I'm not. Instant gratification appeared in the next generation after mine. As a practicing physician I can give you a list of drugs first thought safe and then had to be withdrawn as much larger numbers revealed the danger.-I believe you David, medicine is like building bridges - we learn from our mistakes. We may be able to avoid the obvious ones but we will just start making ever subtler mistakes. -As a physcian, I heartily commend you wanting to avoid making mistakes. But science is about testing theories - sadly with medicine the costs of mistakes can be particularly high.-But we are not going to get perfection in our or anyone else's lifetime. This is my point.

Now my point - sure people will tend to give the expected answer/interpretation (I may have fallen into the same trap, I don't know). But science sorts things out over time. Tariq, the New Yorker and I suspect David are into an instant gratification mode?-I'm not. Instant gratification appeared in the next generation after mine. As a practicing physician I can give you a list of drugs first thought safe and then had to be withdrawn as much larger numbers revealed the danger.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=1-The article above while interesting has a limitation.-But it does remind me of when I started my PhD. My supervisor got me to replicate an undergraduate experiment to make sure my techniques were accurate. The experiment was supposed to produce a graph with a line of slope 2.0. I got a slope of 1.8. All previous similar PhDs had got 2.0, most papers seem to get 2.0 for this family of experiments. I went to my supervisor and he got me to reproduce the the experiment and find the problem for three months. I could replicate other families of experiments but not this one. Wasted three months, but eventually gave up and got on with my studies.-For a couple years supervised the undergraduate prac class only one time did an undergraduate complain they were getting 1.8 rather than 2. The final straw came when a fellow PhD student also noticed he was getting 1.8 rather than 2. At this point I went through the chemistry/math of what was going on and realized the theory was incomplete, the slope should be nearer 1.8.-Now my point - sure people will tend to give the expected answer/interpretation (I may have fallen into the same trap, I don't know). But science sorts things out over time. Tariq, the New Yorker and I suspect David are into an instant gratification mode?

A letter to The Guardian a couple of weeks ago from a Dr Tariq Ali, who I assume is a medical doctor and not the activist writer and historian:
> 
> "You highlight a problem with scientific advice given by scientists with potential conflicts of interest (Report condemns swine flu experts' ties to big pharma, 4 June). Unfortunately, this is only the tip of an iceberg and reflects only one aspect of the problem with blind acceptance of scientific advice. Scientists are human beings and are driven by the same selfish desires as the rest of us. The altruistic scientist, driven only by "the search for truth", is a media fabrication. Fame and influence inflate egos. Hubris, arrogance and a woeful lack of self-awareness is common, in both scientific and medical communities.
> 
> In my experience many scientists cannot see beyond their limited horizons and only the most remarkable individuals are able to see the big picture. -A wonderful article in New Yorker should be read thru and thru. There is forceful new evidence of how true the above statement is:-http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=1


> I said it once, I shall say it again: Man learns by doing. Far too much haunch-sitting in my generation. Too much caution. In the case of the Glen canyon dam, there needs to be outside corroboration. If it's done by the Army Corps, get an outside group to come in and verify the results. It costs more up front, but much less than a mistake.-Can 't really disagree with you. We really do learn by mistakes. What I am saying is lets not fool with mother nature so much. Leaving well enough alone with natural landscape may be the best thing to do. As for the GC dam, the folks running it misread the Rockies snow pack for the winter and in the spring did not release enough water. Picture 4x8 side-by-side plywood panels on top to keep the water from running over and vibrating the dam apart.


> > Remember, with me you're dealing with an engineer: How do we understand something without trying it? 
> > 
> > To me, the river project you discuss is exactly the kind of thing that we can only learn by doing, there's no way, we could have figured out the importance of that river to the everglades if we hadn't f***ed it up. 
> > 
> > A mistake is worth a hundredfold of a success.
> 
> Screw up parts of the world so we can learn? Isn't the world screwed up enough? And now we have a giant dam on the Bio Bio in southern Chile, right smack dab in an earthquake zone. One hellava disaster waiting to happen. Use nuclear power, not hydrologic. Dams have a rated lifetime, because every dam built is silting up at various rates. Did you ever hear the story how the Glen Canyon dam almost failed becasue the snowpack runoff was miscalculated. I can give references.
> 
> Engineer what you can understand and acurately predict.-And my counter to that is: Then we will learn nothing. We can build all the computer models we want, but we won't get it right until we actually DO it. I see it happen all the time: I'm not saying don't plan, don't calculate, but forgive me if I'm wrong, but most of the information we have on ecosystems NOW simply didn't exist when the Florida engineers did their thing? They wouldn't have learned that if they hadn't done it wrong. -I said it once, I shall say it again: Man learns by doing. Far too much haunch-sitting in my generation. Too much caution. In the case of the Glen canyon dam, there needs to be outside corroboration. If it's done by the Army Corps, get an outside group to come in and verify the results. It costs more up front, but much less than a mistake.


