News on China's scientific and technological development.

vesicles

vesicles

Colonel
PanAsian said:
I doubt that this Chinese team is the first ever in the world to do such experiments. Maybe first to do such experiments and submit a public scientific paper on it. Controversial no matter what.

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Well, if someone has done it and obtained data, they WILL publish it. Science is about publishing your findings. That is the number 1 goal of any scientist. As soon as you get pubslishable data, you want to publish it, let alone such high profile project. Literally, as a scientist, your career depends on it.

Plus, this type of experiments cost a lot. also, in order to carry out this kind of experiments, one has to obtain all the necessary permits, which is very tedious and takes huge amount of time and effort (any project involving the use of human cells is a nightmare to obtain permits. Believe me, I know it). No one will simply spend that much hard-earned grant money and that much time getting all the approval and doing the actual experiments, but not publishing it.

Anything involving human embryo has huge level of ethical issues associated with it. Better not to touch it... Additionally, genetic modification is wayyyyyyyyy too early to be applicable, be it human or food. there are still so many things about genes that we don't know about. Just think about it. Human genome contains about 30,000 genes. Yet, these 30,000 genes encode millions of proteins, enzymes and peptides. The old idea of "one gene coding one protein" is completely wrong. So the whole premise behind genetically modified (GM) food is flawed. It is definitely NOT the same as genetic cultivation that we have done for thousands of years. You can never predict what a foreign protein can do in a host cell... It is well known that an oncogene (cancer-causing gene) expressed in different cells has different effects. For instance, an extremely prevalent oncogene can actually kill host cells when expressed (genetic modification of host cells) in some cell types. that is the opposite of what an oncogene is supposed to do. It's supposed to make cells immortal and promote proliferation of cells... Why is that? NO IDEA! So how can you be sure that any genetic modification can simply do what you intend to?
 
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P

PanAsian

Major
vesicles said:
Well, if someone has done it and obtained data, they WILL publish it. Science is about publishing your findings. That is the number 1 goal of any scientist. As soon as you get pubslishable data, you want to publish it, let alone such high profile project. Literally, as a scientist, your career depends on it.

Plus, this type of experiments cost a lot. also, in order to carry out this kind of experiments, one has to obtain all the necessary permits, which is very tedious and takes huge amount of time and effort (any project involving the use of human cells is a nightmare to obtain permits. Believe me, I know it). No one will simply spend that much hard-earned grant money and that much time getting all the approval and doing the actual experiments, but not publishing it.

Anything involving human embryo has huge level of ethical issues associated with it. Better not to touch it... Additionally, genetic modification is wayyyyyyyyy too early to be applicable, be it human or food. there are still so many things about genes that we don't know about. Just think about it. Human genome contains about 30,000 genes. Yet, these 30,000 genes encode millions of proteins, enzymes and peptides. The old idea of "one gene coding one protein" is completely wrong. So the whole premise behind genetically modified (GM) food is flawed. It is definitely NOT the same as genetic cultivation that we have done for thousands of years. You can never predict what a foreign protein can do in a host cell... It is well known that an oncogene (cancer-causing gene) expressed in different cells has different effects. For instance, an extremely prevalent oncogene can actually kill host cells when expressed (genetic modification of host cells) in some cell types. that is the opposite of what an oncogene is supposed to do. It's supposed to make cells immortal and promote proliferation of cells... Why is that? NO IDEA! So how can you be sure that any genetic modification can simply do what you intend to?
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Which unsurprisingly comes back down to greed for money and power.
 
vesicles

vesicles

Colonel
PanAsian said:
Which unsurprisingly comes back down to greed for money and power.
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Unfortunately, that is not the case this time. Most of the scientists spend half of their lives in school and with little career advancement opportunity (only the lucky few gets to have their own labs while most are stuck in a black hole called postdoctoral fellowship). Once we are out of school, we get paid midget amount of money that an average college graduate would make. And even when you "make" it and become a tenured full professor, you still have to fight and scratch for grant money. You lose the grant, you lose your job. Some schools let you keep the job, but you have to teach and get a 30-60% pay cut since typically large % of our paycheck comes out of our grants. It is one of the most pressure-packed jobs out there. So most of us are doing it for the love of science.
 
broadsword

broadsword

Brigadier
I see a number of Chinese scientists at the forefront of alternative energy research in US institutions. They are producing cutting edge results with far greater frequency than their counterparts in China. What are the reasons?
 
P

PanAsian

Major
vesicles said:
Unfortunately, that is not the case this time. Most of the scientists spend half of their lives in school and with little career advancement opportunity (only the lucky few gets to have their own labs while most are stuck in a black hole called postdoctoral fellowship). Once we are out of school, we get paid midget amount of money that an average college graduate would make. And even when you "make" it and become a tenured full professor, you still have to fight and scratch for grant money. You lose the grant, you lose your job. Some schools let you keep the job, but you have to teach and get a 30-60% pay cut since typically large % of our paycheck comes out of our grants. It is one of the most pressure-packed jobs out there. So most of us are doing it for the love of science.
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I know how the system works and I sympathize with you, I didn't mean the scientists themselves but how the whole system has been hijacked by corporations to serve their masters' agendas. Higher education in every field works pretty much the same way.
 
