Citizen Science: Who Makes the Rules? 189
New submitter UnderCoverPenguin writes "At MakeZine, David Lang talks about the some of the legal issues around a planned, amateur science 'expedition,' as well as some other amateur science projects.
In the not too distant past, most science was amateur. Over the past 20 or so years, society has been making it harder for amateurs to do real science, despite the technical costs falling. With the recent upswing of the 'maker movement,' amateur science has seen an increase as well, but is running into an assortment of legal issues. (An exception is astronomy, where amateurs continue to play important roles. Of course, astronomy doesn't involve chemicals or other (currently) 'scary stuff.') Can amateur science make a come-back? Or are the legal obstacles too entrenched?"
Question and answer (Score:3)
Can amateur science make a come-back?.....amateur science has seen an increase
Sounds like the answer is, "Yes."
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I would guess the most successful (i.e. published) amateur science is done in coordination with professionals.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines [wikipedia.org]
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no.
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In this age, people are finally catching up to the evolution of thought that; you are free to do what you want as long as you harm no one and DONT get caught.
I predict a rise in home made EMP and HERF projects to combat the rise in drone projects. I think privacy and self defence projects are going to lead the way for a while.
Actually, the only real difference between amateur and professional science is; amateurs have less funding and are immune to corruption of fact by payola from benefactors. It is far to
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Science asks questions. It is skeptical. This means being skeptical of authority too. This will make the government nervous. They would probably prefer official "scientists" to a bunch of "hacks". This doesn't mean they are right. The government is great at bureaucracy and officiousness, especially if it means they can then exclude otherwise able people who don't toe the party line.
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no it can't because amateurs can't do things rigorously enough to meet the 5 sigma thresholds.
That is certainly a hypothesis....not supported by evidence. If you're too lazy to search for amateurs who have made important advances recently, is it too much to read the summary, where it mentions the important role amateurs play?
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That's fine, everyone has holes in their knowledge-base, but, if you want to fill in your knowledge-hole, you think it's a good idea to search for the thing that is opposite of what would give you knowledge? How did that even sound like a good idea to you?
Re:Question and answer (Score:5, Informative)
Posting search results is a bad idea for a source. For starters, Google tailors search results to a great number of things including IP address. In other words, Google won't necessarily return the same results for me as it does for you. Another reason it's a bad idea, is you're not really providing a source. You're simply claiming something and then telling us to look it up if we don't believe you.
Mendel and Faraday were amateurs whose work we still use and teach today. From your results I learned a little factoid. One amateur scientist liked to collect sea shells and wound up discovering several dinosaurs. She became someone known for selling her sea shells which is the source of the tongue twister. She sells sea shells by the sea shore...
Science is science. It makes little difference whether it comes from authority or not. If the science is good then it's good. If not, it's not. To argue that amateur scientist 'suck' is kind of an argument from authority and generally considered a logical fallacy.
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I really don't think his intention was to discredit amateur science by linking to the search results of "proof that amateur science sucks."
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there's more to science than statistics.. you don't really need statistics to prove that putting a and b together makes them go boom.
Re:Question and answer (Score:4)
there's more to science than a + b = boom.
Re:Question and answer (Score:4, Interesting)
Based on the professional scientists I have worked with they can't do it either. Based on the level of fraud in scientific papers that have been found for new drugs it seems that very very few actually can do it to those thresholds. Sure they can lie at that level but they can't do science at that level.
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Based on the level of fraud in scientific papers that have been found for new drugs it seems that very very few actually can do it to those thresholds...
Nah... This is one of those cases where malice (or more precisely, greed) trumps simple incompetence.
Re:Question and answer (Score:5, Insightful)
no it can't because amateurs can't do things rigorously enough to meet the 5 sigma thresholds.
Most professional scientists never meet the 5 sigma threshold either.
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are you cray cray? 5 sigma means five standard deviations from the mean! that's like 95%+, bizznitch! show me an amateur scientist that can rock those numbers, and I'll eat my cat.
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Re: Question and answer (Score:4, Funny)
in his defense, he's not a professional statistician or mathematician. :)
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The real problem with "amateur" science isn't necessarily the 5 sigma threshold but the arrogance of the people involved.
Most of the "makers" I've met think that programming a raspberry pi is 2 steps removed from curing brain cancer and that acadeeeeeemia is just a rat's nest of warring fiefdoms who should be done away with because they don't actually contribute anything.
