[Hades]

The older I get the more I begin to suspect something very fishy is going on in the hard scientific community. It's been a long time I've been musing on this concept.

Doesn't it strike anybody here as odd that it's the year 2016, there's more people and money and news media being thrown at "scientific research" than ever, women are being pushed kicking and screaming into hard STEM fields, and I Fucking Love Science is a cultural meme, but still we have no truly great and intellectually fearless scientific geniuses? They've practically gone extinct. Where the hell is our Einstein?

The last truly great American scientist that I can pinpoint was Richard Feynman. He was of a particularly curious and puzzle-breaking sort and he lived a colorful life of intrigue, accomplishment, and adventure. He died in 1988 at the relatively young age of 70. Since then nobody who's arrived on the scene can fill his shoes.

I'm strongly suspecting that there's a deep and insidious movement in the scientific community these days. It's corrupting it's otherwise noble ideals to serve those in power.

We've got complete charlatans like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye the Science Dunce dominating the news every slow cycle and shitty pop science twats like Steve Pinker drafting complete crap and selling it to the hungry masses.

Something is going on here. Why is it that Black Science Man and Billy the College Dropout are the faces of modern science? Why are they pushing GMOs? Why are they pushing first Global Warming, then Climate Change?

It's utterly and despicably anathema to the concept of the scientific method to speak on things you know nothing about. What gives anyone the right to do that? It violates every known ethical and philosophical standard that the pure and rigorous sciences hold very dear. And yet these celebrity liars and layabouts who've accomplished almost nothing of note in their meaningless careers are manipulating the masses to thinking it's "cool" and "edgy" to abandon their religion and God and flock to the cult of Science as Religion.

They're slowly changing the perception of what science actually is in the public sphere. If you're one of few here who thinks Trump is somehow worse than Hitler he has nothing on the damage these two are doing in the long term. They're committing a terrible crime. Maybe those in power thought it would take thirty or forty years but it's happening at a destructively rapid rate. People are forgetting to ask questions. They don't understand that you must follow the money, for a real scientist would search for truth without getting paid for it.

If nothing is done to prop men (it's usually men) of great virtue and accomplishment in their rightful place as rockstars in intellectual society and swiftly destroy the reputations and annihilate the false idols of celebrity personified by intellectually dishonest fools like Neil Tyson and Bill Nye, we will see a day where "research" is wholly static garbage, churning out the same shit for eternity. 1984 doesn't just apply to the working class stiff working in factories. "Smart" people are easier to persuade than dumb people.

The philosophical and inquisitive nature of science will then have become fully corrupted towards the fascistic and dogmatic ideology of Science as God, and terribly destructive nonsense will be voted in, funded heavily, and pushed to the unquestioning masses all under the tyranny of democracy.

[AboveAverageJoe]

Neil De Grasse was a beast in his day, captain of high school wrestling team and undefeated at Harvard.



Nowadays, there is more money in celebrity science than actually executing the scientific method. So these guys make money by entertaining the masses with proven, elementary science. You called them charlatans and may be right, but I am not going to say it to De Grasse's face.

[Hades]

(06-01-2016 10:18 AM)AboveAverageJoe Wrote:  

Neil De Grasse was a beast in his day, captain of high school wrestling team and undefeated at Harvard.

So what. If he makes public statements but doesn't refuse to comment on things he does not understand deeply, he is no longer a scientist. He's a whore.

People believe he's a scientist because he's got a piece of paper from a university and studies a couple years, maybe did research, and now he preaches about shit he simply did not go to school for, nor research personally. Bad ethics. No scientist is supposed to deliberately mislead the public.

[AboveAverageJoe]

(06-01-2016 10:22 AM)Hades Wrote:  

(06-01-2016 10:18 AM)AboveAverageJoe Wrote:  

Neil De Grasse was a beast in his day, captain of high school wrestling team and undefeated at Harvard.

So what. If he makes public statements but doesn't refuse to comment on things he does not understand deeply, he is no longer a scientist. He's a whore.

