Aw shucks, better luck next time. I bet each of you hackers possess exactly the humanist, ethics focused, inclusive, science based, data driven solution "we" need to fix this problem. If only it wasn't for those bad people who made this bad system turning all the good people into bad people!
Fraud, so much fraud
601–610 of 868 posts
Re: Fraud, so much fraud
#602[dead]
Re: Fraud, so much fraud
#603Earlier quoted context omitted.
In defence of the "less bright people" or deplorables as others have called them - they are deeply suspicious of Science(tm) used as a cudgel. They intuit that some parasitic entity or entities has latched on to Science and is co-opting it for it's own gain to achieve it's own purposes which run counter to the interests of the people. The heavy handed Covid response and censorship is a prime example of that. The whol…
I think this comment comes across as slightly ignorant. Many examples exist where a misguided belief in scientific 'facts' (usually a ropey hypothesis, with seemingly 'damning' evidence), or a straight up abuse of the scientific method, causes direct harm. Suspicion is often based on facts or experience. People have been infected with diseases without their knowledge. People have been forced to undergo surgical proce…
> No one has a problem with science itself per se. Everyone accepts the scientific method to be one of our greatest cultural achievements
This is just wrong and naive. You can be happy if a majority of people agree to this.
Re: Fraud, so much fraud
#604I'm the furthest thing from a scientist unless you count 3,000 hours of PBS spacetime, but I love science and so science/academia fraud to me, feels kinda like the worst kinda fraud you can commit. Financial fraud can cause suicides and ruin in lives, sure, but I feel like academic fraud just sets the whole of humanity back? I also feel that through my life I've (maybe wrongly) placed a great deal of respect and trus…
Pick up an old engineering book at some point, something from mid 1800's or early 1900's and you'll quickly realize that the trust people put on science isn't what it should be. The scientific method works over a long period of time, but to blindly trust a peer review study that just came out, any study, is almost as much faith as religion, specially if you're not a high level researcher in the same field and have sp…
[dead]
Re: Fraud, so much fraud
#605There may be a dark twist to this story. The expose article writes: > "UCSD neuroscientist Edward Rockenstein, who worked under Masliah for years, co-authored 91 papers that contain questioned images, including 11 as first author. He died in 2022 at age 57." They say nothing else about this. But looking at Rockenstein's obituary, indications are that it was suicide. (It was apparently sudden, at quite a young age, an…
[dead]
Re: Fraud, so much fraud
#606Earlier quoted context omitted.
Far more educated. But certainly not smarter. And it's not at all clear if that education does anything other than magnify their intellectual predispositions. The smart people can make great strides, but the stupid will be stupid louder and harder. And the average may well just be... more average.
IQ levels has risen on average because of nutrients, not using lead and education. An increase in blood lead from 10 to 20 micrograms/dl was associated with a decrease of 2.6 IQ
…and to still believe that IQ levels measure something meaningful is pretty average Joe anyway. Could be the rise of videogames for all we know.
Re: Fraud, so much fraud
#607Earlier quoted context omitted.
In defence of the "less bright people" or deplorables as others have called them - they are deeply suspicious of Science(tm) used as a cudgel. They intuit that some parasitic entity or entities has latched on to Science and is co-opting it for it's own gain to achieve it's own purposes which run counter to the interests of the people. The heavy handed Covid response and censorship is a prime example of that. The whol…
I attended the opening talk of a local science festival. The speaker was a psychology researcher from UK who flew here for that, and the talk was about conspiracy theories. When they introduced her they stated that she wouldn't accept any questions from the audience. This was received with boos and shouts that it was not real science. She then proceeded to bundle all the conspiracy theories together. Going from "the…
This actually may be true although somewhat indirectly with respect to at least one well-known conspiracy belief.
If I recall correctly, the Flat Earth Society was originally concieved as a prank intended to lampoon actual conspiratorial groups (I.e. Nasa faked the moon landing, JFK was a mob hit etc)
But through some combination of timing, convimcing execution, and media interest coincidentally developing in the same direction resulted in the supreme irony of an unserious sham cult spawning an unironic counterpart community which rapidly outgrew and ultimately succeeded it.
Re: Fraud, so much fraud
#608Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a good one. In my experience, corruption is almost always disguised as neglect and incompetence. Corrupt people meticulously cover their tracks by coming up with excuses to show neglect; some of them only accept bribes that they can explain away as neglect where they have plausible deniability. It doesn't take much brainpower to do well, just malicious intent and knowing the upper limits. IMO, Hanlon's razor "…
Barry Apppelman, for a long time the boss of all the Unix engineers, said malice was preferable to incompetence because malice would take breaks.
Yes and in addition malice is enough times predictable while incompetence is just a quantum void where the probabilities are inverted and your hard earned intuition doesn't help you...
Re: Fraud, so much fraud
#609Do folks here know how expensive it is to develop a drug? How much work it takes to get it through the pipeline? How much time, heartache, effort, has gone wasted? How many patients given false hope? This is tragic on so many levels
Re: Fraud, so much fraud
#610Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a good one. In my experience, corruption is almost always disguised as neglect and incompetence. Corrupt people meticulously cover their tracks by coming up with excuses to show neglect; some of them only accept bribes that they can explain away as neglect where they have plausible deniability. It doesn't take much brainpower to do well, just malicious intent and knowing the upper limits. IMO, Hanlon's razor "…
Barry Apppelman, for a long time the boss of all the Unix engineers, said malice was preferable to incompetence because malice would take breaks.
However malice is directed. When it doesn’t take breaks it does a lot more damage usually.
One can argue malice can be controlled with incentives at some level, though.