[shrug] You can define it that way if you want to, but don't expect everyone else to go along with you.

So you can only come up with a rambling and vaguely confrontational statement of what you think it doesn't mean? Nice.

Okay, then, what do you think it means?

Given Newton's later descent into religious mania, he might not be the best example here ;)

Ah, I see the rumors of Francis Dec's demise were greatly exaggerated.

This is beautiful.

Maybe you should look at how things work in the real world instead of believing what a bunch of philosophers tell you they think ought to happen. Hint: Karl Marx and Ayn Rand both developed economic theories that were entirely logical and self-consistent.

Yes. Yes, it is.

What, you were expecting something more idealistic? Sorry, sucker, welcome to the real world.

Yes. This is an important distinction. "They also laughed at Bozo the Clown."

Hoyle wasn't purely a crank, of course. He was a very good scientist, who had made major contributions to his field, but who just couldn't accept new ideas past a certain point, and thereby became a crank. This phenomenon isn't universal by any means, but it's sadly common.

The FDA disagrees, and so does the evidence. And there are a whole lot of areas where pharmacogenetics is starting to have an impact on treatment. In any case, pharmacogenetics is a subset of pharmacogenomics; for example, as I mentioned in another comment, the lab where I work is working on expression-based tests for prediction of altitude sickness and setting up drug trials.

The clinical trials framework that's evolved over the decades isn't really equipped to deal with personalized medicine, but that's starting to change. Where I work, we're starting to understand the genomic basis of altitude sickness and putting together treatment trials on that basis. This is an area where the potential market is pretty large, of course, and for rare diseases that affect small numbers of people it's going to be harder, but if we can develop a generally accepted body of protocols for individualized trials then it should be possible to apply this to smaller groups as time goes by.

Urgh. Good point.

I'll bet there's a model that could take all stuff this into account, and sufficient data to estimate the parameters. But trying to figure out what that would be feels too much like work.

So we have records of about, what, eight thousand mass extinctions? Wow, I had no idea. ;)

Okay, makes sense. So we probably already have the data available to do a pretty good analysis of impact periodicity.

I understand why they're getting a weak signal here on Earth, where most craters will have long since been erased by erosion and surface remodeling. But I'll bet we could get a much stronger signal from the Moon, particularly the far side. Do we have the ability to get dates for craters there from orbiting probes, or is that something we'd have to collect physical samples to do?