People believe he's a scientist because he's got a piece of paper from a university and studies a couple years, maybe did research, and now he preaches about shit he simply did not go to school for, nor research personally. Bad ethics. No scientist is supposed to deliberately mislead the public.

It was an offhanded comment, I admit but not disingenuous . I did say that he was a celebrity scientist which is more of a "I am not a real scientist, but I play one on TV role."
He still comes across as awfully likable, that is probably his appeal more so than his accomplishments.
Now Bill Nye that guy just has what in astrophysics we call "a punchable face"

[Hades]

(06-01-2016 10:30 AM)AboveAverageJoe Wrote:  

(06-01-2016 10:22 AM)Hades Wrote:  

(06-01-2016 10:18 AM)AboveAverageJoe Wrote:  

Neil De Grasse was a beast in his day, captain of high school wrestling team and undefeated at Harvard.

So what. If he makes public statements but doesn't refuse to comment on things he does not understand deeply, he is no longer a scientist. He's a whore.

People believe he's a scientist because he's got a piece of paper from a university and studies a couple years, maybe did research, and now he preaches about shit he simply did not go to school for, nor research personally. Bad ethics. No scientist is supposed to deliberately mislead the public.

It was an offhanded comment, I admit but not disingenuous . I did say that he was a celebrity scientist which is more of a "I am not a real scientist, but I play one on TV role."
He still comes across as awfully likable, that is probably his appeal more so than his accomplishments.
Now Bill Nye that guy just has what in astrophysics we call "a punchable face"

Science has to purge outsider influence from it's ranks and re-establish it's cold and dispassionate approach towards natural phenomena. It doesn't matter how likeable the pawns of the enemy are.

If the community doesn't make a stand and do just that, it's not science anymore.

[storm]

(06-01-2016 09:58 AM)Hades Wrote:  

The older I get the more I begin to suspect something very fishy is going on in the hard scientific community. It's been a long time I've been musing on this concept.

Doesn't it strike anybody here as odd that it's the year 2016, there's more people and money and news media being thrown at "scientific research" than ever, women are being pushed kicking and screaming into hard STEM fields, and I Fucking Love Science is a cultural meme, but still we have no truly great and intellectually fearless scientific geniuses? They've practically gone extinct. Where the hell is our Einstein?

What a low-effort post.

While I cannot speak for Physics, there are plenty of great and eccentric men in Mathematics: James Simons, Cédric Villani, Grigori Perelman, come to mind, as do a million others who I do injustice by omitting for the purpose of brevity. If you want to talk about politics and eccentricity, Roosh recently reviewed Ted Kaczynski's manifesto.

There is, right now, a group of mathematicians building a castle modeled after Spain's Alhambra.

I would suggest that you find science lacking because you are reading too many pop culture news articles and not enough actual science. Nobody is talking about these guys because they don't want to be talked about: WSP said it best: fame is just harassment from regular people. At the same time, guys like Neil De Grasse make money by being talked about.

The entire situation is abundantly clear to anyone who thinks about it for just a moment.

[Hades]

(06-01-2016 10:44 AM)storm Wrote:  

(06-01-2016 09:58 AM)Hades Wrote:  

The older I get the more I begin to suspect something very fishy is going on in the hard scientific community. It's been a long time I've been musing on this concept.

Doesn't it strike anybody here as odd that it's the year 2016, there's more people and money and news media being thrown at "scientific research" than ever, women are being pushed kicking and screaming into hard STEM fields, and I Fucking Love Science is a cultural meme, but still we have no truly great and intellectually fearless scientific geniuses? They've practically gone extinct. Where the hell is our Einstein?

What a low-effort post.

While I cannot speak for Physics, there are plenty of great and eccentric men in Mathematics: James Simons, Cédric Villani, Grigori Perelman, come to mind, as do a million others who I do injustice by omitting for the purpose of brevity. If you want to talk about politics and eccentricity, Roosh recently reviewed Ted Kaczynski's manifesto.

