/11? If they'd only raised bogus security arguments, they would've sailed through. Heck, the feds probably would've authorized them to shoot anybody with a BlackBerry.
Uh huh.... and what is your take going to be Lockyer? Oh, just a small percentage you say, but a small percentage of an obscenely large number of dollars is still lots of dollars, right? Will you be buying a new Bentley with your share? Or will it be a party in your Escalade?
For what it's worth, Bill Lockyer is the attorney general. So unlike private lawyers who bring class action suits, his take will be $175,525 a year, which is exactly what it would be if he didn't bring this suit.
Which raises a really interesting question: Why is Bill Lockyer doing this? Does he think he can convince his constituents this is a good idea?
NelRo, what you say simply isn't a fair characterization of the scientific literature. The methods used in studies are quite diverse, and yes, some studies use analog measures of outcomes like what you describe. But there are also randomized experiments that measure actual, honest-to-goodness physical aggression.
I'd highly recommend you read this report in its entirety. It's a good review of the research literature on media violence written by scientists for a non-expert audience.
Mod parent up! The question of whether videogames lead to violent behavior (probably yes) is entirely separate from the question of what government should do about it (very little).
The whole reason freedom of speech is encoded into the US constitution is that speech can be dangerous. Why do totalitarian regimes suppress the work of artists? Because art is a tool that can incite people to action. Like any tool it can be used in morally good or bad or ambiguous ways, but the founders were smart enough to know that government cannot be trusted to decide which is which.
I'd add to the parent post that if people are supposed to make good choices about how to raise their children, we need good, objective science, not the FUD offered by the Jack Thompsons (on one side) and game-mag editorialists (on the other). That science is actually being done, though you wouldn't know it from the partisans.
Before videogames, there was fun. People have been having fun for millennia: playing board games, going to the theater, etc. Therefore, videogames are not fun. QED
Perhaps you see why that line of argument is ridiculous? No reasonable critic is trying to argue that videogames are the sole determinant of violence; in fact, I don't think even the unreasonable critics (of which there are more than a few) are trying to argue that. To claim otherwise is to grab for the most ridiculous of strawmen.
An average reader might not understand a very technical basic research article, but they can probably get the important points out of many articles that would be directly relevant to their situation (clinical trials, meta-analyses, etc.).
Moreover, I think this policy would actually help quite a few scientists, especially those at less well-funded institutions. Institutional rates for journals are astronomically high, and universities often have to make difficult choices about which journals to subscribe to. That problem won't completely go away with such a system -- scientists will still want access to journals inside of the 6-month embargo to stay on top of cutting-edge work -- but it will make the field at least a little closer to level.
Your view of things agrees with some of the available resesarch on who tends to be more successful:
...Students' implicit beliefs about the nature of intelligence have a significant impact on the way they approach challenging intellectual tasks: Students who view their intelligence as an unchangeable internal characteristic tend to shy away from academic challenges, whereas students who believe that their intelligence can be increased through effort and persistence seek them out.
I've never been exactly sure what "racketeering" is. It's kind of the US-white collar equivalent of what the Soviets used to call "hooliganism": a generic crime applied to people doing scuzzy stuff in bulk where you don't want to (or can't) pin any individual crimes on them.
Actually, in the U.S. charging someone with racketeering involves showing that they committed multiple individual felonies, most of which are quite serious. The idea, as I understand it, is that if you are committing multiple crimes in an organized fashion (part of an "enterprise") the overall offense is considered worse than the sum of the individual crimes.
Never being able to be a juror? where is the downside...
I have never ever known anyone to say "hey, I would like to be on a jury"
Maybe, but if you are on the other side of things, you might care. If you are from some segment of society that is disproportionately likely to be arrested unfairly -- say because of your race or political activity -- that means that a jury is less likely to include people like you.
That comment was probably meant to be funny, but it makes me think... what if somebody created a Clearplay-like technology for DVRs? It would be a great way to skip commercials. All it would take would be 1 person to upload a list of start and stop timecodes for the commercials in a given show, then everybody else downloads the list of timecodes and watches commercial-free. You'd have to make sure everybody's recording was synced to the same start-point, but otherwise it'd be trivial.
I do understand that the Constitution DOES allow regulation of some sort to be created at the state level.
Actually, that power is specifically granted to Congress as far as intellectual property is concerned. The Constitution is pretty clear that it's a federal power.
Of course, the Constitution is also pretty clear that artificial monopolies (patents, copyrights, etc.) on intellectual property are supposed to be granted "for limited times." And it's also pretty clear that the rationale for granting such monopolies is "to promote the progress of science and useful arts," not to promote business interests. Both of those have been pretty much ignored by Congress.
