Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings - <AUTHOR> https://www.spiegel.de/international/business/737-max-boeing-s-crashes-expose-systemic-failings-a-1282869.html <comment><USER2> > What's more, over the course of his 55 years in the profession, he [lawyer > Marc Moller] [has] learned that every plane crash can be traced back to a > single, simple cause.

I don't know, that strikes me as nonsense. It's precisely the interplay of many factors that lead to an accident - and if any one of them had been different, the outcome might have been different. See Reason's "swiss cheese" model of accidents - all the holes have to line up [1].

How you can go and designate one of these holes _the_ hole, the "single, simple cause" is beyond me. This doesn't do the complexity of engineering justice. Might help to win cases with juries, but I don't see how it could help to make flying safer.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model)

<comment><USER3> Forgive me a great deal of cynicism here. I suspect that a more accurate statement is "he learned that it works well for him to argue that every plane crash can be traced back to a single, simple cause."

We don't ask lawyers to do surgery. We don't ask them to design bridges. _And we don 't ask them to do root cause analysis._ We leave all of those things to those who actually know what they're doing in those areas.

<comment><USER4> You don't need to be able to analyze causes in order to count them.

<comment><USER5> No, but if you _want to prevent_ future incidents, it usually helps to have a more systemic view of failure. E.g. questions like: "what kind of management lead to decisions that made such misbehaviour possible?" are usually completely uninteresting for a lawyer, as they either play a legal role or not.

In real life a incident may be the emergent behaviour enabled by complex circumstances and a certain culture, all culminating in one crystalized point of failure. Think of causal chains: Managment pressures engineers and fires experienced older engineers, engineers are clearly not up to task, do something. Qualitt control might catch it but is circumvented by other managers who fake documents. The thing is not up to speck but wouldn't have failed if the pilots... etc.

This is what I mean by systemic emergent behaviour. All of these things were wrong or wreckless, but pinning it to one cause isn't doing reality a favour here.

<comment><USER6> And that's all well and good ... but his role isn't about preventing future incidents, it's seeking restitution for the victims and their families, nothing more, nothing less.

It is the job of regulators to figure out how to prevent future incidents, and it seems that the EASA will be taking the hardline lead on that as there seems to be a general mistrust of the FAA this side of the pond.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _Bickeböller 's complaint endangered the planned inauguration of the 787, > which had already been delayed due to technical difficulties. The problems > identified by the engineer, however, weren't addressed by Boeing, which is > why he turned to EASA in June. [...] In those papers, it states that > management and top executives at Boeing had ordered that the coordination > problems with the company's suppliers be "closed." The reason: "to get the > 787 production certificate."_

I, for one, hope this plane never flies again.

<comment><USER8> We're talking about the 787 here, not the 737 variant that's falling out of the sky. Despite initial teething issues (something all big systems like this have to some extent) the 787 has gone on to be a successful design. To say "I, for one, hope this plane never flies again" is an overreaction, especially since said problems have been fixed and the plane is in service without the issue popping up.

<comment><USER9> If those are teething issues, I'm scared to find out what you'd consider to be a serious problem.

<comment><USER8> Per TFA QA wasn't definitively being done not because they were too stupid to want it done but because of coordination issues with the suppliers because it was a new plane and they didn't have the process down yet. That is almost by definition teething issues. It takes some serious mental gymnastics to say with a straight face that coordination issues with suppliers when a product is first being made are not "teething issues." Sure, it points to systemic incompetency on some level but to say "I, for one, hope this plane never flies again." when the plane now has a proven track record of not being crap is an overreaction, to say the least.

<comment><USER10> My issue as a Quality Assurance practitioner, is that this excuse (coordination issues) quite literally pops up everywhere, and one of the first skills you need to master to get anywhere with a business is to nip that attitude in the bud. No one will let you have the license to test what needs to be tested unless you are willing to hold up the entire project until you get your results/questions answered.

It is not sufficient to get an unproven platform out there to build up "track record" to prove it is safe. That's ludicrous. That's how you get things blowing up, catching on fire, losing power, throwing turbine blades, what have you.

You have to have your your fundamental analysis done, and if you are integrating with a major system from someone else, you need to bloody coordinate with them, and ideally talk with their Quality department. If your plane is going to be spending a lot of time in Asia, testing how your turbine should up to the atmosphere there is not an unreasonable experiment to run. Expensive? Yes. Difficult to prepare? Yes. Unreasonable? Goodness, no.

The thing that scares the bajeezus out of me, is that I've not once come across anywhere that makes that kind of contact between organizational Quality departments feasible or efficient. In my pursuits, I basically end up having to do end runs around obstacles and become such a subject matter expert, I start asking questions that make other service providers nervous, because they don't know whether they're saying too much. I've spent so much time tearing stuff apart it's just natural to me to do so; but as I'm frequently reminded, I'm apparently not a typical specimen in my craft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is probably the best piece I've read about this:

"How the Boeing 737 Max Disaster Looks to a Software Developer"

[https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/how-the- boeing-...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/how-the- boeing-737-max-disaster-looks-to-a-software-developer)

<comment><USER10> Obligatory further reading repost.