There is, right now, a group of mathematicians building a castle modeled after Spain's Alhambra.

I would suggest that you find science lacking because you are reading too many pop culture news articles and not enough actual science. Nobody is talking about these guys because they don't want to be talked about: WSP said it best: fame is just harassment from regular people. At the same time, guys like Neil De Grasse make money by being talked about.

Did you even read my post? What a low-energy reading comprehension.
Your post was a bunch of virtue signaling about how tight you are in the maths community. I could literally give a damn, that has nothing to do with this thread.

Who was the last great scientist who enjoyed public celebrity during his lifetime?

Why are fake/telegenic "scientists" whoring themselves to government agendas?

If you don't see the 3-D playing field of how the gradual persuasion of the masses is changing what people actually perceive science to be, and can't relate that to how money is being moved and funneled into naturally unscientific endeavors, then read it again. Or visit the Trump thread.

Nowhere did I say there weren't brilliant men making great big changes in the world. No shit there are. If .001% of people are super-geniuses, by six billion humans, that's a couple thousand people.

I'm saying that these guys are nowhere in the media. Why must that be the case? Is it for a good or a bad reason?

If they did not like being talked to, what would be so wrong with a newspaper releasing terse notes on their ground-breaking research under an approved pseudonym? Ben Franklin was Poor Richard.

You can only name these guys because you've either actually looked or had to know their work due to scholarly pursuits.

Ask somebody on the street about any of that and they'll have no idea who you're talking about.

[AboveAverageJoe]

The real scientists have all been poached by the government and organized crime.

[storm]

So your claim is no longer that there are no eccentric brilliant scientists?

Now you are saying it is bad that we are taking about pop science and not real science?

Science is hard. Pop science is easy. There is money involved. People like to be told they are smart and don't like thinking. Why is the situation we have a surprise?

You mention Einstein. So you even understand relativity? Almost nobody does. That is why we have De Grass and not Grothendieck.

[storm]

If you want an example of a modern day Feynman perhaps Terrance Tao will fit your bill.

EDIT: I think you are overplaying the significance of high science. Effectively interesting things can be understood with basic college math. In this way the pop science is superior.

[Marmite]

Stephen 'The Hawk' Hawking?

[RichieP]

I don't think it's true there are fewer genius scientists. But you probably don't hear about their work as much, because of:

1) Collaboration. Science is now far more collaborative - problems get solved incrementally, by teams and global collaborators.

2) Comptuation. We're now able to simulate many problems that are analytically unsolvable. Thus, we can make steady incremental progress in applied science without having to come up with revolutionary grand-theories that transform problems.

2) Hyper-specialization. There was once a time when a genius physicist could understand most cutting-edge physics of his time. Utterly impossible now - a genius physicist may not even be able to understand much that's published in a journal in his field. Skillsets have become hyper-specialized. The hours now needed to even begin to understand the mathematical frameworks/languages required to tackle modern theoretical problems preclude "genius generalists" moreso than they used to.

Why arent these guys in the media? Because their work is far too complicated, far less globally sexy and almost entirely unrelatable to pretty much everyone. Much easier for journalists to lionize tech entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, who are innovating in ways people connect to.

But check out ScienceDaily.com if you want your faith restored. So much cool shit is happening, it's increasing exponentially, but progress is incremental, hyper-specialized and team-driven.

[PhDre]

(06-01-2016 09:58 AM)Hades Wrote:  

The older I get the more I begin to suspect something very fishy is going on in the hard scientific community. It's been a long time I've been musing on this concept.

Doesn't it strike anybody here as odd that it's the year 2016, there's more people and money and news media being thrown at "scientific research" than ever, women are being pushed kicking and screaming into hard STEM fields, and I Fucking Love Science is a cultural meme, but still we have no truly great and intellectually fearless scientific geniuses? They've practically gone extinct. Where the hell is our Einstein?

