Definitely true, although having had the misfortune to sit through and then TA classes full of pre-meds, I now respect MDs even less.

He accused the APS of being corrupt. The APS says he's full of shit and they're not getting any money to talk about climate change. If you're going to hype the "controversy", be honest and quote both sides.

As long as these goals are present and more important to scientists and the scientific community at large than doing actual science, this will always be a serious problem.

Having worked in academia for a while, I don't entirely disagree with your diagnosis, but I think you're mischaracterizing the motives of scientists. Most of us really want to do actual science and not have to worry about money, and no one actually gets excited about grant writing the way they do about a successful experiment. The problem is that our incentive system is so screwed up that dealing with it occupies an increasing amount of our time. Even very thoughtful, scrupulous, and dedicated scientists whom I greatly respect get sidetracked by these practical concerns. It's incredibly depressing to watch, and one reason why I desperately want out.

Someone (I forget where) once claimed that editors are disinclined to actually use these suggestions - instead, they'll remember the names for the next time they receive a manuscript on a similar topic from a different group. I doubt most scientists would complain if these recommendations disappeared entirely. What we're usually much more worried about, instead, is that the editor will send our paper to our arch-enemy who constantly bad-mouths us at meetings and is working on a similar project. (Or a notorious pedant who will dismiss any research that doesn't conform to his ideas about theory.)

To clarify: I don't necessarily think the proportion has changed. But the absolute quantity of bad papers has certainly increased. I'm also wondering whether the incidence of truly incompetent work has gone up due to lowered standards; the average PhD student isn't a towering intellectual giant. (Hell, even I graduated.)

It's intellectually dishonest to post that letter without giving the APS a chance to respond, so I'll briefly quote them:

Dr. Lewis’ specific charge that APS as an organization is benefitting financially from climate change funding is equally false. Neither the operating officers nor the elected leaders of the Society have a monetary stake in such funding. Moreover, relatively few APS members conduct climate change research, and therefore the vast majority of the Society’s members derive no personal benefit from such research support.

It's not just companies and politicians. University PR departments can be just as bad as their corporate counterparts, as witnessed by the proliferation of press releases claiming that "State U researchers discover possible cancer cure."

I think there are two other related issues at play here:

1. There has been a proliferation of relatively shoddy low-impact papers. Thanks to the Internet and the large scientific community, many of these are quickly flagged, but it's still a drag. Part of the reason for this is that the developed world (and more recently, aspiring nations) has been over-training scientists for a few decades, and a PhD is typically an essential requirement for most decent careers - which creates a big incentive to publish no matter how crappy the results.

2. Because of our f***ed-up incentive system, there is an additional huge incentive to publish in ultra-selective high-profile journals, which means the result has to be sufficiently exciting (and "citation bait"). Naturally, this leads people to either cheat or (more often) be sloppy and careless. These failures attract the most attention for obvious reasons.

Basically it's a natural side effect of the "democratization" of science. When basic research was just a gentleman's club centered at a relatively few elite institutions, there was much less incentive to game the system.

Manufacturing equipment that is designed to be as flexible as possible on a smaller scale is probably never going to be as efficient and cost-effective as a setup optimized for mass production. A skilled team of organic chemists should be able to figure out a much better way to synthesize molecules that they need massive quantities of. The reason this tool is potentially a huge breakthrough is that it's prohibitively expensive to do this for every molecule you're potentially interested in, versus those you plan to sell for boatloads of money.

They will have to shut this down HARD, to keep us from manufacturing pharmaceuticals and recreational drugs wihout the permission of IP "owners" or our frankly insane drug law enforcers.

It will take decades before automated chemical synthesis is advanced enough to allow individual manufacture of patented and/or illegal compounds. And for someone sufficiently determined, it's not all that difficult to get these molecules right now. You just need to contract it out to a lab in China, which has plenty of skilled technicians who will do it the old-fashioned way for much less than the cost of a 3D printer. Moreover, the people who would most benefit from cheaper drugs won't be able to afford the printer either.

Of course, the more likely result is that after a bunch of people die from automatically and illegally synthesized drugs that have undergone very poor quality control and contain major contaminants, everyone else realizes what a bad idea it was.

There is a fairly large population of feral turkeys near where I live and work - the adult males are slightly terrifying. Every time I see one I think of the dinosaurs who eat Wayne Knight in "Jurassic Park". Only with [more] feathers.

This is what drives me up the wall too. I'm an atheist, with an academic background in the natural sciences, but I have zero interest trying to disabuse people of their sincerely held superstitions - especially I can't honestly claim to be a paragon of rationality most of the time. What offends me as a scientist (of sorts) is when people actively lie and distort the scientific evidence in support of their mythology. "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."

If you think Starship Troopers is one of the greatest works of science fiction, you have an extremely limited exposure to sci-fi literature.

Maybe I just have different taste in books than you. Your sig alone demonstrates that we really don't think alike.

The accusation of fascism wasn't just Verhoeven, though - many others have made the same complaint (again, I think it's unfair, but it is a widespread view). Heinlein was clearly bothered enough by some of the reactions to his book that he wrote an entire essay defending himself and clarifying what he meant (I think it's in the collection Expanded Universe). One of the key points was that fascism tends to involve universal conscription - his "federal service" was absolutely voluntary.

I'm using the term "libertarian" only in the most general sense - not the Tea Party/Ayn Rand versions. It's an imperfect term to describe him, but I have a hard time thinking of another that works better, since none of the established political groupings occupies a similar niche.