>Rob McLaughlin, dean of the agriculture college at the University
>of Guelph, said Clark is a specialist on pasture management for
>livestock and she should not comment on genetically modified
>foods.
this is one of the extremely rare cases i allow myself to get
impolite and say "end of season buy in the cerebral department".
it was exactly that attitude in germany, which contributed
heavily to the rise of a system, in which in the end nobody
dared to open his mouth against the system itsself.
"i'm a aeronautic scientist (medicine, physics, law, ballistics,
chemistry... put in whatever profession you'd like) and i am not
interested in politics nor am i an qualified expert in gas chambers,
who should comment on them...."
it needed almost 50 years for the scientific community in germany
to finally realize this fact. papers and books, which fill miles of
bookshelf have since be written by almost every respected
university and scientific organisation just to excuse, what had
happened and noone then liked to realize. nowadays they ALL agree,
that they SHOULD have commented on things, which weren't "in their
field of knowledge".
but tunnel vision was not restricted to pre-war germany. for
america the name oppenheimer comes to mind ("if i had known the
political and military behinds, i would never have voted for
throwing the bomb")
>''If she actually had a report of any substantive nature, she
>would have submitted it to a journal,'' said Doug Powell, food
>safety expert at the University of Guelph.
that's the increasingly outdated assumption, that science, logic,
beauty and truth can only be found in peer-reviewed journals.
either the article, no matter where, "appears" consistent,
logical and without errors (let me say it that way, for further
readings i suggest "fraud and deceit in science" by broad & wade)
or it doesn't. it's the CONTENT of the article, not style, date
or place of publication.
The "Better Living Through Science" Dept.
Poor Knoll Pharmaceutical. The company paid researchers at the
University of California at San Francisco $250,000 to see if
their thyroid medicine was better than generic brands, and the
scientists couldn't get the results right. In fact, UCSF's Dr.
Betty Dong wanted to publish their finding that Knoll's
expensive medication, used by almost 8 million Americans, was
no better than cheaper generic competitors. Unfortunately for
her, Knoll managed to find "significant flaws" in the research,
decided it wanted to get this information to the public "in a
balanced view," and blocked its publication. After years of
litigation, the New England Journal of Medicine finally
published the study, but not before one final hurdle was
cleared. Now that corporate grants have largely replaced
government funding, the Journal had trouble finding 5 experts
to judge the study who did not have financial ties to Knoll.
Sounds a bit like Abraham's search for 10 righteous men in
Sodom. (NYT 4/16/97)
all in all i read a lot of accusations. did they SPECIFY any
fallacies ?? or did they do nothing but to accuse ??
although i agree, that a dean has a certain responsablity to keep
the university's reputation intact and has to take measures in
case it's being hurt, the accusations should be SPECIFIED and
counterproven point for point like a scientific subject!!
>Powell said he has seen studies conducted by seed companies that
>are much more in depth than those posted on the Health Canada Web
>site.
what's his point ? i've seen studies done by hobby researchers,
who never saw the interior of a university, that are more in
depth than those of university researchers. mendel for example
published his findings on genetic inheritance in a private
journal of hobby researchers meeting twice a year in a coffee-
house in bruenn, austria.
one of the most important innovations of the last century (the
anti-baby pill) was not published in a journal of chemistry or
endocrinology (pincus refused to do that), but in LADIES' HOME
JOURNAL !!
>He would like to see companies making their studies more widely
>available.
he should engage in reading more literature and less abstracts..
a good place to start might be the publications of the PRSH or
the ACSH.....
it's a wise person, who knows the difference between free speech
and cheap talk. mclaughlin doesn't !! his spirit of thinking
strongly resembles the following one:
'Ze rockets go up,
and where zey come down,
that's not my department,'
- Werner von Braun
klaus
To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest".
To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"subscribe sanet-mg-digest".
All messages to sanet-mg are archived at:
http://www.sare.org/htdocs/hypermail
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Feb 06 2000 - 12:00:29 EST