The last truly great American scientist that I can pinpoint was Richard Feynman. He was of a particularly curious and puzzle-breaking sort and he lived a colorful life of intrigue, accomplishment, and adventure. He died in 1988 at the relatively young age of 70. Since then nobody who's arrived on the scene can fill his shoes.

I'm strongly suspecting that there's a deep and insidious movement in the scientific community these days. It's corrupting it's otherwise noble ideals to serve those in power.

Fully agree with this observation.

I work in scientific research in the STEM field and this is my view on the causes of this problem.

I identify roughly three causes:
1) a decline in educational standards
2) people becoming dumber
3) publication pressure
4) origin of the funding

First of all politicians have been working hard for decades to reduce the educational standards, both in primary and in secondary school. Thirty years ago, students left high school and they were fluent in at least two languages, had an excellent command of grammar and vocabulary in their mother tongue and could play with basic calculus and linear algebra problems. Excellence in these things was strongly encouraged and parents took great pride in the good performance of their children.

And then the politicians decided that this performance-based system was unfair, discriminated the less intellectually gifted (and girls and immigrants who refused to learn the language and adapt to the culture), put too much pressure on children’s shoulders and that school “had to be fun”. Thus, requirements were universally lowered. This coincided with the shift from a male dominated teacher corps to a female dominated one. As a result, today’s 18 year olds are mostly borderline retards with an overinflated self worth. They think they master multiple languages, but they don’t even know the basic grammar of their mother tongue and they definitely cannot carry a conversation or write a text in another tongue. They hardly solve a quadratic equation, let alone calculate a derivative, an integral or a determinant. This is not an exaggeration; I teach courses to engineering students and every year I am required by my superiors to lower my standards because a certain percentage of (ever dumber) students need to pass.

I will not spend too much time on the second cause because I don’t want to search for sources now, but it has already been mentioned on this forum: people are actually getting dumber. Is it because of genetic selection (the dumb breeding more), poor food, exposure to endocrine disruptors and emf’s, inferior brain development due to overreliance on computers and the internet… ?
I don’t know, but today’s people are dumber (in terms of pure reasoning capacity, so not likely explained by a change in educational standards) than they were 30, 50 or a 100 years ago.

The third cause is something a lot of people in academics are fully aware of: the publication pressure. Basically, nowadays, your value as a scientist is solely measured by the amount of peer-reviewed articles you publish in scientific journals (and also by the impact factor of the journal and the amount of times you are cited but I won’t go deeper into that).
The amount of papers you publish determines whether you get funding for your PhD or not, whether you are allowed to defend your PhD or not, whether you get hired as a post-doc, as a professor, whether your research proposals get accepted or not, how much money you receive for your projects or your department…
It makes the difference between being without a job, and being a highly paid and respected professor at a prestigious institute.

Since coming up with an actual scientific advance and writing a paper on it takes many years, it is impossible to participate in the race for the most amount of papers if you take this route. So if you really want to advance science, you will simply not have the chance because you will be out of funding after one or two years due to insufficient output.

Moreover, this peer-review procedure is conducted by other researchers in your field. Thus it is completely impossible to publish a study that attacks the current status quo. You need to suck the dick of those who were publishing in the domain before you were, or you will never be able to enter into the domain.

As a result, nearly all studies published nowadays are slight variations on the existing literature, changing a variable here and there. But no one dares to question the current state of the art or explore new paths.

And finally, the funding plays an important role.
Who pays for publicly accessible scientific research? The government, large multinationals and foundations from billionaire philanthropists.
Do you think they are happy with no matter which outcome? No at all.

The editor-in-chief of The Lancet (most important journal in medicine) sounded the alarm bell last year. He estimated that at least half of the studies that appeared in his journal were purposefully falsified. A friend of mine did research on cancer remedies and he told me that literally everyone “massaged” his data to fit the research hypothesis.
Why?
Do you think that big pharma will spend billions to develop a drug without bringing it to market? Do you think they want you to read that a simple herb is superior to an engineered drug?

