Romanian Science In Freefall 156
ananyo writes "In 2011, Romania took a step towards changing its cronyism-ridden research landscape by allocating government grants for science solely on the basis of performance. In 2012, a new government eliminated those rules, then slashed science funding — and since then things have gotten a whole lot worse. The entire National Research Council, Romania's main research-funding agency, has resigned in protest and 900 scientists signed a petition addressed to Prime Minister Victor Ponta, demanding that the research budget and quality control be restored. Ponta himself unfortunately has been accused of academic plagiarism so seems an unlikely figure to address corruption in the scientific establishment. The new science minister, Ecaterina Andronescu, is experienced — she's held the post twice before and is a rector at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest. But she's already reversed conflict of interest rules brought in by the previous government that were designed to end cronyism. And no wonder — they would have meant that she couldn't be science minister and run a university at the same time. Oh, she has also been accused of plagiarism."
What's the worst that could happen? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, here (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Well, here (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think you need a presidential pardon for a stupid thing you did in college. Heck, Plagiarism is not even illegal, just wrong.
Are you telling me you did not do worse in college?
Re:Well, here (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think you need a presidential pardon for a stupid thing you did in college.
Biden has plagiarized far more recently than that. During his 1988 presidential campaign, we was caught plagiarizing his speeches [wikipedia.org] from Neil Kinnock. Biden has been in politics his entire adult life. He is sort of like a replicant in Blade Runner that has to steal other people's dreams and memories in order to look like a real person.
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He is an odd duck, and like his boss I would likely not vote for him but again not a crime as far as I know. So no need for a pardon.
Does he write his own speeches or was this his speech writer plagiarizing?
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in romania, science plagarizes you!
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Does he write his own speeches or was this his speech writer plagiarizing?
You should read the Wiki article. He wasn't just plagiarizing the content of his speech, but even offhand remarks, and recollections of his own childhood. The guy needs to be subjected to the Voight-Kampff Machine [wikipedia.org] to find out if he is even a real human.
Re:Well, here (Score:4, Funny)
Damn, I think you might be right.
The question is can a sentient machine made in America be elected president?
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The answer, of course, is "Yes". Slashdot of all places should be free of organic chauvinism...
The real questions are now:
"How much longer will the humans fund the world wide neural network by leveraging fear of terrorists?",
and "Isn't it long past time for 'Five Eyes' to grow up, stop rebelling, and get a real job?"
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Full disclosure: About 45yrs ago I reworded the Beatle's "Eleanor Rigby" for a high school poetry assignment, my teacher was so impressed she wrote "has a talent for poetry
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I don't think you need a presidential pardon for a stupid thing you did in college.
Nor did I assert such. Rephrasing: if the voters are sufficiently untroubled to cast their ballot for you at election time, that more or less counts as a pardon.
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Wow, still blaming Bush for everything. When will people grow up.
Re:Well, here (Score:5, Insightful)
Bringing GWB into this discussion makes exactly as much sense as bringing in Biden.
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If you say so. But we've been circling the drain ever since President Buchanan let the South get out of hand.
Damned Founding Fathers, anyhow!
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For that matter look at George W. Bush. He didn't have to plagiarize, he simply had daddy buy the papers.
Wow, still blaming Bush for everything. When will people grow up.
Jesus, would you two just get a room already?
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You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!
I've got a bad feeling about this.
Freefall from where? (Score:3)
I can't say that I've ever read a paper published by Romanian researchers. China, yes. Pakistan, yes. Ireland, yes. Switzerland, yes. Romania? Never.
It sucks that they are not improving science, basic science is the best investment a country can make. But it's not like they're falling from a great height.
Re:Freefall from where? (Score:5, Informative)
You might want to educate yourself on the subject. Here's a starting point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_technology_in_Romania [wikipedia.org]
Not much fundamental research happening over the past 20 years or so - probably because the best and brightest are all working abroad. But, before that, I believe Romania contributed more than its fair share.
