X-Message-Number: 15497
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 04:25:55 -0500
From: Paul Antonik Wakfer <>
Subject: Comments on Research - #15421, 15426, 15430

>CryoNet #15421
>From: 
>Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 13:25:13 EST
>Subject: detail
>
>As I have said, CI's web site will soon have more details and clarifications 
>concerning our procedures. But let me again explain some of the pitfalls.
>
>For researchers, detail can be useful or even essential.

It is more than useful and more than essential. Without it the research
has not been completed and any results should not be accepted as even
existing.

>But nobody is going 
>to repeat experiments to test the current CI procedures. Who is going to go 
>to that effort and expense? Certainly not some newcomer trying to educate 
>himself.

I have explained in a previous post why this view is both incorrect and
irrelevant to the notion of science.

>What about newcomers trying to choose between organizations? For some of 
>them, a lot of detail may seem comforting--"scientific" and "medical" and so 
>on. Like photos of a lot of people wearing surgical masks and green gowns. 
>(We usually use face plates and white over-suits, including shoe covers.) But 
>what will they think and do when they see differences of procedure, or 
>differences between CI procedure and something in the literature?

When Mr Ettinger continually mixes rigorous scientific method or sterile
medical procedures with statements about PR, window dressing, and
"newcomer" impressions, I really begin to wonder just how much of the
theory and practice of good scientific method this man understands.
I am reminded of an incident which happened to me when I was a Professor
of Mathematics at the University of Toronto in 1967. I received a
plaintive letter and "mathematical" paper from a man who very earnestly
told me his tale of woe about not being able to get any mathematicians
interested in his work or any journals willing to publish it, work which
he felt was very important and profound. I took some time to look at his
paper in detail and what I found was quite astonishing to me at that
time of innocent young adulthood. This man earnestly thought that if he
wrote down symbols, equations and words in a manner which *looked* like
mathematics then, in fact, he was *doing* mathematics! His paper was
logically meaningless, but this poor deluded man actually thought he was
doing real mathematics. I remember recalling at that time how as a very
young child, I had thought that writing was merely making squiggles on
paper. Then I did my best to make some squiggling, just like adults did,
and proudly showed this "writing" to my grandmother. Recently there was
an esoteric appearing post on sci.life-extension which was very similar.
It appeared to be something but was in fact, a meaningless association
of various numerical parameters of various chemicals.
Of course, I can't really believe that Mr Ettinger, who taught science
for many years, can really be this kind of deluded soul. Perhaps, he
merely assumes that the cryonics public are themselves not capable of
discerning good science from bad.
On the contrary, my method of dealing with everyone, children or adult,
has been to never spoon-feed them, and to always present the full
picture including all the tangles and negatives. Sometimes this large
picture must be presented in stages, but IMO, one should never present
false information at one stage which one then corrects at a later stage,
merely because the earlier stage is more "easily" presented with the
false information than the truth.

>Suppose they read that CI uses X% of glycerol, whereas some report in a 
>journal says that, in the context of a particular tissue type and procedure, 
>there are better results with Y% of ethylene glycol, especially if you throw 
>in Z% of DMSO. What is he to make of that? Should he try to guess which 
>approach is best? Should he suggest that we do another series of experiments?

More missing of the main point here.
The essential difference between what the published journal paper
contains and what CI reports contain is *not* those elements that Mr
Ettinger has mentioned above. No, the essential scientific difference is
that the published journal paper, and the log books from which it came,
contains a complete list of equipment used, and detailed enough
presentation of the method used including all parameters and
intermediate measured variables, to enable recreation of the experiment.
If it does not include these then it is not good science and will not be
reproduced nor believed by other scientists.

>But as for guessing which approach is best, based on general background 
>information, that is a potential snare. What counts, in the end, is the 
>testing and the evaluation of the tests by independent professionals.

No, what counts is the reproducibility of the results. If the
"independent professionals" are not professionals within the field of
science which they are being asked to evaluate, and do not know the
purpose and source of what they are evaluating then their evaluations
are of little worth. In addition, it is not unheard of for an
independent professional to happily take your money, wink to his
associates about your purposes, and then proceed to make an analysis and
to give you a report biased toward what you want to hear. 

>We 
>choose our experiments in light of what we believe to offer the most bang for 
>the buck, and we make our final (always interim) decisions based on verified 
>results. We have reported these.

It is highly regrettable that CI is spending all this money and making
these decisions with no guidance from anyone who understands the
requirements of the scientific method. What a sad waste of effort!

>CryoNet #15426
>From: "Jeff Grimes" <>
>Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 22:56:36 -0700
>Subject: More, er, questions

[SNIP]

Quoting David Pascal (private email):

>"(You should understand, incidentally, that funeral directors are degreed 
professionals who, in performing their normal function, >regularly do procedures
that closely parallel cryonic suspension protocols. It's not that we're 
instructing them in something >totally new and different. The replacing of blood
with enbalming fluid and the replacing of blood with glycerol perfusate, for 
>instance, are very similar procedures, which is why we've had success even with
last-minute cases.)" 
>

>But the funeral director (which seems to be the same thing as an 
undertaker)doesn't perfuse the patient with glycerol, does he? >And wouldn't a 
trained perfusionist be offended by your suggestion that his job is not so 
different from a mortician with an >embalming pump? I am not trained in 
medicine, apart from some EMT instruction, but I would imagine that perfusion 
and embalming >are very different indeed, bearing in mind that perfusion is a 
medical procedure for living people, while embalming obviously is >for people 
who have died.

To add to Jeff's perceptive remarks, how do you measure "had success"
until the patient is either restored or declared hopelessly
irrecoverable?

>CryoNet #15430
>From: 
>Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 04:49:44 EST
>Subject: Jiff Grimes--Chill Out...

>I understand that some of the people posting on, and reading from, this site 
>have been involved with cryonics for decades.  If it could be said that 
>"experts" in cryonics exist, they are likely well represented here, and 
>certainly so regarding the organizations discussed.

Actually, this is not so. Many of the most experienced and knowledgeable
cryonics "experts" are either too burned out and disgusted with CryoNet
(some even with cryonics as currently practiced) or are too busy with
productive (even cryonics enhancing) activities to bother with much of
what appears on CryoNet.


-- Paul --

The Institute for Neural Cryobiology - http://neurocryo.org
A California charitable corporation funding research to
perfect cryopreservation of central nervous system tissue
for neuroscience research & medical repair of the brain.
Voice-mail: 416-968-6291  Fax: 559-663-5511

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