[https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times- watchdog/the...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/the- inside-story-of-mcas-how-boeings-737-max-system-gained-power-and-lost- safeguards/)

EDIT: What? It's one of the better written articles that actually includes most of the technical details, plus some of the corporate environment related ones. The two articles together are basically guaranteed to contain all the essentials one needs to understand what happened.

<comment><USER12> The Seattle times has had some of the best reporting on this, presumably because they have been covering aviation for a long time. I've found some of the tech press have (not surprisingly) treated it too much as a technical issue in the sense of it being about broken software or hardware.

This whole disaster has been a great example of the importance of good systems and safety engineering, of effective oversight, and of a good safety culture. What is depressing about it is that the aviation industry worked hard for decades to develop an open and effective safety culture, and Boeing seem to have forgotten a lot of the painful lessons of the past.

Hopefully, if anything good comes out of this situation, it will be a reinforcement of the culture and mindset that has made commercial flight incredibly safe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I saw this documentary about issues with the 787 back in 2014, and it was clear that something was massively wrong at Boeing:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvkEpstd9os](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvkEpstd9os)

The engineers doing the work know what it takes to make a good airplane. Let them do their jobs.

</comment><comment><USER14> > _By the end, the planes had gained so much speed and were descending so > steeply that the pilots would have had to possess superhuman strength to > counter the pressure on the horizontal stabilizer trim._

I thought these systems were all fly-by-wire now?

Edit: Don't downvote for asking an honest question, guys. Thanks to the people who actually answered.

<comment><USER15> My understanding is that the 737 does not use Fly by wire [1] and if I remember correctly it's because they wanted to piggyback on the original 737 certification. I could be wrong.

1: [https://www.quora.com/Does-the-737-MAX-family-use-fly-by- wir...](https://www.quora.com/Does-the-737-MAX-family-use-fly-by-wire)

<comment><USER16> > I could be wrong.

You're not :-) The 737 still has direct mechanical linkages to the control surfaces. Changing that would require completely redesigning the aircraft.

<comment><USER17> What's the motivation for this? Regulatory, I get that. But why use direct mechanical linkage in an era where fly-by-wire would probably be faster/safer/etc?

<comment><USER18> I'm not a pilot, but from what I have read many pilots actually prefer mechanical linkage to the control surfaces. Sullenberger even indirectly blamed fly-by-wire systems (in this case the lack of a link between pilot and copilot controls) for the crash of Air France 447: [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/air-france- flight-447s-lessons-...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/air-france- flight-447s-lessons-four-years-later/)

<comment><USER19> One of the most popular features of Boeing aircraft is that there is a mechanical linkage between the yokes of the pilot and copilot.

Boeing's modern planes (not the legacy 737) have fly by wire where there is still a mechanical connection between the yokes. Thus you have the nice shared feel, but you have the benefits of fly-by-wire.

There have been accidents where fly-by-wire has been part of the problem but there have also been failures of the old mechanical linkage systems. Airliners have had active systems to cancel out unstable modes for a long time (e.g. to suppress "Dutch Roll" on the old 727)

The A320 has particularly been plagued by extreme "human error" situations where people crashed the plane after seemingly trying to crash it. For instance the first passenger flight involved a stunt that resulted in a crash. later on New Zealand regulators who were investigating fly-by-wire glitches tried to provoke the fly-by-wire system into failing when they were approaching a runway and they wound up dead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > _Boeing developed a software program that constantly monitored the angle of > attack. As soon as this angle became too risky, the Maneuvering > Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) would automatically lower the > plane 's nose without the pilot having to do anything at all. To do so, it > doesn't manipulate the rudder, but the horizontal stabilizer trim, the most > forceful control surface on the entire aircraft._

How could the rudder possibly be used to change the angle of attack? Isn't the horizontal stabilizer the only control surface that can do this?

<comment><USER21> It's the horizontal stabilizer. Which has two parts. The control surfaces controlled by the pilots yoke. And the trim system which adjusts the entire horizontal stabilizer. MCAS uses the trim motors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's obvious to me neither the FAA nor Boeing attempted to accurately replicate the first crash scenario, because this could have wholly averted the second crash. As soon as the planes were grounded, we were getting all sorts of reports about the stablizer being too hard to move and basically an unrecover situation.

Jail time is the only outcome I will accept.

<comment><USER2> How is it obvious to you that they didn't investigate the first crash sufficiently?

I'd say some time after the first accident it was reasonably well understood what had happened, and the FAA (and many others!) concluded that it was still safe to fly the plane, as the pilots could easily interrupt the accident chain by doing the right thing quick (as the pilots on the Lion Air flight preceding the accident flight had done).

Why that assessment was wrong is a complicated story that has to be examined carefully.

From what I gather, in aviation safety circles "jail time" is very rarely considered a wise answer. As soon as you threaten jail, people will cover their ass and obstruct investigations. Instead, the goal is and should be to examine the entire system to ensure accidents don't repeat, and by and large, the system works exceedingly well.

<comment><USER23> "as the pilots could easily interrupt the accident chain" \-- No they couldn't!

To survive a runaway trim, pilots had to know the rollercoaster maneuver and have enough altitude to aerodynamically relieve airloads off the jackscrew so they could manually trim the plane back. If FAA and many others knew this then they should have instantly communicated it to all boeing max pilots. Instead none of that happened.