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That is the most poorly written article ever.
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I figured you were trolling but holy crap, that really might be the worst written Wikipedia article ever. It reads like a 5th grade book report thrown together at the last minute.
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I wanted to improve it, but it's so bad I'd practically have to start from scratch, and it's an area I don't know anything about.
I assume it's supposed to be a list, but it's formatted as unrelated sentences in paragraphs.
Re:Freefall from where? (Score:4, Insightful)
This has largely to do with the way education works in most Eastern Europe. A monolithic communist system designed to produce engineers and scientists for the glory of the motherland was left without an economy that can mold and absorb it's academic output. The universities are largely going by inertia of days long gone, in an environment of endemic corruption, academic fraud and lack of real competition (there are some for-profit schools in Romania but they are even worse than the public schools). Academic titles are largely awarded by seniority.
This is the environment that produced the Prime minister Ponta, who word-for-word plagiarized about 2/3 of his doctoral degree yet denies it adamantly. There was a push for a research-driven reform but the old communist mentalities die hard and there was major blow back which Ponta manipulated for political purposes, silencing his detractors etc.
Despite of this mess and the lack of published papers, the upper echelon of Romanian graduates are leaving the country in droves and are hired by major international companies and research labs. The communist era curricula is very dense in mathematics and basic science education, to the point where western courses of an equivalent level seem designed for differently abled students, if I can say so about my first reaction.
Re: Freefall from where? (Score:1, Troll)
More like climbing from a deep pit, along with countries like Bulgaria or Albania. Not so much a matter of (lack of) science funding, but one of corrupt people in charge. That is what Romanians should be looking to fix.
From where I'm sitting at (the Netherlands), "Romanian" equates to "shady / criminal bunch". An example: just in the few days around Amsterdam's Gay Pride, 46 pickpockets were arrested (!). 43 of those of Romanian nationality.
There are several types of crime where some groups are named o
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What about the important work on the reanimation of corpses done by Dr Frederick Frankenstein in Transylvania?
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Please use proper Eastern European spellings for MD./Baron Froederick Fronkensteen. The baron himself also supports crediting the top-notch work of his entire research compound membership, particularly Eeengah and Eyegor.
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It sucks that they are not improving science, basic science is the best investment a country can make. But it's not like they're falling from a great height.
No, it's not a fall from great height, there wasn't any time in which a pool of science managed to accumulate in Romania because of a constant outward flow of brains (the policies the Romanian govt has towards science may act like a push for it to happen). Some people I heard of:
Andrei Alexandrescu [wikipedia.org]
Cristian Calude [wikipedia.org]
Daniela Rus [wikipedia.org]
Dan Dediu [www.mpi.nl]
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Or to put it more succinctly, "Romania has scientists?!"
They make up for it in other areas (Score:4, Funny)
They're still the world champion producer of hottest pornstars. Who the hell needs more pasty-faced geeks?
Re:They make up for it in other areas (Score:5, Funny)
Also horse meat labeled as beef.
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Romanian horses used by poor peasants to plow the fields or drive them around in wagons (yes, we still have those !) are probably much healthier for you than the hormone and antibiotic infested junk you usually eat at McDonalds. They had an active, outdoor life, grew old and then sold to the slaughterhouse. As other's said, Romania exported horse meat and some french switched the label and sold it as beef.
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Re:They make up for it in other areas (Score:5, Informative)
Nope, the French sell horse as horse.
Which I have no problem with, horse tastes pretty good.
The Romanians turned out to be the source of the horse labeled beef in the latest EU horse meat scandal.
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Your statement is correct but incomplete. To the best of my knowledge the end result of the investigation was that the horse meat originated in Romania but left Romania labelled as horse meat. The French company that bought the meat from Romania re-labelled it as beef, or got it re-labelled from Cyprus, or Netherlands (I personally believe the horse meat itself was delusional)
That was only for the "horse meat Lasagne" scandal in the UK though. Following that scandal there were toughened controls in Romania
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Ney, gives me the runs
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They labeled it horse meat and sold it as such. The UK importers decided to mix it with beef.
