Tasered Sheep on Meth

If that's not a band name, then I don't know what is. This short snippet in Popular Science says that the Taser company is testing the cardiac safety of using their products on people who are whacked out on meth by shocking anesthetized sheep who are also on an IV drip of methamphetamine. The article sagely mentions, "There's at least some scientific reasoning behind all the apparent madness."

However, I think they are missing something very important: testing it on anesthetized sheep, while possibly more humane, totally misses the point that the actual mind of a meth-head is doing something different than usual, and the heart rhythm will very much respond to changes in the level of conscious freak-outing-ness. I imagine it's very likely that the this would be a big part of it in cases where this became a problem, and they're going to totally miss that. Another casualty of scientific materialist reductionism.

» more at: www.popsci.com

Posted By omgoleus at 2010-04-30 10:49:27 permalink | comments

Tags: taser sheep meth

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jaded. : 2010-05-02 09:22:57

while there is certainly reasoning behind their methods, i think this study is a great example of the fact that a lot of scientists do just do shit for no reason. how is this supposed to help humanity in general? how bout if we just didn't taser people who find themselves in addictive cycles... i don't need a study to tell me that's probly the right thing to do

Synchronium.net. : 2010-05-01 17:39:39

"However, I think they are missing something very important: testing it on anesthetized sheep, while possibly more humane, totally misses the point that the actual mind of a meth-head is doing something different than usual, and the heart rhythm will very much respond to changes in the level of conscious freak-outing-ness."

The alternative would be a conscious sheep on meth. The mind of a sheep and the mind of a human are completely different, so a conscious sheep still wouldn't be "freaking out" in the same way as someone on meth would be. Using a conscious sheep would give results that're no more meaningful than than those obtained from an anaesthetised one.

Scientists don't just do shit for no reason. There are ethical committees and such that need to approve a study before it can be carried out, and what they've done is compromise between ethics and accuracy. The only thing that behaves like a tazed human on meth is a tazed human on meth. I'm sure you wouldn't rather the experiment be repeated using humans, would you?

Science: 1
Intuition: 0

Andy. : 2010-04-30 20:50:32

This isn't a failure of "scientific materialist reductionism" so much as it just plain sloppy science. But, that is typical for scientific research underwritten by corporations. One need only look at the pharmaceutical industry to see that.

jesus christ. : 2010-04-30 15:17:07

what the fuck?

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Tasered Sheep on Meth

Posted By omgoleus at 2010-04-30 10:49:27 permalink | comments

Tags: taser sheep meth

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