<comment><USER24> This jives with what I've seen from blancolirio, MentourPilot and others sources. The pilots should've had memory items to disable _automation control_ of trim for the duration of the flight rather than _all electric control of trim (including yoke-mounted switches),_ because aerodynamic forces were too large and altitude was too low to manually spin the trim wheels. I do hope Ralph Nader sues the pants off Boeing for murdering his goddaughter through negligent homicide. The FAA is also culpable for failing to oversee self- certification properly and getting too cozy (regulatory capture) with Boeing. As a consequent, equipment models including the whole line of 737 NG (-600 to -900; 2010 Ducommun structural parts scandal), 787 Dreamliner failures and 737 Max 8 and 9 are models I would not step foot on without a gun to my head.

<comment><USER22> I have read some of the earlier reports that they changed how the electric trim works. On earlier 737's, there were two switches: one to kill automated input, one to kill all electrical input.

On the MAX's, the switches only kill all electrical input. So those procedures literally didn't apply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> At this rate they're getting a US bailout. I don't recall Boeing positive anything recently.

And as much as it fuckin irks me...US better throw them a juicy bailout if necessary. Because one aircraft manufacturer global monopoly would be a epic shitshow.

Boeing and Airbus have to walk away from this alive and roughly equal.

<comment><USER26> Don't worry, the duopoly will soon die. Comac is coming with the C919 and C929, and with a huge captive domestic market they are bound to succeed (given enough time).

I know I will sound cynical, but if the past is any indication of what's coming, it is entirely possible that a decade from now Airbus and Boeing won't be able to fight for Chinese orders anymore, while Comac will enjoy the ability to fight for every single American and European order...</comment></comment>


The Gig Economy Is a Rigged Economy - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-modern-team/the-gig-economy-is-a-rigged-economy-e4a2f8946fa#.ak2pwn31a <comment><USER2> > which projects a likely scenario: the end of salaries, the end of health > insurance, the end of pensions.

...which would likely result in socialized benefits to fill those gaps instead (and corresponding taxation to fund it). Yes, even here in the US, it will happen.

> rigged economy ... union membership has been declining for decades,

That's not all bad. The jobs that were unionized were replaced by others that one could argue there's less need for unions to represent.

> perks like "work from anywhere!" become the bullfighter's muleta

IMO the perk would be that incremental effort on my part has a much more direct impact to my compensation than it would be otherwise. And if I manage to find new efficiencies, I get the entire benefit.

> quiet financial desperation ... a need to be cautious of the loud and cool > becoming a smokescreen for the dismantling of knowledge worker labor > conditions.

This seems like a good point to take away from the article.</comment>


Physicists offer new theory on cancer - <AUTHOR> https://asunews.asu.edu/20130712_pauldavies_cancer_research <comment><USER2> Ah, yes, a university press release, with its well known role in the Science News Cycle.

[http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174](http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174)

I wish these researchers well. Cancer has been tough to treat,

[http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/why-havent-we-cured- canc...](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/why-havent-we-cured-cancer-yet/)

in large part because "cancer" is not really just one disease, but a general term for a variety of related diseases with many different kinds of outcomes and treatment trade-offs.

If someone can find a very general commonality to most cancers, with a treatment for that commonality that is safe and effective (and not too expensive) for human beings around the world, that person will of course win a Nobel Prize in medicine. Here on Hacker News, over the 1704 days that I have been here, I have seen many kind submissions of breathless claims of breakthroughs in cancer research. We all desire that cancer breakthroughs happen. Follow-up, so far, has not suggested that any such cancer breakthrough actually has happened. I wish the researchers well, and I hope to hear later about placebo-controlled multicenter clinical trials that show that this approach is safe and effective for human medicine.

<comment><USER3> Hum... the article does not talk about anything that could be _placebo- controlled multicenter clinically trialled_.

It's just about some dudes deriving conclusions from the relationship between embryo development and (what they call) cancer, with a couple of predictions thrown in to make their theory falsifiable. As a press release is not that bad.

<comment><USER4> "deriving conclusions from the relationship between embryo development and (what they call) cancer"

Except that they repeatedly say "The new theory predicts that as cancer progresses through more and more malignant stages, it will express genes that are more deeply conserved among multicellular organisms, and so are in some sense more ancient". So, just to be clear, they're not deriving conclusions from a relationship between embryonic development and (what they call) cancer - they're deriving a relationship from their conclusions.

Physicists poking their noses into fields they know absolutely nothing about and making grand pronouncements isn't new.

Why this is a 2013 press release I don't know - they basically published on this in 2011 ([http://iopscience.iop.org/1478-3975/8/1/015001](http://iopscience.iop.org/1478-3975/8/1/015001)) though they seem to be no further along now than they were then - which is nowhere, since in 2011 they were basically still saying "We think these are atavistic genes, here is the sort of research agenda that might reveal this..." and then they didn't undertake that research, as far as I can find. They're still just speculating on it.