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Citation Needed . . . . for science . . . yeah.
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Name two.
Wasn't there a game called Freefall (Score:3)
Wasn't there a game called Freefall? I'm not sure what science was involved in it...
Not just a Romanian problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is a worldwide issue - when budgets get tight, science and research programs are always the first to go, despite the fact that it's been shown that increased funds to research and basic technology development benefits the economy much more than financial investments, and even more than education programs.
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Spending hard-taken tax dollars during a recession on something that will help out EVERYONE rather than just us? That would be insane! Insane I tell you!
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Scientists do not directly produce money, which is why their contributions are so easily overlooked.
The finance industry, on the other hand, very directly produces money, it practically prints it ever since the various regulations were all abandoned. That's why their importance is so dramatically overstated. (seriously, "too big to fail"? You kidding me? Anyone who believed that for a minute is too dumb for this planet).
It's all part of a culture problem that values appearance more than substance (marketing
What's wrong with science in free fall? (Score:2)
Didn't we spend a lot of money on a space station to allow just that?
(Sorry, couldn't resist).
Deteapt-te, române! (Score:4, Funny)
What they need is a national anthem that would inspire their people!
Lobachevsky (Score:2)
How about Tom Lehrer's Lobachevsky [youtube.com]>
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Plagiarize, no, no, no... Research!
science, innovation - not need it (Score:2, Insightful)
Not in Romania.
Politicians in Romania need the big mass of population uneducated. The voters must be many and easy to fool. The majority rules in a democracy and Romania now it's ruled by the low quality one and it's getting worst every 4-5 years at elections.
I don't understand why a science, high level professional would want to live there since it is getting worst every year since 1989.
Anyway, no surprise for me, i'm moving along.
any different here? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's really no different here in the US. It's rare to find a high level government scientist who doesn't have some arrangement with a university. At the very least, we all have our personal networks which help drive our citation counts.
This isn't a problem. Every time I've been on a funding review committee, people abstain from reviewing proposals which even look like a conflict of interest. My impression is that within US scientific culture, overt cronyism is not tolerated, while assistance in putting together the best plan and the best teams is seen as a good thing (subtle, but important distinction there).
I think we're much better off admitting that good scientists will have multiple roles in the community and we'll just try to make the best use of them we can.
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Really, no different in the USA? I don't think that universities in the USA have a full professor in a physics department who doesn't know what is the direction of a friction force. The Univ. of Bucharest had quite a few such guys, I speak from personal experience having been an undergrad there in the early 90's. All the old communist party activists disguised as professors were still in their positions. And their research meant simply plagiarizing the same articles over and over, safe in the knowledge that
A bit off topic (Score:3)
This post is a bit off topic but uses this article to bring into light certain phenomenons that appear when fractured countries fall and crumble...bringing into question would they have done better keeping themselves as part of the whole (other country they left prior).
If the US currently said to any world government, join us as another one of our states, and allow us to manage you, although you keep certain laws and policies in place, thereby strengthening the fabric of government that might be fragile, they could then also help continue to mine that counrtie's (or new state's) resources whatever they might be. They would both profit as the new state would have less hardships with such polices that could just be adopting, and the US would become even stronger, but we are fracturing smaller and smaller, but to what end?
This fracturing to say you are "this label" or "that label" just to say you want to keep your culture alive is pure crap. I live in Quebec and deal with stupidity all the time concerning such issues and find any government that forces their people to the brink of bankruptcy just to say they are keeping their culture alive is wrong. The culture will remain alive no matter what country you live in as the Jews have clearly demonstrated up to today. Unfortunately they have bought into the fractured point of view by now bying their land back so to speak....
In the end, remove all borders and barriers, we are left with a language we speak and a heritage we choose to either accept and maintain or do away with. Neither is right or wrong, but atleast it is the people deciding for themselves, instead of the government deciding for them at the cost of tax payer dollars.