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Amateur simply means "doesn't do it for a living", not "doesn't have as much skill". An amateur can be possessed of as much if not more skill than a professional. The reverse is also possible, of course.
Doing "it" for a living and skill (Score:2)
I am interested in those areas where "doing it for a living" does not, overall, result in the highest skill compared to those who do not. Look especially at difficult areas of endeavor.
Getting good at science---or any other rigorous profession---requires both underlying talent, and long-term motivation to study and practice for at least a decade as an adult.
The professional side, meaning that people get paid to do work, also comes with a substantial initial filter on knowledge and talent, because people wh
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I am interested in those areas where "doing it for a living" does not, overall, result in the highest skill compared to those who do not.
How about open source software projects?
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The obvious other example is in sports---is there any sport which has a professional league where a substantial number of amateurs are seriously competitive? I'm unaware of any. In fact, professional sports teams are enormously better than even the best amateur clubs.
I think you will want to look at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Specifically, take a look at football, basketball, maybe even baseball. I'm usually hesitant to call the college football and basketball amateur, but they are generally considered still amateurs. In the article below, 40+ athletes were drafted to the pros. Most of these draftees contribute to the team by the very next year, some star. Ohio State has had the most players drafted from a single team at 17. http://www.s [sbnation.com]
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Given that "legitimate" scientists have been caught repeatedly lying about research to get grants or fame... I don't really think the amateurs have that far to go.
All you have to do is make a discovery, document it well enough that someone else will attempt to replicate it, and then have that replication verified.
That's about it.
If I discover something but document it terribly... and someone else uses what little I provided to show I was right... then I discovered it.
Boom and done.
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Statistially speaking.
I prefer to roll dice for its superior accuracy over sigma.
Never trust a technology that comes from carnival folk.
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The general amateur/professional paradigm is/was this: Professionals are more rigorous, do fundamental work and publish in prestigious journals if they are academics, do more practical research and take out patents if commercial.
Amateurs are less rigorous, more concerned with practical applications, and not so interested in intellectual property and publishing.
However, for every professional there are 100 amateurs. Even if the amateurs are 1/10 as productive, their sheer numbers make them a significant fo
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I don't see this at all. In top level science for every 1000 professionals there might be 1 or 2 amateurs.
Amateur chemistry is all but impossible now (Score:5, Informative)
Thanks to the war on drugs, the war on terror, the war on fireworks, the war on common sense and various other wars, its becoming harder and harder for amateurs who want to do chemistry (either generic experiments or genuine research) in their own home/shed/backyard.
Chemical suppliers wont sell to amateurs and hobbyists. Basic chemicals are restricted from sale because they happen to be used in drugs/fireworks/explosives as well as the 100 other uses those chemicals happen to be used for. Some US states require licenses or registration for even basic lab equipment. Hobby chemists who have done nothing illegal are being raided by the police and having their gear seized because it "could be used to make bombs/drugs/fireworks/etc"
Re:Amateur chemistry is all but impossible now (Score:4, Interesting)
Hobby chemists who have done nothing illegal are being raided by the police and having their gear seized because it "could be used to make bombs/drugs/fireworks/etc"
Because scientists were once expected to make their own glassware, someone figured "why not let kids learn too?"
So back in the heyday of science kits, you used to be able to buy a glassblowing kit for your kid.
http://www.thestrong.org/online-collections/images/Z002/Z00244/Z0024483.jpg [thestrong.org]
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Hobby chemists who have done nothing illegal are being raided by the police and having their gear seized because it "could be used to make bombs/drugs/fireworks/etc"
Because scientists were once expected to make their own glassware, someone figured "why not let kids learn too?"
So back in the heyday of science kits, you used to be able to buy a glassblowing kit for your kid.
http://www.thestrong.org/online-collections/images/Z002/Z00244/Z0024483.jpg [thestrong.org]
You reminded me of The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments: http://chemistry.about.com/library/goldenchem.pdf
They didn't go quite as in depth, but they did mention & show how to create some lab equipment similar to what you're talking about.
