Hypography Science Forums: FrankM - Viewing Profile - Hypography Science Forums

The growth in science and science education varies by country, thus all the comparisons to one particular country in the article cited below are not totally valid, different factors are at work. Some of you may have already read the material by Dr. David Goodstein of Caltech.

http://www.its.calte...crunch_art.html

"I would like to propose a different and more illuminating metaphor for American science education. It is more like a mining and sorting operation, designed to cast aside most of the mass of common human debris, but at the same time to discover and rescue diamonds in the rough, that are capable of being cleaned and cut and polished into glittering gems, just like us, the existing scientists. It takes only a little reflection to see how much more this model accounts for than the pipeline does. It accounts for exponential growth, since it takes scientists to identify prospective scientists."

I have read that China is producing more scientists and engineers than their economy can absorb, relegating large number of graduates to scrape by in whatever job they can find, most not in their field of education. This is a totally different mechanism than being explained by Goodstein. One of the mechanisms is what induces individuals to pursue engineering and science educations in the first place. You can point to the U.S. space program of the 1960s as being a major influence in inducing individuals to get technical educations, and as this program stagnated, so did the enthusiasm for science educations. Now, where is the vision of doing something great? Now, how many children want to grow up to be astronauts? The enthusiasm to pursue many additional years of education is not being created. This desire for a science education starts at a very early age. It was what I read in grade school that induced me to pursue an engineering education, there was no family history in this area.

I think the slow down in the "scientific enterprise," a term Goodstein uses in his bio, has other elements, and they are caused by issues created by the "scientific elite" themselves over the years, some starting over a century ago and others before that and carried forward to this day. The scientific enterprise has hit a wall created by its own elite. I perceive one part of the wall is a technical barrier, but it was created by the scientific elite. Another part of the wall is the authority structure enforced by the scientific elite. If you do not accept the generally accepted scientific explanations you will be thrown out of the main stream boat. Contrary views are not accepted. Is that good science?

So, how can the scientific enterprise be stimulated to reverse its current trend? How can the walls created by the scientific elite be torn down?

Turtle presented some interesting geometric forms in his post, Vesica-piscis-real-sacred-geometry.

E8 geometry has some interesting forms based upon straight lines. An animation is provided in the following URL:

http://deferentialge.../e8rotation.mov

This animation was referenced in the footnote, page 18, of A. Garrett Lisi's article.

[0711.0770] An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything

What benefits would accrue to the various scientific disciplines if a set of units, specifically, length, time duration, unit of energy and the speed of light were mathematically defined?

I realize this is a hypothetical, but I need some conceptual views on the benefits of such a system of units.

Why did Grigory Perelman post his solution to the Poincaré's conjecture in arVix instead of submitting it to a prestigious mathematics journal?

Are there types of fundamental "discoveries" where it would be better to publish them outside of peer reviewed journals or transactions?

I recently had the personnel experience of observing major differences in how blood pressure is measured. My wife was at a specialist and he put their automatic blood pressure machine on her and let it cycle a few times. The systolic was 40 points higher than at her previous specialist, which was 20 points higher than what she gets from her general internist that uses a manual sphygmomanometer.

I commented that the systolic pressure was high, and the doctor responded, "the pressure is too high", this referring to the cuff pressure. Guess what blood pressure he recorded on her record?

I recently participated in a "health fair" where my blood pressure was measured, and the machine produced a very high reading and I asked to be tested with a manual device, which was available. It produced a normal reading well below the NIH "high blood pressure" value.

The U.S. NIH states:
"High blood pressure is a blood pressure reading of 140/90 mmHg or higher."

I commented to one of the other "health professionals" at the "health fair" about the difference in the manual versus automatic machine. He stated if you really want some wide variations get it tested at your local drug store where they have one of the machines sitting there for anybody to use.

If I were a drug manufacturer, selling drugs to reduce blood pressure, I would make sure the automatic machines were cheap enough that no doctor would take the time or find it profitable for a staff member to use a manual sphygmomanometer.

I wonder how many people have been put on "biology altering drugs" because of erroneous blood pressure measurements?