• You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.

Disparity Between Scientists and General Public on Scientific Views

Xander

Lex Parsimoniae
Joined
Apr 24, 2007
Messages
4,463
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
9w8
You can have bias in the scientist as long as it isn't in the science. Bitching about greenies or whatever gets nowhere and produces more inaccurate and inferior results. Because we're wanting so hard for the data to say what we want. That shouldn't be how it works.
Note I do not support Tellenbach's opinion but bias in the scientist can affect what they look for and thus slant their research even if their scientific method afterwards is to standard.

Personally I would love to thin of scientists as paragons of balance but my faith in my fellow human isn't strong enough. I find few professionals who are exemplary and far too much evidence for the Peter principle.
 

Avocado

Permabanned
Joined
Jun 28, 2013
Messages
3,794
MBTI Type
ENFP
Enneagram
7w6
Instinctual Variant
sp/so
Poll Results Show Disparity Between Scientists And American Public On Scientific Issues | IFLScience

There's been many news articles posted on this over the past several days.




This is incredibly depressing, angering, and in some cases, dangerous. I've known for a long time that there is a very unfortunate gap between what scientists view as valid, and what they general american public views as valid. I did not know it was this bad though, in some of the issues I am utterly flabbergasted and imbarrasted. The fact of the matter is, science is unbias and speaks for itself. There is no disagreeing with fact. There will always be some naysayers and a bit of disagreement on matters that are more opinion based, but on other matters there truly is a right or wrong answer. How someone can just flagerently ignore fact in favor of fringe low impact material, personal opinion, gut feelings, or simple dislike is absolutely beyond me.

I really don't know what we can do about this. There is talk about increasing STEM education, but I am not sure that will do quite enough. There are other root problems that might make it intractable. We do need to improve this though, because when the public disagrees with science, even when the science is factually and morally sound as it can be, even when the public is dead wrong it still effects it, and everyone else.

Discuss.

How sad.
 

sprinkles

Mojibake
Joined
Jul 5, 2012
Messages
2,959
MBTI Type
INFJ
Note I do not support Tellenbach's opinion but bias in the scientist can affect what they look for and thus slant their research even if their scientific method afterwards is to standard.

Personally I would love to thin of scientists as paragons of balance but my faith in my fellow human isn't strong enough. I find few professionals who are exemplary and far too much evidence for the Peter principle.

Yes but the method is the one place where this can be mitigated the most. Practically speaking we can't eliminate it from the scientist because if you look for the perfect scientist you're going to be looking for a very, very long time.
 

Tellenbach

in dreamland
Joined
Oct 27, 2013
Messages
6,088
MBTI Type
ISTJ
Enneagram
6w5
sprinkles said:
Practically speaking we can't eliminate it from the scientist because if you look for the perfect scientist you're going to be looking for a very, very long time.

It took me 10 seconds.

Dr. Young Hee Ko, a biochemist at Johns Hopkins University, discovered a potent substance which killed every cancer cell she tested it on. She compared her discovery with the standard chemo drugs (carboplatin, cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, 5-fluorouracil, methotrexate, and paclitaxel) and found that her drug far outperformed what's available on the market today.

Every time she ran the assay, she saw the same stunning result - 3BP wasn't just better at killing cancer cells than conventional chemotherapy drugs, it was vastly better. Even more shocking, it was vastly better in every type tested: brain, colon, pancreatic, liver, lung, skin, kidney, ovarian, prostate, and breast cancer. In every sample, 3BP dominated the list. - From the book 'Tripping Over the Truth'

"I just couldn't believe it, so I ran the assays, I'm not kidding, over one hundred times." Dr. Ko

She also works 16 hour days, 7 days a week and has devoted her life to bringing this drug to market. When asked by parents to test the drug on a dying teen, Dr. Ko sent letters to 500 doctors in the US asking them for help in administering the drug. All of them ignored her, but she did find a European doctor to help the teenager and the treatment was successful.
 

sprinkles

Mojibake
Joined
Jul 5, 2012
Messages
2,959
MBTI Type
INFJ
It took me 10 seconds.

Dr. Young Hee Ko, a biochemist at Johns Hopkins University, discovered a potent substance which killed every cancer cell she tested it on. She compared her discovery with the standard chemo drugs (carboplatin, cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, 5-fluorouracil, methotrexate, and paclitaxel) and found that her drug far outperformed what's available on the market today.



