Here's the entirety of what the Reuters article says that could be considered at all pertinent to the utterly false and clickbaity video title:

The technology could propel China to dominate global pharmaceuticals, and also potentially lead to genetically enhanced soldiers, or engineered pathogens to target the U.S. population or food supply, the advisors said.

Reuters has found that BGI’s prenatal test, one of the most popular in the world, is a source of genetic data for the company, which has worked with the Chinese military to improve “population quality” and on genetic research to combat hearing loss and altitude sickness in soldiers.

That does not come anywhere near supporting the claim being made without tremendously more specific, pertinent evidence. Starting with your chosen conclusion and working backwards is a clear sign that you're probably wrong.

@dirkdeagler7

You keep saying I'm being fanatic, or aggressive. Nothing in that quote could be construed as such. It was a direct response to the following quote from your previous post:

"Explain to someone who has no insurance or has a problem with medical bills or has no job or has family members fighting abroad or is getting foreclosed on....that we need to spend money to better understand hermaphroditic snails and the intricacies of their mating rituals in order to better understand evolution and reproduction to maybe one day apply that technology to genetic research or fertility programs."

Presumably you would also argue that they would not be convinced by the need to study the intricacies of sea-slug gill withdrawal reflexes. Your posts seem to suggest that someone other than scientists (some vaguely defined "greater good") should be dictating which specific research aims should be funded. You suggest we should be "asking" these people if that money should be spent.

My contention is that scientists have spent their (already meager) funds with remarkable efficiency. My example was meant to illustrate that asking lay people what science should be funded is likely to have prevented some of the most critical research of the last century from ever having taken place. They don't understand the broader impacts of the research, and thus lack the expertise necessary to evaluate its merit. Sure, someone in pain will probably balk at those sorts of studies. However, if you ask them "are you glad someone did the necessary research to develop ____insert_medical_procedure here____," then I think you'll find they're happy their forefathers spent a few pennies studying snails. The fact is the reverse argument does not hold up. We all, scientists not withstanding, are experts in basic human needs and suffering. For many, scientists that's what drove us to the work. You act as though we can not evaluate the merit of research with respect to the larger picture. I think you're wrong. We do it all the time.

Also, I'm a bit insulted by your reference to people with medical bills, or family members fighting abroad as I fall into both categories. We all have our cross to bear. I don't think I'm alone in responding "I'll be fine, spend the money on the future."

I was attempting to say that people should not be fanatic on either side of this argument, as not all scientific research is the most efficient topic or use of resources and not all research deemed "insignificant" is actually insignificant.

The fact that people reacted so strongly to ANY criticism of current research or justifications for it shows just how fanatic some people are about the need to defend any and all research.

It's the nature of a scientist or science minded people to find value and merit in almost any scientific pursuit. But in a world of limited resources and with many other problems, we have to accept that there is an opportunity cost to any and all research, no matter how important.

For some the valuation of this opportunity cost will differ.

Explain to someone who has no insurance or has a problem with medical bills or has no job or has family members fighting abroad or is getting foreclosed on....that we need to spend money to better understand hermaphroditic snails and the intricacies of their mating rituals in order to better understand evolution and reproduction to maybe one day apply that technology to genetic research or fertility programs.

Then watch them give you the look of "thats great but why do I care about that now?" and understand that they are part of the greater good too.

@ChaosEngine

Oh sweet irony, I'm being called wilfully ignorant by a young-earther.

I'm not going to refute you. I don't need to; @BicycleRepairMan has already done an excellent job of it.

An excellent refutation? He cherry picked one sentence out of my reply, a reply where I had demonstrated the fallacy of his argument from incredulity by proving his assumption of the constancy of radioactive decay rates was nothing more than the conventional wisdom of our times. Is this what passes for logical argumentation in your mind? He posited a fallacious argument. I exposed the fallacy. He ignored the refutation and cherry picked his reply. You seem to be showing that in your eagerness to agree with everything which is contrary to my position that you have a weak filter on information which supports your preconceived ideas. Why is it that a skeptic is always pathologically skeptical of everything except his own positions, I wonder?

