Assessing Pakistani Science

This is a message received from Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy:

``For all concerned with the issue: It was mutually agreed upon by Dawn and myself that there would be no restriction on republication of my article ``Assessing Pakistani Science``. In fact, Dawn and I have already given permission to other publications to reproduce at will and without charge.

The matter of copyrights is irrelevant, and I see any attempt by an
outside party to raise this as a mischievous attempt to distract readers
from the content of my article.``

#20, the witch-doctor (chaltahai) writes: <<< This has got to be the most idiotic garbage I have ever read on the subject of innovation. Masadi, most patents filed by the PTO and ITPO are based on stardards recognized throughout the world. The reason for such protection is not to limit innovation, it is to protect it, nurture it and allow for successive creations to use exisiting knoledge founderies along with providing the inventor the ability to monetize on his/her hard work. >>>

The purpose of patents is not to ``protect`` innovation and ``nurture`` it. It is merely to guard against others cutting into the profits of the so-called innovators. Science and human knowledge is built upon successive steps, when you block one level artificially by putting a guard like a copyright on it, it block innovation, it does not nurture it. How much development has taken place in alternative energy use for the mass society since the oil companies purchased the patents to the alternatives that were well on their way to development?

Then the rain-dance man writes << No intellectual rigor?

I was in Bell Labs yesterday, the museum alone had things like the t.v., the telephone, the transistor, the nano cell, 7 Nobel prize winning inventions and countless others that have become the fundamental basis for continued technological growth in the world. The lab houses scientists from India, China, Eastern Europe, western europe, America and places in between. They come to the US because there is avaliability of capital and technology to do the research. there is more rigorous debate and critque as to the ``innovative`` aspect of inventions than ever before.

Theories are vetted by experts from around the world to ensure there are no loop holes >>

Punching a few buttons to standardize products, which are then mass produced and massively advertised for profitibility does not constitute ``intellectual rigor`` in my opinion. Neither does blocking access to information through copyright or bureaucratized barriers that create artificial shortage of qualified individuals. As a result with the growth of your ``science machines`` concentrated in the military sector, from which innovations like the internet slowly ``seep`` into civilian society is no big deal to me. Show me how all this ``advancement``, that is an outrage against science and the enlightenment tradition, has helped the human situation around the world. More people around the world live in misery than did ever before, amidst more suprlus than existed ever before. If people were dying at the rate they are today of want and genuine deprivation when humans were hunter gatherers, the human race would have become extinct long ago. And you so called science machines are have not only bureaucratized and directed innovation towards profit maximization (as against human betterment), they have ensured that profits from them get circulated among a narrow group. With dim wits like you working for them, we can be sure that something is lacking in the ``vetting`` process.

What exists today is not science as was originally envisioned by classical rennaissance scientists but rather a ``plutocratic prostitution of science`` as C. Wright Mills suggested. Further there is little or no coincedence between men of power and men of science and when men of science come into contact with men of power they play the role of hired men, hired to do a job to maximize profits or to perfect ways to kill more people. So much for Hoodbuoy`s claim of their ``value`` in the West. They are peons like you are in a system which uses them for maximum profit generation.

#32 by Zeena on February 22, 2006 8:50am PT


We should not forget, even in USA, local ethical committee works side by side for almost all Scientific projects which have been/will be or being launched. Why blaming Pakistan for each and every scientific drawback?


WTF are you blabbering on about? local ethical committee?

You`re the perfect argument against human cloning...and intelligent design..

#35 arjun_M
MIND your language. (WTF) , is this what your science is based upon ? Science teaches you to be a good human first. Science refines the humans. You are perfect example of Scientific destrutions and it`s negative impact based on your colorful langauge and narrowminded approach. This is the point that I am focusing on. People like you can trigger science negatively to destroy throught their own biasedness.

PS:- watch your language. I am just warning you, politely.))

Re: # 32
I think the topic of the doctor`s article is the abysmal state of Pakistani science and education, Zeena. Some people just cannot talk about any topic sensibly without bringing in American foreign policy.

#37 jamesmaxwell
james
Yes, this topic is abolutely about Pakistani science and education. I agree with most of the points raised here. I did my analytical approach based on the objective approach of the article. Dr. is blaming Pakistani society`s culture for the Scientific regression in Pakistan and is calling the whole society superstitious and fatal. I am just answering his objectivity with my subjective point of view with out being biased.

Remember, Science is mostly based on subjectiveness and non biasedness. When you speak with objectivity, then Scientific issues loose their core. Science is for the betterment of humans as whole, with out targeting certain groups.

Science is always based on research data, and to have research data we have to have comparative subjects for study designs, which we study for certain point of time for prospective results based on retrospective inference. If, we won`t have comparative subjects, Scientific research can not occur. So, I implied the same rule of basic Scientific research to compare Pakistan with other countries. And, yes, Scientific research do affect any country`s foreign policy as well.

Re: # 38
Zeena, this has to be the most hilarious post ever!