Do you think that it is possible in this day and age to publish a study that shows that the brains of men and women are not equal and that as a result, women are less suitable for STEM or decision-making roles? A study that shows that artificial emf’s are dangerous? A study that shows that GMO’s are not nutritionally equivalent to the real stuff and might trigger the release of inflammatory compounds?
Not at all, the researchers who try to research this kind of thing have their funding cut and their reputation destroyed.

I hope this gives you some more insight into why science is so rotten nowadays.

Currently, scientific research does not serve the people. It is simply another tool in the toolbox of the globalist overlords to make people into dumb, obedient, unfit, unhealthy slaves. As long as the tide is not turned, it will remain that way.

[PhDre]

(06-01-2016 11:19 AM)RichieP Wrote:  

The hours now needed to even begin to understand the mathematical frameworks/languages required to tackle modern theoretical problems preclude "genius generalists" moreso than they used to.

Disagree. The mathematical framework for physics were and are still tensors and differential equations.
Sure the equations might become more complex, but whereas 50 years ago tedious analytical limits and approximations were necessary, nowadays numerical solution techniques enable one single person to analyze the behaviour of a very complex problem over a wide range of domains.

(06-01-2016 11:19 AM)RichieP Wrote:  

But check out ScienceDaily.com if you want your faith restored. So much cool shit is happening, it's increasing exponentially, but progress is incremental, hyper-specialized and team-driven.

Disagree again.
It depends on what you call cool shit.
If you are happy that nowadays you can stream HD movies on your phone while you are taking a shit, or that your car will soon drive autonomously, then yes a lot of stuff is happening.

That kind of stuff is irrelevant for me.
- We are still clueless about the causes and the solutions to chronic diseases.
- More people than ever have a chronic disease.
- More people than ever are obese.
- More people than ever are infertile.
- More people than ever have psychological problems.
- Solar power, electrochemical energy production,... make very little (nearly no ) real-world progress.
- ...

The advances in research in the past 40-50 years have done a lot to entertain people, but very little to make us actually live healthier or happier lives.

[Stirfry]

(06-01-2016 11:19 AM)RichieP Wrote:  

I don't think it's true there are fewer genius scientists. But you probably don't hear about their work as much, because of:

1) Collaboration. Science is now far more collaborative - problems get solved incrementally, by teams and global collaborators.

2) Comptuation. We're now able to simulate many problems that are analytically unsolvable. Thus, we can make steady incremental progress in applied science without having to come up with revolutionary grand-theories that transform problems.

2) Hyper-specialization. There was once a time when a genius physicist could understand most cutting-edge physics of his time. Utterly impossible now - a genius physicist may not even be able to understand much that's published in a journal in his field. Skillsets have become hyper-specialized. The hours now needed to even begin to understand the mathematical frameworks/languages required to tackle modern theoretical problems preclude "genius generalists" moreso than they used to.

Why arent these guys in the media? Because their work is far too complicated, far less globally sexy and almost entirely unrelatable to pretty much everyone. Much easier for journalists to lionize tech entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, who are innovating in ways people connect to.

But check out ScienceDaily.com if you want your faith restored. So much cool shit is happening, it's increasing exponentially, but progress is incremental, hyper-specialized and team-driven.

This is pretty much on the money. Hyper-specialization, national and international collaborations, and increasing research costs only scratch the surface of why the 'celebrity scientists' like deGrasse Tyson and that Japanese guy with the white hair aren't 'real scientists,' not to mention that the 'real scientists' are too busy working, writing grants, publishing papers, teaching, and presenting at meetings to host a tv show on the Discovery Channel. I am a scientist (cancer research) and there are so many things wrong with the original post that I'm not sure where to begin.