@BicycleRepairMan

...and to see an exampe of such a racket, check the flood "geology" link.

Seriously, you cant see the blinding irony in your own words? So, things like radiometric dating, fossils, geology, astronomy, chemistry, biology are all just parts of a self-perpetuating racket confirming each others conclusions in a big old circlejerking conspiracy of astronomical proportions.. well, lets assume then that it is. So they are basically chasing the foregone conclusion that the universe is over 13 billion years old and that life on this planet emerged some 3,6 billion years ago and has evolved ever since. But where did these wild conclusions come from? Who established the dogma that scientists seems to mindlessly work to confirm, and why? And why 13,72 billion years then? Why not 100 billion years, or 345 million years?

The thing is, what you have here is an alleged "crime" with no incentives, no motivation.. Why on earth would all the worlds scientists, depentently and independently and over many generations converge to promote a falsehood of no significance to anyone? it might make some kind of sense if someones doctrine was threatened unless the world was exactly 13.72 billion years old. Or if someone believed they were going to hell unless they believed trilobites died out 250 million years ago.. The thing is, nobody believes that.

The truth is pretty much staring you in the face right here. The conclusions of science on things like the age of the earth emerged gradually; Darwin, and even earlier naturalists had no idea of the exact age of the earth, or even a good approximation, but they did figure this much: It must be very, very old. So old that it challenged their prior beliefs and assumptions about a god-created world as described in their holy book. And thats were nearly all scientists come from: They grew up and lived in societies that looked to holy books , scripture and religion for the answers, and everybody assumed they had proper answers until the science was done.If scientists were corrupt conspirators working to preserve dogma, they be like Kent Hovind or Ken Ham. Ignoring vast mountains of facts and evidence, and focus on a few distorted out-of-context quotations to confirm what they already "know".

Not only was your prior argument fallacious, but I refuted it. Now you're ignoring that and cherry picking your replies here. Seems pretty intellectually dishonest to me? In any case, I'll reply to what you've said here. I was going to get into the technical issues concerning why scientists believe the Universe is so old, and the history of the theory, but so far you have given me no reason to believe that any of it will be carefully considered.

Instead I'll answer with a portion of an article I found, which was printed in "The Ledger" on Feb 17th 2000. It's interview of a molecular biologist who wanted to remain anonymous

Caylor: "Do you believe that the information evolved?"

MB: "George, nobody I know in my profession believes it evolved. It was engineered by genius beyond genius, and such information could not have been written any other way. The paper and ink did not write the book! Knowing what we know, it is ridiculous to think otherwise."

Caylor: "Have you ever stated that in a public lecture, or in any public writings?"

MB: "No, I just say it evolved. To be a molecular biologist requires one to hold onto two insanities at all times:
One, it would be insane to believe in evolution when you can see the truth for yourself.
Two, it would be insane to say you don't believe evolution. All government work, research grants, papers, big college lectures -- everything would stop. I'd be out of a job, or relegated to the outer fringes where I couldn't earn a decent living.”

Caylor: “I hate to say it, but that sounds intellectually dishonest.”

MB: “The work I do in genetic research is honorable. We will find the cures to many of mankind's worst diseases. But in the meantime, we have to live with the elephant in the living room.”

Caylor: “What elephant?”

MB: “Creation design. It's like an elephant in the living room. It moves around, takes up space, loudly trumpets, bumps into us, knocks things over, eats a ton of hay, and smells like an elephant. And yet we have to swear it isn't there!”

Here are some selected quotes:

We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

Richard Lewontin

"In China its O.K. to criticize Darwin but not the government, while in the United States its O.K. to criticize the government, but not Darwin."

Dr. J.Y. Chen,

Chinese Paleontologist

Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic."

