amgen is a big company--they got $15.6 billion in revenue last year and spent $3.2 billion on research in 2011 according to their fact sheet. Presumably they have some money to spend to try to replicate published studies, or at least their main findings. I would think that replicating results would be part of their due diligence; if they're going to invest time, money, and resources developing a product based on the results of a research paper, they need to have some confidence that that investment is based on solid footing.
More importantly, since they've shown that they can apply this technique (it's not really specified, but I'm assuming it's whole genome sequencing) and applied it to one patient, there's nothing stopping them (except money) from applying this to other patients with the same condition. Maybe a different patient has 25,000 mutations, maybe another has 27,000, etc. Chances are these mutations are not all going to be affecting the same sequence positions in all the different patients. If they can find mutations that are more common than others or genes that are mutated more often than others, then they can perhaps discover new genes which, when mutated drive the development and progression of the tumor. If you can discover which genes are important you can perhaps design treatments for that.
That said, the title ought to be more like: "Scientists crack 'Entire Genetic Code' of one melanoma patient's tumor and one lung cancer patient's tumor. This is definitely a very impressive achievement in its own right, and the technology that has made this possible is pretty amazing, but it's a bit premature to say "we've cracked the genetic code of cancer" full stop.
The cold chills of the 4 AM morning air nipping at my underwear-shod body
OK, I never played warcraft so I don't know about most of what the hell you're talking about, but I have to ask why you were wearing underwear as shoes!
I tried that but it pastes as a bitmap. I just found out about the new word equation editor today though, so I certainly haven't tried it exhaustively.
Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to work in powerpoint, so you're stuck with crappy ol' equation editor 3. (Or at least I haven't seen how to use the new editing system).
Did Fannie and Freddie give out a lot of NINA loans? Honest question. I have no idea and have no idea how to find out. Also, what regulations were proposed and what would they have done if enacted? You're implying that the regulations would have had beneficial effects and that they were rejected by people with foolish or underhanded motives, but it's hard to judge if that's the case or not without knowing what regulations were actually proposed. If you have any links or anything, I'd certainly like to take a look.
What I find disconcerting is the effort (presumably made by those on the right) to pin the blame for this crisis on fannie and freddie alone. Which is why I asked about the NINA loans. After listening to This American Life: Giant Pool of Money, I would tend to think that at least some of the blame ought to go to the system whereby mortgage brokers were looking to make as many loans as possible to sell to others, and so didn't bother to verify income or assets. After all, once they sold the loan, they got their money and didn't have to worry about whether the borrower would default.
Also, see this post by Andrew Leonard in salon, discussing Alan Greenspan's testimony:
The evidence strongly suggests that without *the excess demand from securitizers*, subprime mortgage originizations, undeniably the original source of the crisis, would have been far smaller and defaults accordingly far fewer. But subprime mortgages pooled and sold as securities became subject to explosive demand from investors around the world.
Italics mine.
That's right. Alan Greenspan went before Congress and did not, at least in his initial statement, blame Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac or the Community Reinvestment Act or stupid homeowners or fraudulent lenders for the subprime meltdown and the ensuing credit crisis. He blamed the demand for risk from both the banks who would repackage the dodgy loans as exotic securities and the investors whose taste for these hotcakes could not be satisfied.
Again, if you'd provide some links discussing the proposed regulation, I'd be able to determine whether I should have been concerned that useful regulations were being blocked, or whether these proposed regulations were, in fact, designed to stick it to the poor.
1, "anything outside of nature" is by definition supernatural. By nature, I mean the world, the universe, and the laws governing their function/activity.
2. I don't know what you mean by "tainting the experiment"
3. The classical example of evolution is the ring species.
4. I probably did miss your point. I'm not actually sure what it is.
supernatural: of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe; especially : of or relating to God or a god, demigod, spirit, or devil
natural: being in accordance with or determined by nature b: having or constituting a classification based on features existing in nature. occurring in conformity with the ordinary course of nature : not marvelous or supernatural
How do you have things outside of the natural world? An excellent question. I have no idea. What I'm basically trying to say is that science is concerned with studying the natural world and looks to discover the causes behind various effects. Invoking some unobservable (because if you could observe it, faith would be pretty mundane) entity not bound by the constraints of the natural world to explain these effects isn't science.