- "Where the hell is our Einstein?" In the cancer research world, I can think of several "Einsteins" who are widely respected by their peers, and who have made amazing discoveries, but don't get much publicity because of the complexity of their work, or the preliminary nature of their discoveries, which need time to be built upon in order to achieve translational value (i.e. drug development or other novel therapies). But I guarantee that in the next few years there will be a revolution in drug design and in the treatment of individual cancers (google "personalized medicine" and you'll see what I mean).

- "They don't understand that you must follow the money, for a real scientist would search for truth without getting paid for it." HA!!! How do you think research gets done? I run a lab, and between salaries (and benefits) for post-docs and grad students, and the supplies necessary to keep the place running, it's hard to make ends meet. My money comes from the NIH (part of Health and Human Services) but I had to apply for it- an arduous task of compiling data and writing a grant application that takes place slowly over the course of many years. In fact, one of the things hindering great discoveries is the low "pay-line" for grant applications (at the National Cancer Institute, only something like 7% of grants submitted actually get funded). Oh, and if you don't get a grant you can't buy supplies, hire staff, or sometimes even keep your job, let alone make discoveries.

There's a lot of things wrong with today's scientific climate, but Bill Nye or whatever YouTube guy is chattering about global warming these days is the least of our worries.

[Stirfry]

[/quote]
The advances in research in the past 40-50 years have done a lot to entertain people, but very little to make us actually live healthier or happier lives.
[/quote]

Wrong wrong wrong. Look up cancer survival rates over that time. Look up life expectancy rates. You'll be surprised. There were childhood leukemias and lymphomas that were death sentences 50 years ago, that are now completely curable. Even the non-curable cancers (late stage breast and prostate cancers come to mind) are better managed, directly due to discoveries made in labs deciphering the mechanisms of disease, and how to hinder them.

Sorry for the multiple replies but this particular topic is dear to my heart, and at least it's something on the board about which I am somewhat qualified to comment :-)

[EDantes]

(06-01-2016 09:58 AM)Hades Wrote:  

The older I get the more I begin to suspect something very fishy is going on in the hard scientific community. It's been a long time I've been musing on this concept.

Doesn't it strike anybody here as odd that it's the year 2016, there's more people and money and news media being thrown at "scientific research" than ever, women are being pushed kicking and screaming into hard STEM fields, and I Fucking Love Science is a cultural meme, but still we have no truly great and intellectually fearless scientific geniuses? They've practically gone extinct. Where the hell is our Einstein?

Off the bat I would say it's due to "science" having been turned into a religion substitute for atheists and progressives; with "evolution" for example serving as a substitute for a creation myth, and "global warming hysteria" serving as a "secular escatology", not much different than religious fundamentalists who claim every new year is going to be the rapture for example.

The scientific method institution was actually modeled after the structure of the Catholic Church in many ways, though it was intended simply as an institution for objectively gathering empirical data to solve real world problems, rather than as a source of "gospel" or ideology.

As a result questioning the scientific establishment has likely become something like questioning the Catholic Church in Medieval Europe, and scientists will therefore be afraid to question anything, which defeats the whole purpose of "science" to begin with, because once it's above questioning it becomes "religion". (The Big Bang theory for example was at one point considered a "fringe theory" yet it turned out to be correct).

So yet again this shows why "progressives" are actually regressive; by turning science into their own "atheist religion" they're impeding freethought and progress.

Quote:

The philosophical and inquisitive nature of science will then have become fully corrupted towards the fascistic and dogmatic ideology of Science as God, and terribly destructive nonsense will be voted in, funded heavily, and pushed to the unquestioning masses all under the tyranny of democracy.

The cult of science is also a lot scarier than some hick who believes in a literal talking snake; one moonbat movie critic even advocated the extermination of climate change deniers - it's as scary as the Spanish Inquisition ever was.

[weambulance]

"Science" is being used as a tool to gather money and power. The religion analogy is a good one.

Honestly I think that explains most of the problems, in a nutshell. Science is no longer predominantly about a search for truth or finding new ways to improve our lives. It's used to scare people into complying with ever tightening restrictions on what government allows them to do, and to gain public approval for boondoggles that purportedly fight whatever world-ending impending disaster is on the menu this week.