S. C. Todd,
Correspondence to Nature 410(6752):423, 30 Sept. 1999

"Because there are no alternatives, we would almost have to accept natural selection as the explanation of life on this planet even if there were no evidence for it."

Steven Pinker,
Professor of Psychology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA., "How the Mind Works," [1997]

"Biologists are simply naive when they talk about experiments designed to test the theory of evolution. It is not testable. They may happen to stumble across facts which would seem to conflict with its predictions. These facts will invariably be ignored and their discoverers will undoubtedly be deprived of continuing research grants."

Professor Whitten,
Professor of Genetics, University of Melbourne, Australia, 1980 Assembly Week address.

"Science is not so much concerned with truth as it is with consensus. What counts as truth is what scientists can agree to count as truth at any particular moment in time. [Scientists] are not really receptive or not really open-minded to any sorts of criticisms or any sorts of claims that actually are attacking some of the established parts of the research (traditional) paradigm, in this case neo-Darwinism. So it is very difficult for people who are pushing claims that contradict that paradigm to get a hearing. They find it hard to [get] research grants; they find it hard to get their research published; they find it very hard."

Prof. Evelleen Richards,
Historian of Science at the University of NSW, Australia

Speaks for itself, I think..

Just yesterday, in one of my psych classes, we went into depth on the disease of addiction. I was appalled at the misconceptions held by the (perceived) majority. Most people still believe it's selfishness and lack of willpower, contrary to the AMA classifying it as a disease, and all of the scientific research backing the disease concept, most non-addicts can't wrap their head around it. They might think, 'Ive gotten high once or twice, and then I moved on with my life. If I can do it why can't they.' I liken it to telling a diabetic, 'My blood sugar is just fine. Why can't you regulate yours? You don't need insulin. You just need a positive mindset and determination, you weak-willed git!' As my professor referenced case study after case study, neurological and genetic research findings, the majority of the student's still nodded their heads in disbelief. I sat there in horrified silence, being as I am a recovering addict myself. I thought about outing myself, but the bulk of their comments reflected disgust....

>> ^jerryku:
Interesting stuff but I gotta wonder what this guy really thinks about black and Latino crime in the States, and if he's holding back on the topic for fear of having his career destroyed.


You bet.

Racial, ethnic and cultural differences are the ultimate black sheep for social scientists and genetic researchers.

They have a lingering paranoia that it's unethical to even consider differences and instead tippy toe around any findings they produce. I think it was Gladwell or perhaps another popular statistician that stumbled upon data so shocking concerning races in America that he intentionally refused to publish the results or even discuss them on camera.

I disagree with Gladwell in that cultures are malleable. Cultures can transform themselves, but to expect a culture to change is ridiculous.

Will a jetliner pilot learn to speak English if he wants to keep his job? Of course.

Is it ethical or even worth consideration to "improve" a culture through injection of xenoethnic aptitudes? Absolutely not.

Cultures will evolve as they see fit. Social engineering is no-one's business, which is why multiculturalism is a failed policy.

>> ^EDD:
Poor child. I suppose this kicks mortality rate up quite a bit, too. And what about vision-I wonder if this child can see at all? Anyway, this is just another reason to support genetic research - I guess sooner or later people should find a way to treat these kinds of mutations.


There are cases of people surviving -

In general, harlequin foetuses do not survive for very long. In the past, the life expectancy for a harlequin foetus was about two weeks; however, intensive supportive care and the use of drugs has prolonged the lifespan of these babies and some have made it into adulthood. However, the average lifespan is much lower, and the babies usually suffer from physical developmental delay, although intellectual development has been reported to be normal.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A3816830

Poor child. I suppose this kicks mortality rate up quite a bit, too. And what about vision-I wonder if this child can see at all? Anyway, this is just another reason to support genetic research - I guess sooner or later people should find a way to treat these kinds of mutations.

Tags changed from "new species, genetic testing, pretty" to "new species, genetic research, pretty" by gold star member pho3n1x.