Friday, January 01, 2010

Just a couple of things to point to this morning

First, Insty linked to this the other day: nice piece on how scientific research most often works; it's a messy and unpredictable process.
Dunbar came away from his in vivo studies with an unsettling insight: Science is a deeply frustrating pursuit. Although the researchers were mostly using established techniques, more than 50 percent of their data was unexpected. (In some labs, the figure exceeded 75 percent.) “The scientists had these elaborate theories about what was supposed to happen,” Dunbar says. “But the results kept contradicting their theories. It wasn’t uncommon for someone to spend a month on a project and then just discard all their data because the data didn’t make sense.” Perhaps they hoped to see a specific protein but it wasn’t there. Or maybe their DNA sample showed the presence of an aberrant gene. The details always changed, but the story remained the same: The scientists were looking for X, but they found Y.


On Christmas eve first the mother seems to die, then the baby is born apparently dead, then the mother comes back(after minutes with no respiration or heartbeat) and then the baby is revived. The doctor's statement:
"I don't have a great explanation," Martin said. "From my personal perspective, I'll take help wherever I can get it."
Be warned, the site has one of those 'play automatically' video commercials for which the sponsors need to be punished.


TSA is backing off on attacking the bloggers who published some information. Please understand, I'm very much for protecting actual sensitive material. Period. I'm also against these clowns going after bloggers when, if someone like the NYEffin' Times had published it, they'd have done nothing. Just like they did nothing before.


Now I have to go out and hope the dollar store is open, as I seem to have lost both the dustpans I used to have.

Hmmm, how 'bout this: Dustpan, clubBig Broom, Politician: and the river's close by....

1 comment:

Keith said...

That scientific method link is was well worth reading. Thanks

It applies to literature and art to.
If you wanted to know what life in soviet russia was like, you'd go to one of the dissident writers, not to old copies of Pravda.

I suppose Frank Zappa held a pretty good mirror to the west of the 1970s.

In ten years time, we'll be looking at cached blog entries, not the cosy, self satisfied MSM.