Masadi writes :``The purpose of patents is not to ``protect`` innovation and ``nurture`` it. It is merely to guard against others cutting into the profits of the so-called innovators. Science and human knowledge is built upon successive steps, when you block one level artificially by putting a guard like a copyright on it, it block innovation, it does not nurture it. How much development has taken place in alternative energy use for the mass society since the oil companies purchased the patents to the alternatives that were well on their way to development? ``

Purpose of patents is not to protect the innovation? hahah.. Not all patents are money makers Masadi. Out of the 31K patents at Bell Labs, only 10% ever see the light of a commercialized day. 90% of innovation happens on the backs of existing innovation? Ever invent anything in your life, other than ill founded diatribes against big-bad USA? Patens are novel concepts or prodcuts or processes...they are novel that means no one has ever thought of, developed or produced these ideas or articles. They do not suffocate ideation but put parameters around certifed knowledge which is used by other inventors to develop, enhance further.

You speak of global energy issues as this is some radical thinking on your part. Biofuels and other alternative energy sources weren`t prduced en masse not because of the patent regime, but because price of producing a barrel of BIo Diesel from Jerotha or Corn plant was higher than the cost of Saudi oil until fossil fuels went to $50/barrel and above. Cost of raw materials and technology required to produce oil in such large quantities was simply economically unthinkable. Brazil, the leading producer of Sugar in the world meets 35% of it`s energy demands through Ethanol production. Even in a country where raw materias are not an issue and technology is there, the prevalence of alternative energy has been hampered by the economics of fuel production for traditional sources of energy. But hey, don`t let the reality stop you..you go ahead with your Satan=USA rant. :-)

``Punching a few buttons to standardize products, which are then mass produced and massively advertised for profitibility does not constitute ``intellectual rigor`` in my opinion. Neither does blocking access to information through copyright or bureaucratized barriers that create artificial shortage of qualified individuals. As a result with the growth of your ``science machines`` concentrated in the military sector, from which innovations like the internet slowly ``seep`` into civilian society is no big deal to me. Show me how all this ``advancement``, that is an outrage against science and the enlightenment tradition, has helped the human situation around the world. More people around the world live in misery than did ever before, amidst more suprlus than existed ever before. If people were dying at the rate they are today of want and genuine deprivation when humans were hunter gatherers, the human race would have become extinct long ago. And you so called science machines are have not only bureaucratized and directed innovation towards profit maximization (as against human betterment), they have ensured that profits from them get circulated among a narrow group. With dim wits like you working for them, we can be sure that something is lacking in the ``vetting`` process. ``

Let`s see, fiber optic cable, the transistor, plastics for NASA programs, bio generics, the number of innovations coming out the US and the world that recognizes a patent scheme as a way to ensure technological growth are to numerous ot mention. As far as the human sufferieng goes? More people live longer and healthier lives today than ever before. Avg span of human life is longer now than ever before, infant mortality is down across humanity. IS it uneven, sure..but less so than it has ever been before. Diseases like Malaria, typhoid, influenza were pandemics...it is innovation in the labs around the world with patent protection that provided cures...not some guy sitting with a tablet and a piece of chalk on the sidewalk in Arabia coming up wiht solutions.

``What exists today is not science as was originally envisioned by classical rennaissance scientists but rather a ``plutocratic prostitution of science`` as C. Wright Mills suggested. Further there is little or no coincedence between men of power and men of science and when men of science come into contact with men of power they play the role of hired men, hired to do a job to maximize profits or to perfect ways to kill more people. So much for Hoodbuoy`s claim of their ``value`` in the West. They are peons like you are in a system which uses them for maximum profit generation. ``

What makes you think that science is stagnant, when nothing else remains so? Men of power and men of science have always existed. Men of power and men of arts always existed. Innovation isn`t cheap. Patronage requires both a patron and the genius. Men of power also patronized the development of the jet engine, it is used to kill people and at the same time to deliver aid to earthquake victims. Your myopia is colluding logic. It happens....when you are neither a genius nor an innovator. :-)

Peons like me in the system do more for the world than pontificating halfwits like yourself.

#38 by Zeena on February 22, 2006 9:28am PT


Remember, Science is mostly based on subjectiveness and non biasedness. When you speak with objectivity, then Scientific issues loose their core.


Science is based on subjectivity and not objectivity? that the earth is round is open to subjective debate?

if you`re a doggy doctor, i`m calling the NJ SPCA..

#41 arjun_m
I request you not to provoke personal attacks on my profession. This article is not about me and my profession. Thanks

Now, answer to your question.Scientific evidence suggests that what we call objectivity is just a generally accepted form of subjectivity. Scientific research has to be subjective with comaprasion among different subjects to be used for inference.
Now, earth is round is an absolute subjective research, with different objective opinions in the past.

If, we will not use subjects for subjective experiences then scientific research looses it`s significance.
Now, Mr. arjun_M
May I request you NOT to address me directly or indirectly. I do not appreciate your interactions . Please, do interact with your ilks.

#38 james.....
Why is my post hilarious? Mocking someone`s point of view is not always an answer to your query! Explain.

Oh boy...Friedman quotes Hoodbhoy dissing Pakiland...pakis are going to have an apoplexy..

