Posts by Joe Wylie
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And I have no idea what you mean with that "gun" comment.
Sort of "let us know when you buy a Segway", but less calculated to offend?
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Guilty as charged / I have that honour.
Appreciate your interest, please check your mail. -
To be fair, Newbold does actually do a fair amount of academic research. He didn't get his position just for being a source of quotes for the media.
And some of the things he has been quoted as saying aren't obvious to the "tough on crime" crowd. He's gotten better at deflecting attention from it when quoted, but some of his ideas would be considered quite radical not too long ago.I don't doubt the quantity and quality of Newbold's research, and I clearly remember how he appeared to cut through so much of the BS around at the time that he first sprang to prominence. Not in recent memory though. While he's hardly to blame for the often inane and trivial context in which the media seek his opinions, he doesn't seem to be averse to giving them when asked.
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Can you imagine what jailing Simon Prast for P use would have achieved for society for example? Would he have come out a "better" citizen?
The way things happen in this country, he'd take over Greg Newbold's regular spot as academic talking head on matters criminal.
As Newbold's ready media comments in recent years had pretty much ossified into stating the bleeding obvious, one could be forgiven for wondering if it wasn't time that he went back inside for a sabbatical. Instead they've made him a professor.
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Oh FFS Bart, nobody's comparing you to a war criminal just because you happen to be a scientist. Nor was I deliberately setting out to offend you. While I'm happy to admit that my example was somewhat extreme, I still believe that it's a perfectly valid illustration of what can and does happen when 'pure' research is conducted without ethical oversight.
Anyway, what the hell, they were only cows. No big deal. How very PC of me.
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. . . I understand Einstein and Oppenheimer were both top blokes and were in no way pawns of government or commercial interests.
While Edward Teller, by most accounts, was a right prick. And Marie Curie, to add a little gender balance, was a living saint. While I don't believe that it's in anyone's interests for scientists to labour under a pettifogging bureaucracy, the kind of special pleading that they're a sainted caste by virtue of their calling is nonsense. As Bart says, they're not inherently corrupt, just human, with the same inherent virtues and fallibilities as the rest of us.
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Real people not theoretical ones. Real scientists doing their best to make real changes that will benefit the world.
Well I've never Godwined a thread before, but hell why not: As far as anyone can ascertain, Josef Mengele was a brilliant medical scientist who believed that what he did was for the greater good. Not corrupt, just absorbed in his work to the exclusion of any wider moral considerations, thanks to a lack of pesky public oversight. His victims could be said to have received a higher standard of medical treatment than they'd have experienced in the wider hospital system.
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Transfarmers!
Hold that thought.My ribs are hurting :)
Y'picked a fine time to leave me Lucille
Four hundred children and a crop in the field . . . -
Which would seem to make it a reasonable match for GM, wouldn't it?
Depends on how the risks are perceived. In the piece you linked to, these were to do with consuming potatoes. While there are always risks when introducing a plant species to a new environment, there's no evidence that 18th century Europeans saw the potato as a threat to existing agriculture, in the sense that it might become an invasive weed, or cross-breed with existing crops. These are very real concerns with artificially created varieties, and it's perfectly reasonable to expect them to be addressed.
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Meanwhile, in Russia: