Serge Lang
I object to a legal approach when settling questions of science or scientific behavior.Collection: Legal
Of course, screening for HIV did essentially eliminate the transmission of this virus by transfusions.
Questions have also arisen about AIDS being transmitted to hemophiliacs via blood transfusions.
Questions have arisen about the policing of science. Who is responsible for the policing? My answer is: all of us.
I am not here concerned with intent, but with scientific standards, especially the ability to tell the difference between a fact, an opinion, a hypothesis, and a hole in the ground.
Of course, there are diseases of which people die.
There exist thousands of Americans who have AIDS-defining diseases but are HIV negative.
Aside from all that, we recall that antibodies to malaria and other diseases prevalent in Africa show up as HIV-positive on tests.
Roughly speaking, this hypothesis asks whether drug use causes some of the diseases officially associated with AIDS, such as immunodeficiency and Kaposi's sarcoma.
Originally, in the early eighties, the drug hypothesis was among the first which occurred to scientists.
What standards are upheld by the scientific community affect the community internally, and also affect its relations with society at large, including Congress.
To address questions of scientific responsibility does not necessarily imply that one needs technical competence in a particular field (e.g. biology) to evaluate certain technical matters.
If Baltimore's view, that scientists who do not take the words of authorities are far removed from the ordinary behavior of scientists, prevails in the scientific community, then something fundamental, very serious, and very disturbing is happening to the scientific community.
They cannot count on the press and they cannot count on Congressional committees to bring the problems of the scientific community to their own attention, or to police the scientific community.
Axiomatization is what one does last, it's rubbish. It's the hygiene of mathematics, axiomatization.Collection: Hygiene
The only goal of science is the honour of the human spirit, and a question in number theory is worth a question concerning the system of the world.Collection: Numbers
To an extent that undermines classical standards of science, some purported scientific results concerning 'HIV' and 'AIDS' have been handled by press releases, by disinformation, by low-quality studies, and by some suppression of information, manipulating the media and people at large. When the official scientific press does not report correctly, or obstructs views dissenting from those of the scientific establishment, it loses credibility and leaves no alternative but to find information elsewhere.Collection: Views
The problems of financing the universities and their intellectual freedom, threatened by political and bureaucratic interference, are problems which are invariant under the ism transformations: socialism, communism, capitalism, or any other ism or ology.Collection: Political