Do you even read the things you write before you post them? You freely accept that you have no evidence for the increasingly bizarre accusations you're making, but carry on anyway.



Of course you should provide evidence if you're making accusations - any reasonable person would demand it, and justice demands it. To do otherwise would mean a return to the days of the Salem Witch Trials and McCarthyism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism

What do you think people feel about you when they read this thread?

Could it be that you're facing such determined opposition simply because you're wrong, history has proven your attitude and approach abhorrent and decent people aren't prepared to stand for it.


btw, 250 million points (:yay:)!

*edited to appropriate forum content - ErikaT

You seem to think that no one other than yourself is aware of the dangers of conflicts of interest in science. In fact, you're on the trailing end of that curve. For example - http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/rcr/rcr_conflicts/foundation/#1. In particular, point 2.4 ff.

However you are not claiming that commercial interests cause any bias in terms of the research done. Your claim is that some commercial interests may get results sooner than the public at large. That barely counts as a conflict given the fact that all research is by definition, at least in the context of WCG, public domain. And as I've already tried to explain, anyone who tries to patent something based on work done at WCG would be unable to do so without contributing some sort of added value.

If you did want to raise more serious objections however, those are already being dealt with as indicated in the link above.

As I've said before, it is not the place of a facilitator like WCG to dictate how research should be done. You may not want to accept this fact but your acceptance or lack of same is irrelevant. WCG understands this fact and accepts it - as does virtually everyone else here.

So your choice is really a binary one.

@twilyth

I don't have time to read your link right now, but I'll read it tomorrow. And no, I don't think I'm the only one who is aware of the conflict of interest in science and I'm convinced I'm on the trailing end of that curve, but we who voice our concern here are definitely in minority.



Actually I'm claiming both could happen, but I have no proof it has. It is mostly the latter that I consider to be parasitic and thus harmful.

Twilyth, we have discussed this before: real people lie, real companies lie -- especially when money is involved -- meaning, what can be proved in court and what really happened don't always coincide.

As you know, the post-crunching data is just an approximation of real physical values. Guesswork. This means a molecule has to be built in a laboratory, which takes time and is expensive. A company that has employees working in one of the projects can gain advanced info into where they should concentrate their experimental efforts. Only after the molecule is built, after its real world, physical values and effects are measured, is it possible to patent it. This means the company could lie and say they did their own crunching, or that they stumbled upon the molecule after doing many experimental trials and errors. It can't be disproved unless there is a paper trail or a confession. WCG has confirmed the databases are not updated in real-time and some of the projects go on for many years. There is a window of opportunity.

I now realize this scenario is both legal and condoned by WCG, since they've chosen not to contractually forbid such behavior when formulating the legal document the researchers are asked to sign. It would have, as you have already pointed out, been difficult to enforce. How difficult we'll never know, since WCG has green lighted researchers who covertly leak post-crunch prepublished data to for-profit companies. According to WCG's current contractual agreements, this type of behavior is kosher. This is perhaps research reality of today, but how many crunchers are aware of this?

Asking the researchers to file publicly accessible income source statements, is something different. It doesn't prevent the above scenario, but we crunchers would be able to choose which projects we want to donate our computing resources to. We would be able to whitelist researchers, that is to say, know which interest group they belong to: nonprofit or for-profit. Why is WCG denying us this dry biscuit? We are not asking for a cream cake, just a small biscuit. Itsy-bitsy small and so dry it gets stuck on the tongue.



As far as crunching goes, I'll continue to crunch, while alerting any future would-be crunchers of what they're getting into. They need to know that WCG is far, far from being forthcoming regarding these conflict of interests. The opposite is true. Thanks everybody for helping me by opposing the suggestion.

Once more into the breachso don't read the content but forge ahead with an uninformed reply. How can we take you seriously?hopefully, this little gem of heinous, unproven accusation will get this thread deletedso you KNOW (sic) that WCG is acting illegally, yet you continue to support WCG by participating. That is such a horrendous contradiction of values. It suggests you can't even support your own theory and that you directly support what you accuse WCG of doing. WOW!!

Btw, actually crunchers don't need to hear one single aspect of the conspiracy theory you have presented. Crunchers can carry on quite easily into the years ahead while you go back to sleep in your foxhole.

You caught me. I am a professor and the lead researcher in the department of Genetic Engineering in the Faculty of Medicine and hold over 100 patents on the human genome. I've been outed. My career is over. Thanks a lot.

It's too bad I didn't go with my first choice 'TeamChina' or my second choice 'Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science'. No one would have known.