<comment><USER5> Okay, you're right about deriving a relationship from their conclusions. At least mostly. There's certainly an interesting set of possibilities to be pursued where the idea is concerned with evolutionary processes and thinking outside the box of seeing cancer as purely a random mutation, and the problematic questions Davies and Lineweaver pose from that standing perspective.

Yes, they are speculating on a potential new direction of study based on being outside observers who specialize in physical systems and recognizing orchestrated, systemic actions.

However, let's dial down the disdain slightly, can we? These aren't physicists arbitrarily and whimsically "poking their noses into fields they know absolutely nothing about and making grand pronouncements". These are physicists who _have been asked_ to poke their noses into something they know absolutely nothing about and help existing specialists uncover potentially new avenues of research. Davies makes this very clear in his opening statements of the article. He admits he knew nothing about cancer, and started asking questions that were not typically the questions asked by standing specialists --who show a pattern of questioning and investigating cancer from that perspective of a random genetic mutation that occurs in humans, and not investigating the possibilities that might be found in questioning cancer as a feature of multi-cellular life as a whole.

Davies and Lineweaver are not saying this is the fundamental theory of what cancer is. They are suggesting it as a possibility of future research and investigation and, given their work in their own fields, I strongly suspect they'll be willing to update their notions based on evidence.

Who knows where we can get if more respected scientists joined cross- disciplinary programs that were aimed at collaborating on investigating and understanding various human concerns. It's not like the physicists who've joined these programs (of which Davies and Lineweaver are but two) are going to set back cancer research and treatment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Davies and Lineweaver are currently testing this prediction by comparing gene expression data from cancer biopsies with phylogenetic trees going back 1.6 billion years, with the help of Luis Cisneros, a postdoctoral researcher with ASU's Beyond Center."

Press releases for untested scientific conjectures (further nerd-rage inducing by calling it a "theory" in official communication) raises a red flag for me: it suggests that the investigators aren't fully skeptical of whether their conjecture actually represents the real world, and increases the probability that they'll introduce bias in their investigation.

The article ([http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/indepth/2013/jul/01/expo...](http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/indepth/2013/jul/01/exposing- cancers-deep-evolutionary-roots)) is 100% hand-waving imo:

"Could it be, we wonder, that cancer's predilection for a hypoxic environment reflects the prevailing conditions on Earth at the time when multicellularity first evolved, before the second great oxygenation event?"

"Wondering," alas, is not science! We need a model, a hypothesis, and a well- controlled experiment to actually discern truth.

<comment><USER4> "Could it be, we wonder, that cancer's predilection for a hypoxic environment reflects the prevailing conditions on Earth at the time when multicellularity first evolved, before the second great oxygenation event?"

Could it be that once cells are approximately 2-3 cell-diameters away from a blood vessel they die of hypoxia, and thus cannot break through a basement membrane and achieve metastasis without evolving a tolerance for hypoxia? This is essentially the cancer-specific version of the anthropic principle.

I love it when physicists start spinning yarns about other people's fields.

<comment><USER5> They are hardly "spinning yarns". Did you miss the part where they were _asked_ to be part of a cross-disciplinary program, along with other physicists, to bring fresh ideas to the field of cancer research? They are doing what they were asked to do, and wrote an article on it. It's hardly a setup for clinical trials in which human lives are at stake, so I think we can, while holding out for evidence that increases the probabilities of certainty in this theory, allow them to do what they've been asked to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Physicists have made great contributions to molecular biology, but this isn't one of those cases. This one is so wrong at so many levels it's hard to to justice to it. Much of it just misinterprets things we already know.

In the article it says:

 _Davies and Lineweaver claim that cancer is actually an organized and systematic response to some sort of stress or physical challenge. It might be triggered by a random accident, they say, but thereafter it more or less predictably unfolds._

There's nothing new here. Cancer is basically deregulated cellular replication and proliferation. These are core processes in multicellular organisms, so of course they unfold predictably. The trigger is often a mutation ("random accident") in a key regulatory gene.

The article says the new theory "challenges the orthodox view that cancer develops anew in each host". But we know that the mechanism of proliferation does not develop anew in each cancer; only the trigger is different in different cancers.

The physicists say _"We envisage cancer as the execution of an ancient program pre-loaded into the genomes of all cells," and that "it will express genes that are more deeply conserved among multicellular organisms, and so are in some sense more ancient."_

Since cellular replication programs are deeply rooted and ancient because they are fundamental processes, this shouldn't be surprising.

"Sure enough, cancer reverts to an ancient form of metabolism called fermentation, which can supply energy with little need for oxygen, although it requires lots of sugar." Guess they are unaware that your muscle cells do they same when they are starved for oxygen! Anaerobic "fermentation" is a standard part of our metabolic system under certain conditions.

This goes on and on...

<comment><USER8> I don't see you pointing out anything that is wrong?!

I also disagree that all that stuff should be obvious to everybody. Certainly wasnt to me, although it makes sense, which is why it's interesting. Rather than saying "hell, anybody can get cancer and we have no idea why" these guys seem to think about its role in evolution. They are thinking about it not as a random mutation but as an intentional genetic program which just makes much more sense.

Like in any criminal investigation, answering the cui bono question is imperative. I agree with the people in the paper actually: A deeper understanding is necessary. We dont know whether that will lead to a cure but as a software engineer its my experience that you can't fix a bug you don't understand. (And it amazes me so many of my fellow engineer try....)