Re:Amateur chemistry is all but impossible now (Score:5, Interesting)
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Hmmm, never considered a quick search of Ebay to be jumping through hoops.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Nitric-Acid-70-Pint-Hydrochloric-Acid-Quart-Aqua-Regia-Gold-Recovery-/111117206284?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19df1a030c
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Hmmm, never considered a quick search of Ebay to be jumping through hoops.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Nitric-Acid-70-Pint-Hydrochloric-Acid-Quart-Aqua-Regia-Gold-Recovery-/111117206284?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19df1a030c
Buying something and receiving something are two different things. Here in Australia I can buy a lot of things online which get confiscated on the way into the country.
It also doesn't change the fact that Potassium Cyanide used to be available over the counter at the chemist, so yes searching on ebay is comparatively "jumping through hoops".
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Could someone familiar tell us if this is an FBI honey pot?
Just see if there is "Yellow Cake uranium -- cheap!" offered by the same seller to be sure.
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If you're a geologist then why can't you register your shed / garage as a lab?
I can understand why you may perhaps want to keep potassium cyanide out of the hands of normal people, but it is almost certainly still being used by proper labs.
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Not just hobby chemists either. I'm a geologist with a minor in analytic chemistry. I used to have an assay lab where I could run samples for qualitative analysis. That's in the crapper now. You have to jump through hoops to get things like con nitric acid, and just forget anything like potassium cyanide. And if you do manage to get supplies, they make you a target for a raid any time the local cops get a bug up their ass. So no more lab. :(
I remember having Potassium Ferrocyanide in my chemistry set, as a ten year old. (Yes, that one's essentially non-toxic, but releases the highly toxic gas if you mix with an acid.)
And I'm hardly ancient. It wasn't really that long ago.
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Heck, I'm fairly sure the chemistry kit I had when I was 10 would put someone on the FBI most wanted list today.
And for all that "security" where is the drug-free and fluffy safe future we traded this for? I'll trade a few potassium cyanide poisonings for 10,000 SWAT raids.
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.... its becoming harder and harder for amateurs who want to do chemistry (either generic experiments or genuine research) in their own home/shed/backyard.
I wonder if that might be something that feeds into the growing interest in home brewing, cheese making, and so forth. As you get more sophisticated you do start using various analytical techniques that would be familiar to chemists, but there is little chance that the police will bother you, and at the end you have a tasty reward.
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Not so impossible at all. (Score:2)
Thanks to the war on drugs, the war on terror, the war on fireworks, the war on common sense and various other wars, its becoming harder and harder for amateurs who want to do chemistry in their own home/shed/backyard.
Chemical suppliers wont sell to amateurs and hobbyists.
The A C Gilbert Heirloom Chemistry Set [kickstarter.com] project was fully funded three days ago. ($149,000)
H.M.S. Beagle [hms-beagle.com] has about 600 chemicals for sale online. H.M.S. Beagle Publications: Materials Safety Data Sheets [hms-beagle.com]
United Nuclear [unitednuclear.com] is a rich resource for the amateur scientist. Radioactive Isotopes [unitednuclear.com]. Chemistry Experiments [unitednuclear.com]
-----
Chemistry Supply Websites [chemistrytwig.com]
Re:Amateur chemistry is all but impossible now (Score:5, Interesting)
Turns out at least in some countries there is a lot of "assumed" laws that don't exist. And lab suppliers seem to be paranoid.
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Re:Amateur chemistry is all but impossible now (Score:4, Insightful)
Wire, of any kind, watches, clocks, cell phones, and various things found under your kitchen sink all become bomb making supplies when the police want to hold you for any reason what so ever. Your kids backpack, your pressure cooker, your stash of nails and screws, gas for the lawn mower, the tank for the gas grill, all can get you held for 72 hours.
Mere possession of these materials can get you charged. You are already guilty.
out side usa? yeah right (Score:2)
What are you USA, the damn matrix that can take kill anyone, even HITLER would be so jealous of the powers of USA.
Or have ex-3rd reight taken over usa in the 50s and run it now.
u can make a bomb out of salt. (Score:2)
Na + h20 = FU
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You must also not have one of either salt, power outlets or wires. And there ought be a way to reach the couch with N2, I'm just not good enough to come up with it.
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he was being sarcastic.
End result, no students will take up the discipline.
And the whole science and industry slows/falls down.
Cant we do VR/Computer simulated chemistry?
Wait until we can use 3d printers to do nano printing of any molocule, then, FU GOVT.
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Some of it, and making lots of assumptions because you can not simulate the solvent.