February 22, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Empty Pockets, Angry Minds
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

MUMBAI, India

I have no doubt that the Danish cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad have caused real offense to many Muslims. I`m glad my newspaper didn`t publish them. But there is something in the worldwide Muslim reaction to these cartoons that is excessive, and suggests that something else is at work in this story. It`s time we talked about it.

To understand this Danish affair, you can`t just read Samuel Huntington`s classic, ``The Clash of Civilizations.`` You also need to read Karl Marx, because this explosion of Muslim rage is not just about some Western insult. It`s also about an Eastern failure. It is about the failure of many Muslim countries to build economies that prepare young people for modernity — and all the insult, humiliation and frustration that has produced.

Today`s world has become so wired together, so flattened, that you can`t avoid seeing just where you stand on the planet — just where the caravan is and just how far ahead or behind you are. In this flat world you get your humiliation fiber-optically, at 56K or via broadband, whether you`re in the Muslim suburbs of Paris or Kabul. Today, Muslim youth are enraged by cartoons in Denmark. Earlier, it was a Newsweek story about a desecrated Koran. Why? When you`re already feeling left behind, even the tiniest insult from afar goes to the very core of your being — because your skin is so thin.

India is the second-largest Muslim country in the world, but the cartoon protests here, unlike those in Pakistan, have been largely peaceful. One reason for the difference is surely that Indian Muslims are empowered and live in a flourishing democracy. India`s richest man is a Muslim software entrepreneur. But so many young Arabs and Muslims live in nations that have deprived them of any chance to realize their full potential.

The Middle East Media Research Institute, called Memri, just published an analysis of the latest employment figures issued by the U.N.`s International Labor Office. The I.L.O. study, Memri reported, found that ``the Middle East and North Africa stand out as the region with the highest rate of unemployment in the world``: 13.2 percent. That is worse than in sub-Saharan Africa.

While G.D.P. in the Middle East-North Africa region registered an annual increase of 5.5 percent from 1993 to 2003, productivity, the measure of how efficiently these resources were used, increased by only about 0.1 percent annually — better than only one region, sub-Saharan Africa.

The Arab world is the only area in the world where productivity did not increase with G.D.P. growth. That`s because so much of the G.D.P. growth in this region was driven by oil revenues, not by educating workers to do new things with new technologies.

Nearly 60 percent of the Arab world is under the age of 25. With limited job growth to absorb them, the I.L.O. estimates, the region is spinning out about 500,000 more unemployed people each year. At a time when India and China are focused on getting their children to be more scientific, innovative thinkers, educational standards in much of the Muslim world — particularly when it comes to science and critical inquiry — are not keeping pace.

Pervez Hoodbhoy, a professor of nuclear physics at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan, bluntly wrote the following in Global Agenda 2006, the journal of the recent Davos World Economic Forum:

``Pakistan`s public (and all but a handful of private) universities are intellectual rubble, their degrees of little consequence. ... According to the Pakistan Council for Science and Technology, Pakistanis have succeeded in registering only eight patents internationally in 57 years. ...

``[Today] you seldom encounter a Muslim name in scientific journals. Muslim contributions to pure and applied science — measured in terms of discoveries, publications, patents and processes — are marginal. ... The harsh truth is that science and Islam parted ways many centuries ago. In a nutshell, the Muslim experience consists of a golden age of science from the ninth to the 14th centuries, subsequent collapse, modest rebirth in the 19th century, and a profound reversal from science and modernity, beginning in the last decades of the 20th century. This reversal appears, if anything, to be gaining speed.``

No wonder so many young people in this part of the world are unprepared, and therefore easily enraged, as they encounter modernity. And no wonder backward religious leaders and dictators in places like Syria and Iran — who have miserably failed their youth — are so quick to turn their young people`s anger against an insulting cartoon and away from themselves and the rot they have wrought.

#42 by Zeena on February 22, 2006 10:19am PT



Now, answer to your question.Scientific evidence suggests that what we call objectivity is just a generally accepted form of subjectivity. Scientific research has to be subjective with comaprasion among different subjects to be used for inference.
Now, earth is round is an absolute subjective research, with different objective opinions in the past.


Before you subject us to your idiotic babbling, can you look up the meaning of the word subjective..i`ll help you a little..

sub·jec·tive
adj.

1.
1. Proceeding from or taking place in a person`s mind rather than the external world: a subjective decision.
2. Particular to a given person; personal: subjective experience.

Please, do interact with your ilks.


Yes..my ilks..non-retards..

Pakistan would have fared much better in science and technology if they had not
kicked out/killed/converted Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan during and after partition.

shishapa #45: you mean geniuses from India of the kind who show up on chowk??

Does India have a hoodbhoy, or are you all too busy crowing??

Re: # 46

You are right. I believe we are not in dire straits as far as the scientific research is concerned, but we definitely need more Hoodbhoys. They can only be a benefit to the society,

Thanks,

#46

Actually Hoodbhoy`s parents moved from India. Perhaps Bomaby or Gujarat.

Nice to know that some converted Hindus are of no use now. Conversion took their brains away too.