pifgc - Steem Science / Crowdfund science on steemchainsteemCreated with Sketch.

in #pifgc8 years ago (edited)

Steem Science

Many people are waking up to the fact that scientific knowledge is being hidden, withheld, manipulated or altered before it reaches the public domain. Why is this happening? It's happening for a multitude of reasons but generally speaking, truth reveals too much and is often inconvenient for large corporations or the governments of the world. It comes down to power. Knowledge is power, therefore there is every incentive to ensuring its asymmetric distribution. Governments and corporations try to hoard the knowledge and leave the dregs for everyone else so that populations are easy to manipulate, undermine, confuse, distract, impoverish, sicken and ultimately make powerless. Also, if it's possible to hide or change information, at some point it becomes irresistible for some, normally short-sighted, accountability avoiding or profit making reason.

I cannot claim this idea for myself, several ideas along similar themes have been suggested before by several people, but this is a means to focus it and hopefully produce some action!

The idea is to crowdfund our own science on the Steem network and publish it on the Steemchain.

Steemians who are scientists can put forth a hypothesis post which Steemians can review and vote for and comment upon. If enough support or interest is expressed.....that may depend on many factors like; reputation, experience, skill set, resources, approach, transparency, cost of experiment etc...then a donation round could be held where every Steemian is give the opportunity to donate toward the target.

Any data gained from the experiment will be transparent (it would be down to the scientist to ensure complete integrity however they may) and any knowledge gained would be for the entire Steem community.

If we want to find out for sure if high doses of intravenous vitamin C can cure cancer? Let's fund some science, get it on the Steemchain and find out. Science we can trust.

Ok with the best will in the world, we don't yet have the money to review all of human knowledge or the existing scientific efforts. What we can do is establish a process that works and is robust. Give scientists the chance to establish a reputation on Steemit. Do some science that is not expensive but useful. Or pull out all the stops and try to learn something of great value to all Steemians and our fellow Earth dwellers.

Not all scientists are corrupt and not all science is corrupt. However, when you don't know who or what to trust, you have to establish the truth for yourself. Generally, corporations only lie about science when it suits their agenda, the same with governments. The problem is that their agendas tend to affect all the important aspects of our lives, like our economies, education and health.

Perhaps if we can make an initiative like this a success, our good science may drive out the bad as it will become evident where the most robust science is being conducted and reputations will begin to matter again. There it is, for your consideration. Steem Science.

Can we come up with a hypothesis we'd like to test, that is not overly expensive, and can attract a scientist to conduct it according to the best principals of scientific research and in keeping with the integrity of blockchains? We'll see.


pifgc - post ideas for general consideration

Happy Steeming

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upvoted & resteemed this nice article :)

Thank you very much

Excellent writing........ thnx @benjojo for posting regularly in "post ideas for general consideration"

Thanks royalmacro. I hope other people will post in pifgc too! :)

Fat is dangerous, Sugar is dangerous (Both fat and sugar are examples of the same phenomenon, anything in sufficiently high quantities can become an issue), Cancer is serious ( and there will likely never be a universal "cure," due to the vast number of potential mutate-able pathways and root causes, there will have to be a whole host of treatments), vaccines are safe.

Best of luck funding science in this way, though do be careful to fund science, and not just projects that fit what ever world view you personally "believe" in. Science is not about beliefs, its about testing hypotheses, determine answers and using that information to pose new hypotheses.

I really appreciate your input. I'm not sure what you mean by my world view. But just to reassure you, i'm interested in discovering data that has integrity and allowing that data to inform genuine conclusions and further research wherever it leads. I'm interested in truth. I'm talking about using the best principals of science, principals that seem to be discarded by institutions whenever the data and conclusions reveal something inconvenient or outright damaging to influence and profit.

When you say vaccines are safe, what do you mean precisely? I genuinely would like to understand you. You are a biochemistry researcher and I believe being absolutely genuine when you say that. There can be no doubt that vaccines cause permanent injury and death...even the manufacturers will admit to side-effects. So for you, what does "safe" mean? To be completely up front about my opinion, my trust in vaccines has been shaken to its core by what I have researched and what I've seen with my own eyes.

We all have a view of how the world works, that statement wasn't an accusation. As a scientist I remind my self to go where the data takes me, not where I want. So it was more a reminder to keep the scientific method at heart.

We must always go where the data takes us, if that is contrary to previous findings then it is. If it confirms previous findings then it does. Try not to consider what corporations do, I work for a biotech company, and my companies profits aren't my concern in my experiments. I go where the data takes me, sometimes that isn't somewhere good in my companies eyes. Nevertheless that doesnt change how I treat or report the data.