"I just couldn't believe it, so I ran the assays, I'm not kidding, over one hundred times." Dr. Ko

She also works 16 hour days, 7 days a week and has devoted her life to bringing this drug to market. When asked by parents to test the drug on a dying teen, Dr. Ko sent letters to 500 doctors in the US asking them for help in administering the drug. All of them ignored her, but she did find a European doctor to help the teenager and the treatment was successful.

That speaks more to the benefits of the method than the scientist. Running a test over 100 times also speaks about a scientist that knows they aren't perfect and that nothing is. This speaks about someone who is willing to get themselves out of the way and get the work done.

Everyone has a bias somewhere. Everyone. The ones who test a lot and are dedicated can overcome the bias. The ones who claim to not have bias are the ones you have to watch out for the most.
 

PeaceBaby

reborn
Joined
Jan 7, 2009
Messages
5,950
MBTI Type
N/A
Enneagram
N/A
It took me 10 seconds.

Dr. Young Hee Ko, a biochemist at Johns Hopkins University, discovered a potent substance which killed every cancer cell she tested it on. She compared her discovery with the standard chemo drugs (carboplatin, cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, 5-fluorouracil, methotrexate, and paclitaxel) and found that her drug far outperformed what's available on the market today.

She also works 16 hour days, 7 days a week and has devoted her life to bringing this drug to market. When asked by parents to test the drug on a dying teen, Dr. Ko sent letters to 500 doctors in the US asking them for help in administering the drug. All of them ignored her, but she did find a European doctor to help the teenager and the treatment was successful.

I see there's a lot more to the story than you share here. Some of what I've discovered online about Dr. Ko is from Libertarian sources, making it highly suspect. Do you see that you are yet again cherry-picking information to suit your belief? And your consistently blind belief in these right-wing 'wackadoo' sources, and your consistent denigration of left-wing 'wackadoo' sources, makes you just as unreliable a source as the people you say are wackadoo? Do you see how your polarization is EXACTLY the same thing?

It's like complaining about people smoking then you lighting up and smoking. You are them, they are you. I don't understand how you don't see that.
 

Tellenbach

in dreamland
Joined
Oct 27, 2013
Messages
6,088
MBTI Type
ISTJ
Enneagram
6w5
PeaceBaby said:
I see there's a lot more to the story than you share here.

I was going to blog about this remarkable scientist but then sprinkles wanted an example of "a perfect scientist". She is it. She ran the same test 100 times to make sure she wasn't screwing up. The ability to put your ego aside and subject your hypothesis to scrutiny is critical in the sciences. This is completely lacking in climate science. Climate scientists hide their raw data and some even change the historical temperature data to suit their agenda.

Back to Dr. Ko. She's the scientist who discovered why a mutated protein causes cystic fibrosis.

"It was a localized folding problem resulting in dysfunctional CFTR (cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator)." Dr. Ko

After solving the mystery of cystic fibrosis, she decided to work for Dr. Peter Pedersen at Johns Hopkins. This is the guy who figured out why cancer cells become immortal and multiply uncontrollable. Dr. Ko was looking for an inhibitor that could be transported inside cancer cells and that was a substrate for the problem enzyme (Hexokinase II). She decided on a pyruvate analog since that is the substrate for Hexokinase in the first step of glycolysis. It worked. She tested the compound 3BP (3-bromopyruvate) on rabbits, mice, and one human and she achieved a 100% success rate.

PeaceBaby said:
Do you see that you are yet again cherry-picking information to suit your belief? And your consistently blind belief in these right-wing 'wackadoo' sources, and your consistent denigration of left-wing 'wackadoo' sources, makes you just as unreliable a source as the people you say are wackadoo?

Hardly. Dr. Ko's published in mainstream journals and she worked for a prestigious scientific establishment. Critique her techniques or her hypothesis if you can.
 

PeaceBaby

reborn
Joined
Jan 7, 2009
Messages
5,950
MBTI Type
N/A
Enneagram
N/A
She tested the compound 3BP (3-bromopyruvate) on rabbits, mice, and one human and she achieved a 100% success rate.

