[jweese]

Justice Scalia's concurrence, reproduced here in full:

"I join the judgment of the Court, and all of its opinion except Part I–A and some portions of the rest of the opinion going into fine details of molecular biology. I am unable to affirm those details on my own knowledge or even my own belief. It suffices for me to affirm, having studied the opinions below and the expert briefs presented here, that the portion of DNA isolated from its natural state sought to be patented is identical to that portion of the DNA in its natural state; and that complementary DNA (cDNA) is a synthetic creation not normally present in nature."

[1337biz]

I am unable to affirm those details on my own knowledge or even my own belief.

I wish more public officials would show this kind of honesty, esp. those voting on new laws and regulations. I am waiting for the first politician to come foward with a "I have no idea of this stuff, can anyone of my constituents explain to me how and why to vote on that" message.

[davidp]

> "I have no idea of this stuff, can anyone of my constituents explain to me how and why to vote on that"

That is precisely the primary function of lobbyists, as distasteful as it sounds when that word is used.

Many lobbyists also buy access, which is a separate problem.

Can you imagine the disastrous mess Congress would create if they knew even _less_ than they already know about the areas they're legislating? This is why regulating lobbying is hard; at root it's just citizens speaking to elected leaders (again, until money gets involved).

[takluyver]

> I am waiting for the first politician to come foward with a "I have no idea of this stuff, can anyone of my constituents explain to me how and why to vote on that" message.

I suspect all too many of their constituents would be very happy to explain how they should vote on all sorts of matters. Getting peoples' opinions is the easy bit, working out which ones are worth listening to is the challenge.

Maybe we should just go with the most prevalent opinion on any issue. But, besides the practical issues, we can all probably think of at least one issue where we think the majority of people have got it wrong. We'd like our reasons to be considered, not just our numbers.

[rayiner]

You have to appreciate his dedication to rigor.

[wavefunction]

He's consistent, which is about the only nice thing I'd want to say about him.

[vaadu]

Your ignorance is staggering.

He voted that the police should not be permitted to take your DNA just because you were arrested.

He voted that government should not be permitted to take your property and give it to another private entity because it will generate higher taxes.

He voted that the police should not be permitted to enter your property with drug sniffing dogs without a warrant.

He voted that authorities scanning a home with an infrared camera without a warrant constituted an unreasonable search.

[tptacek]

"Seldom has an opinion of this Court rested so obviously upon nothing but the personal views of its members", said Scalia when the court found it unconstitutional to execute the profoundly mentally disabled.

"If it were impossible for individual human beings (or groups of human beings) to act autonomously in effective pursuit of a common goal, the game of soccer would not exist", he said, when the court found it unconstitutional for the VMI to refuse admission to women.

"This ruling will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed [...] The nation will live to regret what the court has done today" he said when the court held that Guantanamo detainees have the right to appeal their captivity to federal courts.

"Is it really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the face to determine where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited in the Constitution?" he said, under obvious circumstances.

"Today's opinion is the product of a Court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda" he said, in attempting to retain a law that criminalized same-sex relationships in Texas.

[shardling]

It's interesting that you just assume the OP would take your side on those issues. If literally everyone agreed, they would not be an issue. :)

Completely orthogonally, sometimes people judge someone based on the intention behind their actions.

[pessimizer]

If you conclude that those four votes mean that nobody can think that he's vile, you're the ignorant one.

[twoodfin]

"Vile" is a pretty strong term, especially to use in a political context.

[wavefunction]

I thought about saying something very rude to you about me being entitled to my opinion, but I won't.

[dekhn]

cDNA occurs in nature (reverse transcriptase).

In fact DNA intermediates with introns spliced can be reintegrated into the genome.

Further, faulty viruses can acquire oncogenes (intron-splicted, mtuated versions of growth factors, like EGF and HER2/neu) and transfer them to other cells via cDNA intermediates. It's not hard to believe that nature has in fact passed BRCA cDNAs around via retroviral intermediates.

[dnautics]

RT doesn't work that way, it requires a specific site near its target gene in order to make the DNA strand. There is off-target activity, but it is almost certainly vanishingly rare.

[dekhn]

anyway, if you're really so hung up on this, let's drop the viral intermediate and focus just on pseudogenes (instead of viral retropseudogenes), which are exactly the thing I described in my first comment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudogene#Processed

so, if you want to demonstrate your claim, you would need to write a script that showed that there was no pseudogene that ever inserted at a nonspecific site. You can't show that. ergo, my proposal is more likely than yours. Further, it's support by evidence- for example, the genome is studded with p53 pseudogenes that reintegrated from cDNA nonspecifically.

[dekhn]

"almost certainly vanishingly rare event" * "incredibly high rate of reproduction of viruses" = almost certainty.

See the first 4 chapters of "Biology of Cancer" by Weinberg.

[dnautics]

molecular biology can deal with probabilities that are lower than 1/the number of particles in the universe.

[dekhn]

again, have you read "The Biology of Cancer", by Weinberg? There is strong evidence for what I'm saying.

[dekhn]

Further, I'm not sure what the relationship of probabilities to the number of particles in the universe is. The probability of any given sequence emitted by hmmer as the "highest probability" is tiny (often 10e-50 or better, and for very good matches, 10e-138). So what's your point?

[dnautics]

uhm, no? But do you understand the thermodynamics of base pair mismatching in DNA/RNA duplexes and how to convert the kcal/mol into probabilities?