Ultra

Ultra

Junior Member
PanAsian said:
I doubt that this Chinese team is the first ever in the world to do such experiments. Maybe first to do such experiments and submit a public scientific paper on it. Controversial no matter what.

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A Clone Army in the making? Chinese Storm Troopers!

The PRC will cease to exist and will be replaced by the 1st Galactic Empire. with Darth Jinping as supreme ruler and Darth Putin as his apprentice. Perhaps George Lucas is not just the creator of the Star Wars series but a biblical prophet!

:D
 
vesicles

vesicles

Colonel
PanAsian said:
I know how the system works and I sympathize with you, I didn't mean the scientists themselves but how the whole system has been hijacked by corporations to serve their masters' agendas. Higher education in every field works pretty much the same way.
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Well. Thanks but no thanks. I don't think you should sympathize with us. It's tough, but we LOVE it. That's why we do it.

Further, although the academic system is brutal, we can't blame the evil corporation for it. In fact, most of the scientists have been blamed to live in our ivory tower, completely separate from the industry. Most of us have nothing to do with corporations. The politics in academia is completely different from the one played by corporations. In fact, how science works depends on its separation from business, money and power. How's why most of the scientific projects are funded by the govnt. Influence of corporation is usually short-sighted since it is important and vital for companies to make a profit. On the other hand, overwhelmingly majority of science projects won't make money at all. If influenced by corporations, most of the scientific projects won't be funded. Thus, it is absolutely vital for science to be separated from the corporation.

Nowadays, we are actually urged to collaborate with corporations a little more, so that our findings would actually benefit people. So academia is actually one of the few fields less influenced by the corporation.
 
vesicles

vesicles

Colonel
This acually reminds me of some interactions with the business world. My former postdoctoral mentor is a co-founder of a pharmaceutical company. I used to go to their meetings when I was a post doc in his lab. The meeting usually begins with warm welcomes and all, but almost always proceeds to heated argument between the two camps: business vs. scientists. We usually have a hard time understanding why the business side would do things in certain way. We have been so used to the "spoiled way" in academia, according to our business colleagues. Since we never have to worry about making a profit, our goal is to "use up the money", or to use the words of our business colleagues: "wasting money on meaningless and crazy hunches". The clash shows how different academic world is from the business world.

I for one hate, and I mean HATE, interacting with the industry. I chose academia for the freedom to do what I love to do. And I enjoy my freedom. I now study colon cancer. I can one day switch to cardiovascular diseases if I want to, or neuroscience. In fact, I am doing all these now although my main focus is still cancer. It would be impossible to do any of this with all the corporate politics. I spent two and half years in the lab of my post doc mentor's. I was so fed up with all the corporate politics that I decided that I wanted nothing to do with them. And I am doing exactly that.

The business world is so different from academia that it's almost like two completely different cultures that have never seen each other in the history of mankind. When the two clash, it's almost monumental in a sense. To the business world, we are like a whole bunch of spoiled naive geeks who don't even know how to put on clothes in the morning. On the other hand, to us, the business people are bunch of greedy evil rats.
 
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Jeff Head

Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
In the end...someone has to pay.

Research and development is not cheap...where ever it occurs.

Corporations do a lot of R&D...but a lot of it is geared towards specific product planning aimed at specific markets.

Real scientific research is indeed a lot of what you business colleagues say...but it is also necessary to bring the technology forward so that new products can be built on top of them.

I have had the privilege of working for companies that were forward thinking enough...and, equally importantly, good enough with their bottom line and profit margin...to afford to do that type of research to help fuel their future products. Really good companies do.

That is not to say that other companies are not "good." It just means that they have not gotten in a position with their bottom line to be able to afford taking that next step up.
 
vesicles

vesicles

Colonel
Jeff Head said:
In the end...someone has to pay.

Research and development is not cheap...where ever it occurs.

Corporations do a lot of R&D...but a lot of it is geared towards specific product planning aimed at specific markets.

Real scientific research is indeed a lot of what you business colleagues say...but it is also necessary to bring the technology forward so that new products can be built on top of them.

I have had the privilege of working for companies that were forward thinking enough...and, equally importantly, good enough with their bottom line and profit margin...to afford to do that type of research to help fuel their future products. Really good companies do.

That is not to say that other companies are not "good." It just means that they have not gotten in a position with their bottom line to be able to afford taking that next step up.
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Completely agreed! All the conflict comes from misunderstanding between sides. Talk about pride and prejudice... With that said, I still treasure the ability to do what I love in academia. I would not survive in a company. And one big advantage of academia: flexible hours! My wife always gives me dirty looks when I decide to work from home when I work on a paper or a grant. As an IT analyst, she can't even do that in her dream.
 
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