Comments on: The Russians: "Human DNA can be changed and rearranged with spoken words and phrases"

By: OtherMichael

OtherMichael — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 14:09:00 +0000

Ever read something in the mainstream media about the God particle?

Did it leave you feeling that the writer had a sound understanding of the issues, and imparted knowledge to you?

Or that they thought the whole thing was a laugh-riot or a waste of tax-money?

By: Gyrofrog

Gyrofrog — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 22:48:00 +0000

Thank heavens for subtitles!

By: novium

novium — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 11:11:00 +0000

This just makes me miss Fringe.

By: David Neil

David Neil — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 04:30:00 +0000

Me thinks some Russian scientists have been dropping some good acid and listening to some early Talking Heads!
http://youtu.be/Rvjw5xJF8WQ

By: C W

C W — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 04:16:00 +0000

“It’s interesting to find distorted truth in writing that’s obviously crap”

Spew out enough bullshit and you’ll hear something plausible.

By: C W

C W — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 04:15:00 +0000

Better than Deepak Chopra? This sounds ~exactly~ like “What the Bleep?!” to me.

By: C W

C W — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 04:14:00 +0000

“I do not want to waste the time on Pubmed and Google Scholar following up any more because I honestly don’t care enough”

Quelle surprise!

By: RElgin

RElgin — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 02:16:00 +0000

My kind of science project that will end up with a life time of funding. (slapping head many times)

By: David Guilbeault

David Guilbeault — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 01:45:00 +0000

>There was an excellent piece in the New Yorker about a >linguistics hobbyist who had created his own incredibly >complicated language with the aim of being able to
>express ideas with absolute precision.
Liebniz (the calculus guy) also made a similar effort.

By: piff_smoke

piff_smoke — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 01:14:00 +0000

The headline, and a few particular phrases in the article, are at the heart of an interesting question in current biology. This is obscured by most of the article.

It’s possible, of course, to read it as a “lol xD those crazy russians” story, or a “look at these stupid people who believe stupid things” story, or even a “evil pseudoscientists” story.

Stories about people believing pseudoscience are neither novel nor worthy of discussion.

Reading the piece somewhat more critically, a number of social and scientific tidbits jump out as being worth thinking about.

The tidbit that jumped out at me, because of my profession and training, happened to be the article’s distorted view of reasonably good science.

It’s interesting to find distorted truth in writing that’s obviously crap, and to examine the process by which current research becomes new age pseudomedicine. This, I hope, is obvious.

Incidentally, it’s also a nice way to bring up the topic of retrotransposons.

Hopefully that clarified things!

By: Derek C. F. Pegritz

Derek C. F. Pegritz — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:39:00 +0000

Wow–there’s the basis for my next sci-fi masterpiece already figured out FOR me!

By: Marko Raos

Marko Raos — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:12:00 +0000

Ah, those silly Russians, whenever did ever any of their crazy ideas come to anything…

Oh, wait…
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky for starters. What a weirdo, “rockets for space travel” while everybody sane knows that it’s either the big guns or balloons which might be conceivably capable of doing the job.. and that “space elevator” thing lol.. i mean it is 1895 and there is the Eiffel tower but… really man, get a grip. Next you’ll be telling us we’ll all be riding around in private motorcars and listening to sounds from the other side of the world via some invisible “waves” and shit.)

By: smut clyde

smut clyde — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:06:00 +0000

Use the power of Voice!

By: retchdog

retchdog — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 23:57:00 +0000

“My name is a killing word.”

By: retchdog

retchdog — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 23:56:00 +0000

60 Hz, right?

By: Rob

Rob — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 22:57:00 +0000

It’s obvious that DNA can be changed and affected with words.

“Hey babe, come here often?” – 9 months later, new DNA

By: miasm

miasm — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 22:50:00 +0000

What’s the frequency Кеннет?

By: Al Billings

Al Billings — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 22:48:00 +0000

Esperanto.

By: smut clyde

smut clyde — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 22:23:00 +0000

I feel obliged in the interests of random pedantry to point out that this particular line of fiction was popular over 5 years ago, when Orac was making fun of it:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/10/19/your-friday-dose-of-woo-reprogram-your-d/

At the Undergroundhealthreporter site they don’t believe in dating their articles, so I have no idea how recently they stumbled upon it.

By: Snig

Snig — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 22:19:00 +0000

I just did a facepalm and the percussion of the slap rearranged my DNA. All better now.

By: flyingmonkey

flyingmonkey — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 22:04:00 +0000

That was John Quijada – link here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/12/24/121224fa_fact_foer

By: Lemoutan

Lemoutan — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 21:29:00 +0000

Does this mean that the application of transformational grammars on our DNA can be used to change us from organisms implemented as statements to organisms expressed as questions? I think I’d like to be remodelled in the pluperfect.

By: John Merlin

John Merlin — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 21:16:00 +0000

The person doing the talking has to be the Dovahkiin.

By: gijoel

gijoel — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 21:14:00 +0000

I know how to turn you into a troll.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z4m4lnjxkY

By: spenze

spenze — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 20:33:00 +0000

Though, they clearly have poor reading comprehension. Snow Crash was actually more plausible.

By: dragonfrog

dragonfrog — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 20:23:00 +0000

Through the application of modulated radio and light frequencies, the Russians were able to influence cellular metabolism
De-bullshitified: We turned on the television and the kids calmed right down. Sergei managed to get some work done, and his blood pressure went down too.

By: Steve Taylor

Steve Taylor — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 20:22:00 +0000

There was an excellent piece in the New Yorker about a linguistics hobbyist who had created his own incredibly complicated language with the aim of being able to express ideas with absolute precision.

He remained an obscure hobbyist for many years until there was a groundswell of interest in his work in Russia. They flew him over to Russia for a conference, where he was appalled to find that his language was the centerpiece of a program to turn a bunch a slavic nationalists into supermen, so they could purge Russia of all corrupting foreigh/dark skinned/Jewish influences. They were also into an oddball mental discipline called “Psychonetics”.

I’m wondering if these might be some of the same people.

By: Brainspore

Brainspore — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:17:00 +0000

What are you, some kind of bugger lover?

By: chenille

chenille — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:17:00 +0000

It also seems you don’t care enough to read even the excerpt to see what they meant…but did enough to write a dozen paragraphs based only on the headline.
That is a very specific level of not caring.

By: Brainspore

Brainspore — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:16:00 +0000

“She turned me into a NEWT!”
(awkward pause)
“I got better.”