The budget coming Monday from the Obama administration will send the NASA division that launches rovers to Mars and probes to Jupiter crashing back to Earth.
Scientists briefed on the proposed budget said that the president’s plan drops funding for planetary science at NASA from $1.5 billion this year to $1.2 billion next year, with further cuts continuing through 2017.
Myfanwy posted:Groulxsmith posted:
between tar sands, reviving asbestos mining and increasing demand for fresh water the future looks bright for the true northIt's really sad to see quaint and nice little canada become something like britain. britain is an oil exporter remember, but instead of nationalizing it and having a nice welfare state, a few guys make tons of money from it and the country slashes benefits every few years.
britain has the oil reserves of norway with 12 times the population. our oil revenues did actually go on welfare, but in the 1980s when our unemployment was consistently about 11% lol
Klotz, L. (2005), How (not) to communicate new scientific information: a memoir of the famous brindley lecture. BJU International, 96: 956–957. doi: 10.1111/j.1464-410X.2005.05797.x
Author Information
Sunnybrook and Women’s College Health Sciences Centre, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
*e-mail: laurence.klotz@sw.ca
Publication History
Issue published online: 13 OCT 2005
Article first published online: 13 OCT 2005
Accepted for publication 22 July 2005
In 1983, at the Urodynamics Society meeting in Las Vegas, Professor G.S. Brindley first announced to the world his experiments on self-injection with papaverine to induce a penile erection. This was the first time that an effective medical therapy for erectile dysfunction (ED) was described, and was a historic development in the management of ED. The way in which this information was first reported was completely unique and memorable, and provides an interesting context for the development of therapies for ED. I was present at this extraordinary lecture, and the details are worth sharing. Although this lecture was given more than 20 years ago, the details have remained fresh in my mind, for reasons which will become obvious.
The lecture, which had an innocuous title along the lines of ‘Vaso-active therapy for erectile dysfunction’ was scheduled as an evening lecture of the Urodynamics Society in the hotel in which I was staying. I was a senior resident, hungry for knowledge, and at the AUA I went to every lecture that I could. About 15 min before the lecture I took the elevator to go to the lecture hall, and on the next floor a slight, elderly looking and bespectacled man, wearing a blue track suit and carrying a small cigar box, entered the elevator. He appeared quite nervous, and shuffled back and forth. He opened the box in the elevator, which became crowded, and started examining and ruffling through the 35 mm slides of micrographs inside. I was standing next to him, and could vaguely make out the content of the slides, which appeared to be a series of pictures of penile erection. I concluded that this was, indeed, Professor Brindley on his way to the lecture, although his dress seemed inappropriately casual.
The lecture was given in a large auditorium, with a raised lectern separated by some stairs from the seats. This was an evening programme, between the daytime sessions and an evening reception. It was relatively poorly attended, perhaps 80 people in all. Most attendees came with their partners, clearly on the way to the reception. I was sitting in the third row, and in front of me were about seven middle-aged male urologists, and their partners in ‘full evening regalia’.
Professor Brindley, still in his blue track suit, was introduced as a psychiatrist with broad research interests. He began his lecture without aplomb. He had, he indicated, hypothesized that injection with vasoactive agents into the corporal bodies of the penis might induce an erection. Lacking ready access to an appropriate animal model, and cognisant of the long medical tradition of using oneself as a research subject, he began a series of experiments on self-injection of his penis with various vasoactive agents, including papaverine, phentolamine, and several others. (While this is now commonplace, at the time it was unheard of). His slide-based talk consisted of a large series of photographs of his penis in various states of tumescence after injection with a variety of doses of phentolamine and papaverine. After viewing about 30 of these slides, there was no doubt in my mind that, at least in Professor Brindley’s case, the therapy was effective. Of course, one could not exclude the possibility that erotic stimulation had played a role in acquiring these erections, and Professor Brindley acknowledged this.
The Professor wanted to make his case in the most convincing style possible. He indicated that, in his view, no normal person would find the experience of giving a lecture to a large audience to be erotically stimulating or erection-inducing. He had, he said, therefore injected himself with papaverine in his hotel room before coming to give the lecture, and deliberately wore loose clothes (hence the track-suit) to make it possible to exhibit the results. He stepped around the podium, and pulled his loose pants tight up around his genitalia in an attempt to demonstrate his erection.
At this point, I, and I believe everyone else in the room, was agog. I could scarcely believe what was occurring on stage. But Prof. Brindley was not satisfied. He looked down sceptically at his pants and shook his head with dismay. ‘Unfortunately, this doesn’t display the results clearly enough’. He then summarily dropped his trousers and shorts, revealing a long, thin, clearly erect penis. There was not a sound in the room. Everyone had stopped breathing.
