- Michael Moore
- Yakima, WA
- United States
Disruptive Medical Student, Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences
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When confronted with new ideas like the ones presented by Mina Bissell, how do we change our views in today's scientific establishment?
Today's scientific research is different than research of 100. 50, or even 20 years ago. The advances are generally more incremental, less understandable to non-scientists, and require an expensive research infrastructure. In addition, because of limited resources we often do not have the time or money to reconfirm results, resulting in less validated information being incorporated into our knowledge base. To me this is a similar situation that resulted in the scientific profession, the science journal, and the concept of peer review. Now, because of the explosion of science knowledge, and the idea that scientific knowledge can be proprietary, these structures/ideas are failing us...and revolutionary ideas like Mina Bissell's can pass us by because they are unrecognized.
Are we entering a new era where we need new models of how we validate knowledge? Do we just retain our trend to open information and hope the knowledge rises to the surface, or is there still a role for curation and peer review?
What are the kinds of skills that the "New Scientist" will need? Maybe just as important, what are the skills they will not need?
Fritzie Reisner 100+
http://edge.org/conversation/imaging-conflict-resolution
Mark Hurych
you ask
--how do we change our views in today's scientific establishment? Here's how.
Change our assumptions about what we had traditionally thought was good science. We have pushed the horizon or cutting edge so far so fast, that now we can't keep up with all the possible connections. More scientists, and more people across disciplines, need to look at the benefits of combining different areas of knowledge that are already being established within more and more isolated specialties. I think Mina Bissell would agree that questioning common assumptions within a field is part of good science.
Another assumption has to do with priorities. Basic science has always been about following curiosity. The big questions have echoed "What's out there?" and "What's going on?" and "How do we explain that?" and only later "How can we use this discovery to help us live better?"
Science needs to ask new questions.
So what's different, since 1712, when we began to seriously apply science, with steam-driven pumps pumping water out of coal mines? Hmm. Let's see. We burned coal to pump out water to get more coal.
Now the question, even as science should be well aware of, is about how we thrive on a planet with say 9 billion people, and continue to thrive with teeming oceans, adequate water, biodiversity, providing energy, arable land, food, and healthful comfort to all?
So the sooner and the better we express the shift in our priorities as a species, the more adequately science can be applied to the necessary global systems.
Have a nice day. While we're at it, let's have a nice millennium.
Mark Hurych
Fritzie Reisner 100+
With near universal recognition of the potential of generating new ideas by interconnecting understandings across scientific fields, there has been an explosion of inter-disciplinary collaborations and platforms at universities over the last decades for bringing scientists in different fielss together, both pure and applied.
While budgets are tight in pure science as everywhere, by all accounts it is a thrilling time to be learning and experimenting for those in both life science and physical science.
John Allyn
The species as a whole does not determine scientific priorities. The priorities are determined by who finances the science. Science in itself generates no economic gain. Science is all cost, the bill for which must be paid by someone. The one who pays the bills establishes priorities which are usually designed around generating information which may produce economic gain to the the one who finances the science.
Antonio Robateau
The truth is that everyone could be wrong... except you. Unfortunately also, the person who thinks so - whether truly wrong or truly right - is always considered by the majority to be wrong until proven right - an uncomfortable no-man's land unless...
Unless we recognize that consent does not equate to truth, that truth is not revealed to those who only talk about it but to those who actively seek it out, and that those who are actively seeking it out must live in that uncomfortable no-man's land of challenge and incredulity, then we can never effectively confront today's scientific establishment (if at the same time never differing from it).
And those who live comfortably outside today's scientific establishment's consent will understand that it is easier to find truth than it is to change our views in today's scientific establishment because it is not after the truth (which once made public has no individual value) but after profit (gained by withholding the truth).
Realizing this established conflict of interest, we must realize that we have been, are being, and will be lied to by the established scientific community from time to time to prevent the truth from taking on a power of its own - liberating the masses through increased knowledge (the greatest asset of the man who could go back in time is his unique knowledge of the possible which would make him king).
Unfortunately (or fortunately), it is a only a matter of time before old truth is released to others and new truth is withheld once again, the upper hand always being maintained by active truth-seekers - a race to truth!
John Allyn
And thank you for the effort you applied to saying it........................John
Fritzie Reisner 100+
Antonio Robateau
Fritzie Reisner 100+
I think people have an interesting tendency often to assume that "other" people are in things for profit, the money, power, bad motives....People repeat it so often to each other it comes to seem like common wisdom. It's a "them" and "us", clique-y sort of thinking that arises all over modern life- seeing others as worse than they typically are. I am concerned specifically when our patterns of "learning" tend toward collecting information preferentially that confirms biases for which we actually have little genuine evidence.