But the most important impact is that chemistry is a tool for many other kinds of experiments. Ban chemistry and those are gone. (Also, there is applied research - creating a startup on chemistry is about as impossible as it gets.)
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When was that? Ancient Greeks?
Isaac Newton had a paying job. What major scientific achievement in the last 10 years was driven by an amateur scientist?
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First half of the XX century.
Most of the previous generation of scientits were already scientits when they could get a job doing science. And that's all over the world.
Biased summary (Score:2, Flamebait)
Which can be worse than a merely inaccurate one. First of all, TFA says nothing about changes in the past 20 years, and many of the things described in the article have manifestly not just been made up in the past 20 years. Do you really think Mexico would have let you take biological specimens prior to 1994? Second, the tone of the summary implies that these experiments are being restricted because they are "scary stuff". Only a minority of the experiments described in the article are associated with s
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Amateur Science Too Expensive (Score:3, Funny)
Why bother with the time, expense, and hard work of amateur science when you can just outsource it to people who make stuff up?
It never stopped (Score:3)
Just the other day I was listening to an interview of an artist that had published a well received book on avian anatomy. Pick just about any field and there are people without degrees in that field doing real science and getting it taken seriously.
Re:It never stopped (Score:5, Informative)
Where is this David Lang getting this stuff from?
Read about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioprospecting [wikipedia.org]
There have been numerous lawsuits on behalf of natives peoples to invalidate patents based on local plants and local knowledge.
The West has a long history of appropriating plants and knowledge from countries, which is why TFA talks about the permits required for foreigners to do science in Mexico.
Just the other day I was listening to an interview of an artist that had published a well received book on avian anatomy.
Not all science is created equal.
There aren't that many laws surrounding the study of avian anatomy, compared to chemistry or the atomic sciences.
Most stuff a hobbyist ca not buy and, of the things a hobbyist can buy, a lot of them will put you on the FBI's radar.
Hobbyist science ain't what it used to be and neither is the scope of the law. [wkyt.com]
That's a problem with a patent system (Score:2)
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I've bought controlled substances by the drum and just had to show I was part of a registered business. In a lot of places that's just a matter of filling out forms every year to register a small business or get sole trader/contractor status.
Of course there are some things that would be harder to get but you don't actually need a degree to get them.
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So what? If you've got a legitimate use you tell them beforehand to avoid later confusion. You may drown in paperwork but if it's all sorted out before you actually have the stuff it doesn't really matter if you are "on their radar" or not.
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"legal issues" as a response to prior abuses (Score:5, Informative)
TFA is not so much about "legal issues" as it is about the struggle to get permission to collect biological specimens in another country. Another country where there's unfortunately been a long history of scientists and pseudo-scientists from more wealthy countries showing up and taking whatever they wanted, sometimes to the severe detriment of the locals. Ok, we're talking about Mexico and the US if you're too lazy to read TFA. The "legal issues" are the system of review the Mexican government has put in place in response to prior abuses, designed to ensure new research projects don't exploit, destroy, or otherwise cause the kinds of problems both amateur and professional scientists have caused in the past. I'm glad the author of the TFA is attempting to work out how to make it work, rather than just declare that his 'right' to do research in another country trumps local law, and I'm also glad to hear the Mexican government people he emailed appear to be responding throughtfully.
TL,DR - this isn't about citizen science being stifled by The Man, it's about a particular project hitting a hiccup caused by a long history of 'amateur scientists' exploiting and destroying another country's cultural and biological heritage.
Amateur science is blocked by journals (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that scientific knowledge, in the form of scientific articles, is locked behind exorbitant journal paywalls is what is preventing amateur science the most, not to mention would be professional science in places that can't afford the outlandish subscription fees.
It's a crime against humanity preventing what is often publicly funded scientific knowledge from being shared far and wide, as it could be with virtually no cost on the Internet.
This is a shameful state of affairs that needs to be fixed one way or the other. Long live Aaron!
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This depends on the field. In physics and astronomy, almost everything gets published on arxiv.org [arxiv.org] (in addition to the journals), where it's free to access.
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I agree. The public needs to have access to these journal articles. Now that I've left academia I don't even have free access to the articles that I wrote myself. (of course I kept the PDFs but if I ever lose them I'd have to pay $40 for every article that I wrote). It really does hold back progress.
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You may have more access than you think. Many universities offer access to their library systems to members of the local community for a nominal fee.
