Nobel Conference 50: Where Does Science Go From Here? (Wednesday)

[mrissa]

See my first post for a description of Nobel Conference and Tuesday’s speakers.

Wednesday morning began with a rare livestream session, this one from Steven Weinberg. He talked about the clues we have to the hidden world beyond the standard model: where do things get weird consistently, and what would it take to find out what’s going on there? I

Comments

[ckd]

Wow.

That West talk...just wow.

[mrissa]

I just--using tumors' bad vasculature against them.

That's poetic, is what that is.

[whswhs]

Damasio's joke about tenure actually fits in with something I've been thinking about the past year or so: The theory of tenure is that it enables faculty member to pursue dissident ideas without fear of losing their positions, and thus encourages a community of critical discourse. But it can take ten years or more to get tenure, and that's after the years it can take to get a Ph.D. in the first place. So people aren't getting tenure when they're young and naturally radical and most likely to dissent; they're getting it after they've spent years buying into the academic establishment. I think of the one panelist at the convention I attended nine days ago saying that she was on the tenure track and was keeping her head down (and she was clearly a progressive oriented to gender and ethnic identity theories, which are a lot more acceptable in most academic environments than, say, libertarian individualism); I grant that this may have been a joke, but it's the sort of joke that covers up a truth. Are we really going to get a lot of dissent

[mrissa]

Hmm. The problem with the reverse argument is that the doctoral program enrollees need to be able to be critiqued on quality terms. There's that line to walk: when is a culture criticizing its young because they simply aren't meeting standards of quality and when because they are entirely good enough but in a direction that challenges established orthodoxy? Hard problem to solve. And while we'd love to think that the hard sciences have less of it, the example I mentioned from Harry Gray, where the journal referees did not believe their intercalated N2 until they'd gotten Brookhaven to confirm it, because Brookhaven was conservative enough--Berkeley wasn't--is pretty clear evidence that it can happen in any field.

[timprov]

So what happens if you coat a nanoshell with oxytocin?

[mrissa]

I don't think anyone has studied that. For people with brain tumors, you could get it delivered to the brain at least. For the rest of us, probably nothing, or if there was a stomach tumor you could at least get it delivered to where it would mess with hunger cues etc.

[sheff_dogs]

Wow, lots of wow.

Thank you for sharing the wow.

[ext_1484330]

I can personally vouch for this scientific observation:

http://www.patriciamcconnell.com/theotherendoftheleash/oxytocin-increases-when-your-dog-looks-at-you