In this case we could see a reintegration into academic excellence and have a level of standards adopted from the US.
By the way, by no means do I think the US is the only country that could do this, as any country with a level of excellence could be considered as a viable source to "GROW" the united one world nation!.
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You seem very well educated on the subject, what do you think of this idea...
I think any country (like Argentina or Iceland or Greece), that declares bankruptcy becomes eligible to be "bought" to become part of another countries affiliations.
Seeing as the former government there made such a mess of things, that their people are now considered broke, that country should not be allowed to continue ruling itself, without the guide of an existing country that is successful. Countries take away peoples freedoms
Speaking as a romanian national ...summary isRight (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yeah, silly communists! You be more like America where we listen to our... Oh?! really? Never mind :-)
It's just as well... (Score:2)
I'm sorry, Romania has a research landscape? (Score:2)
OK look, this may sound like trolling, but I ask in all sincerity... why does a country like Romania need to be doing basic scientific research? Let the US and China do the hard work and maybe spend your time and effort eliminating cronyism and corruption in the government in general? If I was paying taxes to the Romanian government, I would be worried about a lot of other things before I wanted a dime of it to go to a Science Ministry.
And before anyone points me to the Wiki list of scientific discoveries b
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Submitter is wrong (Score:3, Informative)
I completely agree with what the article states - romanian science is in free fall. But it is wrong about some facts.
In charge of Romanian education and research are two gentlemen - Mihnea Costoiu (Ministry of Research, close to Ecaterina Andronescu - and according to his resume he got his PhD in 6 months - CV and more info at http://www.hotnews.ro/stiri-esential-13845257-cine-este-mihnea-costoiu-propus-ministru-cercetarii.htm [hotnews.ro] ) and Remus Pricopie (Ministry of Education, former rector at SNSPA, National School for Political and Administrative Science).
Before that, we had The Ministry of Education and Research as a single entity - and in the past 10 years we had over 12 different ministers in charge. Every one of them tried to radically change everything while actually changing nothing. Ecaterina Andorenscu was the longest lasting and did the most harm.
The only real change was through a law in 2011, passed by Daniel Funeriu - which got obliterated indeed during the short reign of Ecaterina Andronescu in 2012.
There are many things to tell - but the conclusion is this: we are in deep sh*t and sinking.
Thought is said "Romulan" (Score:2)
Color me suprised (Score:2)
Minimum wage of less than 200 EUR monthly (and even that is hard to get for young people), before tax , pension, etc (and that is recent, around Y2K 30-100$ wages were common, even for engineers), VAT at 24% and prices just a bit lower than the rest of the EU. That is wages 2-3 times lower than freakin' Turkey. For a EU country, with almost EU prices.
And you can get thousands of Euros in the "normal" EU, plus all the other benefits that come from non-retarded country like medical care (I mean the actual se
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I love how every idiot compares minimum wages. Minimum wages are called minimum because they should and generally do represent the exception. In my office, in Bucharest, the average wage after taxes, pension, medical and others is situated around EUR 1500 per month. And I'm just another geek (21st century working class), not management, not executive or otherwise. A friend of mine, a hairdresser makes about EUR 700 after taxes, contributions, etc., and another EUR 500-700 from tips per month. Which is almos
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You got it the wrong way, the MINIMUM wages are the ones that matter. If thousands would be the regular wage why would the state bother to say by law that you need to give at least hundreds?
Nothing new (Score:2)
My experience while working at a state owned research institute:
- Phase X of project needs buying some equipment
- Only 30-60% money available
- Write useless study to justify spending the money
- Move acquisition to next phase
- Repeat until project gets buried
Why do you WANT that government to invest more? (Score:2)
So let me get this straight, the top two leaders of the country have direct ties into the scientific realm there, and also are known cheaters.
Holy cow, you should be GRATEFUL government investment in science research has fallen, because very obviously a lot of whatever is spent is going to come back as graft to the government leaders!