As for safety.

Nothing in life is 100% safe, everything has a potential negative. (Get in a car and drive to the store and you have a small percentage chance of death). Vaccines are "safe" as the negative potential outcomes associated with them are very small. "Shaken to the core by what I have researched" there isn't sufficient data IMO to cause that. There is plenty of misinformation though. There is bias in scientific publishing, especially in lower tier journals. Most publications critical of vaccination are funded by antivaccination groups (and the researchers usually disclose involvement in vaccination lawsuits). Why is it that those with an agenda are the only ones to find so many problems? Are they going where the data takes them? Why aren't there a plethora of other groups independently finding such issues? There are a lot of academic groups studying vaccines. The scientific consensus is clear that the benefits of vaccination by far out weigh the minimal side effects. Are they perfect ? Hell no, and that's why resesrch continues even on solved problems as a better technique may be just one experiment away.

Dont't worry, i didnt' take it as an accusation...I just wanted to understand. So for clarity, you believe 'safe' is a relative term that is subject to a pesons perspective. So what I would define as safe is simply a lot safer than your definition of safe. No problem. Let me ask you this....do you believe the science exist to prove the medium and longterm effects of an ever changing, ever growing list of vaccines in the vaccine schedule in cases where the schedule is followed? If it does exist, i'd appreciate a reference please. If it doesn't. Would you agree that to say something is safe that hasn't been studied is negligent, arrogant and possibly criminal?

I don't believe anything in this case, belief removes us from a discussion of facts and logic. Safe is a relative term however most people do not have the necessary background to adequately assess the safety of every possible thing (not trying to imply that people lack the ability to judge an unsafe situation from a safe one, but that its a bit more complicated). It is for this reason why we have experts in a wide variety of areas areas to determine relative levels of safety. It is not possible to know enough about everything to make a reasonable judgement in many cases (vaccines being one, certainly most people lack the necessary training to understand the details behind their precise mechanisms of action, along these lines most people lack the training to understand why they are safe). Does the science exist? there are plenty of publications on these sorts of things (eg. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23297680), I certainly have not read all of them. If you would like to find more, I would suggest searching on www.pubmed.gov, however the number of searchable publications is large, and with out good and specific search terms it may prove difficult to find exactly what you are looking for (especially if you don't yet know, what you want to know). Nevertheless, its not my job to know everything about this particular topic (science is just too massive for me to know the specifics, or perhaps I am just not smart enough to know it!), were you to ask me about the DNA replication/repair enzymes I work on, I could likely provide a more exhaustive list.

Would I say to say something is safe that hasn't been studied is negligent, arrogant, and possibly criminal? That depends on a variety of factors. How similar is the poorly or un-studied "thing" to other well characterized and similar "things" ? If highly similar, no it is justifiable to say it is also safe even with out significant study. If significantly different from anything else ever characterized, then that would be an issue. However, as far as vaccination is concerned, they have been studied to death and are safe.

I really appreciate your willingness to have this discussion with me, thank you. I can appreciate what you are saying and I must endeavor to avoid making conclusions based on false assumptions. As a non expert, I've done as much research as I'm capable of and have made the best conclusions I can. If the experts working for big pharma are corrupt....that means everything downstream is suspect. I think there is enough evidence to question our trust in them already. There is no question that vaccines have side-effects and for some, perhaps many children, those side-effects are life-changing ....yet they are injected without their consent. There are risks to contracting an illness, but given that most children recover completely from most of them and gain lifelong immunity, might that not be preferable? There is no question that the longterm effects of the vaccine schedule and the many new vaccines in it have not been studied....that to me is completely unscientific period. Let's just experiment on the most vulnerable in our society and hope it turns out ok? This is hubris.

I hope that we can all find a way to rebuild trust, unfortunately I think the only way to do that is to start again and do science in a way that is not complicated by money and politics.

Thanks so much! And may I say again, i know that not all scientists are corrupt, not all data is corrupt and I daresay you are one of the ones with integrity :)

@benjojo, I'm going to have to science the shit out of this post. My brain isn't used to reading @benjojo posts. Much love from california.

Lol, my appologies bud! Just been having a few thought lately....don't worry, they'll dry up again soon :)

Resteemed

Love the memes

You became better every time I read your posts!

That's very kind and very much appreciated, thank you.

Steemit as a platform for collaborating, sharing and exchanging honest scientific research. What better use for this new technology could there be?

Except for having honest money, I can't think of one. The potential positive affect on all people could be colossal.

Long time, without reading you friend, very good as always, greetings

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