Exactly--if you can get people thinking that there aren't any objective facts, or that they can't trust science because scientists are just a bunch of agenda-pushers, you can inject enough doubt into a political situation to get people to act against their own interests.
Yep, you're right. In my mind I have "not getting tenure" and "getting fired" associated with "very bad things associated with the end of an academic's career at an institution" so I confused one with the other.
You can study the random processes and try to figure out how said processes lead to order from chaos. If you've got a supernatural entity organizing everything, that pretty much stops science (aka the study of the natural world) right there.
OK, I'm game, what's the origin of "intelligent life form on some other planet" that seeded earth?
Also, no working example of evolution in the lab? What are viruses, bacteria, hell, even cancer cells?
Also, nobody's questioning the fact that humans or other forms of intelligence are capable of affecting the course of evolution. Look at the many varieties of dogs, for instance. The main objection to the "intelligence" in intelligent design is that we've got no way to observe that intelligence, and a lot of the ID proponents would seem to require some kind of supernatural intelligence to fulfill that need.
The Pope also has nothing to do with Europe, he is not a European leader of any country, he is the head of a international church whose headquarters happen to be in this continent. <nitpick>The pope is actually the head of the Stato della Città del Vaticano, which is technically a sovereign state, tiny though it may be. Before the unification of italy, the pope actually ruled over decent-sized chunks of land.</nitpick>
All Stein is doing is asking scientists to act like it. They should acknowledge the weak spots in any theory and look to finding the explanations. Stein's documentary could have been about a variety of other subjects. He is simply saying don't close the books until all the facts are in. There is nothing wrong with that its good science. Imagine if people had decided special relativity worked so well we need not bother look at string theory? Except scientists are looking at the weak spots and trying to find explanations in evolutionary theory. There's still a lot we don't know about yet and there are a lot of interesting questions that remain to be answered. On the other hand, rehashing these old debates is not very productive.
Its the same thing. Anyone who takes issue with Steins message is being pretty petty and short sighted. Except he's being misleading and his goal isn't to get scientists to look at ID, it's to get the public to think that they can't trust those evil godless scientists, because all they're doing is agenda-pushing. If you can get people to doubt objective facts, there's no limit to what you can do!
Slashdot Mirror
Back in my day, we had flying toasters...and we liked it!
auto da fé, what's an auto da fé? what you oughtn't to do but you do anyway
amgen is a big company--they got $15.6 billion in revenue last year and spent $3.2 billion on research in 2011 according to their fact sheet. Presumably they have some money to spend to try to replicate published studies, or at least their main findings. I would think that replicating results would be part of their due diligence; if they're going to invest time, money, and resources developing a product based on the results of a research paper, they need to have some confidence that that investment is based on solid footing.
More importantly, since they've shown that they can apply this technique (it's not really specified, but I'm assuming it's whole genome sequencing) and applied it to one patient, there's nothing stopping them (except money) from applying this to other patients with the same condition. Maybe a different patient has 25,000 mutations, maybe another has 27,000, etc. Chances are these mutations are not all going to be affecting the same sequence positions in all the different patients. If they can find mutations that are more common than others or genes that are mutated more often than others, then they can perhaps discover new genes which, when mutated drive the development and progression of the tumor. If you can discover which genes are important you can perhaps design treatments for that.
That said, the title ought to be more like: "Scientists crack 'Entire Genetic Code' of one melanoma patient's tumor and one lung cancer patient's tumor. This is definitely a very impressive achievement in its own right, and the technology that has made this possible is pretty amazing, but it's a bit premature to say "we've cracked the genetic code of cancer" full stop.
