The wonder of scientific research

by amicabl 50 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  Finkelstein

  My experience over many years is that most scientific research is fake. Nothing often comes of the big announcements made to raise more money.

  Wrong and nonsensical.

  Sometimes scientific findings or endeavors from those findings end toward a failed end but that doesn't mean all work and discoveries end toward a useless cause or endeavor.

  It might be true that in certain countries there is problem of over consumption causing obesity leading to further health problems but that causative result can not be blamed necessarily on scientific research.

  There are other socialized problems which could be to blame for these problems directing toward the commercialization of food but there are now steps being taken toward nutrition awareness particularly involving growing children.
  

  You made another nonsensical statement when you said people in the 1800's were healthy and didn't have the health problems which humanity has today ........ really ??? perhaps you might want to read up on some history.

  Yes amicabl put down those stupid Watchtower and Awake magazines and start reading literature that actually has the truth.
  
• 

  OrphanCrow

  amicabl: I can remember my father retiring at 57 with angina and drastically changing his diet with the help of a naturopath, regaining his health and living pain free to 75.

  Amicabl, you seem to have a romanticized (and incorrect) view of the past. You have offered up your father's experience as 'proof' of what good, healthy living can do. And yet, you fail to acknowledge that his age of 57 is well past the age of life expectancy 120 years ago.

  120 years ago, in that age that you think was so healthy and wonderful, an adult male's life expectancy hovered somewhere around 30 to 40 years of age. 120 years ago, your father likely wouldn't have made it to 57.

  https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy/

  Of course, life expectancy ages have risen dramatically in this past century simply because of the decrease in maternal and infant mortality rates. Babies and women are living longer.

  
  
  
• 

  TD

  Amicabl
  

  I would agree that there are health problems directly attributable to our modern lifestyle. Bad diet is part of the problem, but a sedentary routine (e.g. Sitting at a computer all day long, which is something many of us have no choice about) is as bad or worse for your health.

  If you could magically roll the clock back 150 years, would you actually do it though?
• 

  Bugbear

  The wonder of scientific research is:

  That we now know that the earth circle around the sun not the opposite

  The wonder of scientific research is:

  That we now know that deices is caused by bacteria and viruses

  The wonder of scientific research is:

  That we do have exterminate to root of Polio, pests, cholera, and lots of desaeses

  The wonder of scientific research is:

  Know the laws of gravitation and can use them

  The wonder of scientific research is:

  Now know the principles of evolution, and make us understand where we came from
• 

  DJS

  More on OrpanCrow's post;

  In 1800 the health conditions of our ancestors were such that about 43% of the world's newborns died before their 5th birthday. In 2015 child mortality was 4.3% - 10 fold lower than 2 centuries ago. In the year 1850 the average life expectancy at birth in the US was 40.5 for white females and 32.4 for non-white males, with an average life expectancy at birth of between 30 and 40.

  https://www.infoplease.com/us/mortality/life-expectancy-age-1850-2011

  Many years before antibiotics and advancements in health care arrived, the average life expectancy in the US and around the world dramatically increased. Why? Science. Scientists dissevered that treating water with chorine made it safe to drink . We take this for granted now, but circa 1900 this was a dramatic assertion that took years of convincing before it was widely adopted. Disinfecting drinking water and waste water was the single most important steps the world took to increase life expectancies, followed soon by antibiotics, vaccines and other advancements in the health industry. Again, science.
  

  You AOWMs likely owe your lives to the titans who came before you, the scientists and researchers whose primary missions were to make the world a better place.

  Overwhelmingly the cause for shortened life spans and those lived out in poor health in the year 2017 are due to lifestyle choices. Obesity, lack of exercise, drug abuse - smoking, drinking, meth, etc., and the crap so many of our species feels compelled to repeatedly stuff their every growing fat faces with.

  It disgusts me when those with little to no education beyond HS, no experience or real knowledge about scientific issues arrogantly make definitive certitudes and platitudes about the evils and deficiencies of something they essentially know nothing about.

  Show some humility. Or better yet, get yourselves to Google scholar or some other scholarly resource and understand what you are spewing nonsense about. I doubt that any of you AOWM have had a research class, been taught the empirical scientific method and how to develop a scientifically sound study or even read a published study on a topic, conducted by people who have devoted their lives to understanding.

  What you are doing is called leveling, and it really doesn't bring these titans down to your levels. You just think it does.
• 

  cofty

  We are all suffering I think some sort of PTSD from cult involvement

  I'm not. When I object to something said about faith or get annoyed about anti-science remarks or conspiracy theories or pseudo-science and woo-woo it has absolutely nothing to do with my history as a JW.
  
• 

  Finkelstein

  We are all suffering I think some sort of PTSD from cult involvement

  Well I'm not, I was born into this religion and left it behind some 30 years ago.

  What I did find is the enormous amount of pretentious lying and propagating ignorance the WTS heads spewed out their mouths while I was there listening and reading WTS dogma/knowledge, it was really corruption for the sake of literature proliferation or literature commercialization.
  
• 

  OrphanCrow

  amicabl: 120 years ago heart problems were practically Unknown.

  Well, just because something was "practically Unknown" does not mean that it didn't exist. What the 1900s saw was an increase in interest in heart disease and an increase in the diagnosing of heart disease.

  Heart disease has been around for a long time:

  Egyptian mummies, some 3,500 years old, had evidence of heart disease — specifically atherosclerosis, which narrows the arteries. Pharaoh Merenptah, who died in the year 1203 BCE, was plagued by atherosclerosis. Nine of the 16 other mummies studied also had evidence of the disease.

  And:

  To say exactly when civilization first became aware of coronary artery disease, also known as artery narrowing, is difficult. However, it’s known that Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) investigated coronary arteries.
  William Harvey (1578–1657) — physician to King Charles I — is credited with discovering that the blood moves from the right ventricle of the heart through the lung and into the aorta, then the peripheral vessels, and back into the lung.
  Later, Friedrich Hoffmann (1660–1742), chief professor of cardiology at the University of Halle, noted that coronary heart disease started in the “reduced passage of the blood within the coronary arteries.”

  more here at this link: https://www.healthline.com/health/heart-disease/history#2
• 

  Finkelstein

  Something to keep in mind, there were ancients who ate and drank excessively, who also didn't exercise their bodies, they probably had slaves to do their needed work, who became obese unhealthy and died prematurely because of the their social eating habits and behavior, not mention loose and open sexual behavior.
  

  Likewise this still occurs even today.

  This isn't fiction, isn't called human biology.

  Thankfully scientific derived evaluation and discoveries have given us the knowledge of how to maintain a healthy long expected life.

  Amen to science.
  
• 

  amicabl

  Thanks everyone for the interesting posts, I didn't realise that a simple post on corruption in scientific research using medicine as an example would create such a furor.

  Next time I will pick a nice bland topic.

  DJS......You seem to know a lot about me including the fact that I am an ignorant AOWM who indulges in levelling and other uneducated thingies. How did you know?

  One interesting point I discovered myself many years ago in a rural 19th century cemetery was the number of babes and little ones who died of common illnesses, a few young guys who fell off their horses and the rest most of whom died in their 70s or 80s. Common knowledge I know but it is nice to see these things for yourself. It helps explain the skewed life expectancy statistics as some pointed out.

  Thanks again.