Comment Re:Replication (Score 2) 197
Invalidating shoddy research would be a bonus.
Second, the French have a much greater faith in their scientists and engineers than we do here in the United States. The French scientists and engineers in turn work hard to earn and sustain that trust by doing good work. I cannot recall there ever being a serious nuclear accident in France for example. Finally, it seems that the French legal system doesn't allow for NIMBYs to get in the way of projects that are deemed to be in the national interest whereas anyone with money for the filing fees can cause no end of legal trouble here in the United States.
After the oil crisis French goverment went for the nuclear solution without any democratic or parliamentary process whatsoever. Which soon resulted in violent demonstrations etc. The energy production in France is complety controlled (owned and subsidized) by government.
Currently nuclear seem to thrive only in countries where tax payers pay the bill and have no say in the matter...
So they don't always have to tell you they're collecting personal info and once your name, phone number, profile picture and other identifying data is stripped, they can do whatever they want with your data?
Well no -- if it's for example medical or health care research, then you do have to get explicit, specific, informed concent that can be withdrawn at any time...
There has to be some limits in a civilized society, you know!
1. The research wasn't completely privately conducted (universities, and other government-funded organisations were involved), so I think there is probably some reasonable expectation that the community will benefit as a result.
I believe there was practically no private research, since Myriad was founded after the gene was already located in chromosome 17 and it was only a matter of time for the teams in different universities to pinpoint the location and find out the sequence. Furthermore, the company was founded by some of the university researchers that took part (well, their labs took part, at least) in the search for the gene.
Myriad was funded to patent the gene, to put it plain and simple. And by holding a patent not just to their gene test, but any BRCA1 sequence test, they have prevented anybody else for figuring out *why* mutations in BRCA1 may cause breast cancer.
It is the anthropogenic variety that is questioned. I have a VERY hard time believing that anywhere near enough evidence has been collected to determine that humans are responsible for the GW.
Which one you have difficulties with:
- CO2 is a "green house" gas, it traps heat
- Humans are pumping it to the atmosphere 40 billion tonnes per year
The logical step from those two to the Antropogenic in AGW is so small and obvious that when Arrhenius figured out the first one and knew the second one 120 years ago, he could make it without any evidence or measurement.
In the realm of physics it's easy to figure things out way before you can get any evidence...
Without life, Biology itself would be impossible.