Or perhaps less than you think.
At my local university, they tied all the computer services to one login system. So, getting a library card only allows you to borrow books. All computer resources can only be accessed by logging in with the student account and if you are not a student, you can't access it.
Most universities don't bother with physical copies of journals anymore.
Reality makes the rules (Score:2)
We just try to discover them.
Anyone can do it if they ask reality the right questions (experiments).
Just science, not "am" vs "pro" (Score:4, Insightful)
For a group of citizen explorers, without an affiliation to a scientific institution, this is a daunting endeavor.
I think this could just be amended to "For a group of scientists this is a daunting endeavor." Of course scientists attached to a legal institution can probably draw on the help of other resources and people who know how to jump through some of these hoops. But they still have to deal with the same legal issues.
Complexity (Score:3)
Wouldn't the complexity of doing stuff be the biggest bottleneck at some point?
Just like game programming: in the past you could code simple games in a week (or a weekend if you are a tough guy). Compare that to modern shader-based graphics programming -- you will spend the first month just finding out how to set up things to draw anything meaningful on the screen.
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The number of artists (and musicians) working on a modern game is surprisingly large.
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It's both. Comparing OpenGL (ES) to sprite-based and tile-based 2D is kind of like comparing J2EE in all its distributed splendor to PHP.
OpenGL ES 2 was a pain, but dear Jesus God, I spent the better part of a day just TYPING IN the HelloWorld code for an OpenGL ES 3 Android app, and ended up with something like 8 or 10 classes that compiled into a .apk file several hundred kilobytes in size just to draw a yellow triangle on a black screen. Now, admittedly, the increased HelloWorld complexity eventually pay
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^^^ Argh. Proofreading typo-blindness. "~25 years ago, I got a Vic-20 on Christmas Eve. By dinner on Christmas Day, ..."
one way around this... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want to do science on your own, you can and should incorporate. Be a non-profit if you'd like. The entrenched system which stifles non-university researchers gladly accepts small businesses and NGOs, as long as they have some funding.
The number one thing you should not expect about doing science, at any level, is that it will be cheap, quick or lean. When it comes to science those words mean the same thing as "violating environmental and safety law" or simply doing a piss-poor job.
If you want to do real chemistry or biology work, you will find that renting or begging lab space somewhere will be cheaper than actually making your garage legally suitable.
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The insight about incorporating is interesting, and given the facts of the situation, might not be a bad idea.
To your other point:
>The number one thing you should not expect about doing science, at any level, is that it will be cheap, quick or lean. When it comes to science those words mean the same thing as "violating environmental and safety law" or simply doing a piss-poor job.
THIS is what's unfortunate. The point of the article (IMO) was to lament the state of things that law-abiding citizens aren't
Ultimately, you (Score:2)
In that you choose which rules to follow, and which to ignore, subvert, avoid, or not even bother learning about.
Ammoniacal (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm a second year biochemistry student who's had a lifelong passion for chemistry. I've slowly built myself a lab over the years, where I've mostly been making or purifying OTC chemicals to common lab reagents. One day I came across an old paper claiming high yields of acetonitrile when using calcium carbide as a dehydrating agents instead of phosphorus pentoxide. I've talked to quite a few people having problems finding phosphorus pentoxide, or it just being too expensive to use. So being the curious person I am, I thought I'd try both agents and report my yields on the forums. Because I wanted good numbers, I decided to buy some acetamide instead if making it. The only other reagent you use in the distillation. Simply ordered a 250 g jar off ebay, but the order never arrived. Four months later I receive a phone call by the police, interrogating me about the contents of the package, and my intentions with it. I invented a little half-lie on the spot, said I used it for a curing bath for photographic film. A month later I do receive it, labeled "Seized by customs". But now I'm afraid to do anything, expecting them to be at my door at any moment, to see what I'm "really" using it for. So I close down my "lab" temporarily, pack it all into some cases and put them for storage. The next week I get another call from the police, this time from an investigator on "my case". Asking about the amounts I had used, and for what. Etc.
And now I don't know what to do anymore. And all this for acetamide, a substance you get when mixing ammonia and "non-acetone nail polish remover", not even a precursor to any drugs (although it can be used to make a precursor), and has no use in either bombs or pyrotechnics.
Seems like a quick end to a rather short-lived hobby.