But the mere public showing of his erection from the podium was not sufficient. He paused, and seemed to ponder his next move. The sense of drama in the room was palpable. He then said, with gravity, ‘I’d like to give some of the audience the opportunity to confirm the degree of tumescence’. With his pants at his knees, he waddled down the stairs, approaching (to their horror) the urologists and their partners in the front row. As he approached them, erection waggling before him, four or five of the women in the front rows threw their arms up in the air, seemingly in unison, and screamed loudly. The scientific merits of the presentation had been overwhelmed, for them, by the novel and unusual mode of demonstrating the results.
The screams seemed to shock Professor Brindley, who rapidly pulled up his trousers, returned to the podium, and terminated the lecture. The crowd dispersed in a state of flabbergasted disarray. I imagine that the urologists who attended with their partners had a lot of explaining to do. The rest is history. Prof Brindley’s single-author paper reporting these results was published about 6 months later .
Professor Brindley made a huge contribution to the management of ED, for which he deserves tremendous gratitude. He was a true lateral thinker, and applied his unique mind to a variety of problems in medicine. These include over 100 publications that focus on the areas of visual neurophysiology and several other aspects of neurophysiology, including ejaculation and female sexual dysfunction. He also published one remarkable paper studying the effect of 17 different drugs used intracorporally to induce erection . Seven of these (phenoxybenzamine, phentolamine, thymoxamine, imipramine, verapamil, papaverine, naftidrofury) induced an erection. It is not clear to what degree Brindley’s own penis served as the test subject for these studies.
This lecture was unique, dramatic, paradigm-shifting, and unexpected. It is difficult to imagine that a similar scenario could ever take place again. Professor Brindley belongs in the pantheon of famous British eccentrics who have made spectacular contributions to science. The story of his lecture deserves a place in the urological history books.
REFERENCES
Top of page
REFERENCES
1
Brindley GS. Cavernosal alpha-blockade: a new technique for investigating and treating erectile impotence. Br J Psychiatry 1983; 143: 332–7
2
Brindley GS. Pilot experiments on the actions of drugs injected into the human corpus cavernosum penis. Br J Pharmacol 1986; 87: 495–500
mistersix posted:sounds like someones never heard of the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall
tpaine posted:
the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall
great name
marx was truly a poet
Lessons posted:
he is totally bluffing
dm posted:
he is totally bluffing
excuse me, he has a propaganda model, not some sort of highfalutin theory. you may have also noticed he doesn't answer the question about what's new in his thinking. well, much like tom, he doesn't have to justify himself to you.
Goethestein posted:
Wtf Feynman 's example of social science is actually from food science which is admittedly not as hard as physics but it isn't a social science
he's talking about something different there, like people that just set themselves up as authorities, like doctor phil or that goon who proved it's healthy to eat nothing but bacon. and he's got way more of a point there than he does on social sciences.
Lessons posted:Goethestein posted:
Wtf Feynman 's example of social science is actually from food science which is admittedly not as hard as physics but it isn't a social sciencehe's talking about something different there, like people that just set themselves up as authorities, like doctor phil or that goon who proved it's healthy to eat nothing but bacon. and he's got way more of a point there than he does on social sciences.
that's total bullshit, there's obvious reasons why synthetic fertilisers are inferior and less healthy than compost and feynman just doesnt know shit about agronomy
Lessons posted:tpaine posted:
the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall
great namemarx was truly a poet
it's probably great in german
babyfinland posted:
IT's just "Gesetz des tendenziellen Falls der Profitrate" it's not even a cool ridiculously long word 
Ronnski posted:babyfinland posted:IT's just "Gesetz des tendenziellen Falls der Profitrate" it's not even a cool ridiculously long word
marxfail
Lessons posted:
proto goon
shennong posted:Lessons posted:Goethestein posted:
Wtf Feynman 's example of social science is actually from food science which is admittedly not as hard as physics but it isn't a social sciencehe's talking about something different there, like people that just set themselves up as authorities, like doctor phil or that goon who proved it's healthy to eat nothing but bacon. and he's got way more of a point there than he does on social sciences.
that's total bullshit, there's obvious reasons why synthetic fertilisers are inferior and less healthy than compost and feynman just doesnt know shit about agronomy
This was several decades ago, and his point wasn't that it not true, but that pseudo-scientists passing themselves off as authorities had not proved it to be true. He was just using it as an off hand example of the phenomena of people using the appearance of science to legitimize their positions, without actually going through the labour of rigorous experimentation.
