Comments for Solarsaddle's Blog

Comment on Anschütz’s manometer by Andrea Sella

Andrea Sella — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 10:39:47 +0000

I missed it…… how embarrassing. I had wondered whether something like that existed – I may alter my text slightly to include the link later on. Thanks, Phillip.

Comment on Anschütz’s manometer by Phillip Broadwith

Phillip Broadwith — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 08:52:56 +0000

One of the links in the Classic Kit article is to an essay by Bader telling the Loschmidt story, delivered to the Royal Institution in the late 80s – in case anyone missed it, it’s here http://www.loschmidt.cz/pdf/father.pdf

Comment on More on gloves in the lab by Andrea Sella

Andrea Sella — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 09:39:56 +0000

I find it intriguing that very few graduate students have taken this on board here – as far as I can see everyone is still wearing gloves just as much as before in spite of “seeing the argument”. I think it’s a classic example of the human tendency to “beware of letting hold of Nurse, for fear of finding something worse”.

Comment on Lord Monckton and the painful truth by Andrea Sella

Andrea Sella — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 09:08:17 +0000

Sorry – I must have missed your comment earlier. Thanks for these – very interesting. Just goes to show how poor my patent searching skills are – I thought that Espacenet would list them and I guess hadn’t checked the IPO.

I think, however, that you haven’t quite got my argument. Of course he should be allowed to do experiments and to patent materials/subtances that he believes might work. And you’re right that lots of patents are filed each year that are never followed up – part of this is patent bombing and other strategically cynical practices (we’ll leave discussion of Bad Pharma to Ben Goldacre). But look at the pattern. Every year, towards end of August or in September, he files this patent – same name each time – over and over. We can only presume that none of these are robust enough to ever make it through the patenting process. Put it another way: Any one of us can submit a manuscript to a leading academic journal and then list in our CVs “manuscript submitted to Nature”. Only the ignorant and the foolish will be gulled by that sort of ploy, and meanwhile we can go about saying “oh the scientific establishment refuses to accept my brilliantly innovative new discoveries”.
The alternative is to conclude that the man is a fantasist and the gullible are there aplently to fuel his ego.

Comment on More on gloves in the lab by Peter Scott (@peterscott1965)

Peter Scott (@peterscott1965) — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 07:15:09 +0000

Looking back on this now I wonder why I said that about learning. You’re totally correct.

Comment on Lord Monckton and the painful truth by Tel

Tel — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 23:36:07 +0000

I searched for Monckton’s name at the UK “Intellectual Property Office” and very quickly found:

15 October 2008 (Journal 6230) GB0816300.8
Applicant: Monckton, Christopher
Title: Therapeutic treatments

15 October 2008 (Journal 6230) GB0816301.6
Applicant: Monckton, Christopher
Title: Therapeutic treatments

07 October 2009 (Journal 6281) GB0915801.5
Applicant: Monckton, Christopher
Title: Theraputic treatment

07 October 2009 (Journal 6281) GB0915802.3
Applicant: Monckton, Christopher
Title: Therapeutic treatments

20 October 2010 (Journal 6335) GB1014917.7
Applicant: Monckton, Christopher
Title: Therapeutic treatments

20 October 2010 (Journal 6335) GB1014918.5
Applicant: Monckton, Christopher
Title: Therapeutic treatments

26 October 2011 (Journal 6388) GB1115759.1
Applicant: Monckton, Christopher
Title: Therapeutic treatments

26 October 2011 (Journal 6388) GB1115761.7
Applicant: Monckton, Christopher
Title: Therapeutic treatments

26 September 2012 (Journal 6436) GB1214454.9
Applicant: Monckton, Christopher
Title: Therapeutic treatments

26 September 2012 (Journal 6436) GB1214456.4
Applicant: Monckton, Christopher
Title: Therapeutic treatments

Needless to say, the mere fact something is patented doesn’t mean it works. It just means someone thinks it might work, enough to spend a bit of time drafting the documents and a bit of money paying the patent fees. I’m pretty surprised that people who claim to be “pro-science” have such a negative attitude to medical research. It isn’t like Monckton is forcing you to test it or anything. I would presume they are going through the time consuming trials that are perfectly normal in the pharmaceutics industry, and thousands of drugs never get past trial to become products — that’s part of the process. If no one had tried new stuff in the past, we wouldn’t have any medicine at all now.

Looks like many of the earlier patents were terminated during the application stage, I can’t find any explanation for that, could be a lot of things. Maybe his claims were overly broad, or he tried to claim something already common knowledge, or he just changed his mind about what exactly he was claiming.

Comment on Upcoming Dates by Andrea Sella

Andrea Sella — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 14:17:47 +0000

Geesh. I’ve only just found your comment. I’ve not read Harris. On the other hand Andrew Hodges’ biography of Turing, The Enigma, is excellent and completely fascinating. Well worth reading. I’m not sure how to answer your question about fractals, though.

Comment on Upcoming Dates by Strange Ice | Solarsaddle's Blog

Strange Ice | Solarsaddle's Blog — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 11:01:19 +0000

[...] Upcoming Dates [...]

Comment on James Delingpole and the Scientific Consensus by Dave

Dave — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 02:51:42 +0000

Delingpole is a complete, total and utter twat. Lets leave it at that.

Comment on Why do we wear disposable gloves in Chemistry labs? by uknowispeaksense

uknowispeaksense — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 20:57:58 +0000

Working in a plant pathology lab, the only time I ever wore gloves was when handling fresh culture plates or when transferring from one to another. A latex allergy limited me to nitrile pretty much and even those things made me itch. Our SOP’s for the lab and subsequent insurance coverage however demanded the wearing of gloves (and masks) pretty much all the time so had I had some sort of accident or become infected by one of the few plant pathogenic fungi I handled that can infect people, I would have been on my own for any medical costs and time off work incurred. For me it was worth the miniscule risk. On the subject of touching hotplates, a junior staff member fresh out of uni was cleaning down one of the laminar flow cabinets in preparation to culture some samples. She put her gloves on, started spraying the ethanol around and wiping everything down. She then got her culture plates and sample material out of the fridge and placed them in the cabinet. After firing up the bunsen burner, she looked at her gloved hands, realised she had touched the fridge, the bench and her hair so she squirted ethanol onto her gloves and rubbed her hands together, picked up a scalpel and as she ran it through the flame…well you could probably see where this was going. It was horrific. It probably isn’t funny but I WAS reminded of the giraffe in the movie Madagascar after he managed to make fire with two bits of wood tied to his front legs and realiased that he’s still attached.. “fire….fire….FIIIRREEEE!”