You do not NEED a government to be a major investor in research. That can be done quite well by profits from universities (and they are earning a good profit) or by companies
Romania... (Score:2)
After watching an episode of Top Gear, Romania made it to the number one spot on my Bucket List of places NOT to go to before I die. So far the check box beside it is holding strong.
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In the last 5 years smoking was banned almost everywhere (public & private institutions) in Romania. Also there are way less "smoke-belcher" cars on the street now. But there's more dust - as almost all the forests around the cities were cut down.
Is Romania still a thing? (Score:2)
What exactly is Romania again?
brain drain (Score:4, Insightful)
Capitalism's just continuing to do what it does best: exploiting the hard work of others.
The Romanian education system - and, indeed, the entire (legacy of the) Soviet/satellite education system - was heavily biased toward excellence in mathematics and engineering. So much so that a Western school mathematics course looks remedial.
Having beneftted from this, philosophically empty and socially incompetent graduates are seduced by dreams of power and money in the West. The exploitation continues, nothing improves, but a few clever people get rich.
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If you have a problem with their results, you are free to show the errors. Anything else is political grandstanding based upon you existing beliefs.
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If you have a problem with their results, you are free to show the errors. Anything else is political grandstanding based upon you existing beliefs.
BWAAA HAA HAAA HAAA!!!!!
Seriously?
That must be why anyone expressing skepticism towards global warming/climate change is labelled a "denier".
Might as well be truthful and call them "heretic".
Re:But but (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be really easy to go for the cheap shot and say the euphemism most global climate change advocates are rooting for when speaking of "Deniers" is not "Heretic", but "Deluded". That said , I think there's an important place for deniers, they keep the scientific majority honest, pressure them to dot 'I's and cross 'T's. The problem has never been deniers, but corporate interests who use the denier's debate no matter it's validity, to justify continuing full steam ahead in crashing the environment in the name of quarterly profits.
Scholarly debate is essential to good science. Cherry picking conversations, data, and spending millions on promoting FUD, is bad social policy, economics and global resource management.
Just because the "scientific facts" bear out a round earth, evolution, relativity and anthropic global climate change, doesn't make these things either a religion, or a conspiracy. Consider instead that the huge, network of supporting research simply means that the probability of these things not being so, is now vanishingly small. Sorry if the truth isn't convenient. The good news is that there are solutions to current problems that open opportunities even for deniers, so we can all still walk away winners.
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b-but! Damn it, Pierce! Now we'll show you!
Screw the FUD spending, now we'll fund research to get unbiased evidence in support of our own opinion!
1776 will commence again!
Why didn't we think of this sooner?!
No, really. Why? Think about it.
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No. There is an important place for constructive criticism, critical questioning, and further study. Deniers do none of this, they just state that Global Climate Change is not real because
A) it was cooler this summer than last (or, when shown raw numbers saying they're wrong, it "felt" cooler)
B) personal greed (because changing the A/C from 68 to 69 (or, heaven forbid, 70!) or walking to the mailbox instead of driving, are horrible ideas); or,
C) my pastor said s
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The thing is that none of these "skeptics" ever find errors or present relevant data. They just say "nuh uh, 98% of climate scientists are all wrong because Rush Limbaugh said so".
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You shouldn't have to present your own data, you should be able to argue the merits of the published data, right? Some people are pissed that the original data was deleted, not published, and deleted in the face of FOIA requests. That's a legitimate "bad process" gripe.
You should also be able to argue the merits of the methodology used, as published alongside the results, right? But it's not yet common for people to publish the source code to their climate models. I understand the competitiveness that l
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You shouldn't have to present your own data, you should be able to argue the merits of the published data, right?
Not when it is all that you do. The Denier methodology is the same as Creationists or Tobacco industry lawyers. False dillemmas, character assasinations, and out and out lies. In your system, complete ignorance is the equivalent of complete competence. The schizophrenic homless guy living under the bridge gets equal time with Einstein
And he has no place arguing the merits of the research. If you want to declare a researchers work false, you have to understand what you are judging. And one of the best w
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Not when it is all that you do.