I'm not attacking Dr. Ko in any way, science-wise or personal-wise. Do you know how many compounds never make it past animal trials? How many work in animals but don't work in people? I'm not saying she hasn't perhaps uncovered something remarkable, but I have a hard time believing that if something is a perfect cure, it could be suppressed for very long.

Let's look at it from another perspective. Even the most selfish, self-serving people have relationships and love other people, even if their love for that person is utterly self-serving in and of itself. There are very few humans alive that would watch their child or spouse or parent or friend suffer or die knowing that there's a cure for cancer they're actively hiding from the world in a giant conspiracy to make more money trying to cure cancer in other ways. And even such a person possessing an impenetrable heart couldn't hide it for long, with so many other people closer to the center of the emotional / moral bell-curve around. It would have to be the most massive conspiracy in the world, designed ultimately to reduce the human population and with a massive string of co-conspirators sworn to utter secrecy. But still they would crack.

From a probability perspective, which is more likely:

Cancer cure hidden or cancer cure not working?
 

Coriolis

Si vis pacem, para bellum
Staff member
Joined
Apr 18, 2010
Messages
27,230
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
5w6
Instinctual Variant
sp/sx
As for politics... Why is it emotion? Why are scientists being held up as paradigms of virtue? They're a bunch of geeks in open toed sandals who happen to be good with a flame and a flask. I don't recall capes being part of the lab gear.
So, first people want to criticize scientists for having political viewpoints, and now you want to poke fun at their wardrobe? If we are discussing their work as scientists, factors like these are irrelevant.

They are professionals, mostly, but without bias and emotion why would they try anything new or push science forwards? Sheer lunacy.
What you seem to be talking about here is values. Scientists have them just like everyone else, as do the organizations that sponsor their work. What a scientist ends up working on will be influenced by both his or her individual preferences, as well as the mission of any sponsor. If you are funded by the Heart Association, it stands to reason that you should be researching heart disease and its treatments. We can argue about the merits and utility of researching topic A vs. topic B, but bias on this level, if you want to call it that, is much different from bias in the conduct of an experiment itself. This is where proper use of scientific method will compensate, even for unconscious bias, say in formulation of a hypothesis. Some scientists may not be conscientious about this, but then they are not doing their job right.

Should scientists be advocates for a political ideology and use their research to further that ideology? That's what Dr. Mann has done with the statements he's made.
Scientists should participate in public policy debates by sharing the results of their relevant investigations, so lawmakers and the public at large can make decisions based on sound information rather than the everpresent alternatives.

I've discredited the entire paleoclimatology profession as pseudoscientific frauds, not just Dr. Mann.
Not at all, since you have mentioned his work primarily, if not exclusively.

What kind of precision do you think you can get from using tree rings to guestimate temperature? Dr. Mann thinks it's precise to 0.2 degrees Celcius (insert rofl smiley) with an r value of 0.2. There is better correlation between cheese prices and temperature than tree rings and temperature. Analytical and physical chemists, heck, even biologists would laugh you out the building with that kind of correlation (or lack of correlation).
This comment betrays a serious lack of understanding of how scientific inquiry is actually conducted. You yourself seem to have little respect for this Mann fellow's methodology. It would seem foolish, then, to use his investigation as the litmus test for the validity of tree ring measurements.

this is a false dichotomy. Scientists are part of the general public.
Yes, they are. But they make up such a small proportion of the general public that their knowledge in areas where the rest of the public is largely ignorant is insufficient to have a significant effect on polling data.
 

á´…eparted

passages
Joined
Jan 25, 2014
Messages
8,265
I'm not attacking Dr. Ko in any way, science-wise or personal-wise. Do you know how many compounds never make it past animal trials? How many work in animals but don't work in people? I'm not saying she hasn't perhaps uncovered something remarkable, but I have a hard time believing that if something is a perfect cure, it could be suppressed for very long.

Let's look at it from another perspective. Even the most selfish, self-serving people have relationships and love other people, even if their love for that person is utterly self-serving in and of itself. There are very few humans alive that would watch their child or spouse or parent suffer or die knowing that there's a cure for cancer they're actively hiding from the world in a giant conspiracy to make more money trying to cure cancer in other ways. And even such a person possessing an impenetrable heart couldn't hide it for long, with so many other people closer to the center of the emotional / moral bell-curve around. It would have to be the most massive conspiracy in the world, designed ultimately to reduce the human population and with a massive string of co-conspirators sworn to utter secrecy. But still they would crack.

