Gene patenting ruled illegal

[prole]

 

Plenty where that came from...

[layton]

That company is directly across the street, hopefully we'll get some cheap vacant office space.

 

Oh, and so far the ruling is just on this gene patent and it is already in appeals.

 

Myriad's reasoning for their claim was that they discovered the gene in vitro, not in vivo - but you still can (illegally as of last weak) test for it in vitro...so their argument cancels itself out.

 

If you did full gene sequencing, you'd have to black that gene out with a sharpie to legally send out the results.

[Stonehead]

This more your style?

 

"Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a

Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum

Gravity.

 

There are many natural scientists, and especially physicists, who continue to reject the notion that the disciplines concerned with social and cultural criticism can have anything to contribute, except perhaps peripherally, to their research. Still less are they receptive to the idea that the very foundations of their worldview must be revised or rebuilt in the light of such criticism. Rather, they cling to the dogma imposed by the long post-Enlightenment hegemony over the Western intellectual

outlook, which can be summarized briefly as follows: that there exists an external world, whose properties are independent of any individual human being and indeed of humanity as a whole; that

these properties are encoded in ``eternal'' physical laws; and that human beings can obtain reliable, albeit imperfect and tentative, knowledge of these laws by hewing to the ``objective'' procedures and epistemological strictures prescribed by the (so-called) scientific method.

 

But deep conceptual shifts within twentieth-century science have undermined this Cartesian-Newtonian metaphysics1; revisionist studies in the history and philosophy of science have cast further doubt on its credibility2; and, most recently, feminist and poststructuralist critiques have demystified the substantive content of mainstream Western scientific practice, revealing the ideologyof domination concealed behind the façade of ``objectivity''.3

 

It has thus become increasingly apparent that physical ``reality'', no less than social ``reality'', is at bottom a social and linguistic construct; that scientific ``knowledge", far from being objective, reflects and encodes the dominant ideologies and power relations of the culture that produced it; that the truth claims of science are inherently theory-laden and self-referential; and consequently, that the discourse of the scientific community, for all its undeniable value, cannot assert a privileged epistemological status with respect to counter-hegemonic narratives emanating from dissident or marginalized communities."

 

http://compbio.chemistry.uq.edu.au/mediawiki/upload/f/f9/Sokal-transgressing-boundaries.pdf

 

 

Personally, I would advocate for a more historical approach; big "S" science, especially those disciplines and institutions engaged in production, should always be understood in its larger socio-economic and political context. Any claim for the autonomy of Texas Instruments from these processes or the question whether it could be considered "private" at all during the invention of the integrated circuit would make a simple case in point. The claim that "scientific ``knowledge", far from being objective, reflects and encodes the dominant ideologies and power relations of the culture that produced it" actually proves quite illuminating in this case, don'tcha think?

 

 

Texas Instruments can trace it roots back to 1930 when Dr. J. Clarence Karcher and Eugene McDermott founded Geophysical Service, a pioneering provider of seismic exploration services to the petroleum industry. In 1939 the company reorganized as Coronado Corp., an oil company with Geophysical Service Inc (GSI), now as a subsidiary. On December 6, 1941, McDermott along with three other GSI employees, J. Erik Jonsson, Cecil H. Green, and H.B. Peacock purchased GSI, During World War II, GSI built electronics for the U.S. Army Signal Corps and the U.S. Navy. After the war GSI continued to produce electronics. The rugged nature of equipment for the oil industry and of military equipment were similar and thus continued expansion into military contracts was a natural progression. In 1951 the company changed its name to Texas Instruments, GSI becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of the new company.

 

An early success story for TI-GSI came in the 1950s when GSI was able (under a Top Secret government contract) to monitor the Soviet Union's underground nuclear weapons testing from outcrop bedrock found in Oklahoma.[citation needed]

 

Texas Instruments also continued to manufacture equipment for use in the seismic industry, and GSI continued to provide seismic services. After selling (and repurchasing) GSI, TI finally sold the company to Halliburton in 1988, at which point GSI ceased to exist as a separate entity.

 

Defense electronics

 

Texas Instruments was also active in the defense electronics market starting in 1942 with submarine detection equipment, building on the seismic exploration technology developed for the oil industry. This business was known over time as the Laboratory & Manufacturing Division, the Apparatus Division, the Equipment Group and the Defense Systems & Electronics Group (DSEG).

 

During the 1980s quality became a focus area in this business. During the early 80s a quality program was instituted. This included wide spread Juran training, as well as promoting Statistical process control, Taguchi methods and Design for Six Sigma. In the late 80s TI, along with Eastman Kodak and Allied Signal, began involvement with Motorola institutionalizing Motorola's Six Sigma methodology[9]. Motorola, who originally develped the Six Sigma methodology, began this work in 1982. Note that TI's Six Sigma program began well before 1995 when GE started its legendary Six Sigma policy. In 1992 the DSEG division of Texas Instruments' quality improvement efforts were rewarded by winning the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for manufacturing.

 

The following are some of the major programs of the former TI defense group[10]

 

Radar systems

 

TI went on to produce side-looking radar systems, the first terrain following radar and surveillance radar systems for both the military and FAA. In 1967 TI demonstrated the first solid-state radar — Molecular Electronics for Radar Applications (MERA). In 1976 TI developed a microwave landing system prototype. In 1984 TI developed the first inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR). The first single-chip gallium arsenide radar module was developed. In 1991 the Military Microwave Integrated Circuit (MIMIC) program was initiated – a joint effort with Raytheon.

