This appears to be a case where science was moved along by government needs ...ETA: The comment was approved. I've also backed out my more "over the top" (read: ad hominem) comments in this entry. I got carried away, let my frustrations with Chris Mooney spill over to someone I didn't know, and posted unprofessionally, so my apologies to Philip H. Just goes to show, cross-blog drama never pays. Hopefully I've learned my lesson.
Hardly. The complete genome sequence of Haemophilus influenzae was completed in 1995. The complete genome sequence of Escherichia coli was completed in 1997. The rapid sequencing of bacterial genomes had been on-going for years, a decade even, prior to any FBI/DOJ involvement. So ... while you "suspect" that this might be the case, it hardly makes it so. Most of these processes and analytical methods were already firmly entrenched in the molecular biological field well beforehand.
Friday, August 08, 2008
Give me a break ...
... read this entry over at The Intersection and couldn't agree less. Anyways, if this guy has as glass a chin as Mooney does, the comment I placed won't see the light of day ... so I'm posting it here as well.
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4 comments:
I haven't got a glass chin, and your comment was posted. Let's not flame each other shall we?
Philip H.
I was just coming over here to add an "ETA" to comment that you approved the post. Mea culpa.
Apology accepted. For the record of your readers, I'm a fisheries oceanographer by training and practice, and I don't pretend to know everything there is to know about genetics or the science thereof. Chris and his co-blogger asked me to fill in some blogging gaps for them while they work on a project, and I'm trying to do that by looking for stories to discuss that highlight the "intersection" of science and other societal things. SO when the coverage of this story broke, I thought it would be an interesting idea to delve into the science, and leave the politics for the conspiracy theorists.
Fair enough. Man, now I really feel like a heel, for jumping all over the entry like I did (for what really amounts to a minor detail). I don't know who pee'd in my Cheerios this morning.
FWIW, I do agree with your assessment that this has made an interesting case, for any number of reasons.
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