EPTGirl Invents Nanoparticle that Kills Cancer - Page 6
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hazelynut
United States2197 Posts
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Utopi
Denmark176 Posts
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mordk
Chile8385 Posts
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blah_blah
346 Posts
On December 15 2011 20:59 Kazeyonoma wrote: truly amazing, and always points to why sometimes, the answer is right in front of our face, we just have to look at it from a different view, or in this case, from a different pair of eyes. people who are doubting this, realize, that while there ARE researchers around the world who ARE experienced trying at the exact same thing, sometimes it takes a different perspective to find the solution. No, this is something that lay-people commonly believe but is virtually never the case, especially in well-established, technical fields. One reason average people believe this is because they want to believe that they could make an important contribution to science if they just had a single stroke of genius, and they want to believe that there really is not so much separating themselves from brilliant researchers. It's a mild, mostly innocuous form of egotism. As a result people like this (and yourself, apparently) eat up articles like this because they reinforce this belief. Laypeople have no clue what real research actually involves, and they figure that if high schoolers can do it, then so could they under the right set of circumstances. What they don't realize is that top students in these competitions typically work on low-hanging-fruit-type problems, have special access to top researchers who do much of the real work for them and supply them with access to world-class facilities, and then have the importance of their research blown way out of proportion in hyperbolic press releases. Take for example this Siemens winner in math from a few years ago (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10336018/#.Tunk6HOleG4). He came up with a novel solution to a subproblem that probably very few people had actually considered. This problem was probably suspected to be doable without requiring particularly new techniques (otherwise it would have been very poor judgment to assign to a high schooler!), was done in concert with an actual research mathematician (the advisor's name also appears on the final paper), was published in a journal that is not that selective, and has not been cited many times. The news article is misleading; while the Dirichlet problem is one of fundamental importance in several fields of mathematics, this particular version of it definitely is not, and the real-world applications are probably nonexistent. It is still a solid result, but it's probably not one of the best 1000 math papers that appeared that year. Please let me be clear that I am in no way critical of this student. He is probably (several years later) one of the five finest mathematicians of his age in North America, has an IQ off the charts, has a brilliant mathematical career ahead of him, and has already obtained and will obtain much, much more significant results that will be published in much better journals, be much more celebrated by actual mathematicians, and which will not attract one one-hundredth of the attention of this result. And even so, math is somewhat unique. At least in math really, really bright students (like Viscardi) can actually make real intellectual contributions to research problems (many olympiad competitors have done some sort of 'real' mathematical interest in high school). In subjects like biology or chemistry, where the most advanced high school students are much, much further behind actual researchers in biology/chemistry than top high school mathematicians are behind real mathematicians (at least in certain 'problem-solving' type subfields), these celebrated high school researchers make virtually no contribution to experiment design and the conceptual aspects of the problem (because they lack the necessary background), put in a lot of lab work or experimental work under the direction of a postdoc or graduate student, and do work that typically merits being a third or fourth or whatever author in a published paper, the importance of which is then greatly exaggerated by the media, most of whom do not possess any knowledge relevant to the topic at hand yet feel free to make wild conjectures concerning the importance of their work. | ||
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Arnstein
Norway3381 Posts
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Archerofaiur
United States4101 Posts
more news at 11 | ||
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synapse
China13814 Posts
On December 15 2011 20:36 Diavlo wrote: Again with the overexaggeration of the press. Nanomedecine has been around for years. As far as 2000 actually. It's a very promising domain which still faces a lot of challenges: safety,efficiency, cost, versatility in terms of drugs... Don't get me wrong, the fact that a 17 years old is able to design a nanoparticule is very impressive and one day, she might become a leading scientist, but at this point, her work is just another paper on a long list of untested miracles. Just like hundreds (thousands) of other works that get far more prestigious prizes that the public never hears about. Yep, this. Sensationalist reporting sucks... it's not actually a cure, just a drug delivery method (which of course is still a nice step towards our eventual goal of curing cancer). | ||
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Detri
United Kingdom683 Posts
All pretty amazing stuff, but there is no cure for cancer guys. Only treatments, those of you who know anything about the mechanisms of the disease should know that too. I hate misleading shit like this because most people don't even understand what cancer is let alone what causes it (entropy). I blame the press tho same old sensationalist bullshit, with no actual tests, research, proof. And my 2c on AIDs/HIV, well treatments are so damn good now in the west that it has become a non issue, its in reality not much worse of a disease than insulin dependant diabetes for someone in the UK / USA(with insurance). That is why "we" don't care about it just as much anymore. | ||
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evantrees
Canada497 Posts
and unrelated found this one hilarious. On December 15 2011 20:48 3clipse wrote: If I were a supervillain, this girl would be #1 on my kidnap list. Just think of the humanity-enslaving potential of laser-wielding nanomachines... | ||
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MCMXVI
Norway1193 Posts