<comment><USER7> _I also disagree that all that stuff should be obvious to everybody._

It doesn't. But not everybody publishes something in journals. When you do, you have a responsibility to know your subject.

 _They are thinking about it not as a random mutation but as an intentional genetic program which just makes much more sense._

This actually makes little sense to me. The replication machinery and programming is deeply established, not a random mutation. The mutation is in the genes that regulate the system. The inappropriate execution of the replication is the key and that's well established to arise from mutational changes in regulatory elements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a biologist and chemist studying cancer, this sounds an awful like the "ontology recapitulates phylogeny" theory which, while a cute just-so story, turns out to be a particularly misleading way of looking at developmental biology.

and now I'm going to be pithy: Looks like some physicists think oncology recapitulates phylogeny.

<comment><USER10> _As a biologist and chemist studying cancer, this sounds an awful like the "ontology recapitulates phylogeny" theory which, while a cute just-so story, turns out to be a particularly misleading way of looking at developmental biology._

It is misleading, but with a small kernel of truth that appears in the article.

That kernel is that there is little evolutionary pressure to cause changes in early development, and huge potential consequences to adjustment there, so early development is remarkably stable across many species. And this conservation goes right down to the genetic level. Thus it is wrong that we trace out our evolutionary heritage, however it is true that there are similarities between early development of distant species, and that commonality is due to conserved genes that evolved a very long time ago.

(There is, of course, another commonality. And that is the observation due to Gould in _Ontogeny and Phylogeny_ that a lot of the raw material for evolution comes from altering the timing and rates of existing development processes, rather than from introducing "new" features.)

<comment><USER9> That cancer is predominantly not "just" a mutagenic defect but that it more specifically recruits developmental controls and make them go go awry is relatively new in biology, but not revolutionary.

<comment><USER11> Can you quantify "relatively new"? It was clear to me 10 years ago, and I thought it was common knowledge, but then everyone I talked to (especially people from medicine and biology) called it "an novel, interesting theory" when I talked about it (and had to explain why that would make sense).

If there's a name or reference for this theory, I would appreciate a link.

[ My argument that gets the "novel and interesting" theory remark is that in many cases cancer becomes "chemo resistant" after much shorter than any multicellular organism would -- thus, it can't just be a random mutagenic defect, and must involve non trivial developmental/evolutionary machinery. I don't remember where I picked it up, and it might have had a different form, but it was over 10 years ago ]

<comment><USER9> yeah, that's probably about right. I had first started hearing about it 3 years into grad school (i.e. 6 years ago), and I wasn't really a biologist with an interest in oncology until recently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am surprised that the majority of comments ridicule or scorn this idea. I found it to be at least an explorable link, even if it would yield no practical cure. It was nice to know which genes are involved, which still makes no claim on the trigger of cancer. It merely states that forms of stress could activate this, and this still would be in line with current theory of one-off mutations (that is, the tangible result after the event).

<comment><USER13> >even if it would yield no practical cure.

But it seems they suggest something, indirectly: go jogging (more oxygen) and ban/reduce sugar consumption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> PZ Myers, a biologist, gives a good reaction to some earlier news on these physicists at [http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/04/26/aaargh- physici...](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/04/26/aaargh-physicists/)

<comment><USER15> I stopped reading PZ Myers quite a while ago - he's almost entirely negative, and doesn't seem to be able to do much more than flame other people.

eg. his little diatribe on Haekel. Ok, Haekel was wrong, but the initial processes behind embryo development must still be pretty old, right? Nope, apparently, even mentioning Haekel == wrong, and your whole argument is wrong and you're stupid and should be embarrassed, etc, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Reading that title, I couldn't help being reminded of [http://xkcd.com/793](http://xkcd.com/793)

<comment><USER17> My thoughts exactly!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I love the fact that physicists are looking at this problem. I really love the way they think--that there are underlying elegant solutions to inherently messy problems. I think it speaks to how much you think the universe makes sense underneath everything, and they see it on a daily basis. Hence, the success and reknown of an Einstein for example: someone who takes the currently-best-known-answers and makes them simpler, more elegant.

I think this sort of thinking needs to be applied in many more fields than it is, and it's very encouraging to see some people from outside the traditional medicine groups even looking at this supremely important problem. We don't need more drug studies, we need more root cause analysis.

</comment><comment><USER19> A physicist chiming in on matters outside of the field of physics? Why am I not surprised.

Relevant SMBC: [http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2556](http://www.smbc- comics.com/?id=2556)

<comment><USER5> Chiming in? These physicists were asked to join 12 cross-disciplinary centers with other cancer specialists, setup by the US National Cancer Institute, and Davies was asked to lead one such center. He's not chiming in on anything; he's doing the job he was asked to do.

Whether this theory ever gets beyond discussions with field experts is another story. But as it stands, he's not just lobbing fly balls to the outfield for no reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "This could provide clues to future treatments. For example, when life took the momentous step from single cells to multicellular assemblages, Earth had low levels of oxygen. Sure enough, cancer reverts to an ancient form of metabolism called fermentation, which can supply energy with little need for oxygen, although it requires lots of sugar.

