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Old October 23rd 03, 01:14 AM
Derek Lyons
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Default "Confidential" Internal Report Slams NASA Life Science Research

Jim Kingdon wrote:

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=10726
Internal Report Paints Bleak Picture of Human Life Science Research at NASA


Interesting.

One of the most interesting problems is (perhaps) the hardest to fix.
The sample sizes are really small and what resources there are (in
terms of crew time, number of subjects, etc) get divided up between
different investigators, some of which are doing duplicative research.

The report, of course, calls for eliminating duplication. Which might
make sense in some of these cases, but anyone who has followed large
organization politics knows that taking this too far eliminates all
internal competition. Especially bad in science, where reproducing a
result is considered more than just a frill.


Equally unnerving is the section where the author essentially claims
any experiment without a known valid solution *prior to flight* is
valuless.

D.
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