This made me laugh. Thank you, Charles.

Remember, it's always better to squish a few mice to follow cancer progression using bioluminescent markers than it is to chop off the mouse's head.

Until you need to dissect the brain that is.

Now, I'm going back to studying 20-something football players who fell down and go boom if you don't mind.

Fire requires four things: Fuel, oxygen, heat, and chemical reaction.

Reading mudede posts, however, just requires alcohol. Cheers!

Charles, you may not be aware of the way in which big business runs a lot of the revolving doors at the NIH and big research universities, but Golob may be. The situation is akin to the mystery documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car" in more ways than one.

I will not excuse you for failing to realize the relevance of "paradigm shifts" and the like in the philosophy of science. Among other things, power is concentrated in certain methodologies, and those who rise to the level of qualification for NIH (etc) grants are those who have accepted the paradigms of the previous generation of researchers.

And that's just the beginning of the story of why we should question the scientific validity of vivisection.

Well of course you can start a fire without a spark, dummy. Just get something that's flammable hot enough and kerflooey!

@4 Nonsense. Kuhn has been abused more than just about any philosopher since Nietzsche. If you actually hang around some scientists you will see that for the most part the accept theories, or paradigms if you will, because they work and the evidence supports them. Most would like nothing more than to disprove or update some key theory. Thats the realm of Nobels and endowed chairs or at least a paper or book that will be taught in universities for decades to come.

@4 Cool story bro.

Giffy, fair enough.

But do you deny that there are dozens, or tens of thousands, of incentives, to slowly accept the validity of something, as one crawls along the hierarchy? Perhaps I should have attacked the question from a more Chomskyesque critique ala editors may be free, but only because they've already quietly accepted the constraints of working for [insert transnational corporation here] and doing things the way that things are done.

@8 Not really. Yes you have to accept those things which have evidence over those that don't, or at least have a plausible alternative you can defend. But thats not coercion as much as that science is grounded in reality. These things are not enforced from above but are built up by tens of thousands of people publishing papers and doing science.

If I want to work as an electrician then I have to acknowledge that electricity behaves a certain way. I cannot simply say "well I don't accept your paradigm regarding the need for insulation so I am just going to string bare wires throughout the walls!". Now if I have a better way of insulating things then it is incumbent upon me to demonstrate that since it is my idea.

Science is one of the most meretricious and democratic communities around. Sure, like everything, it has politics and bullshit, but it also has an incredible array of means to minimize that.

Generally people who find there ideas rejected by the 'scientific establishment' do so for good reason.

I won't deny that Kuhn and others present an interesting narrative, but it lacks the empirical evidence to make it valid.

Though I think people read alot more into Kuhn then is actually there.

Giffy, I think you have hit the crux of it.

While humans know many of the ways in which electricity behaves, we know very little about how, say, our own minds behave. We do know enough to conclusively say that our brains operate in very different ways than the brains of any other species; even two identical twins have very different brains that behave in very different ways. Test one in a particular fashion, and replicate the procedure in the other - it totally depends on more individualized analysis to determine whether or not you will achieve the same results.

Perhaps we disagree. I simply am not willing to grant a method -- not a science -- that is based on such enormous differences the benefit of the doubt that you and Golob ascribe to it. It seems to me that the use of methodology should be objective, but is, in fact, often a very subjective decision. "Conclusion: We believe that burning the skin off of pigs in [this fashion] is similar to the way that skin is scalded off of humans, but replication is advised."

The methods that are emerging from places like the Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Methods (or something to that effect) are a start. So are fMRIs, skin grafts, and dozens of other human-based ways to see how our genetic code interacts with [name your treatment.] Spending billions burning the skin off of pigs just takes away from the pie available to develop, test, and use more precise methods.

@4 My sister-in-law works at NIH. She says she does it just because she fucking hates mice and rats. Her "experiments" have no value and that her contribution in mapping the human genome was coincidental at best.

