"The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analysis, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness."
Dr. Richard Horton, editor in chief of Lancet.
"It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published or to rely on the judgement of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Medical Journal."
Dr. Marcia Angell, a physician and longtime editor in chief at the New England Medical Journal.
"The medical profession is being bought by the pharmaceutical industry, not only in terms of the practice of medicine, but also in terms of teaching and research. The academic institutions of this country are allowing themselves to be the paid agents of the pharmaceutical industry. I think it's disgraceful."
Arnold Seymour Reiman, Harvard Professor of Medicine and former editor in chief of the New England Medical Journal.
"Everyone should know that most cancer research is largely a fraud, and that the major cancer research organizations are derelict in their duties to the people who support them."
Dr. Linus Pauling, two time Nobel Prize winner
I don't know the date or provenance of these quotes, but I do know that the last two individuals have been dead for some time. Since 2014 in the case of the first, and since 1994 in the case of the second. These are not new problems of recent vintage. They've been true at least my whole adult life, and I'm now getting well past the median age.
Anyway, don't know if I'll have time today or not; I've been away on vacation for my nephew to get married, and I got caught up in a wave of covid cases that hit the wedding party; at least six that I know of: my daughter and son-in-law, my father-in-law, one of my nephews (the groom's younger brother), my own son, and of course me.
Needless to say, I'm behind on all kinds of crap, so my posting may be delayed. Of course, I seem to be the kind of person who can't focus on one thing for too long at a time, so sometimes taking a break to make a blog post hits the spot, so to speak, for improved productivity afterwards.
I do have one small update on my dice post from a little while ago. I wrote to Q Workshop about the discrepancy between the Legacy of Fire image and the actual dice. They wrote back and said that it was a real discrepancy; I didn't just get a bad batch or anything. They offered me a 30% off and free shipping as compensation. So... now I was motivated to buy more Q Workshop dice, direct from the source. :/
I got a set of the 7th Edition Call of Cthulhu dice, which I've always kind of wanted, and I got the macabre dice, which look like they're made up of hundreds of tiny skulls. With that, I think I'm permanently done with buying more plastic/resin dice. I can't imagine that I'll find some so wonderful that I'll really feel like I want them now.
I do, however, still have a few metal dice sets on my wishlist queue at Amazon. :/
When playing, I prefer to have 4-5 sets of dice "out" and available at once. I even have one of those little snapping trays that my daughter bought for me to keep them in. Why so many? Because there's plenty of times that you'll need to roll multiples of dice. If you roll 4d6, it's nice to have 4d6s, for instance, instead of rolling 1d6 four times. For a horror-themed campaign, I could get the Strange Aeons dice, the Call of Cthulhu dice, the Macabre dice and the Halloween dice, and then maybe a metal set for simple rolls of one dice at a time, and I'm good to go.
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