Bob Stiglitz
Michael Moore 500+
Bob Stiglitz
http://bit.ly/dYaWUc
People on the frontiers of knowledge are mocked as outcasts because no one can understand them or others simply can't accept the new persons ideas because they have been taught wrong ideas about what truth is and the level of 'rigor' you need. i.e. they think they'd know truth when they see it, the reality is - the truth is mundane and often times highly non-obvious things that are plainly in view that no one perceives it's relevance. Things that are simple and mundane become powerful only when you figure out how they are related to everything else in the universe.
We already rely on automated truth validation in many areas already - they are just so mundane everyone forgets it. Every time you do a google search for instance and you compare patterns there is something fundamental about that mundane process and how it relates to everything.
John Allyn
Ms Bissell is elucidating in scientific terms what I have been attempting to discuss in terms of the gender gap between the male principle and the female principle. It is not "sour grapes" to report that two of my conversations and one coment have been taken down as-
TED Comment Removal
Dear John Allyn,
We have received numerous complaints from other TED.com members concerning your recent posts, which center on promoting your views regarding women. Many of your posts are seen as hostile and aggressive, including the comment attached below, and this tone is not conducive to the kinds of civil and constructive discussions we want to host on TED Conversations.
As one can see Ms Bissell has penetrated the defenses of the objective domain much more effectively than I have. She is demonstrating that the objective genetic domain is seriously modified and frequently trumped by the phenotypical domain of subjectivity. Of course a scientist will bristle at the use of the term subjectivity in an area which objective analysis is dominant.
Elizabeth Pert, a respected scientist has documented the biological basis of phenotype expression in her book, The Molecules of Emotion. In her initial work she discovered the receptor site for cortisol on the cell membrane. She went on to discover that each emotion corresponds to a molecule which cells through out the entire body produce and have receptors for on their membranes
Ms Bissell in her turn is introducing to science the expression emotional subjectivity has upon the structure and function of an organism. She of course does not use those terms or the scientific community would shut her down immediately. She is a woman, she embodies finesse.
The reactions of the TED administration to my conversations and comments makes it rather obvious to me that I need to develop fines
John Allyn
John Allyn
The integration of the two leads to human life. The objective with out the subjective leads to machine life. Many prefer a machine reality because they fear their own feelings in subjectivity (cancer). Introspection is not the cause of introversion. It is an integral aspect of being human. It does not produce instant solutions to massive social problems. It leads one to ones humanity.
Civilizations collapse due to the unconscious errors in their basic premises. We are in the latter stages of collapse and the great thinkers are attempting to think their way out of the impending doom while not defining and looking at the basic premisses.our society holds.
Linda Taylor 50+
That being said, it is not just research that is struggling with the pace and growth of technology. Like all publishing, it is moving online and becoming difficult for the lay person to distinguish between true research and garbage. It is even becoming difficult for people in the field to know if the data is valid. However, even with peer review, it was difficult to externally validate research. Even then a lot of crap got published. It is just a larger volume now.
So I think we need to continue to develop our ability to critique research, whether in journals or online. We need to know research methodology and appropriate statistical application and view research through a critical lens.
Each discipline will continue to debate and challenge results. Defending your research starts in school and continues throughout a scientific career. It helps to develop scientific rigor. I truly think this will continue, just not through the format of journals.
The skills will be the same. Appropriate method for the question, appropriate statistical application to the research, publish and defend your results. And make sure your research decisions are transparent and open to critique.
It is just that the venue will be different.
Michael Moore 500+
Henry Maldonado
I do not think that science is any less technical than it ever was. It may be more specialized than before but that is a good thing. It is better to be specific and work with others than be a one man jack of all trades. The point being, we need to get people to a condition where the basics are understood to have the will power to understand more.
For me, the first step would be to teach Computer Science to all students at different level, exposing children to a math and science they understand which can be later use to independently verify research.
george lockwood 20+
John Allyn
Scientific knowledge is objective knowledge and is only applicable to machine technology. It has nothing to offer in the quest for more life other than to make it more machine like while calling it life.
Humans have become convinced that they are human resources. a commodity at the service of capital. People now speak of their bodies in terms of being fantastic machines. Disease is no longer dis-ease or dis-comfort it is a diagnostic description used to amplify a patience's fear and dependence so as to lock in more income for the practitioner.
Cultures with the most science have become the most insensitive to feeling because of the objective paradigms they hold. Thus they have kill, injured, maimed and tortured more people than one can imagine through declared and undeclared warfare in the last hundred years. Millions upon millions. They now use drone machines to do their killing and intimidation and some how think it is not them pulling the trigger.
Bob Stiglitz
This is of course is nonsense, how about you actually know what's going on in science before posting your ignorance for all to see.
http://bit.ly/dYaWUc
Fritzie Reisner 100+
Part of learning, though, is to put thoughts out there for others to see. In expressing ideas and in gathering responses, the practice can help us confront our misconceptions, whether in our areas of expertise or outside.