 

Infrared systems

 

In 1956 TI began research on infrared technology that led to several line scanner contracts and with the addition of a second scan mirror the invention of the first forward looking infrared (FLIR) in 1963 with production beginning in 1966. In 1972 TI invented the Common Module FLIR concept, greatly reducing cost and allowing reuse of common components.

 

Missiles

 

In 1961 TI won the guidance and control system contract for the defense suppression AGM-45 Shrike anti-radiation missile. This led later to the prime on the high-speed anti-radiation missile (AGM-88 HARM) development contract in 1974 and production in 1981. In 1969 TI won the (missile) Seeker contract. In 1986 TI won the Army FGM-148 Javelin fire-and-forget man portable anti-tank guided missile in a joint venture with Martin Marietta. In 1991 TI was awarded the AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW)

 

Military computers

 

Because of TI's dominance in military temperature range (silicon) transistors and integrated circuits (ICs), TI won contracts for the first IC-based computer for the U.S. Air Force in 1961 and for ICs for the Minuteman Missile the following year. In 1968 TI developed the data systems for Mariner Program. In 1991 TI won the F-22 Radar and Computer development contract.

 

Laser-guided bombs

A Bolt-117, the first laser-guided bomb built by Texas Instruments.

 

In 1964 TI began development of the first laser guidance system for precision-guided munitions (PGM) leading to the Paveway series of laser-guided bombs (LGB)s. The first LGB was the BOLT-117.

 

Divestiture to Raytheon

 

As the defense industry consolidated, TI sold its defense business to Raytheon in 1997 for $2.95 billion. The Department of Justice required that Raytheon divest the TI Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit (MMIC) operations after closing the transaction.[11] The TI MMIC business accounted for less than $40 million in 1996 revenues, or roughly two percent of the $1.8 billion in total TI defense revenues was sold to TriQuint Semiconductor, Inc. Raytheon retained its own existing MMIC capabilities and has the right to license TI's MMIC technology for use in future product applications from TriQuint.[12]

 

Shortly after Raytheon acquired TI DSEG, Raytheon then acquired Hughes Aircraft from General Motors Raytheon then owned TI's Mercury Cadmium Telluride detector business and Infrared (IR) systems group. In California, it also had Hughes infrared detector and an IR systems business. When again the US government forced Raytheon to divest itself of a duplicate capability, the company kept the TI IR systems business and the Hughes detector business. As a result of these acquisitions these former arch rivals of TI systems and Hughes detectors work together.[13]

 

Immediately after acquisition, DSEG was known as Raytheon TI Systems (RTIS)[14]. It is now fully integrated into Raytheon and this designation no longer exists.

 

Revealing. Yes.

 

"The Sokal Affair (also Sokal’s Hoax) was a publishing hoax perpetrated by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University. In 1996, Prof. Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal dedicated to postmodern cultural studies. The submission was an experiment testing the magazine’s editorial practice of intellectual rigor, to learn if an academic journal would “publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions.”[1]

 

The article, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”, proposed that quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct; it was published in the Social Text Spring/Summer 1996 “Science Wars” issue. At that time, the journal did not practice peer review fact-checking, and did not submit the article for outside expert review by a physicist.[2][3] On its date of publication, in May 1996, in the journal Lingua Franca, Sokal revealed that “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” was a hoax, identifying it as “a pastiche of left-wing cant, fawning references, grandiose quotations, and outright nonsense . . . structured around the silliest quotations [by postmodernist academics he] could find about mathematics and physics”."

 

It only has to have the semblance of truth, in this case as some esoteric type of knowledge, to have an influencing impact. Someone could promote a view of the world in line with Sokal’s “hoax” that would still ring true. Simply take the Gnostic view that the world is unjust, that we are imprisoned through various means, and that emancipation is gained through right knowledge. To put some clothing on this hoax, one could cite some recent examples of rulings issued through SCOTUS such as Kelo and Citizens United and throw in some examples from contemporary events of political and economic nature to complete the weave. Without correct knowledge who could fully separate the fiction from truth in this continuum of reality?

 

Fiction need not imply falsity but an image of what could be much in the same way that a dream image does not have concrete reality but nevertheless can still influence the conscious world where actions manifest. As William Blake said, “Everything to be imagined is an image of truth.” And some believe that was one of the powers of Einstein, who imagining he was riding on a beam of light took that experience and related it into mathematics.

 

Besides, how else could you foster serendipitous discovery in the Kuhnian sense? Do the most radical revelations proceed solely on the basis of rational thought and causality? At some point, it seems one has to take a leap of faith.

 

[ of course, everything I write is basically bs.]

[tvashtarkatena]

I think we've collectively identified the gene for obtusivity here.

Edited April 6, 2010 by tvashtarkatena

[JayB]

[

Besides, how else could you foster serendipitous discovery in the Kuhnian sense? Do the most radical revelations proceed solely on the basis of rational thought and causality? At some point, it seems one has to take a leap of faith.

 

I think it comes down to the difference between inspiration and justification.

 

A new discovery may be inspired by an acid trip, but it'll generally take more than that to justify it in a way that other people will find convincing.