On December 15 2011 19:04 Kickboxer wrote: We already know a cure for HIV. It's called a condom... Our immune system is fully capable of getting rid of HIV on its own. Source? Luc Montagnier, the man who discovered HIV. House of Numbers, a film which will change your view on HIV/AIDS forever. Also, something which i find very suspicious, is that there is no definite way to prove that you are infected with HIV. But back on topic. As someone else pointed out earlier, she is not very likely to get rich from this. Unless she has closely knit ties with the pharmaceutical elite in the US, of course. | ||
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bobobobojos
United States59 Posts
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FallDownMarigold
United States3710 Posts
On December 15 2011 22:26 bobobobojos wrote: They've had all sorts of cancer cures for years. But the big pharmaceutical companies pays big to keep thems under wraps. Sorry but that is wrong. If you wish to believe that, fine, but just know it's sort of like believing that 9/11 was "done by the Feds" or whatever. | ||
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Zootre
Denmark180 Posts
On December 15 2011 17:23 aike wrote: If this is real and actually works that would be totally baller and badass and she deserves to just retire to an island of her choice ;D I think we kinda need her as a researcher to cure more stuff and improve what she just have done  | ||
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cive
Canada370 Posts
On December 15 2011 22:28 FallDownMarigold wrote: Sorry but that is wrong. If you wish to believe that, fine, but just know it's sort of like believing that 9/11 was "done by the Feds" or whatever. LOL it's cute when people say stuff like that right. Well, no one here can prove it so "big pharmaceuticals paying big money to keep them under control" can be a legitimate statement. Regardless, her accomplishment is really cool. Hopefully this will save millions of lives. | ||
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Jongl0
631 Posts
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AnachronisticAnarchy
United States2957 Posts
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7mk
Germany10157 Posts
Could just have been an inside joke or sth though On December 15 2011 19:04 Kickboxer wrote: We already know a cure for HIV. It's called a condom... Also, this girls is super amazing. I hope she invents a lot more stuff in the future. look up what the word "cure" means Very impressive, would be nice to have a more scientific read about how it actually works though | ||
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aksfjh
United States4853 Posts
On December 15 2011 21:38 blah_blah wrote: No, this is something that lay-people commonly believe but is virtually never the case, especially in well-established, technical fields. One reason average people believe this is because they want to believe that they could make an important contribution to science if they just had a single stroke of genius, and they want to believe that there really is not so much separating themselves from brilliant researchers. It's a mild, mostly innocuous form of egotism. As a result people like this (and yourself, apparently) eat up articles like this because they reinforce this belief. Laypeople have no clue what real research actually involves, and they figure that if high schoolers can do it, then so could they under the right set of circumstances. What they don't realize is that top students in these competitions typically work on low-hanging-fruit-type problems, have special access to top researchers who do much of the real work for them and supply them with access to world-class facilities, and then have the importance of their research blown way out of proportion in hyperbolic press releases. Take for example this Siemens winner in math from a few years ago (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10336018/#.Tunk6HOleG4). He came up with a novel solution to a subproblem that probably very few people had actually considered. This problem was probably suspected to be doable without requiring particularly new techniques (otherwise it would have been very poor judgment to assign to a high schooler!), was done in concert with an actual research mathematician (the advisor's name also appears on the final paper), was published in a journal that is not that selective, and has not been cited many times. The news article is misleading; while the Dirichlet problem is one of fundamental importance in several fields of mathematics, this particular version of it definitely is not, and the real-world applications are probably nonexistent. It is still a solid result, but it's probably not one of the best 1000 math papers that appeared that year. Please let me be clear that I am in no way critical of this student. He is probably (several years later) one of the five finest mathematicians of his age in North America, has an IQ off the charts, has a brilliant mathematical career ahead of him, and has already obtained and will obtain much, much more significant results that will be published in much better journals, be much more celebrated by actual mathematicians, and which will not attract one one-hundredth of the attention of this result. And even so, math is somewhat unique. At least in math really, really bright students (like Viscardi) can actually make real intellectual contributions to research problems (many olympiad competitors have done some sort of 'real' mathematical interest in high school). In subjects like biology or chemistry, where the most advanced high school students are much, much further behind actual researchers in biology/chemistry than top high school mathematicians are behind real mathematicians (at least in certain 'problem-solving' type subfields), these celebrated high school researchers make virtually no contribution to experiment design and the conceptual aspects of the problem (because they lack the necessary background), put in a lot of lab work or experimental work under the direction of a postdoc or graduate student, and do work that typically merits being a third or fourth or whatever author in a published paper, the importance of which is then greatly exaggerated by the media, most of whom do not possess any knowledge relevant to the topic at hand yet feel free to make wild conjectures concerning the importance of their work. This is exactly how it is. In 4 years, if she had done the same exact work as an undergrad, she would be lucky to find her name on the paper itself. She'd get paid as a lab assistant over the summer, and possibly face promotion to a full-fledged lab tech with her contributions to the project. Even then, though, the research being done was merely an expansion of what is already being PRACTICED in some leading medical fields. There are a lot of drugs treating cancer which are targeted onto a tumor by some form of radiation. She (or her team really) is just adding to the heap that exists. | ||
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KimJongChill
United States6429 Posts
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obesechicken13
United States10467 Posts
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