The cold chills of the 4 AM morning air nipping at my underwear-shod body
OK, I never played warcraft so I don't know about most of what the hell you're talking about, but I have to ask why you were wearing underwear as shoes!
What the hell do you think an isotope is?
We no longer say "yes", we say "Affirmative!" Unless we know the other robot really well.
I tried that but it pastes as a bitmap. I just found out about the new word equation editor today though, so I certainly haven't tried it exhaustively.
Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to work in powerpoint, so you're stuck with crappy ol' equation editor 3. (Or at least I haven't seen how to use the new editing system).
We know Steve is going to die, someday.
Even if it's only for three days.
Plus 1, Blasphemous!
In Minas Tirith they endure the Eastern Blot, but they do not ask it for tidings...
Did Fannie and Freddie give out a lot of NINA loans? Honest question. I have no idea and have no idea how to find out. Also, what regulations were proposed and what would they have done if enacted? You're implying that the regulations would have had beneficial effects and that they were rejected by people with foolish or underhanded motives, but it's hard to judge if that's the case or not without knowing what regulations were actually proposed. If you have any links or anything, I'd certainly like to take a look.
What I find disconcerting is the effort (presumably made by those on the right) to pin the blame for this crisis on fannie and freddie alone. Which is why I asked about the NINA loans. After listening to This American Life: Giant Pool of Money, I would tend to think that at least some of the blame ought to go to the system whereby mortgage brokers were looking to make as many loans as possible to sell to others, and so didn't bother to verify income or assets. After all, once they sold the loan, they got their money and didn't have to worry about whether the borrower would default.
Also, see this post by Andrew Leonard in salon, discussing Alan Greenspan's testimony:
Again, if you'd provide some links discussing the proposed regulation, I'd be able to determine whether I should have been concerned that useful regulations were being blocked, or whether these proposed regulations were, in fact, designed to stick it to the poor.
WTF? Who made that accusation?
meh, preview is for
Udamnnearkilledum would also be acceptable.
interesting, ron paul didn't vote on this one...I would have figured he'd be against it...
1, "anything outside of nature" is by definition supernatural. By nature, I mean the world, the universe, and the laws governing their function/activity.
2. I don't know what you mean by "tainting the experiment"
3. The classical example of evolution is the ring species.
4. I probably did miss your point. I'm not actually sure what it is.
supernatural: of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe; especially : of or relating to God or a god, demigod, spirit, or devil
natural: being in accordance with or determined by nature b: having or constituting a classification based on features existing in nature. occurring in conformity with the ordinary course of nature : not marvelous or supernatural How do you have things outside of the natural world? An excellent question. I have no idea. What I'm basically trying to say is that science is concerned with studying the natural world and looks to discover the causes behind various effects. Invoking some unobservable (because if you could observe it, faith would be pretty mundane) entity not bound by the constraints of the natural world to explain these effects isn't science.
Exactly--if you can get people thinking that there aren't any objective facts, or that they can't trust science because scientists are just a bunch of agenda-pushers, you can inject enough doubt into a political situation to get people to act against their own interests.
Yep, you're right. In my mind I have "not getting tenure" and "getting fired" associated with "very bad things associated with the end of an academic's career at an institution" so I confused one with the other.
Are you also opposed to half-truths, a lack of ethics and generally misleading content?
You can study the random processes and try to figure out how said processes lead to order from chaos. If you've got a supernatural entity organizing everything, that pretty much stops science (aka the study of the natural world) right there.
OK, I'm game, what's the origin of "intelligent life form on some other planet" that seeded earth?
Also, no working example of evolution in the lab? What are viruses, bacteria, hell, even cancer cells?
Also, nobody's questioning the fact that humans or other forms of intelligence are capable of affecting the course of evolution. Look at the many varieties of dogs, for instance. The main objection to the "intelligence" in intelligent design is that we've got no way to observe that intelligence, and a lot of the ID proponents would seem to require some kind of supernatural intelligence to fulfill that need.