I approve of what he has done, and I respect and admire what she has done - and not just because she successfully defended her thesis, but because of her accomplishments throughout her long career.

See what I did there? There's plenty of respect and admiration to go around here. Maybe you should stop treating this as if it was a zero-sum game.

What makes you think nobody's trying...just because one guy (Richard Horton) is complaining of shoddy practices in one specific field of study (biomedical research)? Are Horton's limited complaints reason enough for you to believe that the rest of scientific research is rife with unethical/fraudulent scientists, and that nobody is policing them?

That may be your notion, but it's not mine. I said nothing about you supplying a "complete proven system" to me or anyone else.

I believe your summary can be boiled down to "let's try using some law enforcement techniques in order to expose fraudulent scientists, then we can publish a fraudster shitlist which will shame them out of the profession". Presumably, you believe that this will result in better science across the board - not just in the limited case of Richard Horton's perceived problems within the biomedical field.

Without addressing the merits of your proposal, I'd argue that your assumptions aren't valid. Primarily, you seem to assume that the root cause of a major portion of the bad science out there is unethical/fraudulent behavior by research scientists. There is nothing in TFA/TFS to support this assumption. Richard Horton never mentions ethics or fraud as being a problem in biomedical research. He lists sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, flagrant conflicts of interest, and the pursuit of fashionable trends as the causes of "bad" science. You seem to have determined that unethical behavior and fraud are the main threats to "good" science all by yourself.

This story is NOT about fraud or unethical behavior causing anything. This story is about the failures of peer review, inadequate statistical criteria, poor research methodology, conflicts of interest, laziness and incompetence. You are injecting fraud/ethics into the discussion without providing the slightest bit of evidence to support your claim.

Well old buddy old pal, I suppose all those research institutions (and all those granting bodies) with research integrity departments are just providing busywork for bureaucrats, right?

The vast majority of research in private universities is government funded, so your public/private university distinction is pretty meaningless. Further, corporations have been eschewing in-house labs in favor of utilizing university labs for some time now.

So your solution to the problem of bad science is to get rid of bad scientists. Brilliant!

Of course, you have to actually propose a process to eliminate the sophist fungus from the halls of academia - a process that is better than the one currently in place - before you get to claim you've solved anything. Do you know of some test that differentiates a sophist poser from a bona fide scientist?

Yes! But it's not our fault. Evolution has hardwired male brains such that we experience a 20-30 point drop in IQ whenever we see boobs.

In fact, we don't even have to see boobs to start drooling with stupidity...just thinking about them makes us dull-witted morons - albeit to a lesser extent that when we see a fully exposed rack in all its glory.

So you see, Evolution (in its infinite wisdom) has ordained that women have boobs, and men are thus rendered idiots for the majority of their lives.

Now if you'll excuse me, I feel a strange urge to go make one of those "hey guys, watch this!!!" videos that often precede receipt of a Darwin Award.

p.s. BOOBS!

Sylpheed's primary advantage over all other e-mail clients is its inability to send HTML formatted mail.

Isn't that awesome?!?

Thanks to the fearmongering industrial complex that's sprung up post 9/11, it's bigger than that. Nowadays, it's "if you live in the US, don't even own a pressure cooker."

Handles up - don't shoot!

Sigh.

Gainsville's treated waste water flows into the Trinity, where it then flows into Lake Ray Roberts, then flows into the Trinity, then flows into Lewisville Lake. Dallas pumps water from Lewisville Lake into treatment plants, then to customers. After the water is consumed, the sewage is sent to waste water treatment plants, and back into the Trinity to be used by communities DOWNSTREAM. This is the traditional process that for some bizarre reason you really really want to call "toilet to tap".

There, did I directly answer your question? Did I stick to the facts?

Here's another fun fact: the above outlined traditional process is not "toilet to tap" (which is simply a euphemism for the more accurate term of "water recycling"). Water recycling uses completely different infrastructure and technology, and implements a completely different resource flow. Ultimately, water recycling systems allow a community to re-use it's own waste water, instead of simply flushing it downstream - which is what Gainesville does to Dallas and ever other fucking municipality DOWNSTREAM from them.

There are no water recycling facilities on any part of the Trinity River watershed, so nobody that drinks water from the Trinity River or any reservoir fed from it is drinking "toilet to tap".

I've given you the definition you asked for three times now, and nobody is so stupid that they could fail to see any distinction between the systems in question. I'm guessing you suffer from some pathological need to be right coupled with low self esteem. When someone points out your mistakes, you feel intellectually threatened and react with childish denial. Kinda sad, really.

Cheers!

That's not what I said. That's what you keep saying, and it's incorrect. As you requested, I laid out an accurate definition of toilet to tap showing significant distinctions from what "we've been doing for a very long time" compared to how toilet to tap systems actually function.

But hey, you don't see any real differences between reservoirs and rivers - and you spout complete nonsense about Dallas pumping water out of the Trinity and into city reservoirs. So it's hardly surprising that you can't see any distinction between a system that passes it's treated waste water downstream and a system that uses hundreds of millions of dollars in additional advanced technology infrastructure in order to pass potable water back upstream for a community to reuse.

I guess your wish to remain ignorant is interfering with your ability to perform a simple internet search. Here, let me help you. What you describe as "toilet to tap" is:

"Cities take water from rivers or wells, contaminate it as they use it, and send it to wastewater treatment plants for sufficient cleanup to return to the rivers, where it heads downstream to the next city."

Your definition of "toilet to tap" is the same water cycle that's been going on since municipal wastewater treatment facilities came into existence (in other words, long before the term "toilet to tap" was even coined).

What the rest of the world describes as "toilet to tap" is a system where a community's sewage is processed through "highly engineered, well-monitored, advanced treatment processes that remove contaminants", typically involving microfiltration, reverse osmosis, and ultraviolet disinfection. The processed water is then reintroduced to the environment upstream of the community that originally created the wastewater.

If you like, I can further help you become better educated on the subject of reclaimed water...I've got all day. But if you can't see the difference in the definitions above, there's little that can be done to help you.

Because pulling water from reservoirs, treating it, and delivering it to customers doesn't fit the definition of "toilet to tap". You may want to define "toilet to tap" that way, but the rest of the world doesn't.

Dallas doesn't pull any water from the Trinity River. It pulls water from reservoirs, and not all of them are fed by the Trinity.

Dallas doesn't pump water into any reservoirs. Dallas pumps water *from* reservoirs into treatment facilities and then to customers.

White Rock Lake hasn't been used for drinking water in decades.

The vast majority of re-claimed water in the US is used for irrigation and industrial uses, not drinking water. Unless you've lived in a few specific communities in CA or FL, you have probably never drank any re-claimed water. Toilet to tap is not common in the US, and it is non-existent in Dallas.