DL Engineering Degree

Re: Re: Re: Five-Year Entry-Level Engineering Degree

I looked into Biomedical Engineering programs in 1972, New York Institute of Technology had such a program. I believe that a SUNY school had a Biomed program also.

Hardly new, at least in the real world.

 

The question is; What percentage of students at the top universities in the US are americans?

I think its a waste of time to say you need a specific degree to be an engineer. Yes, you need specific knowledge but what would prevent you from learning otherwise.

 

Assertion without evidence!

 

Re: Re: Re: Five-Year Entry-Level Engineering Degree

A little Biomedical Engineering history, http://www.whitaker.org/glance/history.html

This thread brings back memories of a person that I used to work with. He used to lump engineers and technicians together and address us lovingly as "lower than whale s**t". He was the scientist and the engineers were simply there to make use of his discoveries, the peon work. This person is a plasma physicist that has since left the commercial world and now works out of Northwestern.

You would have loved him!

 

Quackery

This is so tedious trying to get you up to speed....
Originally posted by Ted Heiks
"Like the person who charges on here asserting that post-baccalaureate medical education with the doctoral title is the only way to train physicians when he shows no knowledge of the fact that most physicians throughout history were trained by apprenticeship?"

For those interesting in the facts: Medicine was largely a apprenticeship/night school/practitioner-controlled profession in North America in the early 20th Century. This resulted in appallingly low levels of competence and an inability of practitioners to adopt new and better treatments. The Flexner Report detailed the deficiencies of the system. As a result, most medical schools in North America were shut down, especially the crackpot modalities - homeopathy, etc - beloved of Mr Heiks - and the German system of university graduate medical education was adopted. Since then, USA medicine has become as good as any in the world.


"Like the person who charges on here asserting that allopathy is the only valid form of medicine when he gives no evidence of understanding what homeopathy and naturopathy even are, much less why allopathy is supposedly so naturally superior?"

Sigh...For those who want to know: homeopathy is the treatment of diseases by "magic water". The same pure water (sometimes alcohol) - containing not even a molecule of active ingredient - is used to treat ALL ailments. Homeopathy lost out because only stupid people believe in magic water as a cure-all. Lancet did a review of the evidence for homeopathy recently and wrote that, for true believers, the weaker the evidence the stronger the belief. Similarly, naturopathy faded out because it was antithically opposed to scientific evidence-based medicine. Naturopathic and similar mumbo-jumbo cures" could not be controlled for dosage or efficacy. The entire business was laughed out of medicine when better treatments came along and the molecular/genetic basis for disease and treatment began to be understood.

Incidentally, the word "allopathy" is used by ignorant altmed enthusiasts try establish a false equivalence between "allopathy" (standard) medicine - are their favorite quack modality - chiropraxy, naturopathy, homeopathy, etc. In fact, there is no such equivalence: There is only evidence-based medicine on the one hand - and superstitious humbug on the other.


"Like the person who charges on here asserting that America has the most laughable system of secondary education in the world and the most excellent system of tertiary education in the world even though he cannot produce any explanation for how whatever country has the most laughable high schools in the world could possibly produce enough smart people to have the best colleges and universities in the world?"

Good lord Mr Heiks - you pile it on faster than I can shovel it off... See previous postings. I'm not responsible for your amazing lack of insight. American secondary schools are demonstrably bad, and the American universities system overall is demonstrably good (though with serious side effects). The two facts can be independently true. Apparently, you're never going to understand that.

 

Re: Quackery

I did want to know and after looking in several medical dictionaries plus Webster's you definition seems somewhat lacking. Perhaps you acquired it from one of those contemporary broad based engineering programs?

The Merriam-Webster definition of homeopathy is:

"A system of medical practice that treats a disease especially by the administration of minute doses of a remedy that would in healthy persons produce symptoms similar to those of the disease."

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Five-Year Entry-Level Engineering Degree

Thirty years is nothing. Accreditation of Medical Engineering is relatively new compared to the tradiational disciplies. Some programs have accreditation back to the 1930s. Big deal.

No. I'm just amazed at what you consider to be "evidence" - citing a few non-accredited programs compared to the large number which are accredited, and compared to the 13 even within MIT which are accredited. Your "evidence" is impoverished.

Well - what about Stanford ? What's your point ? Stanford has five traditional accredited programs and some that aren't - for various reasons. Stanford is unusually flexible and students there don't have to declare a major until late in the program. Good for them. That's a far cry for insinuating ABET accreditation is not important at Stanford.

Looks like I've touched a nerve if you're reduced to citing non-sequiter "evidence"... Can't you do any better ?

 

Re: Quackery

1. Again, Kalos misrepresents what I say. I never said that post-baccalaureate university based medical school training leading to the doctoral qualification for physicians is necessarily bad nor did I say that apprenticeship training for physicians is necessarily good. I merely pointed out that Kalos did make the reverse assumption. And, up to that point, he had not produced evidence to support his opinions.