From a probability perspective, which is more likely:

Cancer cure hidden or cancer cure not working?

Looks like we'll know soon, because it's entered clinical trials. I suspect it faltered because this was several years ago and there have not been any major news sources talking or reporting about it: PreScience Labs Announced that the FDA Accepts IND Application for Novel Oncology Drug | Reuters

I also looked around for opinions on the studies: most people are reporting it as flawed or not particuarly news worthy. Mostly in citing the lack of comparability between the model organizisms, or the quality of the cells used being improper. In other words, the studies are flawed, not noteworthy, and as such we haven't heard of it.

As pointed out, if this was a breakthrough, we'd all be hearing about it. I've also noticed a curious trend that the vast majority of the time, these "scientifically suppressed miracle drugs" are often very small organic molecules. It is extremely rare for these to be effective. One of the exceptions would be cis-platin, and I actually would catagorize that as more complex as it is transistion metal based.

Honestly, when I first read "3-bromopyruvate" and it's reported effects I thought "yeah ok, and my non exsistant aunt Tilly can wistle dixie under water".
 

grey_beard

The Typing Tabby
Joined
Jan 28, 2014
Messages
1,478
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
5w4
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
Tellenbach does not believe nor regard scientific consesus, and cherry picks data that supports his claims while ignoring mass data. As such, I really wouldn't take what he says seriously.

If it's "consensus" then it is not based on reproducible evidence.

Also, note the following nifty features about that graph:

a) the total time elapsed in on the order of 2000 years. Go back a wee bit further and the United States was covered in glaciers down to Missouri. Somehow that doesn't show up on the graph.

b) the y-axis measures the (not defined in the legend) "anomaly" instead of measuring absolute temperatures.

c) Mann cherry picked the data, based on a proxy. It isn't even actual raw data.

It's amazing the codswallop people will swallow when you wrap it in a bow and call it "science". 'Specially when it isn't science.
(Political 'science', computer 'science', climate 'science'...)

Mann's "hockey stick" is a load of bull hockey. Partly because independent researchers were able to get a "hockey stick" increase with pseudo-random input, partly by cherry-picking the proxy data, partly because the underlying data fed into the model was...err, 'fudged'.

See iowahawk: Fables of the Reconstruction
and the links within it, for example

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/MM-W05-background.pdf

and

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/the-smoking-gun-at-darwin-zero/
 

grey_beard

The Typing Tabby
Joined
Jan 28, 2014
Messages
1,478
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
5w4
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
I see there's a lot more to the story than you share here. Some of what I've discovered online about Dr. Ko is from Libertarian sources, making it highly suspect. Do you see that you are yet again cherry-picking information to suit your belief? And your consistently blind belief in these right-wing 'wackadoo' sources, and your consistent denigration of left-wing 'wackadoo' sources, makes you just as unreliable a source as the people you say are wackadoo? Do you see how your polarization is EXACTLY the same thing?

It's like complaining about people smoking then you lighting up and smoking. You are them, they are you. I don't understand how you don't see that.

I'd be concerned about the difference between in vitro and in vivo.

Aaaaaaaaand, there's the little matter of fraud in science, especially in 'hot' areas, trying to make a name for oneself.

Examples might include Hwang Woo-Suk of South Korean (human cloning), John Darsee (Harvard Cardiologist, IIRC his fraud was discovered when someone attentively reading an article realized one of his 'patients' would have had to become a father at age *7* !), and in a more topical example, Dr. Wakefield's article on vaccines and autism in The Lancet.

Consensus isn't always the way to bet, either: I recall a certain Nobel Laureate in Medicine who got his award when he deliberately dosed himself with bacteria in order to induce ulcers...

...and a Nobel Prize isn't even a guarantee, either, even in one's *own* field. Kary Muellis, for example, who won the Nobel for his work on the polymerase chain reaction, has publicly maintained that HIV is *not* the causative agent for AIDS. So we're back to scoring one for consensus...

The point is, loudly shouting "Because SCIENCE!" is not compelling.
 

á´…eparted

passages
Joined
Jan 25, 2014
Messages
8,265

No I didn't see this one. I didn't look particularly hard. I have access to the paper through my university, but they recent updated the system for it (and COMPLETELY SCREWED IT UP BY DOING SO) so I can't actually get the paper at the moment to look at it. The abstract looks promising though, and the journal has decent impact factor.
 

