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Questions related from Barry Turner
I am looking for anyone interested in contributing to a book on science reporting. This area of journalism is an essential part of our information society and is crucial to decsision making for...
06 June 2018 5,746 0 View
Are our ethical and moral rules simply a human manifestation of the instinct to survive? Is morality simply a ritualised set of behaviours centered around survival of the group or...
11 November 2017 4,926 11 View
In science and in law English is becoming evermore the dominant language in the world. This is of course nothing to do with modern Britain but reflects England's past colonial influence (see...
11 November 2017 5,577 15 View
In the last three decades or more horned ruminants have failed to achieve. Not one single goat has been elected to high office in spite of more moronic human candidates being sucessful. In...
10 October 2017 6,329 3 View
Does anyone know how crowd funding to develop business is operating in China.? I am looking for anyone involved in this kind of venture or anyone who has conducted research in this area to develop...
08 August 2017 7,888 2 View
"Psychiatry is in decline and is becoming obsolete, a victim of its own psychobabble and increasingly mind-numbing research, understandable to the elite few". ...
08 August 2017 5,452 5 View
We are all very familiar with the concept of anthropogenic climate change, usually expressed in its negative to potentially catastrophic terms. What is less frequently discussed is that...
07 July 2017 2,546 26 View
Peter Ungar, writing in Scientific American stated on the 17th April 2017, “From the standpoint of paleoecology, the so-called Paleo diet is a myth” Some physicians have argued that many of our...
04 April 2017 1,682 15 View
What is it about our species that causes us to doubt ourselves to the point that we fear our own achievements. In the last two hundred years we have made gigantic advances in science that have...
03 March 2017 3,898 58 View
What is it about studying our ancient ancestors that causes so much friction among scientists? The science of paleoanthropology has seen some of the biggest scientific squabbles in the history of...
02 February 2017 444 98 View
The Ancient Egyptian civilization was able to create works of incredible complexity and size in terrestrial engineering but for some unknown reason never built an open water navy or engaged in...
11 November 2016 1,940 20 View
Thomas Weldon, Oxford philosopher and aide to Air Chief Marshall Sir Arthur 'Bomber' Harris belived that the only way to end war was for it to be as evil and nasty as possible. A war fought by...
11 November 2016 5,669 30 View
History going back to the beginning of the first wars shows a remarkable consistency in the personalities of military commanders. The list is boundless but many names will be obvious. Alexander...
03 March 2016 7,580 8 View
According to an article in The Times on 18/01/16 as many as half of the universities in the UK are suppressing free expression and censoring opinions and views. Freedom of expression underpins...
01 January 2016 7,156 38 View
Does the way we use language give an insight into our culture? In the English language we use military metaphors in many non military settings, sometimes very inappropriately. We talk of...
11 November 2015 3,033 17 View
From global finance and markets to climate change we are constantly told that we must look to the welfare of future generations. According to our politicians and protest groups alike austerity...
08 August 2015 5,952 5 View
The ever proliferating range of ideas in theoretical physics, many of which have virtually no experimental basis are confusing and contradictory. Hypothetical particles, strings, branes,...
07 July 2015 431 38 View
Jakob Bronowski once stated that for scientists "nothing matters as much as the pursuit of the truth" Is that a hopelessly naive sentiment in a world of both commercial and 'political' science?
04 April 2015 3,807 1 View
Science is a philosophical search for the truth in all disciplines. Is it therefore anti-scientific to profess to have found it? Why do some scientists feel that they have to force their own...
04 April 2015 9,944 0 View
The latest revelations about CIA torture methodologies demonstrates that medical doctors took part in what is euphemistically described as Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. How is it that an...
12 December 2014 7,041 39 View
Belief has simultaneously taken mankind from ignorance to enlightenment and though dogma and orthodoxy kept us in the dark. Should all those who call themselves scientists consider: Is it the...
12 December 2014 2,320 7 View
Somewhere 'out there' in interstellar space are people like us, wondering if they are alone in the universe. Will we ever meet them or do the laws of physics prevent that ever happening?
12 December 2014 5,727 9 View
British philosopher Thomas Dewar Weldon, in a statement justifying area bombing once declared that introducing ethics into combat made war more, rather than less likely. Taking the position that...
10 October 2014 3,441 5 View
It is long established that cells communicate by a variety of means and that the signaling is essential to health of the multi-cellular organism. By far the majority of experimental work in this...
07 July 2014 2,566 2 View
Psychopathic personalities as defined in the ICD-10 and DSM series have traditionally been held to be outside the range of states considered mental illnesses. As such the position of many...
05 May 2014 9,195 12 View
British Prime Minister David Cameron has claimed that secularists "fail to grasp the role that faith has is shaping the moral code" Is it not a fact that the pursuit of truth through science can...
05 May 2014 5,225 6 View
Sounds like a silly question but a Swedish study published in The Lancet has indicated a significant reduction in violent crime in patients that are treatment compliant. Does anyone have any...
05 May 2014 391 3 View
One of the effects of exposing in vitro tumour cell lines to chemotherapy drugs is for them to simply pump them out of the cell following signalling from adjacent cells. Is the signalling...
04 April 2014 1,706 7 View
In my everyday research over the last 10 or more years I have been astonished at how many medical practitioners are unaware of how drugs are metabolized in the body. I regularly am told by...
04 April 2014 7,923 12 View
One of the most frequently used expressions in scientific research papers is "the mechanism is not fully understood" and this is a great motivator for researchers to strive to expand scientific...
04 April 2014 3,905 100 View
Warfare has always relied on science and technology from the most primitive projectile weapons through armour and chemical weapons to harnessing the most destructive forces in the universe....
03 March 2014 5,528 9 View
There is a lot of interest in how cancer cells develop what might be an innate resistance to chemotherapy. Since Tamoxifen is reliant on CYP450 cytochromes in its metabolism is there any concern...
02 February 2014 8,971 1 View
Is it better to keep cultured Paclitaxel and Adriamycin resistant cells in the drugs in order to maintain resistance in the individual cells.
01 January 2014 8,418 3 View
A lot of cancer research is of a 'purely scientific nature' only and is either not linked to clinical application or its links are tenuous. Since people think their donations are going towards...
01 January 2014 3,513 3 View
Would science be better communicated in the journals if the authors wrote in plain English rather than jargon? It seems to have worked to some extent in law and that once impenetrable language...
12 December 2013 1,695 14 View
While there is high quality science journalism available, there is also a great deal of misleading and in some cases dangerous copies. Is this a national or international trend?
12 December 2012 9,069 9 View
The Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) has opened a discussion on the contribution of technology to democracy. Does anyone have any ideas on how technology might be used to...
01 January 1970 5,908 2 View
Genetic engineering of food crops can produce a whole range of positive properties from making the food more nourishing, less attractive to parasites, longer shelf life and more resistant to...
01 January 1970 3,018 10 View
The population of Earth is growing by approximately 50 million people per year and by 2100 there will be around 11.5 billion people on the planet. The African continent alone, with the fastest...
01 January 1970 3,612 38 View