I think this whole current controversy over sanitized DVDs would be much less of a big deal if Congress had been actually taking those things seriously from the getgo. If the "limited times" were actually limited in a meaningful way -- only for enough years as is necessary to establish an incentive for scientists and artists to continue creating -- it would be much less worrisome for copyright holders to exercise the kind of control they've been granted.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think any working scientist would deny that it's easier to publish work that fits with prevailing viewpoints and paradigms than to publish work that goes against them. That's perhaps not a problem - after all, if your one experiment flies in the face of well-established existing theory, is it more likely that (a) you've discovered a fundamental flaw with an enormous body of research, or (b) your findings were a Type I error?
But this notion that there's a conspiracy to keep out dissenting views seems a little nutty to me. Sure, big-shot scientists get their egos invested in their theories. But balanced against that is the fact that almost every scientist I know lives and breathes for the surprising or counterintuitive discovery or for the mysterious (replicable) anomaly that needs to be figured out -- that's why they went into science in the first place. Most scientists I know love to play the contrarian. You may need to produce more evidence if you're totally coming from left field, but you'll get an audience when you do.
Maybe the NIST folks figured they'd finally have a little protection from getting censored or worse for giving their honest analysis.
As long as you're using concepts from game theory, let's introduce the concept of "zero sum." Because it's not just that profiling doesn't work - profiling may actually worsen security.
At any given point in time, a security checkpoint has fixed amount of resources to scrutinize passengers. Under profiling, you are devoting greater manpower to searching the Arabs' bags than you would under no profiling. That means that you are actually devoting less resources to scrutinizing the pregnant Irishwomen's bags than you would under no profiling. So if the bad guys can make an educated guess about who does and doesn't fit the profile, profiling actually helps them.
Profiling + Savvy bad guys = Worse security
That's really only been a problem since California passed term limits. Why not repeal them, rather than increasing term length?
Term limits + law of unintended consequences = More power to lobbyists
Although this sounds like a good idea, I don't think it would actually help. The major argument for the Bayh-Dole Act is that it gives universities an incentive to move patented discoveries into the applied realm where they may do some good; otherwise the patents languish underutilized. A major argument against it is that federally funded research ought to be in the public domain. Your plan would create the worst of both worlds: federally funded research would be protected by patents but never get turned into useful products.
Besides, most universities reinvest a large portion of their licensing money into research anyway, so the cycle is largely self-feeding already.
Parent said "Asking Universities to provide access to their discoveries would reduce the value of their discoveries on the open market..." and then: "They should be trying to pursuade drug manufacturers to ship more reduced/free products to these third world countries."
Private industry is heavily dependent on licensing publicly funded discoveries from universities (search on the phrase "technology transfer" at any research-oriented university to see examples). Universities could include in those licenses the stipulation that drugs created from the patents be made available for free or low cost to developing countries. A carefully crafted stipulation in a licensing agreement would be unlikely to drastically reduce the market value of a discovery, since the drug companies would not have been making much money in those countries anyway.
Sure, drug companies could voluntarily do that on their own, but a for-profit company is unlikely to voluntarily do anything that could imaginably restrict their profits, even if only by a small amount. Because of their nonprofit status and public service mission, universities are more likely to get the ball rolling.
Actually, there is already quite a bit of public money invested in biomedical research. The NIH budget is about 28 billion dollars (one of the major reasons why the U.S. is a world research leader, by the way).
Currently, universities are encouraged to patent innovations created with federal funding and make money off those patents, thanks to the Bayh-Dole Act. This statement calls on universities to open up their patents when doing so could help the developing world. It does not appear to call for any changes in how public money is spent -- only in what is done with the products of that public investment.
I wouldn't actually use it.
Seriously, I'm normally a gadget freak. I love anything I can tinker with, especially if it appeals to my creative side. But I somehow managed to call up enough restraint a few years ago to get the tiniest decent-quality camera I could find (a Minolta Dimage Xt, just a little larger than an Altoids tin), and I couldn't be happier. When I'm at a party, family event, wandering a random city on vacation, etc. I can just stick it in a shirt pocket, enjoy myself, and pull it out to take snapshots whenever I feel like it. I don't have to lug around a huge bulky camera in a huge bulky bag, which would be such an annoyance that I'd probably end up leaving it at home (or setting it down somewhere after taking a couple of posed shots and not touching the damn thing all night).
Is my tiny auto camera perfect? Of course not. It takes pretty decent quality pictures, but it's not pro quality, and the shutter lag is annoying. But realistically, a camera that takes a bazillion vivid megapixels with no lag isn't going to do me any good if I don't have it handy when something funny, surprising, or interesting happens.
Let me add that odds are you will agree with one candidate more than the other(s). Voting isn't about getting everything you want on every single issue. That doesn't happen in a democracy -- you'll have to become dictator of your own nation to realize that little fantasy. Voting is about moving the country in a more positive direction, and that is an eminently realistic and achievable goal.
I'm frankly getting sick of the "no good option" argument, just like I have a low opinion of people who can't bother to get informed about the issues. True, there may not be a candidate that you agree with 100%. But there are always real differences among the candidates, and chances are very good that if you give it a little consideration you will find that one is preferable over the other(s).