Davies and Lineweaver predict that if cancer cells are saturated with oxygen but deprived of sugar, they will become more stressed than healthy cells, slowing them down or even killing them. ASU's Center for the Convergence of Physical Science and Cancer Biology, of which Davies is principal investigator, is planning a workshop in November to examine the clinical evidence for this."

This stood out at me as particularly interesting - especially as someone that tries to limit sugar and carbohydrate intake. I've heard other theories about sugar helping cancer spread - does anyone have more information or research on this?

</comment><comment><USER5> Source article (requires login): [http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/indepth/2013/jul/01/expo...](http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/indepth/2013/jul/01/exposing- cancers-deep-evolutionary-roots)

</comment><comment><USER21> Is it true that the latest scientific consensus about cancer is that it is the result of random genetic mutations?

Yet there are only about 200 well defined types of cancer that just appear over and over again, millions of times per year?

And then someone suggests that the mechanism and progression path might be embedded into our DNA, and it gets called pseudoscience?

<comment><USER22> No, it is not true that the scientific consensus on cancer is that it is caused exclusively by random genetic mutations. Different cancers have different causes. There are, for instance, a small number of viruses that together cause a sizable fraction of cancers. Viruses make fairly specific genetic changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Sounds like they are coming up with testable predictions, so rock on! That's how it works in physics. Come up with a model, check the predictions, if the model is nuts but predicts well, you have no choice but to accept it until something better comes along. See General Relativity and it's bizarre time space bending and stretching. And Quantum Mechanics. All the biologists going nuts in this thread sound just like people who couldn't accept things can be in multiple states at once.

</comment><comment><USER24> I believe PZ Myers offers the definitive verdict.

[http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/11/20/aaargh- physici...](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/11/20/aaargh-physicists- again/)

<comment><USER25> Myers visits the Davies/Lineweaver speculations three times, in April 2011 [0], November 2012[1], and December that year. PZ is quite scornful in all three posts, but after all, he is a biologist specializing in developmental biology -- so he can be assumed to know the literature, and the details of cell biology, which he claims they very clearly do not.

[0][http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/04/26/aaargh- physici...](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/04/26/aaargh-physicists/) [1][http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/11/20/aaargh- phy...](http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/11/20/aaargh-physicists- again/) [2][http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/12/19/aaargh- go-...](http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/12/19/aaargh-go-away- silly-physicists/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This doesn't really sound like a completely new theory; Haeckel proposed in the 1800s that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny", and it is widely understood that cancer is like a de-differentiated state.

</comment><comment><USER5> From the source, Davies' argument (for those who don't want to register for _Physics World_ ):

Cancers prevalence among multi-cellular organisms indicates it is "deeply embedded in the logic of life". It is found among mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and other organisms. The human genome is pre-loaded with a "cancer sub-routine" that is triggered by various factors. Once triggered, most cancers follow a similar pattern: reproduce uncontrollably in a specific organ, then spread throughout the host, invading and colonizing other organs and parts of the bodies with the help of tumors.

> _The overall impression is of a carefully orchestrated and pre-programmed > strategy--its aim to multiply cancer cells and colonize new sites--which is > unleashed when neoplastic cells somehow evade the normal regulatory > mechanisms of the organism and embark on their own agenda._

Seeing a "highly organized and efficient behaviour in biology" leads Davies and Lineweaver to suspect evolutionary mechanisms at play. Davies finds that orthodox explanations describing cancer as random genetic mutations starting from scratch leave too many unanswered questions--such as why they are fitter than the existing healthy cells in a body, why such random mutation provides "a whole series of mutually supportive survival traits ... in a period of just years of months", why dormant cancer returns in the same organ after a primary tumor is removed, or "why cancer cells deliberately transplanted into certain tissues, or cancer nuclei into healthy cells, often results in normal behaviour", while the reverse process results in cancerous cells.

Thus, from a physics perspective, "there are clues pointing to cancer as a phenomenon influenced by forces and fields--not one that is purely ruled by genetic instruction." Sadly, the article never dives into more on this physics perspective and what kinds of forces and fields may be at play, instead turning to evolutionary biological arguments from embryonic development applied to cancer development.

> _Cells are usually regulated by mechanisms that instruct them when to > multiply and when to die. What we believe is that when these mechanisms > malfunction, the cells revert to the default option, a genetic subroutine > programmed into their ancestors long ago, of behaving in a selfish way._

> _Lineweaver and I suggest that genes that are active in early-stage > embryogenesis and silenced thereafter – which, by our hypothesis, are > generally the ancient and highly conserved genes – may be inappropriately > reactivated in the adult form as a result of some sort of insult or damage. > This trigger serves to kick-start the cascade of maladaptation events we > identify as cancer. So the "cancer subroutine" is really just a re-run of an > embryonic developmental program. We envisage a collection of ancient > conserved genes driving the cancer phenotype, in which the metastatic > mobility of cancer cells and the invasion and colonization of other organs > merely reflects the dynamically changing nature of embryonic cells and their > ability to transform into different types of tissues._

> _The big picture is that we attribute cancer 's survival traits to deep > evolution on a billion-year scale, rather than orthodox explanations that > point to evolution from scratch with each case of the disease. In our > theory, the latter remains true, but is a small perturbation._

The ASU article covers much of the rest of the original article by Davies. ASU just left out much of the lead-up to how they arrived at their conclusions.