Plato thought that practical experimentation was uneeded, too. He set western growth back 400 years.

wow, TAJ. Remember, don't eat vegetables, they scream in agony when you rip them from the earth ...

fwiw, i'm writing a paper right now. the paragraph i'm tweaking includes an argument based, however indirectly, on Nietzchian logic. ;)

we know very little about how, say, our own minds behave. We do know enough to conclusively say that our brains operate in very different ways than the brains of any other species

Yeah, not really. We know little about the human mind compared to everything there is to know, sure, but the past 50 years has been a boom time for brain and behavioral science. And our brains operate pretty much just like the brains of other mammals, with the complicating factors of language and extremely high social adaptability tacked on. And being able to find the differences between our brains and other species' contributes to knowing how our own minds work.

@12, You're right, we don't know as much about brains as electricity. Thats why you'll find all kinds of theories and ideas getting funding. We know a lot though, so someone with a theory that says that for example vision is really processed in the very front of the brain instead of the rear, would probably not be well accepted as we have lots of evidence that it is in the rear. Now if this person had some good evidence that would be something else.

You would also be surprised at how much research has gone into figuring out the differences and similarities between humans and other animals. In many ways our brains function very similarly to say chimps. Damage certain areas on both sides of the prefrontal area of a chimps brain and do the same thing to a human and you'll find they then exhibit pretty similar behaviors as they are no longer able to function well in a complex social environment, but often otherwise seem perfectly healthy.

And really its not spending billions to just torch some pigs. That is more the providence of your neighborhood BBQ joint. The treatments developed from testing on pigs, which have a similar skin to us(which we can just see with out eyes, but also know from more in-depth investigation) provide help to thousands of people who suffer severe burns every year.

Of course there is the need for oversight and scrutiny, but as Golob says, there is loads of it. But it is going to be a long long time before we have enough non-animal things to test on. The interactions are too complex and often the things you need to do are simply unacceptable to do to humans. You may, I don't know, find animal testing to be simply immoral, and thats fine its your morality, but I think the benefits outweigh the costs.

Diesel Engines - starting a fire w/o a spark since 1892.

It's my understanding that research in the fields of evolutionary psychology and neurobiology have together laid the groundwork fairly well for a good initial understanding of the reason why we humans are so empathic to the needs and emotions of other animals, and hence why many feely so strongly about harming animals. Ya got yer' mirror neuron stuff of course, all heavily tied in with the idea that the ability to simulate another creature’s mind is incredibly advantageous in figuring out how best to get what you want from that creature. There’s clearly a strong selection pressure for empathy in highly social apes. But we’re not good at corralling that ability just to members of our own species; give an animal with eyes & a mouth on a face and our minds will try to understand how and what it’s thinking, and often exaggerate their level of intelligence because our minds are programmed to essentially treat them as beings capable of equal intelligence. The prohibition against harming members of your own tribe/group/etc also appear to have a strong basis in evolutionary psychology. Put this all together, and you get a society whose “natural” reaction is to oppose animal research and stand in the way of progress through continued scientific advancement, based on what I believe can be objectively viewed as a completely morally relative ethical framework.

Though I would agree that by making animal testing so onerous, it does put pressure on scientists to think about different ways to do experiments, which can occasionally result in unexpected discoveries, but is also just as equally likely to lead to sub-par alternative modalities.

Please rip me a new one if you disagree, ya'll seem to have some decent heads on yer shoulders.

Personally, it's their giant cute eyes that always get me ...

@19 I know full well I impute to my dog traits that he does not by any stretch have. But a few thousand years of selective breeding has made it almost impossible not to. I do not do the same thing to lizards or flies.

and how exactly does "tramps like us, baby we were born to run" square with notions of pre-destiny and free will?

@12
I'd rather they scorch a bunch of pigs than scorch a bunch of people. No, pig flesh isn't exactly the same as people flesh but if 10 out of 10 pigs burn I'm pretty confident that people will too. Besides, they smell delicious when they scorch.

I know the scorching is just one example but I would stand by my statement in almost all cases. Eventually things get to human testing but I would rather weed some of these things out before they get to people. Does it hurt animals? Yes, but I'm willing to see a lot of squished rats if we can cure some real suffering in people.

@12 Now that's crazy.

These things are not enforced from above but are built up by tens of thousands of people publishing papers and doing science.

This process of "peer review" is anything but democratic, which is the entire point of Kuhn's work, really. One wonders if you've even bothered to read it.

well said-- I recently read, "The Animal Research War"-- what an eye-opener!!!!