Nobel Prize Winner Needed

Position open for scientist, Biologist or Chemist
preferable. Base salary, with winnings
from Nobel Award, quite substantial.

I’ve said it before, and quite a few others have said it
before me, that in some key respects, Western science is lagging behind many
ancient cultures in some important observations and discoveries. We who live in the West need someone to step
up and help us to catch up to the rest of the world, ironically the ancient
world.

Ever since Francis Bacon and Descartes, there has been a
distinct nose turn upping at all observations and findings that anyone outside
of a very insular scientific community may have stumbled upon. With an almost Harry Potter like wave of a
wand made of blackboard chalk, all of the ancient sages and wise men were
rendered silly and stupid, believers in things completely untrue. It was as if the Great Pyramids were of no
relevance in determining whether or not the ancient Egyptians had superior
engineering skills. Or that the ancient
Chinese had no ability to observe nature, despite their many advances in
technology that helped move the West out of a culture of subsistence farming
and general ignorance.

This arrogance became embarrassingly clear in the early
1970s, when Richard Nixon visited mainland China and news crews took footage of
a medical operation, brain surgery if I recall, using only acupuncture as an
anesthetic. For most everyone living on
this side of the Pacific, it was the first time anyone had ever seen or heard
of acupuncture. There were questions
asked by the newsfolk, and we found that is was a practice done for thousands
of years, that it can treat many illnesses, especially chronic ones. Then the Western scientists weighed in, and I
remember this quote—that they (the Chinese) may use it, and it may work, but the Chinese have
no idea how it works. Right. They’ve been using it for thousands of years,
there are textbooks and teachers, but none of them have any idea what they’re
talking about. Just scientifically
embarrassing for our scientists who weren’t in any mood to act like scientists.

Fast forward thirty years.
Alan Alda is hosting a show for PBS, something like Science
Frontiers. In those thirty years
alternative medicines have become a multi-billion dollar industry. And so scientists are paying more attention,
and doing their method to substantiate or disprove the validity of
acupuncture. That is, they are testing
acupuncture in a double-blind study.
It’s a scientific heksher. They
have someone do a stress test for a baseline reading, then they needle him up
along “what is called the heart meridian”, and find that his results are in
fact much better. It would appear that
acupuncture does have a beneficial effect.
But we aren’t done with the study.
Those results could have been luck.
So, the scientists pick a “meridian” that is not in any way related to
the heart meridian, and they chose….the Small Intestine. Right now all of those familiar with
acupuncture are smiling if not laughing out loud. The Heart Meridian is Heads, the Small Intestine
is tails. There isn’t a meridian more
closely related to the heart than the small intestine. The scientists would have known this if they
just picked up a book and read about acupuncture, or picked up a phone and
called one of the hundreds of acupuncturists in their city. But nope, can’t use that data. Of course, the needled up dude does better
again, and they conclude that it’s just the needles placed anywhere randomly (!)
that produces the benefit.

Heaven forbid they should give any validity to the idea of
Chi. The nature of their methods, that
only biochemical data counts, means they can never discover the energetic
component of the human body. So whoever
discovers Chi, and therefore also is able to better define life (Do you know
that the present scientific definition of life is if something eats, moves, and
poops, it’s alive. Pretty pathetic. What is making the thing move, eat, and poop? Dunno, says the biochemist.)might just win Big Science Prize.

The ancient Hindus called it prana, the Jews call it Nefesh,
the Chinese call it Chi. And that’s just
one part of it. The Hindus call it
Kundalini, the Jews use the story of the snake four different times in the
Torah, showing that it can harm or heal, that it can enslave us (insert
gratuitous Eliot Spitzer comment here) or free us, and the Chinese celebrate
with the image of the slithering dragon.

So, if you’d like to win a Nobel Prize, someone “discover”
this. We sure as heck need it.