Criminally Careless Use of Science, Without Knowledge

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Err, he was being ironic and sarcastic (when isn't he) he knows that.

Only it's Aspartame, not Saccharin, which is even worse, meh.

-F

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I didn't have a can to read from. The ingreediment list I found via web said it contained Saccharin.
Ok, so Saccharin causes cancer and death, and Aspartame causes paralysis and death, so maybe one is worse than the other - but neither compares to the horror of the Tri-Chloral (pesticide) Sucralose!! Of course, with the gobs of money being made, the industrial chemical company which makes the Chlorine product Sucralose can spend gazillions on adverts to convince you that Chlorine-based Sucralose is really the same thing as sugar! And diabetes, metabolism, high blood pressure, liver & kidney, and headache pharmaceuticals are making more money every day!

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Hey Fred.... think I pretty much agree with you on most of that actually...

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Originally posted by fredgiblet:

You sure? Seems to me that this is probably the result of people chucking old pills down the drain, doesn't seem very business-like to let frequently expensive drugs get dumped by the corps. I could be wrong though.

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Actually, a larger culprit here is the fact that the human body doesn't absorb much of the drugs we've been ingesting. I'm sure throwing old pills away does plenty of damage too. Who knows how much drugs are in the water supply because of cleaners/shampoos/parishables that end up in the water supply as well?

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I don't care if you bust some chops, long as they're the right chops. Problem I have with 6ix is that he's so focused on the scientists that he doesn't notice the people who are really to blame.

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I'm really not that focused on the Scientists at all. Perhaps I didn't make that clear in my rants, or you are just reading what you want to hear.... Maybe you took Signy's gripe and ran with it. Perhaps a little of all of the above.

I'm pissed off really at my own peers who buy into all of this bullshit and let it rule the way we live and allow the Government to force us to live as a result of all the fearmonguering which they have orchestrated. "They" being the Government, Corporations, Big Pharm, the Media, etc...

My own personal stake in this, which I've never hidden, is the blatant infringment of my rights as a smoker and the overstepping of liberties which have been taken against us in the last decade. This story (and I'm confident many others like it) just serve to illustrate just how little "They" actually care about any of our health. This is all about the bottom line.

For decades now, we've been ingesting these pills which we have created through the use of Science. This doesn't make the Scientists bad, and I don't believe we've got millions of mad-scientists worldwide enacting their genocidal plot. It just so happens that we're doing exactly what the title of my thread states:

Criminal Use of Science, Without Knowledge

I suppose that I could have added Ethics as well. One way or another, the criminal use of Science without Knowledge or Ethics, will be the eventual means to our end as a species. If we don't up the knowledgable and ethical use of the many things which Science continues to provide us, it will be our downfall, whether it be by infertility, nuclear war, or cloning an army of Storm Troopers.

From what you said about respecting a person's right to smoke on their property or a businesses decision to allow or disallow it, I'm assuming that we're pretty much on par here.

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I heard a while ago that there was a movement among the scientific community to adopt universal ethical standards. Haven't kept tabs on it so I don't know what the status is.

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This is all well and good, but who decides what the Ethical standards are? If it's any of the "They" entities I've mentioned above, there might as well not be any Ethical standards involved. We'd likely all be better off without them.

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...corporate labs are probably short on ethics, research-only and university labs are probably much better.

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I would definately have to agree here, although I think with all the Government grants that University labs get I'm really not too optomistic about the heightened enlightenment at the University level either.

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Again I'm not part of the community but from what I've seen there isn't a whole lot of emphasis on professional solidarity, if you are wrong your colleagues are going to correct you, publicly if you've already published, privately if they catch the error before you publish. Science isn't the field for people who can't take constructive criticism.

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Sure... but a lot of studies are funded by companies with vested interest in particular results. This research in many cases can be replicated in many circumstances, but I would say just as many cannot be replicated in a

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There have been people talking about this for years that were just dismissed as crackpots.

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*raises hand*

My interest in our piss poor water quality standards and testing got sparked in 1987 when I heard about a town in north texas that due to low level mercury exposure via the water supply, the whole town prettymuch all went bonkers at once - and it wasn't till many years later they figured out why, I believe (not sure) the original story I read it from was in Readers Digest, if anyone else might remember it.

It also caught my attention in the littleton/aurora area just before the Columbine incident, as violent crime and behavior jumped almost 400% even if you discount the school shootings, combined with a few incidents of *really* oddball behavior previous and afterwords.