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And all this for acetamide, a substance you get when mixing ammonia and "non-acetone nail polish remover", not even a precursor to any drugs (although it can be used to make a precursor), and has no use in either bombs or pyrotechnics.
Seems like a quick end to a rather short-lived hobby.
Maybe it was the actual use you intended (dehydration to acetonitrile) that freaked them out, or rather the idea of someone trying to obtain acetonitrile on the sly as opposed to getting it as a side product of acrylonitrile (carpet, ABS plastic, etc) like everyone else. After all, acetonitrile = methyl CYANIDE; Acetonitrile + terrorist + google search = SARIN GAS ATTACK TOKYO...
Only time I ever had an issue with customs when ordering for a lab was a uronium salt (well, sort of an uronium salt: HBTU) fro
Expedition permits? Easier, actually... (Score:4, Informative)
Very misleading original article full of misguided complaints. Controls on the export of native plants or other biological specimen have been in place for hundreds of years, and with much harsher penalties.
The members of the expedition have a, admittedly tedious, path to get permits. Just play by the rules.
When John Rolfe smuggled tobacco from Trinidad to Virginia in 1611, establishing its tobacco farming industry, there was a mandatory death sentence for seed smugglers imposed by the Spanish colonialists.
Microryza? (Score:2)
Ben Franklin was an amateur law-breaking scientist (Score:2)
Franklin sued to pay people to steal corpses so he and his friends could dissect them and learn about anatomy. This was very highly illegal in Colonial America. They had a basement in a where he was staying . It was a part of the Enlighenment impulse to to come to understand reality through natural science without the *benefit* of the intermediaries of his day the Church and the King, who were glad to tell you everything you needed to know about any topic whatsoever.
As is sometimes the case with facts abou
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Stealing bodies led to many medical advances and for a period of time was what medical schools were forced into. It's what you had to do if you wanted to learn about human physiology in those times.
Eventually it became such a problem that grave robbers started taking short cuts and created their own corpses (cf. Burke and Hare). This eventually led to the 1832 Anatomy Act in England addressing the crisis in medical education that the short supply of cadavers created.
From Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w [wikipedia.org]
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Scary? You betcha! (Score:2)
You just wait. Someday an amateur astronomer is going to discover an asteroid that will hit the earth and kill us all. Then you'll see how scary amateur astronomy really is! We can only be safe by prohibiting these dangerous amateurs and leaving the field to the responsible professionals.
Good (Score:3)
Shit, they probably don't want people building nuclear reactors in their backyards, either.
ah, the good old days.... (Score:2)
Maker Movement (Score:2)
One of the major issues here has been the problem of intellectual property. Post plans online, download and print and bypass the licensed manufacturers and distribution network. So the press grabbed the plastic guns issue and ran with it, trying to demonize the hobby.
Its all about open source vs securitized and privatized models for knowledge. You figure out how to make something yourself and you put a dent in corporate shareholders' property.
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It's an example of the real reason. Most people can't even write their own name properly. That makes them too dumb to do real science.
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Why, its all on google, the first 5 years is just duplicating existing work, so in 6 years time, you wasted 6 years doing nothing.
Learning due process and procedure is a 5 min task, just give me the template/rules manual.
An amature would rather spend immediate time doing research, thought experiments than trying to learn the exact stuff needed for specific exams to pass to get a grade to move on. A genius doesnt need a 2nd opinion.
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I've heard of "scientists" taking samples of psychoactive cactus to be analysed via the bioassay method. It's a lot like Japanese whale studies.
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It's the sad state of spelling in the texting age. Either that, or more of that "Ebonics" crap.
Re:Don't do electrical engineering (Score:5, Funny)
Own a cellphone? You own a 'remote detonator for an explosive device' - you terrorist!
Bleach and ammonia in your house? You have the makings of 'chemical weapons' - you terrorist!
Can of gasoline and some fertilizer for your garden? You have 'elements for an explosive device' - you terrorist!
(And heaven help you if you happen to own a pressure canner, and perhaps a box of nails or two!)
And, damn, if you have even more electrical know-how and can program an Arudino or BS2 or something, you are an 'advanced' terrorist!
And then of course, if you are here posting on slashdot about such things... well, you must be an anti-government subversive! And terrorist!
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Small correction. The editors on this site are paid employees. This was done by a professional illiterate.
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WOPR