Is real science still being done? Sure. But the focus on science in the media and government is about shaping public opinion to some end, and does not necessarily correspond to reality. That's the sort of thing Bill Nye, the Mechanical Engineer and that dipshit Tyson do.

I strongly disagree with what some people here have said, that just because there are people doing real science work it doesn't matter that people like Nye and Tyson are the faces of science in the public eye. It matters a great deal, because most people will listen to someone like Tyson over the actual experts even when he has no deep knowledge of the subject matter. That means the actual experts have little power to convince people that the government is doing moronic things that will actually hurt us, just so some congressmen can enrich family members who happen to own green energy businesses (for example).

[Atheistani]

(06-01-2016 09:58 AM)Hades Wrote:  

Where the hell is our Einstein?

This is exactly the problem - Einstein worship. He is considered the archetypical physicist, writing papers in his little patent office as he couldnt get into a half decent university. He writes a few papers summarizing and adding to the work of others and is now considered the most intelligent person that ever lived. The guy's status is akin to Jesus or Mohammed. The name Einstein has become a byword for genius and intelligence.

Even on this forum I see people using his name all the time, as if 'Einsteiness' is some kind of high virtue only the elite in society can achieve. It's as if no one else even compares, Newton, Poincare, Darwin all seem to be one level below what The Great Man himself alone occupies.

It's exactly this Einstein worship and has caused science to become what it now is.

Quote:

Schlafly reminds us that Einstein spent most of his scientific life working on a “grand unified theory” of physics that never came to fruition, and says that many of today’s physicists are similarly afflicted with an Einstein-like ambition to create a “paradigm shift” that would catapult them into scientific stardom. This has damaged science, he believes, since it tosses aside the traditional practice of “observation-hypothesis-experimentation methodology” in favor of “elite intellectuals who insist on heaping the greatest praise on [often abstract] work with no measureable or rational advantages.”

http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/201...d-physics/

[PhDre]

(06-01-2016 12:59 PM)Stirfry Wrote:  

n the cancer research world, I can think of several "Einsteins" who are widely respected by their peers, and who have made amazing discoveries, but don't get much publicity because of the complexity of their work, or the preliminary nature of their discoveries, which need time to be built upon in order to achieve translational value (i.e. drug development or other novel therapies). But I guarantee that in the next few years there will be a revolution in drug design and in the treatment of individual cancers (google "personalized medicine" and you'll see what I mean).

(06-01-2016 01:05 PM)Stirfry Wrote:  

Quote:

The advances in research in the past 40-50 years have done a lot to entertain people, but very little to make us actually live healthier or happier lives.

Wrong wrong wrong. Look up cancer survival rates over that time. Look up life expectancy rates. You'll be surprised. There were childhood leukemias and lymphomas that were death sentences 50 years ago, that are now completely curable. Even the non-curable cancers (late stage breast and prostate cancers come to mind) are better managed, directly due to discoveries made in labs deciphering the mechanisms of disease, and how to hinder them.

Stirfry, I completely agree with you.
There are probably a lot of highly intelligent an passionate people working in cancer research (maybe you are one of them) and cancer survival rates have increased tremendously over the last 50 years.

On the other hand, the incidence rate of cancer and other chronic diseases keeps going up and I don't buy into the narrative that it's due to better screening and people getting older.

I indicated in bold where I think that cancer research goes wrong.
Cancer has been turned into a huge business

Try to enter a research proposal on the role of the following items in cancer/chronic disease development:
- sugar and processed food
- nutrient depleted food
- plastics, heavy metals and other endocrine disruptors
- artificial EMFs
- GMOs and pesticides

Since you run your own lab, you know better than me that you don't stand a chance with any of these proposals. You'll get shot down for promoting "quackery, bogus science and debunked myths". In the best case scenario your project is simply refused, in the worst case scenario your career is ruined.