Add to it one of the primary nearby industries is solar cell production, which produces mercury as a waste product (they donated some solar units to run the town redlights) a badly run wastewater treatment setup that uses some of the runoff to irrigate local crops and the fact that the township, small as it is, has a special collection unit for household toxic disposal, and throw in an antiquated and much bitched about sewage system, and it brings one to wonder if possibly a combination of low level exposure in combination with prescription medication may have caused not only the shooters aberrant behavior, but a lot of the really oddball stuff that went on just before and after that.

No proof of anything, mind you, other than a few EPA complaints against the wastewater treatment plant and local industries, but it's an interesting theory, when you think about it.

But I gave up addressing water quality and our lacking standards for it a long while ago cause I got sick of being shouted down about it every time I bothered to gripe, no matter how much data in hand, they just didn't wanna hear it cause "official" people told em it was fine.

Guess we're seeing a sea change in how much stock people put in the word of "official" folk anymore, and any way you slice it, that's a good thing.

Also - Scientists Union ?
Now that's a ball we could run with, it's got merit, utility, and makes a lot of sense, even if once organized they'd catch a lotta hell from folks like PN for being a conspiracy, lol.

It would make slanting research a hell of a lot harder to do, cause you'd have to convince EVERYBODY to look the other way, not just the folk in your own dept or office....

Thoughts on that, and how to do it, would be welcome - and I will pass them on to the IWW and see if they have any input.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Who knows how much drugs are in the water supply because of cleaners/shampoos/parishables that end up in the water supply as well?

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Indeed, I'm doing my part by not cleaning my place until after it develops it's own ecosystem.

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I'm really not that focused on the Scientists at all. Perhaps I didn't make that clear in my rants, or you are just reading what you want to hear.... Maybe you took Signy's gripe and ran with it. Perhaps a little of all of the above.

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I'd vote for all of the above.

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...One way or another, the criminal use of Science without Knowledge or Ethics, will be the eventual means to our end as a species.

From what you said about respecting a person's right to smoke on their property or a businesses decision to allow or disallow it, I'm assuming that we're pretty much on par here.

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More or less, I'm sure you remember some of thee epic evolution threads I've been in with Anti, one of the major reasons for threads like that is that without a comprehensive understanding of how the world works and how we affect that it's impossible to make good decisions about what to do. People like Anti want to weaken the education system (whether they intend to or not that is what achieving their goals would do) and weak education is part of the reason we have people who do horrifically damaging things, they simply have no idea of the consequences of their actions.

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This is all well and good, but who decides what the Ethical standards are? If it's any of the "They" entities I've mentioned above, there might as well not be any Ethical standards involved.

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Well the idea was that the scientists would develop the standards themselves, independent of any major "They"'s the only real influence that governments would have is the already enforced issue of ethics and legality, something that is considered ethical but not legal or legal but ethical.

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I would definately have to agree here, although I think with all the Government grants that University labs get I'm really not too optomistic about the heightened enlightenment at the University level either.

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The difference is that most government grants are given with the knowledge that not all science succeeds thus the only significant pressure to succeed comes from the standard desire to advance science. A corporate lab has constant pressure to provide a beneficial answer regardless of whether or not its correct. That's not to say that a government funded study WON'T end up biased or leaning towards a pre-determined answer just that they are less likely to. Also, independent labs and colleges get funding from non-government sources as well while corporate labs get all their money from the corp.

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Sure... but a lot of studies are funded by companies with vested interest in particular results. This research in many cases can be replicated in many circumstances, but I would say just as many cannot be replicated in another environment. If for no other reason that "Trade Secrets" prohibiting it.

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Perhaps, but even that doesn't necessarily mean that it can't be found to be flawed, many papers are debunked without even testing the hypothesis just by demonstrating that the logic is flawed or the conclusion is a nonsequitur. There is always problems with replicating difficult or expensive experiments.

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Plus.... why is nobody talking about this issue that I brought up about the rivers and lakes? Why is it only now getting just a sliver of the attention it diserves? Why is it only now not being something casually dismissed as a tin-foil hat consipiracy? There have been people talking about this for years that were just dismissed as crackpots.

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There have been environmentalists bringing it up for a long time, there's probably been an enormous amount of studies supporting it, but it doesn't get media attention. Scientists are, as a general rule, not media whores, most are content to do their work, publish it

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Also - Scientists Union ?
Now that's a ball we could run with, it's got merit, utility, and makes a lot of sense

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I don't think you would get much interest though, correct me if I'm wrong but don't unions usually come out of mistreatement by employers? From what I've seen employers are usually pretty good to their scientists, the only people who can be said to be mistreating them are the media and the occasional pseudo-scientists, neither of which a union would be likely to change.

