Posted by alexandra_k on March 5, 2020, at 19:32:18
In reply to Re: what else is to be done?, posted by alexandra_k on March 5, 2020, at 19:08:02
Because I go to talks and the talks get worse and worse and worse and worse and worse and worse and worse.
And I remember people overseas joking about how they can visit NZ and run a talk they wrote 20 years ago and people in NZ will think it fresh and new. And be all understanding about how it really takes that long to polish work (listen up, kids, that's why it will take us 10 years to edit and re-edit and re-re-re-edit your thesis round and round and round)...
So we don't see any of the new stuff.
And we certainly don't have exposure to work that is genuinely in progress.
There is a diminishing returns situation on work. You get it out at 80 per cent done and then other people can tidy up the formatting / typos situation with fresh eyes to do in hours or weeks what would take you years. And it's supposed to be quid pro quo. But people, here, are only every obstructive.
_________
And the local talks only got more and more and more and more and more and more depraved.
Ethics talks about how we want to alter the legislation (actually, the altering of legislation was in progress) so we can do experimental research on elderly people who are not capable of providing informed consent. So, we don't need to ask them for informed consent. We can just experiment on them and not ask them for informed consent.
I suggested people be allowed to 'opt off' by way of living will - before they deteriorated to the point of not being able to provide consent. They did not like that.
Psychology talks about how we falsely accuse a student (experimental subject) of stealing something. About how we say they 'have to' come with us and they 'have to' answer our questions about the incident. No reading of their rights, I mean to say. Just bully them into coming with us and bully them into staying in the room indefinately. Bully them into co-operating and answering our questions.
Apparently that one was about how people should have to co-operate with the police because the police are truth-seeking rather than working as part of the prosecution.
I was very surprised they got ethics approval to do that study.
Physiology talks about how we wanted a model of a coma patient so we kept rats in rooms without exercise wheels with rubber around the walls to stop them climbing. Apparently it is really really hard and you have to be really very very devious in how you prevent them from exercising. Because the lengths they will go to to exercise.
All so we can kill them and take biopsy samples of sartorious because we want to do research on rat muscle wasting because...
Because...
Because why wouldn't you, if you could get away with it.
Why on earth not?
The girl actually said she was surprised about the project. That she would be doing a project like that. That that was a worthwhile project to be doing. But her advisor thought that it was. So now she had a PhD thesis project all done and dusted on that. On how she tortured these rats to prevent them exercising. MOdel of a coma patient.
All this sort of research.
I go and listen to talks about stuff like this...
The think tank of New Zealand.
And I'm supposed to... What?
Marvel at their ability to get away with it?
Apprently nobody in NZ has had an ethics problem with any of the research that has been done in NZ since the Cartwright inquiry.
The Cartwright inquiry was how a pathologist got it into his head that cervical changes were reversable rather than being likely to progress to cancer so he said their smears were okay and their uterus was not removed.
A number of those women (apparently mostly young female Maori women) went on to develop cervical cancer and they died.
Apparently people had problems with him at the time thinking that he shouldn't just be observing the progression of... Cancer... Basically. Without intervening.
But it took years for a stop to be put to it.
We do observational studies all the time. Because they are cheap and easy.
Fungi and housing. I think thats a big one. Because fungi are regional. I don't know what species we have. Growing in peoples walls of their houses. Growing in their sinus passages. Growing in their lungs. Dissemating in their bodies. Seeding in their bones. I don't know.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:1108152
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20191229/msgs/1108858.html