elemennop posted:shennong posted:Lessons posted:Goethestein posted:
Wtf Feynman 's example of social science is actually from food science which is admittedly not as hard as physics but it isn't a social sciencehe's talking about something different there, like people that just set themselves up as authorities, like doctor phil or that goon who proved it's healthy to eat nothing but bacon. and he's got way more of a point there than he does on social sciences.
that's total bullshit, there's obvious reasons why synthetic fertilisers are inferior and less healthy than compost and feynman just doesnt know shit about agronomy
This was several decades ago, and his point wasn't that it not true, but that pseudo-scientists passing themselves off as authorities had not proved it to be true. He was just using it as an off hand example of the phenomena of people using the appearance of science to legitimize their positions, without actually going through the labour of rigorous experimentation.
scientific method demonstrated once again as an obstacle to social progress
elemennop posted:shennong posted:Lessons posted:Goethestein posted:
Wtf Feynman 's example of social science is actually from food science which is admittedly not as hard as physics but it isn't a social sciencehe's talking about something different there, like people that just set themselves up as authorities, like doctor phil or that goon who proved it's healthy to eat nothing but bacon. and he's got way more of a point there than he does on social sciences.
that's total bullshit, there's obvious reasons why synthetic fertilisers are inferior and less healthy than compost and feynman just doesnt know shit about agronomy
This was several decades ago, and his point wasn't that it not true, but that pseudo-scientists passing themselves off as authorities had not proved it to be true. He was just using it as an off hand example of the phenomena of people using the appearance of science to legitimize their positions, without actually going through the labour of rigorous experimentation.
i understand his point its just a really terrible example because you can determine a priori that crops grown on a fertilisation regime that includes micronutrients will have greater nutritive value than those grown on NPK alone. pretty much all of the experimentation that was necessary to make this assessment was complete by the 40s or so. unless we're going to run around replicating everyone's work every time we want to make a determination it makes perfect sense to be able to make common-sense judgements implied by prior work and have those assessments treated as scientifically legitimate.
gyrofry posted:
join my epistemological anarchist bookstore coop
only if i can write no less than 100 terrible staff recommendations
shennong posted:
i understand his point its just a really terrible example because you can determine a priori that crops grown on a fertilisation regime that includes micronutrients will have greater nutritive value than those grown on NPK alone. pretty much all of the experimentation that was necessary to make this assessment was complete by the 40s or so. unless we're going to run around replicating everyone's work every time we want to make a determination it makes perfect sense to be able to make common-sense judgements implied by prior work and have those assessments treated as scientifically legitimate.
i saw another interview where he poses a similar argument, except this time his example is even more ludicrous: brushing your teeth. and he was frustrated that he would ask his dentists where the evidence was that brushing your teeth was actually good for you, and he never got a good answer. now i'm sure Feynman brushed his teeth, and it's honestly strange to be in the position of defending him, but i can sympathize with his frustration about the way people can be so deferential to received knowledge, so willing to take things on authority, so incurious. like i hear you, and that's important and useful, but i also think it's important and useful to cultivate a healthy sense of skepticism.
i actually do the same thing in insisting to see evidence about this or that being healthy, but i think we have to acknowledge that empirical observation is a really difficult tool to use for addressing questions about holistic states of being like health and in a lot of cases we're just not going to get the evidence. like if you really wanted to do the experiment to address the hypothesis "fertilising regimes affect the 'healthiness' of the crops" you immediately get into some seriously intractable shit like designing a huge decades-long interventional dietary epidemiology study (i doubt you could do it w/o intervention), deciding beforehand on what health outcomes you're going to be measuring etc etc, and then you're not even addressing effects on ecosystems which also are determinants of health etc.
feynman says that the adoption of scientific forms by pseudoscientists is a result of the "success" of science but imo it's as much a result of the use of those forms to present our work as inherently authoritative to society at large. that's less of a problem for sth like physics than it is for the biological sciences. there, the contingencies are so extensive that if you want to answer questions about things like "is practice xyz healthy" it's unlikely you're ever going to be able to present evidence for your case that a guy like feynman is going to find completely authoritative, but we still get health scientists speaking in the kind of language feynman might use to describe his conclusions about particle physics
shennong posted:
IM LIKE, AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL ANARCHIST, MANNN
that's actually a real thing btw: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend
dm posted:shennong posted:
IM LIKE, AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL ANARCHIST, MANNNthat's actually a real thing btw: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend
ya i was making a feyerabend reference 
i havent actually read aynthing hes written, i just recite the wiki summary of his theories to my reductionist friends and watch them quake with rage
is his stuff worth reading?
gyrofry posted:
yes
you better make a feyereband thread My dude.