We have higher levels of uric acid than most other mammals who home-brew their own Vitamin C. And uric acid has a sparing effect on Vitamin C. So extrapolating from goats to people is not a conversation-stopper.

I’ve experimented on a convenient guinea pig, myself. My conclusion, based on a sample size of one, is that the 60-mg Recommended Daily Allowance is a joke. However Pauling-sized doses have an interesting side-effect on me.

Despite my sustainable exercise routine and trying be mindful about when I’ve had enough to eat at each meal, I’m still slightly overweight, which is a risk factor for various health problems. Anyway, taking even 300 mg of Vitamin C at a meal increases my appetite. I need that like I need hole in the head! So Linus, wherever you are, please forgive this poor sinner.

One more point about Vitamin C. In the real world, we have to make decisions on the basis of less-than-perfect information. For most people, the risk of a Type 1 Vitamin C error is probably much smaller than that of a Type 2 error. You’re definitely not going to turn into a frog if you take more Vitamin C than you need–even if your physician makes stupid expensive-urine jokes.

Getting back to the larger issue. Yes, Pauling had incredible intuition about how the natural world worked. But he wasn’t a god. It’s still necessary for people with lesser minds to get their hands dirty, and do the bloody experiments. With better information, people will make better health decisions.

Linus was quite a character…one of my favourite scientists. Before his death, he was doing work with Matthias Rath on heart disease. They reached the conclusion that heart disease was due largely to levels of vitamin C being far too low in humans, causing leakage in the arteries. Vitmain C is a key component in the production of collagen, the glue that sticks cells together. Pauling theorized that humans had lost the gene responsible for producing it’s own vitamin C and that liporproteins had been evolved to plug holes in the arteries caused by the lack of C.

When Rath, through experiement in a lab setup for him by Pauling, discovered that lysil deposits were causing plaques to form in relation to the lipoproteins, Pauling immediately saw that the amino acid lysine could be used in conjunction with vitamin C to prevent heart disease and possibly reverse the effect of it. This has become known as the Pauling Formula, but it will no doubt be a century before it is taken seriously.

It wasn’t just that Pauling took ideas and threw out the bad ones, he had the ability to know what was good or bad when it came to ideas. For example, a 150 pound goat makes 12 grams of vitamin C for himself in a day, while the human makes none. Pauling saw the intelligence in that and wondered why the recommended daily allowance for vitamin C was so incredibly low. It’s barely enough to prevent scurvy yet C is the main ingredient in much of the bodily processes. It is involved twice in muscle growth alone. Pauling recommended 3 grams of C a day for humans, and took up to 18 grams a day for himself.

When it was suggested that was a waste, because humans just peed it out, Pauling went into the lab and proved that 5 grams of a 10 gram intake was retained in the body. He claimed the 5 grams expelled in the bowels helped prevent cancer. That was the difference between Pauling and other scientists, he didn’t hide behind double-blind studies, asking why they were necessary when an outcome was so obvious.

One thing you might add, Louis, is that the great scientists have no problem laughing at their mistakes. I can’t see any of the AGW ego-trippers ever getting over their mistakes. Linus Pauling once laughed at missing a third Nobel for discovering the structure of DNA. He was so close that a trip to England to consult with an xray crystallographer would have revealed the evidence he needed. Instead, he clung to another theory. Even Mrs. Pauling gave him gip for that. The point to note is that the discoverers of the structure, Watson and Crick, were so green they had to consult Pauling on how to put the theory together. That came about because Pauling’s son was hanging out with them.

In this manner, the possibility can be confused with the reality. If you take that to the nth degree, where it’s undecided whether atoms are particles or waves, reality could be energy fields with solid points. So reality moves closer to the dreamer’s philosophy that it is nothing more than an illusion. The danger in that thinking, however, is the obvious: it is nothing more than a thought, and a distorted one at that.

That is the philosophy that comes from science and it is a basis for quantum theory, some of which is completely absurd. Scientists get into thought experiments but they can get out of hand and confused with reality. The danger to a human, however, is in losing his/her grounding, or centering, a vague reference to the need to be in touch with where one actually is in life…the here and now. Many people spend large amounts of time in thought of future and past events, excluding the reality of now.

For me, I needed to get out of that mental space where everything, including reality, became merely a thought. The wall experiment was a good example to me that some things were too real to be avoided. Whereas it was fine to theorize about life, getting caught up in the theory was a serious problem to my awareness of what was actually going on. I never want to lose the understanding that a brick wall is only a collection of atoms bound together by inter-atomic forces yet I don’t want to lose the awareness that it is a real impediment for me if it’s in my way. From that point of view, acknowledging reality as a definite construct was far better than leaving it as an abstract reality.

I was in an awareness seminar once and got in a philosophical argument with the seminar leader. We were arguing reality and I was presenting some highly philosophical arguments about what it ‘might’ be, or what ‘might’ be possible. He called me on stage and pointed to a wall at the back of the stage and asked me if I could walk through the wall. In my demented mind at the time, I talked of the possibility one day of the atoms of my body fitting between atoms in the wall. He told me to cut the bullshit and walk through the wall if it wasn’t real.

That was my cure. Seeing that wall as a real object that I could not walk through started me on my way to becoming aware of the mental processes that distort reality for us. That’s when I got off the mental crap that afflicts most of us, the crap that leads us to believe reality is an illusion. Mind you, reality is far more than we think it is. We see real objects that appear to be solid and define them based largely on light shining off them. The notion, however, that the Earth’s reality would not exist without the human mind to qualify it is based on absurd arrogance.

It bothers me to admit that yet another socialist regime has messed up royally. The socialist idiots in power in the UK have set science back on its heels. The only comfort I can draw from the situation is that right-wing governments are just as bad on AGW theory, but that’s a small comfort.

The guy writing the article is telling it like it is. Whereas physics has gone too far into the objective, with it’s math-based calculations, it still represented a precise science in that an exam answer was ‘essentially’ right or wrong. Richard Feynman was quick to point out that a scientific fact should not only be supported by mathematical proof, it should also be explanable in words. He lectured on that basis, refusing to present a lecture he could not explain in words. There is room for both on a physics exam but abandoning mathematics-based problems is not on.

Having been there in the 70’s I am fully aware it was mainly, but not all a popular press driven “scare”, but hey what is different to now? Hindsight is a great skill.There is a considerable gap between what genuine science is stating and what the popular press reports. There is no more “real evidence” now for anything out of normal limits (geological time) than there was in the 70’s. Maybe the science was better then or at least properly reviewed and contested. One big difference is that research funding is quite different, far more political now.

So I will return to the point of my original post and related to the topic. How can a major university offer a science degree with so little hard science? And to be fair to the UWA they are not the only institution doing this. I await your on topic comments.

Louis: what is called “pseudoscience”? Also, can you not be more careful about what you are quoting, and what are your own words? If you’re quoting someone else’s words, put them in quotation marks.

Linus Pauling said something similar. During an interview, he was asked how one makes important scientific discoveries.

His answer. First you have lots of ideas. Then you throw out the bad ones.