 _Physics World_ also has a lot more coverage in the current issue, entitled "Physics of Cancer". The entire issue can be downloaded as PDF here: [http://physicsworld.com/cws/download/jul2013](http://physicsworld.com/cws/download/jul2013)

</comment><comment><USER27> Well, as a molecular biologist I can't say I ever saw cancer in any other way. What's so new about this?

We all know that embryonic, proliferation and stem cell associated pathways like the Wnt pathway and the PI3K pathway commonly are the ones that get out of hand in cancers. We also know that proliferation in single cells is the highest goal and that the uncontrolled division of a single cell (as it probably did when still living alone) leads to problems in higher organisms. If the fail-safes that developed to allow for multicellular organisms fail to prevent the egocentric behaviour of individual cells and a cell reverts back to a "divide as fast as you can"-state, they become what we call cancer cells.

I fail to see the news value in this article.

</comment><comment><USER28> Odd. I always assumed that cancer was a natural part of a living organism, and that what got disrupted was the "cancer suppression mechanism" (not a technical term). The fact that cancer evolves anew in every patient seems very... improbable.

<comment><USER5> Yeah. Similarly, I pretty much landed (around a decade ago) on seeing cancer as little more than a small subset of death for which we'd identified features and given it a name--i.e., before humans identified cancer, people just died for then-unknown reasons (which were likely, at given points in history, called 'natural causes'). Once we identified cancer, people 'got cancer' and, subsequently, a varying percentage of such people died, with that percentage declining as understanding and treatment improved. I remain fascinated by cancer research and the hope for a cure because I remain fascinated by seeing humans practicing science discover more ways to identify death and prevent it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I get nervous when physicists wander too far from Physics. They're a smart lot, but look what happened when they went into Finance. :-) It takes a while to apply the math skills properly elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER30> ho-hum newbie-think

consider the source

"Arizona State University Regents' Professor in ASU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. "It is rather like Windows defaulting to 'safe mode' after suffering an insult of some sort." <snicker> It's probably as attractive and simplistic as the old saw "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny". Kinda true at some levels, but not really. Sometimes functionally useful. Certainly not new. Wanna contribute to ASU? Have I got a real smart guy for you..... Or is that the London Bridge in Arizona?

</comment><comment><USER31> Off-topic: Does it bug anyone else that this guy's desktop is 3/4 covered in icons?

<comment><USER21> That's what my desktop looks like.

I use it to store any file that I save because it's the first spot that pops up (and the easiest one to find no matter where you are) in Windows Explorer or when you right click and say "save as".

Then every few months I shove them all into an "old desktop" folder.

The horror.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> if you turned the gene off would you be able to have kids though?

</comment><comment><USER33> This bullshit is bullshit incarnate.</comment>


Mint.com for Networking - <AUTHOR> http://signup.xfluential.com

<comment><USER2> I would have been more inclined to provide my email if I knew or saw more about the product. I understand people want to do customer development and such but I think I have launch rock fatigue. Without more info this feels too much like testing out an idea to see if people even care.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am part of this team. We are already funded and building the product right now. I understand the concerns about just testing out an idea. But we will be rolling out the launch in the next couple of months.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for replying.

After registering, a link to "blog" appears, but there is no blog. Will there be? And if so, when?

Is there anywhere else to find information about xfluential beyond your 207-character comment above? I see no status updates on Facebook nor tweets on Twitter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we will begin posting on the blog in the next couple of weeks. Plan on sending out updates to the emails that register for updates. These updates will also include at times screen shots and additional information on the feature set.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a subject that nerdy hackers could always use help with. This launching page doesn't say much about the actual product though.</comment>


Why Americans still use Fahrenheit - <AUTHOR> http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/why-americans-still-use-fahrenheit-long-after-everyone-else-switched-to-celsius/ar-BBhDwLI

<comment><USER2> These types of articles are always like: "Americans are so backwards for using Imperial measurements instead of metric!!!1!". I will take them seriously when they advocate abolishing the idiotic hour/minute/second paradigm of time. The reasons for not switching from 24/60/60 to a base-10 time measurement is as equally valid as American's reason for not switching from Imperial to Metric.</comment>


Prison Camps in Siberia - <AUTHOR> http://spartacus-educational.com/RUSsiberia.htm

<comment><USER2> A very good movie about escaping a prison camp in Siberia, by the way (somewhat inspired by real events, but you better take it all with a grain of salt): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_Back](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_Back)

EDIT: spoiler alert, thank you Wikipedia

</comment><comment><USER3> Good way to compare pre and post revolution Russia is to take number of officers in police and other repressive forces. Tsar had police apparatus comparable to France. Soviets had almost 15% of population in repressive forces.

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra Tsarist russia did not hesitate sending prisoners (including revolutionaries) to Siberia or other prisons, but in the 100 years they probably killed less than early USSR managed in one year, and USSR had multiple of such years.