2. Where did I say that homeopathy or naturopathy or any other "non-traditional" medicine was beloved of Mr. Heiks or that allopathy, aka "traditional" Western medicine was not beloved of Mr. Heiks? I merely pointed out in a previous post in this thread that, up to that point, Kalos had not yet defined what homeopathy or naturopathy was, much less had he shown (at least not at that point) why allopathy, aka "traditional" medicine, is necessarily superior to homeopathy, naturopathy, or other "non-traditional" medicine.

3. The assertion that American high schools are crappy is usually engaged in by rightwingnut conservatives who take a few cases and treat those as if they were the norm, usually in an attempt to convince people to vote against school taxes. American high schools are nowhere near as crappy as people say they are. If they were, they couldn't feed into the best college/university system in the world. And the assertion that American colleges/universities are "good at remedial education" is male bovine fecal material.

 

Homeopathy for the Gullible

Well see - you have to dig a little deeper rather than just accept a superficial answer. That instinct comes from being a good and skeptical engineer... The "minute dose" in homeopathy is so dilute there's not even a single molecule of the original substance in the water - ie past Avogadro's number. It is in fact non-distinguishable from ordinary water. That's why it is called "magic water" - for the gullible. See "Homeopathy - The Ultimate Fake": www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/homeo.html

 

Re: Homeopathy for the Gullible

I'd hardly call a Webster's definition superficial nor would I say referring to a website called quackwatch as digging a little deeper. Your skeptical thirst seems to be quenched rather quickly.

 

Re: Homeopathy for the Gullible

Could you explain Avogadro's number? The term seems to almost ring a bell from Dr. Calvin J. Luke's freshman Survey of Chemistry class at Mesa State College from a quarter century ago, but I can't say I recall specifics about it.

 

Homeopathy for the Gullible

Since you're satisfied with Webster's statement that homeopathy uses "minute doses" without enquiring further to find out that these "minute does" are, in fact, no doses at all, you're hardly in a position to accuse me of quenching my skeptical thirst prematurely.
The Quackwatch article has a large bibliography if you want to inquire further. Or, you can do your own research. The results are the same - homeopathy is bogus, and its believers are cretinous.

 

Re: Homeopathy for the Gullible

You missed the part that I referred to several medical dictionaries as well. I humbly offer this url to you, http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/13638.html. It's not quackwatch, it's a report from this remote group called the AMA. They're not engineers but I believe that they may know a bit about medicine anyway. Call it instinct.

 

Homeopathy for the Gullible

AMA is now notoriously skittish about calling a spade a spade. It used to be - before the great chiropractor lawsuit - that the AMA made reasoned pronouncements on quackery. Now they tend to mumble timidly about quackeries being "non-proven". Also, the AMA has been infiltrated by the alt-med crowd. This is a known problem which won't be fixed until the next paradigm shift.

A good article can be found at www.time.com/time/columnist/jaroff/article/0,9565,1114166,00.html. Time Magazine is usually useless, but this writer - Jarroff - has a fairly good reputation for balanced reportage. Some excerpts from the article:

 

And yet many people in Europe deride the American education system ......

 

I went across the border to Detroit a few day ago - a kilometre across a river from Canada. I was helping a friend settle in to Detroit. We went to a "Walmart" to rent a cellular telephone. We wanted a cellphone which could be used in Canada and had cheap calling rates to Canada.
So I asked the attendant whether a certain cellphone could be used in Canada. She went to a service wall chart and stared intently at it for several minutes. Finally, I couldn't stand it any longer and asked what she was looking for. She said she was seaching on the map for Canada...
This is the state of American Secondary Education today...

 

Probably more indicative of employers' attempts to drive down wages to as near nothingness as possible leading to their being able to get only the commonest g..d... idiots for employees

 

You guys are androids that don´t to sleep....

Anyway, my previous comment was evil meant. It wasn´t about secondary education, but about University education. Many poeple here feel it is too easy, too many multiple choice or open book or take home exams. It is just nonsense, but that´s how many people perceive American higher education.

 

BTW, I am not trying to pick up a fight. I paid lots of USD for my undergraduate education in the States, and I am satisfied with it. It opened many doors for me, also in a metaphorical way.

One more think I forgot yesterday (over here it is already tomorrow). That Chinese list you provided yesterday with the best universities of the world states that SUNY Albany is a better university than Georgetown, which is just ridiculous. I was wondering if those Chinese people used a dice.....

 

Re: Homeopathy for the Gullible

In this subject I completely agree with Kalos..

But the analogy between engineering and medicine is limited, it doesn't explain why the knowledge gained through experience and independent study in engineering is different from what you can learn in an accredited program.