To call something ignorant typically interferes with the potential of this process.
Bob Stiglitz
Fritzie Reisner 100+
John Allyn
Look at cancer as a symptom of the bodies discomfort and progress will be made. A cancerous tumor has a massive blood supply. Why? because the body craves circulation in that particular area, fluid circulation which has been denied it due excessive structural tension in the involved connective tissue. Such excessive structural tension originates in a persons desire to deny feeling which is accomplished by crimping the connective tissue with tension and there by inhibiting neuron transmission.
Nearly all cancer cells do not need oxygen because they are the body’s adaptation to a very low oxygen environment brought on by poor circulation. They get their energy by converting sugar to lactic acid and do not convert the lactic acid to ATP because they lack oxygen.
This life threatening situation for the cells causes them to become very hard to kill because they have developed defenses for the protection of their DNA. Cancer cells synthesis telomerase, an enzyme which protects the DNA from degrading as it does in normal cells.
Cancer is the body’s last ditch stand against ones lethal denial of feeling.
Lars Mews
And you know less to little about people with cancer diagnosis, if confronted with that, such people sure do a lot, but not deny any feeling, they are litterally flooded by any feeling there is. If one is open for feelings, then sure those who face their own death coming.
So if cancer would react on psychotherapy as you imagine it, they gonna need brains first and an own ego. Cause cancer patients feelings do change frequently, whilst the cancer cells do their job ongoing, ignoring the mood of the patient.
Your theory says that the body has a soul, and the body owner has a soul to, so to say humans are a double soul. The body feels bad, because his owner is living the wrong life, so the body kills himself? What a crap, sorry!
Why is there so many people lacking of empathy, that they tell people with shortened life span these are self-responsible for their doom? This is absolute nonsense, and by the way sadism of purest kind, because telling cancer patients they have a "mental illness" and they just need to undergo a psychological treatment or change their lifestyle is contra-productive, as it will only produce more pressure and discomfort-what shall be the reason of their illness as you imagine.
Subjective science is nonsense too. You can't fly without wings-that simple. Even when you use a helicopter, you do not fly, the copter is flying. Subjective science would ignore this and say humans are birds too. That is absurd!
Cells follow their program, they are objective. They don't care bout feelings you have. You can sit allday smiling and feeling great on nuclear waste, they gonna grow to cancer cells. If your theory was true, nothing will happen. And fish were cancerfree.
John Allyn
There are victims in your world. You thus still blame people who you identify as the perpetrator of a victim's problem. If you knew how to feel where you feel like a victim you would have a chance to move the emotions involved. Then you would have the possibility to vibrate your way out of being a victim and learn a lot about how you created your experience of being a victim in the first place.
You do not understand how we have fragmented down to this level of function and thus do not know how to collect back your pieces into the much greater being that you once were. Fragments of ourselves "out there" seem to perpetrate against us or we attack them. Few people realize that the perpetrator and the victim are frequently one fragmented being. As Peanuts (cartoon) once said: "We have met the enemy and it is us." If you develop a functional relationship to your emotions you will be able to reassemble yourself.
Form the way you write to me your fear seems to be stuck, backed up and it is converting into rage in order to keep you from feeling the fear. Empathy for me is to hold myself responsible for all of my experience and to do the same for all other sentient beings.
When one stops blaming one begins to learn to take responsibility. Best wishes........John
Lars Mews
According to your theory that will make me suffer from cancer...
"When one stops blaming one begins to learn to take responsibility. "
I did not blame you, i just told you about nonsense you wrote-what was a fact. If facts are same as blame for you, you do not act, think or feel responsible, you deny that.
"Few people realize that the perpetrator and the victim are frequently one fragmented being."
You mix up one nonsense with another nonsense... Like i told you cancer can be found in almost any lifeform on this planet-if you imply that a fish is thinking the same absurd thoughts about guilt, blame, victims and such, then this is still way more absurd.
Cancer is a term for growing cells, so to have a start for your theory, a cell growing wrongly in a fish is something diffrent than a wrongly growing cell in a human. But it is not, because "growing cell" describes what happens, not an object. Cancer is what happens, the cells are still just cells, just to get you back on track.
Your theory implies that "thoughts" or mind is forming the bodies physical structure. If so, you would be able to change skin color, hair color, et cetera. If you can't control that, you can't control cell growing too. So as you are a greater being, become "the great shape-shifter" on youtube and prove me wrong! And no, chameleons do not change color by mind, it is uncontrolled reflex, they can't control.
"Empathy for me is to hold myself responsible for all of my experience and to do the same for all other sentient beings."