Where tsarism will bother to send you out communists will just shoot you, problem solved.

UK also was shipping prisoners to Australia where most of them died en route. Oops. Took them several decades to figure shipping out.

<comment><USER4> Early on, the UK also shipped their detritus to the US

<comment><USER5> Britain also transported the convicts to Australia:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convicts_in_Australia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convicts_in_Australia)

<comment><USER5> Quoting from the same link the support for my claim that Britain also transported the convicts to Australia:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convicts_in_Australia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convicts_in_Australia)

"Between 1788 and 1868, approximately 162,000 convicts were transported to the various Australian penal colonies by the government.[1]

The British government began transporting criminals to overseas colonies in the 16th century. When transportation to the American colonies declined with the move towards American independence in the 1770s, an alternative site was needed to avoid further overcrowding of British prisons and hulks. "

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That sounds unpleasant.</comment>


China Premier Li Keqiang: 'Economic Openness Serves Everyone Better' - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-26/china-premier-li-keqiang-economic-openness-serves-everyone-better <comment><USER2> Sure is funny seeing China of all countries lecture others on free trade, when they themselves are heavily protectionist [1,2,3], and they allow almost no immigration [4,5] - their population is almost mono-ethnic, with the minorities mostly other indigenous asians [6].

But the media just obediently repeat their press releses, without calling them out on any of it...

[1] [http://www.weeklystandard.com/how-chinese-regulatory- authori...](http://www.weeklystandard.com/how-chinese-regulatory-authorities- impose-protectionist-trade-policies/article/903435) [2] [http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/24/protectioni...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/24/protectionist- u-s-free-market-china-not-so-fast.html) [3] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/douglasbulloch/2016/10/12/protec...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/douglasbulloch/2016/10/12/protectionism- may-be-rising-around-the-world-but-in-china-it-never-went-away/#10b57567143f)

[4] [http://www.china.org.cn/english/MATERIAL/79853.htm](http://www.china.org.cn/english/MATERIAL/79853.htm) [5] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_China) [6] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_demographics#Ethnic_gr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_demographics#Ethnic_groups)</comment>


Tipjoy's experiment in virality on Twitter: Happy birthday Shaq - <AUTHOR> http://happybirthdayshaq.com/ <comment><USER2> whoops. <http://twitter.com/the_real_shaq> : "Stay away fr. Happy Bday Shaq site. Nothin ta do wit me. Shudderdown. Shame shame All I want is friends, thank u all"

<comment><USER3> Why whoops? Burger King's Whopper campaign got shut down by Facebook, but that doesn't mean it wasn't successful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Neat/funny idea, but Shaq doesn't need my money. Celebrity obsession is a foolish passion that I've never understood.

<comment><AUTHOR> If he takes interest, he'll undoubtedly use it to buy the Twitter team lunch or give it to a charity. We also hear he's a really good tipper :-D

Have you seen his tweet stream? He keeps it more real than most regular people I know on Twitter, e.g. [http://betaworks.com/post/80027230/shaq-keepin-it-so- real-it...](http://betaworks.com/post/80027230/shaq-keepin-it-so-real-its- scary)

<comment><USER5> Here's the back story: [http://sesquipedalis.blogspot.com/2009/02/finally-use- for-tw...](http://sesquipedalis.blogspot.com/2009/02/finally-use-for- twitter.html) (via @timoreilly)

Definitely keepin it real.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is not to be confused with Shaq's virility, which from his tweets is undoubtedly impressive.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We were asked to take down the site. Sigh...

<comment><USER6> Can you say who? Shaq or Twitter?

<comment><AUTHOR> Neither. Someone from the Phoenix Suns, note: <http://twitter.com/tipjoy>

We'll try to move it to be a charitable angle, rather than direct cash.

<comment><USER7> Did the site even mention the Suns anywhere, or do they literally own Shaq?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm actually curious about how that business works. We had a picture (remixed from Shaq's twitter profile page <http://twitter.com/the_real_shaq> ), with him in a Suns jersey. Presumably he has people both for his personal brand and also those for the team he leads. I doubt the Suns would care much about, for example, a pirate copy of his music or movies.

One thing is pretty clear: Shaq is authentic on twitter, but the account is managed and monitored by a number of interested parties. That is obvious when you think of him like any other brand, but has left me a bit jaded about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Failed:

<http://twitter.com/tipjoy/status/1285537683>

"a representative from the Phoenix Suns asked us. I presume the gifting / money site is what they didn't like."

Ouch. That sucks.

</comment><comment><USER3> This reminds me of high school when people would safety pin dollar bills to the birthday boy/girl's shirt... but 'web 2.0'.

Great idea. Probably the best marketing ploy since Burger King's Facebook Whopper campaign, and Shaq was the perfect choice.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have a strong distaste for using Twitter as a marketing tool, in particular "forced" viral marketing, as I call it (where you _have_ to follow and/or tweet something in order to participate somehow... the "ViralTweets" software is the worst).

The Shaq thing is kind of clever, but if someone I followed spammed me with more spammy things I'm very likely to unfollow them.

</comment><comment><USER9> yikes... <http://twitter.com/THE_REAL_SHAQ/status/1285621312></comment>