So instead of trying to find the real cause of these diseases and prevent them, nearly all research is directed towards the development of drugs to manage or cure these diseases and their symptoms. This would be no problem if only private companies were funding this research; it is perfectly normal for them to want a return on investment. However, here in Europe for instance, the large majority of research funding comes from taxes.

It really is a perfect business model
- force people to support your government subsidized company through their income taxes
- develop cheap food, materials and entertainment on which you make tremendous profits
- people get sick from your products
- remove all voices who say/try to prove that you are the cause
- develop a cure (again funded by tax money)
- sell the cure at astronomical prices, paid by social security taxes

[Blaster]

How many theoretical physicists can be famous in pop culture at one time?

It's difficult to really compare current fashion to history about these things, because the popular charlatans of the era are forgotten while the greats are not. It seems more likely to me that Einstein's own popularity during his lifetime was something of an anomaly. He made a singularly huge contribution to physics at a relatively young age. I'm sure plenty of his contemporaries were not as well known by average people, and many of them likely had a much smaller individual contribution to the field.

Probably the most famous hard scientist living today is Steven Hawking. He may not quite match Einstein's fame but he's famous enough to be the main character in a mainstream movie: The Theory of Everything. And however unrelated to science the movie might be, it's not like Einstein's famous tongue photo had anything to do with science either.

In 100 years Bill Nye will be a footnote while Hawking's legacy will endure. Some of the lesser-known physicists like Ed Witten and Freeman Dyson may be remembered alongside him.

[Hades]

(06-02-2016 11:44 AM)Blaster Wrote:  

How many theoretical physicists can be famous in pop culture at one time?

I'd say one, possibly two. They have to be literal rockstars of intelligensia to qualify. Just doing a bunch of math equations doesn't capture the public imagination. #Trump2016

Feynman, for instance, was clearly a polymath who slayed tons of top-shelf pussy. He performed at a high level in physics, maths, even some music and sketching. He even once stood up to a local government in defense of a titty bar. Check out his book if you haven't, its a great read. His fame was in his own audacity and lifetime of accomplishment.

Edit: I wrote a reply to Storm but had to close the tab. The sites security blocked me out of the Deep Forum for a day or so.

[RatInTheWoods]

When I read the percentage of yanks that think the world is 6000 years old, and dinosaurs hung out with humans, I despair at the level of basic scientific and rational though.

And these fuckers have nukes!

[Thersites]

(06-01-2016 09:58 AM)Hades Wrote:  

The last truly great American scientist that I can pinpoint was Richard Feynman. He was of a particularly curious and puzzle-breaking sort and he lived a colorful life of intrigue, accomplishment, and adventure. He died in 1988 at the relatively young age of 70. Since then nobody who's arrived on the scene can fill his shoes.

When you compare Feynman to modern hack of De Grasse and Nye, there are two things missing in them and modern world: curiosity and enthusiasm. Watch old interview of Feynman explaining rubber bands:

You can feel the excitement and wonder that he has when he explains something as simple as rubber band. The icons beloved by the media, De Grasse and Nye, like to lecture and bring people down for not follow their opinion.

As EDantes bring up:

(06-01-2016 02:47 PM)EDantes Wrote:  

Off the bat I would say it's due to "science" having been turned into a religion substitute for atheists and progressives; with "evolution" for example serving as a substitute for a creation myth, and "global warming hysteria" serving as a "secular escatology", not much different than religious fundamentalists who claim every new year is going to be the rapture for example.

As science becomes a 'religion', scientists become the new priests. Using terminologies created by Vox Day, he breaks down science in three aspects Source:

Quote:

1. Scientody: the process
2. Scientage: the knowledge base
3. Scientistry: the profession
   

The media and progressive are amorous with the Scientistry, disregard the process and knowledge base of science. As long as it makes them feel good.

[Marmite]

How is it that there is a thread about the hard sciences, and Dr. "Fucking" Kahn, the master of the 'hard sciences' has yet to post!?