[raybbr]

In 1993, the EPA announced that second-hand smoke was "responsible for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths each year in nonsmoking adults," and that it " impairs the respiratory health of hundreds of thousands of people."

Not that I would that far, however, if I am stuck in a room with smokers, my eyes burn, my throat dries up, my sinuses get clogged and eventually I will start to continuously cough.

Sooner or later, we must form an independent research institute in this country. It must be funded by industry, by government, and by private philanthropy, both individuals and trusts. The money must be pooled, so that investigators do not know who is paying them. The institute must fund more than one team to do research in a particular area, and the verification of results will be a foregone requirement: teams will know their results will be checked by other groups.

They would need to study politicians first. Try to determine what turns 98% of them into worthless dregs who feed off of their constituents instead of serve them as they are supposed to.

[seowulf]

They would need to study politicians first. Try to determine what turns 98% of them into worthless dregs who feed off of their constituents instead of serve them as they are supposed to.

I already know the answer to that. Politicians suffer from the fault of being human (just like scientists, one of which I happen to be). It is the basest human nature to want to take the easy path, to get something for nothing, or to take what doesn't belong to them. Everyone also likes to be right (or at least to make most people agree that they are right) and to go along to get along.

The only way to counter this nature is by having a code of moral behavior, a set of rules that one lives by and everyone around you expects to be followed with certain consequences for when they are not followed. For politicians this might be a religious moral code (the Ten Commandments might be a good start) and for scientists it is the Scientific Method. Neither of these moral codes are emphasized enough today.