Re: OT: New imaging method enables detailed RNA analysis of the whole brain

And how would they do that? A virus that could only survive in communion wafers?

Not that anybody knows how to do that with something as simple as a virus. Religions work by brain-washing the young. So does science, but it is more careful about what it washes out and what it lets get back in.

The religious right in the USA seems to like Donald Trump, which is really very strange. He does tell them what they want to hear, but they really should have enough sense to realise that that is the only reason he spouts that kind of nonsense.

Except that it isn't any kind of religion. It's based on scientific investigation, not dogmatic assertion, though a dimwit like you isn't conscious of the distinction.

The people who are fed up with the persistent assertions are mostly those who stand to lose money when we start taking them more seriously.

You don't need plutonium to do that. Conventional explosives are perfectly adequte. And the main reason for not putting nuclear plants bsack on line is that they are inflexible and expensive.

What Trump wants isn't all that interesting. He changes his mind - what there is of it - much too frequently for the latest fad to be worth worrying about.

It is followed like a religion and a lot of the 'science' in the popular media is utter rubbish. There may be some good science somewhere, but unless it supports the popular beliefs and dogmatic assertions it is never heard - that seems like religion to me.

The Murdoch media do publish a lot of climate change denial propaganda. I'm sure that they are paid well for doing it.

There is a lot of good science in all the good science places. Newspapers like the Guardian with a commitment to publishing reliable information push the more digestible parts of it from time to time, but British science journalism isn't great. George Monbiot has specialised in the area, but he's unusual. Dutch science journalists do tend to have science degrees and can do better.

Good science doesn't look anything like religion. If you know enough to understand the science you won't make that mistake.

You appear to have misunderstood what I was trying to say. The results of good science are being ignored and suppressed because they don't support the 'religious' beliefs of those in charge. The politicians and the more ignorant of the people have been convinced by pseudo-science into believing things in a field they don't understand - so they take the simplic view: X=Good, Y=Bad which is fed to them by 'activists'.

The evidence that disproved the 'scientific' claims which led to racial segregation in some countries and racial purges in others was suppressed by politicians and activists because it didn't suit their dogma.

Only the flimsiest of evidence (if any) supported the bogus claim that lead leaching out of landfill was a major pollutant that could only be stopped by banning lead from solder. The evidence which would have shown that this was untrue was suppressed by politicians and activists because it didn't suit thier dogma.

Try getting a grant in a British university to do research that might produce evidence that some major aspects of the 'Climate Change' theory are nothing but bunkum based on selected measurements and warped statistics. You won't; evidence like that iwould be suppressed by politicians and activists because it doesn't suit thier dogma.

On the contrary, politicians and activists love it when they find duff ostensibly "scientific" research that purports to show that climate change is bunkum.

The scientific community hasn't had much trouble shooting them down.