Sorry, empathy s not about what it is for you, but about what it is. And empathy is not that what you call it, take responsibility for that first, before you wrongly believe that you made any experience in life.
John Allyn
Your rage seems to be building as you go along in this thread, which in turn seems to me to be causing you to not attempt to understand what I am driving at. By the time you reach the last paragraph above you seem to be breaking up and becoming a bit incoherent.
Take a few days off, read the thread over a few times and you may find something of interest in what I wrote and then you may wish to dialogue instead of disparage. If not just let it go.
george lockwood 20+
John Allyn
Maria Kuznetsova
Maria Kuznetsova
Debra Smith 200+
Maria Kuznetsova
Robert Winner 50+
Mina Bissell has the university advantage. I call it that because she has new eyes to read old studies, review current status, and see the project anew. That, to me, is a teriffic advantage. After a couple years of going down the same road I become locked in and have tunnel vision and tunnel thoughts. New blood allows for new thoughts and possibilities if the EGOs will open up to them.
A truck was stuck in a tunnel and need about three inches to release the truck. All the pros discussed the proper means of doing this when a child said why not let some air out of the tires.
I offer this because there is a stigma about young minds in the "adult", "veteran", "old hands", "proven", etc ... world. We need these new eyes and we need them on the leading edge.
The skills change daily. I think that the science of today is probally ten years old. By the time accepted methods, equipment, computers are manufactured they are behind what is on the drawing board and that is ten years til delivery.
I cannot answer your specifics but I think we share some common ground.
All the best. Bob.
Antoinette Carvajal
Delia Bogdan 100+
As for answering your question, the principles Mina Bissell stated to be important for new discoveries are also important in accepting those discoveries as possible solutions to unanswered questions, so as she said:
1- think outside the box
2- be curious instead of arrogant
I might add: question evidence with "what if it is so, and I just never thought about it from this point of view?" instead of "how does this fit the old concept?" Maybe the old concept was pretty narrow minded viewed from where science got today, so we have to open our minds to new approaches. Progress in science implies invalidating old hypothesis that we now came to call concepts, maybe because we are now able to see a bigger picture. For short: think "what if?" instead of "no way!"
Uday Pasricha 100+
Uday Pasricha 100+
Gabo Moreno 100+
As for the talk. It was rhetorical rather than scientific. That a single oncogene in a single cell would make you a cancer victim has never been a theory, let alone a dominant one, in cancer research. Oncogenes are just part of the story. No cell biologists ignore that context is important. But no serious scientist should think that cell environment holds the whole clue for all cancer-related problems. As someone below asked, then what about metastasis, what about so many mutations, what about such and such. This lady chose carefully to talk about her discoveries, but other discoveries and problems should not be ignored if we are to get a proper picture of cancer.
pat gilbert 50+
Gabo Moreno 100+
pat gilbert 50+
But I thought she showed some evidence that she did do that? From your perspective it was more rhetoric aimed at getting funding?
For sure the last thing the world needs is more junk science.
Gabo Moreno 100+
Gail . 50+
It is my thinking that twho things have to change. 1) education, and 2) our economic model.
re 1) "In 1968, George Land took a creativity test used by NASA to select innovative engineers He then tested school children with the same test. The test results were staggering! 98% at age 5 registered genius level creativity, 30% at 10 year and 12% at 15 years of age. The same test given to 280,000 adults placed their genius level creativity at only 2% ! In his book 'Breakpoint and Beyond', co-authored by Beth Jarman, Land concluded that non-creative behavior is learned".
re 2) A 10-year (by now) study in Iowa looks at adults 45 & older (most expensive health-care group). One group meditates 2ce/day. The other does not. The meditation group had 87% less medical expenses than a comparative group and 67% less than the general population. Researchers are now suggesting that stress is responsible for illnesses - though further study is needed. (I would like to see an investigation into the belief-sets that participants hold, because it was only after I conducted my own study into my own belief-set, (letting go of conflicting and erroneous beliefs), that my life changed DRAMATICALLY.
Why isn't the proven benefits of meditation to not only reduce illness - including psychiatric disorders - but also reduce (if not end) war, crime & violence, poverty, & ignorance taught? With over 600 studies showing the same results, and with most governments around the world conducting their own studies & agreeing - why are governments supporting Insurance companies and Big Pharma rather than personal responsibility?
the reason that both have in common? $$$$$. War = profitable. Peace = NOT. Illness = profitable. Wellness = NOT. Crime = profitable. Peace = NOT. Ignorance (through enforced diseducation) = profitable. Knowledge is not only unprofitable, but it counters $'s agend
Scott Armstrong 50+
Pam Bosch
Fritzie Reisner 100+
Michael Moore 500+
Joris Bressan
Joris Bressan
Michael Moore 500+
Debra Smith 200+
Michael Moore 500+