Housework wards off breast cancer
"Women who keep their homes clean and tidy are less likely to develop breast cancer than those who let the dust and dishes pile up, according to a new report."
Is it becoming more obvious that researchers and scientists have an agenda? This research was done in Islamabad, Pakistan, so we know all the researchers were men and adhere to the misogynist culture of Islam. There have been countless studies which aim to scare fat people into losing weight, and most of them make sure to point out that women are harmed most by being overweight. So, we now know that scientists want women to be thin housewives. Who would not listen to a scientists? They're the priests and rabbis of the modern age. That's not to say that science is a religion, researchers are just often listened to by average people without critical thought (especially if the researcher confirms something that you already believed).
Many reasonable skeptics and libertarians happily believed that any critic of lenient smoking laws had nothing to fall back on as no studies had proven that second-hand smoke could cause cancer in non-smokers. What has been found is that the tobacco companies, being the powerful and practically untouchable entities they are, were preventing studies from being done or skewing the results of those studies.
Even with no huge corporations around to prevent public enlightenment, scientists can have their own biases. Take the case of studying the effects of prayer for the ill. It's obvious this study would be either started by skeptics to prove that prayer does nothing other than give comfort (to the one praying and the one being prayed for if they know they're being prayed for), or by some religious group (most likely Christians if in the USA) who wants to prove to the skeptical that their prayers really do reach their kind and loving God (and of course, they will always have backup explanations if their study fails to provide results, such as 'God words in mysterious ways' or 'it's not right to test God in the realm of science'). There was research like this, brought about by Christians, predictably (since real skeptical scientists would probably be working on real issues, not proving people wrong), and it had results a skeptic would expect: the only people affected by the prayer were those who knew they were prayed for, because it's a form of emotional support, even if there's no God to reach his finger down and make the person well. The feeling of being loved is very important in the process of getting well.
All of this doesn't mean that science is worthless (it's accomplished a whole lot), and it doesn't mean that the scientific method and community is inherently flawed, but it does mean there may be some bias and corporate and religious metaling in certain studies.
HAPPY 2007!
Is it becoming more obvious that researchers and scientists have an agenda? This research was done in Islamabad, Pakistan, so we know all the researchers were men and adhere to the misogynist culture of Islam. There have been countless studies which aim to scare fat people into losing weight, and most of them make sure to point out that women are harmed most by being overweight. So, we now know that scientists want women to be thin housewives. Who would not listen to a scientists? They're the priests and rabbis of the modern age. That's not to say that science is a religion, researchers are just often listened to by average people without critical thought (especially if the researcher confirms something that you already believed).
Many reasonable skeptics and libertarians happily believed that any critic of lenient smoking laws had nothing to fall back on as no studies had proven that second-hand smoke could cause cancer in non-smokers. What has been found is that the tobacco companies, being the powerful and practically untouchable entities they are, were preventing studies from being done or skewing the results of those studies.
Even with no huge corporations around to prevent public enlightenment, scientists can have their own biases. Take the case of studying the effects of prayer for the ill. It's obvious this study would be either started by skeptics to prove that prayer does nothing other than give comfort (to the one praying and the one being prayed for if they know they're being prayed for), or by some religious group (most likely Christians if in the USA) who wants to prove to the skeptical that their prayers really do reach their kind and loving God (and of course, they will always have backup explanations if their study fails to provide results, such as 'God words in mysterious ways' or 'it's not right to test God in the realm of science'). There was research like this, brought about by Christians, predictably (since real skeptical scientists would probably be working on real issues, not proving people wrong), and it had results a skeptic would expect: the only people affected by the prayer were those who knew they were prayed for, because it's a form of emotional support, even if there's no God to reach his finger down and make the person well. The feeling of being loved is very important in the process of getting well.
All of this doesn't mean that science is worthless (it's accomplished a whole lot), and it doesn't mean that the scientific method and community is inherently flawed, but it does mean there may be some bias and corporate and religious metaling in certain studies.
HAPPY 2007!