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At 08:10 AM 12/20/95 EWT, you wrote: >Jeff, > We've had quite a few messages talking about pesticides since I joined o >the list a couple of months ago, but I believe this is the first time I've >heard anyone say that they have pretty much been ruled out. Would you please >share with us what you know about this subject, and forgive me if you have >already done so and I missed it. What is the latest thinking about suspect >environmental factors? > Thanks. >Marti Eiermann I suppose this is as good a time as any to talk about the problems of paradigms again. A paradigm is a world view held by a scientist in order to help organize his/her thinking, I would hope. However, many of us cling to such views as if they were written on gold. We tend, therefore, to work on things that support our paradigm. Worse yet, we do not give serious consideration to the views of others who's paradigm differs. The view that pesticides, being toxic, and, in part, may be responsible for some cancers is a paradigm that tends to lead scientists to attempt to implicate them in any illness where the cause is as yet unknown....its simply a fashionable thing to do. If one were to propose that a bacterial toxin in rural well water might be responsible for the elavated PD rats among people living is such areas, that suggestion would be very hard to fund, even if the hypothesis were carefully and properly supported...Why? It isn't a paradigm YET. If one were do the research alone, without the help of serious funding, get the results published a few times, it would start to become a paradigm. Now suppose this happens. And suppose too that another scientist has a different idea....that second scientist will experience difficulty in getting his/her work funded. My thought is to fund research for any scientist so long as they present within their grant applications a testable hypothesis to be investigated using standard laboratory methods. A major lesson form the history of science and medicine is that the generally accepted paradigm is ALWAYS WRONG to a greater or lesser extent. We also know from history that we can not predect by whom or where a revolutionary discovery will be made....a discovery that will topple the paradigm. Back to pesticides....there are only a few published papers that develop compelling evidence that they are involved in PD...Most studies find what paradigm-driven research will yield - nothing. Research, according to what classical scientific method teaches, should be hypothesis-driven. Not paradigm-driven or, worse yet, fishing expedition-driven. We in the Parkinson's community know very well how relatively little can be done for PD....it's time to do some real research....no holds barred. -Jeff ([log in to unmask]) >