> Remember, with me you're dealing with an engineer: How do we understand something without trying it? 
> 
> To me, the river project you discuss is exactly the kind of thing that we can only learn by doing, there's no way, we could have figured out the importance of that river to the everglades if we hadn't f***ed it up. 
> 
> A mistake is worth a hundredfold of a success.-Screw up parts of the world so we can learn? Isn't the world screwed up enough? And now we have a giant dam on the Bio Bio in southern Chile, right smack dab in an earthquake zone. One hellava disaster waiting to happen. Use nuclear power, not hydrologic. Dams have a rated lifetime, because every dam built is silting up at various rates. Did you ever hear the story how the Glen Canyon dam almost failed becasue the snowpack runoff was miscalculated. I can give references.- Engineer what you can understand and acurately predict.

I would posit that just because the reason isn't obvious or understood does not mean it doesn't exist. As an analogy, reference the Kissimme(sp?) river in Florida. Engineers knew that it twisted and turned, but could see no reason behind it. So, in their ignorance, they tried to straighten it, only to find that they had inadvertently poisoned the everglades by removing the bends in the river. Again, it goes back to what I keep saying about arrogance and a lack of understanding.
> 
> What is worse is the abortion created by the Corps of Engineers in putting in levees and constructing canals for ships to go directly to the Gulf in Louisiana. The delta is shrinking and the tidelands are disappearing. Part of the effect of Katrina was loss of protective coast around New Orleans. The rule is simple: you can never fool Mother Nature.-This will mark me as a giant a-hole: Federal funding to rebuild New Orleans should have been contingent on it being moved 20mi inland to higher ground.

I would posit that just because the reason isn't obvious or understood does not mean it doesn't exist. As an analogy, reference the Kissimme(sp?) river in Florida. Engineers knew that it twisted and turned, but could see no reason behind it. So, in their ignorance, they tried to straighten it, only to find that they had inadvertently poisoned the everglades by removing the bends in the river. Again, it goes back to what I keep saying about arrogance and a lack of understanding.-Remember, with me you're dealing with an engineer: How do we understand something without trying it? -To me, the river project you discuss is exactly the kind of thing that we can only learn by doing, there's no way, we could have figured out the importance of that river to the everglades if we hadn't f***ed it up. -A mistake is worth a hundredfold of a success.

I would posit that just because the reason isn't obvious or understood does not mean it doesn't exist. As an analogy, reference the Kissimme(sp?) river in Florida. Engineers knew that it twisted and turned, but could see no reason behind it. So, in their ignorance, they tried to straighten it, only to find that they had inadvertently poisoned the everglades by removing the bends in the river. Again, it goes back to what I keep saying about arrogance and a lack of understanding.-What is worse is the abortion created by the Corps of Engineers in putting in levees and constructing canals for ships to go directly to the Gulf in Louisiana. The delta is shrinking and the tidelands are disappearing. Part of the effect of Katrina was loss of protective coast around New Orleans. The rule is simple: you can never fool Mother Nature.


> If we can design a simpler and more efficient chemical pathway that isn't biologically harmful, then we are smarter than God, if he does in fact exist.-All I remember is the Krebs cycle and I couldn't draw it now for the life of me. There are other pathways, and you make an interesting point.


> > Well, specifically I was referring to some biochemical mechanisms that exist that actually have much shorter and more direct synthesis pathways; yet nature chose a more convoluted path. In these cases there is nothing gained in the convoluted path other than the consumption of more resources. In this instance; if humans can design something better than the UI, than the UI isn't really a UI. Or to put it more bluntly; if we can do something better than nature, than what does it say about nature?
> 
> But the final question is: can we do better. we haven't so far.-I will have to dig back a few years, but I recall that there were pathways dealing especially with energy production/consumption that nature follows that are inefficient compared with pathways built in the lab. A question was raised on why nature didn't go down these pathways. To my recollection this was never revisited in class. This is why I raised the question. If we can design a simpler and more efficient chemical pathway that isn't biologically harmful, then we are smarter than God, if he does in fact exist.


> Well, specifically I was referring to some biochemical mechanisms that exist that actually have much shorter and more direct synthesis pathways; yet nature chose a more convoluted path. In these cases there is nothing gained in the convoluted path other than the consumption of more resources. In this instance; if humans can design something better than the UI, than the UI isn't really a UI. Or to put it more bluntly; if we can do something better than nature, than what does it say about nature?-But the final question is: can we do better. we haven't so far.