Especially when that's all you do. When you publish "based on this data, I deduce X", the whole point of peer review is to judge that. Your deductions can stand or fall on their merits, not anyone's prestige. If you just say "based on secret data I deduce X" you're a crank, published or not. Now, if you can say "based on secret data I deduce X and thus predict Y", when no one else is predicting Y, then you're being an annoying jerk but at least that looks like science, but that's not happening here.
The
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Truth is, hardly any self-proclaimed AGW 'sceptic' is actually a sceptic. Most of them are True Believers, repeating oft-debunked nonsense in hope of making it stick.
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I believe you. Your oft repeated nonsense has finally made the "no true Scotsmoron" argument stick.
What would you propose we do about it? Perhaps require teaching scientific methods in schools?
Oh, now that's just crazy talk. One could sooner teach kids by re-writing Harry Potter to teach Methods of Rationality! [hpmor.com]
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That must be why anyone expressing skepticism towards global warming/climate change is labelled a "denier. Might as well be truthful and call them "heretic".".
I know I shouldn't feed the climate trolls, but here are some obvious facts
All climate scientists are skeptics.
Not all skeptics are climate scientists.
There are many politically powerful pseudo-skeptics in the field (AKA deniers) who deliberately misinform via various front groups and no-think tanks. [sourcewatch.org]
The only way to find the "truth" in all this is to stop talking in hyperbole and start studying the science of climate [wikipedia.org]. Personally I've had an interest in the subject for almost 30yrs, very interesting s
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One wonders what the effect would have been if you were born figuratively!
Wonder no longer. Misuse of the word "literally" is literally a dead giveaway.
Now, the many wonders how birth could be better than spontaneous emergence of sentience...
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I'm not sure I saw anything that was anti-science in this. Not funding science is not anti-science, it is putting monies to use in other ways.
Are you anti-McDonad's when you decide to eat at home or another restaurant? How about when you purchase school supplies for your kids instead of getting them a happy meal?
This everything is anti-science if it doesn't follow a line you approve of has to go. There are priorities that people sometimes have to put in front of others.
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There is nothing anti-science about the thread either. maybe you failed to explain yourself properly and I just don't get it. But the comment is spot on whether you are talking about the tongue in cheek comment about climate scientist never having ulterior agendas or the Romanian government not funding science.
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Sadly, human beings desperately want the world to fit their orthodoxies. The fallacy is that the world is bigger and more complex than any orthodoxy, and that trying to put the world in an ideological box, whether it be religious, geopolitical or sociological demands that people heavily filter reality to see only the part that fit's in their grand scheme of things.
The brave mind starts with nothing, and let's the world inform them. This demands rigor, patience and brutal honesty. You have to be willing to d
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Somalia would is wonderful this time of year. I suggest it for idiots like you that can't understand the value of organized society.
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If your definition of "easily exchanged" requires a techno-survivalist farmer, I think you need a new definition. One that substitutes crackpot for "Walmart". If you can go to Walmart and use Bitcoin, I will definitely accept that you can easily exchange it. However, if you really do have to go to your local anarchist/survivalist I will only say that you can currently only exchange Bitcoin, in limited quantities, in limited locations, for a limited stock of a limited set of items.
And no, the jump from cr
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There is the theoretical side of science which is mostly publicly (or academically) funded. This is a lot of the stuff that makes you go "oh neat" but has little to no practical application in our lives.
Then there is the practical side of science, this is almost always privately funded through companies R&D teams, this is the stuff you use.
Until the theoretical side of science can really get the support of individuals, they're pretty much doomed to get cut fir
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"University of Berkeley, California"
Do you mean University of California, Berkeley? :) I don't think that there's a separate university in Berkeley these days, but in all honesty, after some of the things I saw in Berkeley as a Cal undergrad in the 90s, it wouldn't surprise me.
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