N.Wells
Posts: 1836
Joined: Oct. 2005
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Yes, really.
You made a completely bogus assertion about why they had been taken seriously. | Quote | | I guess this is "real science" because they are modeling from a public database a whole bunch of "scientists" are now playing with these days, which when modeled will even make the corresponding neurons in the virtual mouse's brain light up when you stroke their whiskers. Wow!! |
I explained why they were taken seriously, when you are not. They laid their foundations by being well versed in the fundamentals of their fields, following established terminology except for providing clear redefinitions where needed, tried to match what they were doing to reality, and so on and so forth:
| Quote | | [from me] No, it's real science, because, unlike you, they take pains in "bringing together multiple sources of data of varying detail into a single virtual model and testing this against reality." They don't just build on assumptions and assertions without ground-truthing, and then jump to all manner of unjustified conclusions. They document relevant evidence, provide decent definitions where appropriate, demonstrate a solid understanding of prior work, and don't abuse standard terminology. All of that makes their work worthwhile, unlike yours. |
You do none of the stuff that is required of good science, without which you extremely unlikely to succeed, and without which no one, including you, would be able to tell if you had actually accomplished something. Nonetheless, it is clear that you haven't got anything worthwhile, and that you have in fact failed completely, totally, and abysmally at fundamental levels, so unrecognized success is not a risk for you.
Unlike you, | Quote | | By all accounts, Markram is earnestly trying to do good science. |
Now, let's move on to the second half of this: if they were doing science right, how come they failed, and how come people didn't see the problems coming?
Despite doing many of the things that are needed for science to have a chance of succeeding (which is why they were given a huge budget, why a lot of scientists collaborated with the work, why they were taken seriously, and why people are trying to fix the problems and get the project back on track, rather than writing it off as huge error), the Human Brain Project has clearly had extreme problems, from which it may or may not recover.
| Quote | | Several scientists who know Markram personally now describe him as a kind of genius gone off track |
You aren't a genius, but the going off-track aspect fits you quite well. Markram became got too personally invested in his ideas (like you), became overly convinced of his vision (like you), took shortcuts (like you), and was a very poor manager (does that shoe fit too?).
| Quote | | In 2005 he founded the Blue Brain Project, to which IBM contributed a Blue Gene supercomputer, at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. The project uses data and software to simulate a small subset of a rat's brain, focusing on a collection of neurons known as a cortical column. |
The US version of the HBP is going much better because of better management and much better strategies for making progress.
| Quote | | Markram initiated a mediation process to address the critics' claims. A committee of 27 scientists reviewed both sides' arguments, and, with the exception of two dissenters, the group agreed, almost point by point, with the critics. |
So they are listening to criticism and learning from it, unlike you.
There are some criticisms that you could learn from: | Quote | , critics say the simulation can do very little that is useful or helps us understand how the brain actually works. To this day, Markram has not published a comprehensive paper of Blue Brain's findings in a peer-reviewed journal. ............
Many of those critics disputed the basic science behind Markram's project. Even if it were possible, mainstream neuroscientists say, reengineering the brain at the level of detail envisioned by Markram would tell us nothing about cognition, memory or emotion—just as copying the hardware in a computer, atom by atom, would tell us little about the complex software running on it. |
Nonetheless, | Quote | | .... the venture is generating knowledge about how to mathematically model some parts of the brain's circuitry........ |
and
| Quote | The project is also focusing more tightly on data tools and software that are not exclusively aimed at simulating the brain. Although the mediators criticized the HBP for raising “unrealistic expectations” with regard to understanding the brain and treating its diseases, resulting in a “loss of scientific credibility,” even critics such as Dayan and Mainen fully support the project's parallel goals of delivering computational tools, data integration and mathematical models for neurological research.
Concentrating on Big Data, a core part of Markram's vision from the start, might even make Europe's HBP a perfect complement to the U.S.'s BRAIN Initiative, whose new technologies are expected to generate huge volumes of neurological data. If the HBP scales down to its technological core—developing useful computational tools and models for neurological research, as mundane as that may sound—then Henry Markram may well leave a great and lasting legacy to neuroscience. |
In short, get the fundamentals down right and you can get taken seriously and have some hope of accomplishing something, unlike your trash, which is hopeless from the start.
Regardless, congratulations to you for not wasting as much money as they have done. On the other hand, they caught on to their problems and started taking measures to fix problems within two years, while you've wasted a decade or more of charging relentlessly down the wrong road and still haven't figured out that you are eyeball-deep in mistakes.
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