tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post1217842494989750878..comments2024-02-29T03:57:00.088-05:00Comments on The Mermaid's Tale: Adam's sin and Next Generation SequencingAnne Buchananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09212151396672651221noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-73798176915377992962013-08-20T16:20:59.483-04:002013-08-20T16:20:59.483-04:00To a great extent, the newcomer has the advantage ...To a great extent, the newcomer has the advantage because they don't have to rebuild their infrastructure and cultural inertia. So if Asia is doing that, they have an edge.<br /><br />On the other hand, the commercial system is such that Asia might just be copying us only with all-fresh equipment. There are signs that China will just be more and bigger--and I know some who say let them do that, while we innovate.<br /><br />Time will tell. But right now we certainly have a system that reinforces a do-the-same but pretend it's different mentality.Ken Weisshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02049713123559138421noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-8698130712127720212013-08-20T12:34:08.370-04:002013-08-20T12:34:08.370-04:00Needless to add that USA's decline is not reve...Needless to add that USA's decline is not reversible, but new NGS technologies will surely find use in proper science in a different part of the world. We strongly believe east Asia is that region.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-17096148763995966872013-08-20T12:27:44.113-04:002013-08-20T12:27:44.113-04:00Leaving a link to our follow-up comment and a summ...Leaving a link to our follow-up comment and a summary for the convenience of your readers - <br /><br />http://www.homolog.us/blogs/blog/2013/08/20/enlightenment-technology-and-rise-of-democracy/<br /><br />"In our opinion, the discussion of Ken Weiss missed a third dimension that played important role in the transformation of science. It is the change of society to full-blown democracy and complete acceptance of the democracy God. A reading of Oswald Spengler’s book, where he presented four stages of civilizations, would be helpful.<br /><br />When we worked in theoretical physics, we saw a different process of birth of new ideas from today. Many new fields started with some unknown young physicist writing one paper that went unnoticed. Then he wrote another one, which got barely followed by his friends. Three or four papers later (and if he was lucky), an outsider took notice and contributed with his own paper. If everything went well, after almost a decade, the original author could write a ‘Reviews of Modern Physics’ paper summarizing the achievements of him and others. Only then the commoners found out that something exciting was going on. Compare that with democratic science, where we try to judge papers based on their immediate ‘success’ in twitter.<br /><br />Democracy has got so ingrained in our scientific fabric that we do not realize in how many ways it affects us. As an example, the reward system of scientists is based on government funding, but the government is becoming more and more democratic or crowd-pleasing. Crowd is never pleased with esoteric science and likes to see something of ‘immediate importance’. As a result, scientists either lie in their grant applications (death of Feynman’s rules for scientists) saying that their work will cure cancer, or scientists move away from spending their life on solving esoteric problems. What is wrong in scientists overstating their case in grant applications as long as the work eventually helps the society? It is that the culture of lying allows the entry of ‘social scientists’, who manages to redirect science elsewhere.<br /><br />Democracy, which leads to short-term-ism, is not consistent with enlightenment science."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com