Tellenbach

in dreamland
Joined
Oct 27, 2013
Messages
6,088
MBTI Type
ISTJ
Enneagram
6w5
Hard said:
Looks like we'll know soon, because it's entered clinical trials.

The book describing Dr. Ko's effort was published in 2014 and she was still trying to raise the $3 million necessary to conduct a clinical trial with 20 patients. I'm not sure she's raised that amount yet. I would advise Dr. Ko to stay away from the Mayo Clinic and Sloan Kettering since those institutions were involved in suppressing intravenous Vitamin C and laetrile.

PeaceBaby said:
I'm not saying she hasn't perhaps uncovered something remarkable, but I have a hard time believing that if something is a perfect cure, it could be suppressed for very long.

You need to read about Linus Pauling's battles with the Mayo Clinic and the New England Journal of Medicine. The Mayo Clinic, botched both clinical trials of Vitamin C.

Coriolis said:
Not at all, since you have mentioned his work primarily, if not exclusively.

Oh, I've posted a lot more in my blog, many months ago.

Coriolis said:
Scientists should participate in public policy debates by sharing the results of their relevant investigations, so lawmakers and the public at large can make decisions based on sound information rather than the everpresent alternatives.

"THE overwhelming consensus among climate scientists is that human-caused climate change is happening. Yet a fringe minority of our populace clings to an irrational rejection of well-established science. This virulent strain of anti-science infects the halls of Congress, the pages of leading newspapers and what we see on TV, leading to the appearance of a debate where none should exist." Michael Mann

Coriolis, that quote from Dr. Mann is nothing more than an ad-hominem attack on climate skeptics. It's an irrational argument (again, the appeal to authority). He's doing much more than just sharing research information. He's the attack dog for the radical environmentalist movement.

Coriolis said:
It would seem foolish, then, to use his investigation as the litmus test for the validity of tree ring measurements.

Mann is not the only one who uses tree ring data to reconstruct temperature records.

PeaceBaby said:
It would have to be the most massive conspiracy in the world, designed ultimately to reduce the human population and with a massive string of co-conspirators sworn to utter secrecy.

One deliberately botched clinical trial with negative results and the treatment would be forbidden by the FDA. It takes $400 million, on average, to bring a drug to market. I doubt Dr. Ko can raise that sort of cash even if the phase I trial was a success.
 

Coriolis

Si vis pacem, para bellum
Staff member
Joined
Apr 18, 2010
Messages
27,230
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
5w6
Instinctual Variant
sp/sx
I'm not attacking Dr. Ko in any way, science-wise or personal-wise. Do you know how many compounds never make it past animal trials? How many work in animals but don't work in people? I'm not saying she hasn't perhaps uncovered something remarkable, but I have a hard time believing that if something is a perfect cure, it could be suppressed for very long.
I don't. But this has nothing to do with scientists like her, and everything to do with politics and economics. Powerful industries who would lose significant market share should a new discovery or invention supplant an established approach have been known to block research, either procedurally or by preventing its funding. Experimental research tends to be expensive, and few scientists have the personal wherewithal to continue in the absence of sponsorship.
 

Tellenbach

in dreamland
Joined
Oct 27, 2013
Messages
6,088
MBTI Type
ISTJ
Enneagram
6w5
Hexokinase-2 bound to mitochondria: cancer's stygian link to the "Warburg Effect" and a pivotal target for effective therapy

This paper describes the theoretical basis for using 3BP to inhibit Hexokinase.

One remarkable success story [Ko YH, Smith BL, Wang Y, Pomper MG, Rini DA, Torbenson MS, et al. Advanced cancers: eradication in all cases using 3-bromopyruvate therapy to deplete ATP. Biochem Biophys Res Commun 2004;324(1):269-75] is the use of the small molecule 3-bromopyruvate (3-BP) that selectively enters and destroys the cells of large tumors in animals by targeting both HK-2 and the mitochondrial ATP synthasome. This leads to very rapid ATP depletion and tumor destruction without harm to the animals. This review focuses on the multiple roles played by HK-2 in cancer and its potential as a metabolic target for complete cancer destruction.
 
Top