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Thoughts on that, and how to do it, would be welcome

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Unfortunately I can't really think of anything, unions are not my area of expertise.

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and I will pass them on to the IWW and see if they have any input.

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Question, I did a little poking last night (meaning I read the wikipedia entry) and it says that the IWW wants to abolish the wage system, can you elaborate? What exactly that means and what they propose to replace it?

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I'll copy the relevent bit here, Fred.

Mind, this is one of the spots in which I disagree with them, as they favor a more socialist system, and I favor a more ruthless division of the spoils in which folk are paid by percentage of profit in accordance of how much of the end products "value" was produced by their actions - and the problem of freebies is that it comes at a cost of ever more exploitive and less efficient systems (aka Government) to manage them.

Wouldn't mind subsidising the education of Doctors and Teachers though, sure hell a better use of my tax dime than more bombs.

POSTED TEXT BELOW
(Disclaimer: As stated above, Frem does not agree with this proposal.)
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What are wages?
Wages or salaries are the money given to us by the boss in return for a set amount of time we spend at the job. We get so much an hour, or so much a month. Whether we've spent the day working hard or had to "look busy" much of the time, we receive exactly the same amount.

But for the same eight hours of employment, people are paid greatly varying amounts. We are paid different rates for doing the same job in different locations (i.e., truck assemblers get paid more in Windsor than in Vancouver) and for doing different jobs in the same location (i.e., in Vancouver accountants are paid more than daycare workers). Even when we're employed by the same company in the same building, various tasks are often paid at varying rates (i.e., electricians, assembly line workers, secretaries).

These differences in pay are mostly a result of events which happened in our past: our history. Certain jobs get a particular rate of pay because of some decisions by the boss. Other jobs get a particular rate of pay because of actions taken by our forefathers and foremothers. As teachers grew more militant. for example, that task changed from a low-paying to a better-paying one. Overall, unionized jobs show the results of past fights for better pay and conditions.

On the other hand, a failure to stay militant results in lower comparative wages There was a time in B.C.'s history when woods workers overall were among the highest-paid blue-collar employees. No longer.

On every job, a number of excuses are offered to explain why I should get more pay than you, and why he or she receive more than both of us combined. Years of education and training are often cited, though this education is largely supported out of taxes we all pay. So those who receive this education really benefit twice. Meanwhile, should employees with four years of university receive more than employees with seven years of an apprenticeship?

Another argument is that some people have more responsibility or take more risks. This can be in connection with our own life or others' lives, or concerned with valuable items or money. But then, why aren't those who work at the most hazardous jobs (as determined by Workers' Compensation Board statistics) the most highly paid? Or. why don't bank tellers earn a lot of money?

Should the people who produce what society needs most be the best paid? This would mean that farmers and agricultural laborers who produce our food would be among the highest paid people. They aren't now! And those who manufacture our clothing are still often immigrant women working for very, very low pay in sweat-shop conditions. And the host of non-union carpenters and others building our housing aren't very well reimbursed for their work, either.

What's wrong with wages?
As can be seen, then, the present wage system is totally irrational. It is a hodge-podge of differing amounts paid to people for a range of often-contradictory "reasons". In fact the work of all of us (however humble) is equally necessary to keep this society going.

About the only sure conclusion that can be gathered from the present wage system is that the further up the corporate ladder from actually producing goods or services a person is, the more money he or she takes home.

As well, most of us are really paid only enough to meet our basic needs. Advert

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I have to say that a lot of that is IMO kinda loopy, probably deserves it's own thread but I do wholeheartedly agree that this isn't right:
"About the only sure conclusion that can be gathered from the present wage system is that the further up the corporate ladder from actually producing goods or services a person is, the more money he or she takes home."

That is definitely a failing of our system.

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Yep, was my take on it too - there's some right good points in there, but whoever wrote it shoulda put the blunt down first, cause they was "on something".

I still favor the percentage model.

-F
*Yanno, that wouldn't be a bad discussion to have, tho I bet it goes flamewar within 27 posts.

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
I still favor the percentage model.

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I like the idea, not so sure how it would actually work out, how do you quantify the value of a manager for instance?

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*Yanno, that wouldn't be a bad discussion to have, tho I bet it goes flamewar within 27 posts.

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Wouldn't be surprised.

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