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Comment no slashdot bias (Score 1) 334

If this was a Republican White House, the story would be mostly tagged "republicans". But because it's a Democratic White House, it's tagged "government". Obviously, this is a story about a Democratic administration, but somehow most of the slashdot readershit is too dumb to believe that it is because of the principles of the Democratic party that this is happening and not despite of them.

Comment what difference does it make? (Score 1) 315

Cynicism aside, show me a Democrat who will not vote for a Republican if she gets the nomination. Oh, and show me a Democrat who can gain enough support among Democratic Party primary voters to beat her. As long as voter turn out is as low as it is, "bringing out the vote" will be the way elections are won.

Comment Re:"taxes are write-off expenses" (Score 1) 98

It doesn't cost you $1 to make $1 in donations. If you donate something that retails for $1, it only costs you what your cost is. If you donate a million in software licenses (retail), it costs you almost $0 (assuming the schools to whom you donated would never be able to afford the licenses in the first place). If you see patients for free a during hours when you don't have any appointments scheduled, but your paying patients are charged $200 an hour, then you exchanged your downtime for a $200 write off (or 60 to 80 per hour in reduced tax bill).

Comment Re:what conflict? (Score 1) 448

Sorry, "others agree with me" is not a counterargument. You haven't addressed any of the actual concerns. In fact, claiming that what's popular is ethical only validates the concern that demanding to know who sponsored the research creates an impetus for quashing legitimate lines of scientific inquiry. This should be a grave concern not only for the pedantic reason such as a wish for a purity of scientific process. As you are probably aware, quashing inquiry into medical efficacy of a certain naturally-occurring substance has resulted in the US having the highest incarceration rate in the world. Injecting mob-mentality-biased weights into choices of scientific lines of inquiry is very, very dangerous.

Comment Re:what conflict? (Score 1) 448

Actually, it's an interesting test on its own. It may have accidentally exposed a bias in editorial choices. In fact, if the journals do put any weight on source of funding of the research, can they claim to be "peer-reviewed"?

It would mean that they only give partial consideration based on the peer reviews and give some of consideration's weight to a source of funding.

Further, a case can be made that any journal that requires that all sources of funding be disclosed and yet does not make this requirement clear to its subscribers (and still maintains that it is a "peer-reviewed" publication) is a journal that is committing fraud. By making disclosure of the sourcing of funding a requirement, it makes it part of a pre-screening for review. So it gives some however-justifiable or however-little weight to a consideration which has nothing to do with peers' view on validity of the research.

Comment Re:what conflict? (Score 1) 448

This:

Research should be considered on its merit.

is not being naive because of the very sentence that follows it:

The assumption should be made that there are vested interests on both sides of any controversial scientific issue and the source of funding should not be considered as a data point in evaluating the legitimacy of research

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