Am I the only to think that it's kinda sad that the standard reaction when we find something new is to remove it from where it was and dissect it?
If it was some creature that's evolving we surely stopped it in its track.
If it was some creature that's evolving we surely stopped it in its track.
Hence why scientists and doctors shouldn’t and mustn’t get a free pass.
* things that have unclear significance to me and might be the part I'm missing: "reaction:" label, doctors, free pass, and finally callous (I know the word meaning, but it seems there was sensitivity and regard?)
Why was Currey so obsessed with sampling this particular tree and not any of the other, given the difficulties? More importantly, why was Currey so keen on cutting this tree down when it was so difficult?
It's all he-said/she-said, but what's clear is that even for those times the decision was held into question and very strongly disliked. Cox was pinned as the decision maker, but it's not clear how (if at all) Currey was held accountable.
References:
- https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Staying-Alive-High-in-Ca...
From Wikipedia [7], above [1]: "In 1964, Currey was zeroing in on trees that seemed to be nearly as old as their California relatives. One in particular, which he called WPN-114, seemed to be very old indeed." "he asked...Forest Service ranger [for the park] from 1959-67, for permission to cut [it] down. Permission was granted..."this tree was like many others and was not the type that the public would visit," Cox wrote in his [1996] memo. "I felt that this tree's best purpose would be to serve scientific and educational programs."
Unclear to me what this has to do with doctors/scientists in general in your first contribution. Keeping it to the personal focus on Currey in the second, is personal animus deserved? IMHO no, given the sources you provided from the Wikipedia article: if I had read just the Wikipedia article, I'd agree with ya, the short version can be read as indicting Currey if so desired.
Yes, your quote points out that Cox made the decision. But this is where you and I disagree deeply:
> Intensive study of the bristlecone was begun in the 1950s by scientist Edmund Schulman. In 1958, he announced in National Geographic the discovery of Methuselah Walk...the oldest of Schulman's trees had been alive at least 4,600 years, he reckoned.
Then of course later:
> In 1964, Currey was zeroing in on trees that seemed to be nearly as old as their California relatives. One in particular, which he called WPN-114, seemed to be very old indeed.
A thorough reading would show that Currey knew that this tree was extremely ancient; and likely why he was keen to get readings from it.
Which is of course also why this tree would serve a scientific purpose; but it's not at all clear that even for that time, cutting down the tree was necessary nor desirable to achieve this goal.
> When this student and his associate came upon the bristlecones at the timberline, they began to take core samples from several trees, discovering one to be over 4,000 years old! Needless to say they were excited, and at some point, their only coring tool broke. The end of the field season was nearing.
In other words, our geologist is being given a free pass for chopping down what he certainly knew was a very ancient and long-lived organism; simply for his PhD and because they didn't want to wait another year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ming_(clam)
Sitting happily in the ocean for 405 years.
They both shoot their finding thinking “this is the last one, what a prize!”
Unless there's many of these things floating about. A small sample to dissect isn't going to slow down the march of evolution.
[^1] Whether you use peanuts coated with cyanide is entirely up to you.
I think we should have a certain amount of trust in actual scientists that when conducting gain-of-function research on potential pandemic pathogens the cost-benefit analysis is done in such a way as to mean that they don't cause a pandemic.
As it turns out, scientists can often be the last people we want doing the cost benefit analysis of their own work.
However thinking again about what I actually meant (vs how I expressed it) it’s probably clearer if I edit to “the institutions of science are generally fairly good (with some notable outlier exceptions) at self regulating - and almost certainly better at this than (probably) non-expert opinion.”
Before you relinquish your claim of significance in a context on the pretext of not being an expert, keep in mind that the people who bill themselves as such have a vested interest in maintaining your distanced deference, and when really pushed, will usually be coaxable into running into some aspect of the problem space where they are decidedly not an expert.
Be an expert at living your life, and deciding what you want to see, don't, and doing everything possible to be informed, but never let anyone convince you that your input doesn't count. In point of fact, your willingness to let that be the case is just what the "experts" are counting on. Nothing incites more fear into those that think they know, and others just can't understand, than steadied, pressured, insistence to share it, and make it understandable.
* if you're actually poisoning birds for fun, get therapy.
Pokemon style evolution?
Not quite how evolution works in that (1) organisms are never in a state of evolving (or not evolving), and (2) evolution (i.e by random mutation and natural selection) operates over a gene pool or population, not at the level of individual organisms.
I do however echo your sadness, that we can’t easily study things without killing a few of them first.
Evolution operates by being fit for your environment. If that environment is dominated by ecosystem destroying humans. Adapt or be replaced with life that has.
Most have "opted" to die out. We are currently in the six mass extinction, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
https://earth.org/data_visualization/the-6th-mass-extinction...
Arrogant, and the likely justification for strip-mining etc, though honestly that thinking also lives in my mind.
Has been quoted to me so often or at least that version from which ever translation chosen to essentially justify "we do what we want"
> It is over 10 centimeters (4 inches) in diameter and had a small tear near its base.
"Ignoramus et ignorabimus." Turtles all the way down...