Remember in 2000, people who made the argument that Bush and Gore weren't any different from each other? (Sometimes accompanied by the argument that 3rd party candidates had no hope of winning, so there was no point going that direction either.) Consider the last 6 years, and ask yourself if they were right. Would the US be in the same place if Gore were president? (Of course, different people will reach different conclusions about whether that would be a better or worse place. But it's pretty hard to argue that it would be the same.)
If you don't feel informed enough to make a choice, don't justify your laziness with a false dichotomy of uninformed vote versus no vote. Get off your lazy, whiny butt and do your duty -- yes, your duty -- as a citizen. Inform yourself and cast a vote.
Ask Japan.
Haven't these guys learned anything since 9/11? If they'd only raised bogus security arguments, they would've sailed through. Heck, the feds probably would've authorized them to shoot anybody with a BlackBerry.
And don't forget the clustering illusion.
For what it's worth, Bill Lockyer is the attorney general. So unlike private lawyers who bring class action suits, his take will be $175,525 a year, which is exactly what it would be if he didn't bring this suit.
Which raises a really interesting question: Why is Bill Lockyer doing this? Does he think he can convince his constituents this is a good idea?
NelRo, what you say simply isn't a fair characterization of the scientific literature. The methods used in studies are quite diverse, and yes, some studies use analog measures of outcomes like what you describe. But there are also randomized experiments that measure actual, honest-to-goodness physical aggression.
I'd highly recommend you read this report in its entirety. It's a good review of the research literature on media violence written by scientists for a non-expert audience.
Mod parent up! The question of whether videogames lead to violent behavior (probably yes) is entirely separate from the question of what government should do about it (very little).
The whole reason freedom of speech is encoded into the US constitution is that speech can be dangerous. Why do totalitarian regimes suppress the work of artists? Because art is a tool that can incite people to action. Like any tool it can be used in morally good or bad or ambiguous ways, but the founders were smart enough to know that government cannot be trusted to decide which is which.
I'd add to the parent post that if people are supposed to make good choices about how to raise their children, we need good, objective science, not the FUD offered by the Jack Thompsons (on one side) and game-mag editorialists (on the other). That science is actually being done, though you wouldn't know it from the partisans.
Let me try to mirror your argument:
Before videogames, there was fun. People have been having fun for millennia: playing board games, going to the theater, etc. Therefore, videogames are not fun. QED
Perhaps you see why that line of argument is ridiculous? No reasonable critic is trying to argue that videogames are the sole determinant of violence; in fact, I don't think even the unreasonable critics (of which there are more than a few) are trying to argue that. To claim otherwise is to grab for the most ridiculous of strawmen.
Yeah, and they worked pretty well for Darwin and Einstein. At least that's what I keep telling myself when I forget or ignore colleagues' emails.
Wait, I'm confused. Is this guy copying Colbert or slashdot?
An average reader might not understand a very technical basic research article, but they can probably get the important points out of many articles that would be directly relevant to their situation (clinical trials, meta-analyses, etc.).
Moreover, I think this policy would actually help quite a few scientists, especially those at less well-funded institutions. Institutional rates for journals are astronomically high, and universities often have to make difficult choices about which journals to subscribe to. That problem won't completely go away with such a system -- scientists will still want access to journals inside of the 6-month embargo to stay on top of cutting-edge work -- but it will make the field at least a little closer to level.
Your view of things agrees with some of the available resesarch on who tends to be more successful:
Actually, in the U.S. charging someone with racketeering involves showing that they committed multiple individual felonies, most of which are quite serious. The idea, as I understand it, is that if you are committing multiple crimes in an organized fashion (part of an "enterprise") the overall offense is considered worse than the sum of the individual crimes.
Maybe, but if you are on the other side of things, you might care. If you are from some segment of society that is disproportionately likely to be arrested unfairly -- say because of your race or political activity -- that means that a jury is less likely to include people like you.
That comment was probably meant to be funny, but it makes me think... what if somebody created a Clearplay-like technology for DVRs? It would be a great way to skip commercials. All it would take would be 1 person to upload a list of start and stop timecodes for the commercials in a given show, then everybody else downloads the list of timecodes and watches commercial-free. You'd have to make sure everybody's recording was synced to the same start-point, but otherwise it'd be trivial.
Actually, that power is specifically granted to Congress as far as intellectual property is concerned. The Constitution is pretty clear that it's a federal power.
Of course, the Constitution is also pretty clear that artificial monopolies (patents, copyrights, etc.) on intellectual property are supposed to be granted "for limited times." And it's also pretty clear that the rationale for granting such monopolies is "to promote the progress of science and useful arts," not to promote business interests. Both of those have been pretty much ignored by Congress.
I think this whole current controversy over sanitized DVDs would be much less of a big deal if Congress had been actually taking those things seriously from the getgo. If the "limited times" were actually limited in a meaningful way -- only for enough years as is necessary to establish an incentive for scientists and artists to continue creating -- it would be much less worrisome for copyright holders to exercise the kind of control they've been granted.