To: Stultis
You are idealistic, and your ideas are not bad ones, but it is the Lewontins of the world that actually control the grants, funding, journals, and prestige. The actaul achievments of actaul scientists has been subverted by the dictates of Naturalism. Consider this case of Creationist Dr. Ray Damadian...
Nobel Prize Committee Accused of Rewriting History 10/10/2003
When Paul Lauterbur and Peter Mansfield got the Nobel Prize for Medicine last week for their work on MRI scanning technology, Dr. Raymond Damadian was shocked. It was he who had first envisioned whole-body MRI scanners in 1969. It was his paper, written in 1970, published in Science in 1971, that demonstrated that water molecules in living tissues responded to nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and affirmed that this held promise for biological diagnosis. It was he who proved this with experiments on laboratory animals, and later on humans. It was he who had produced the first working MRI scanner (now in the Smithsonian). It is he who holds the patent on MRI, a patent hard-won against technology thieves over the years that resulted in his vindication by the Supreme Court in 1997.
He has the National Medal of Technology for his work on MRI, is enrolled in the Inventor's Hall of Fame for his invention of MRI, and is the president of a company Fonar Corporation, that builds MRI scanners. It is his company that remains on the cutting edge of MRI advancements. No one has devoted more of his life to MRI technology; his name is almost synonymous with MRI.
None of this seemed to matter to the Nobel committee. They gave the prize, with all its historical prestige, to two men who merely made technical improvements based on Damadians foundational discovery. Without Damadians pioneering lead, they might never have considered the possibilities of MRI. (See this timeline of MRI for credit discovery and invention, and also this background of the dispute over credit for MRI in Opinion Journal, written over a year before the Nobel announcement.)
Damadians company and supporters took an unusual step. With the support of colleagues at the State University of New York School of Medicine, where much of his research was done, and with quotes from colleagues and authors of books about MRI, they took out full page ads in the New York Times and Washington Post. The ad accuses the Nobel committee of revising history. Their evil was intentional, the ad claims, because the rules clearly allow for three people to be named for the prize, so there is no excuse for excluding Damadian. It is also contrary to the purpose of the prize as stated in Alfred Nobels will, that it should be awarded for the most important discovery [not procedure or refinement] within the domain of physiology or medicine.
Damadian feels the committee has robbed him of 33 years of his identity, and has been effectively written him out of the history he helped make. The decision is a shameful wrong that must be righted, the ad proclaims in bold type. The committee showed inexcusable disregard for the truth, it says, making a decision that is simply outrageous. Now that the committee has disgraced itself, the ad calls for readers to join their voice with the many distinguished physicians, scientists and authors who are expressing their outrage at this decision, and to urge them to include Damadian in the 2003 Nobel Prize for Medicine. The Nobel committee claims the award was correctly chosen, however, and the decision cannot be appealed.
This guy was cheated. He can get technology awards, but not science awards. This is just one example. The bias of naturailists that control the process have a chilling effect on those who would question the status quo.
501 posted on
12/05/2003 2:59:48 PM PST by
Ahban
To: Ahban; Nebullis; Right Wing Professor; Physicist
[Damadian whines, sues, takes out ads, yada, yada, yada...]
You got a price check on Alaskan eggs to go along with that?
507 posted on
12/05/2003 6:28:29 PM PST by
Stultis
To: Ahban
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