ISMEE's diary. Friday, October the 29th. 7th day.
Friday was a difficult day. Students were agitated due to fatigue, arrived late and I had that reduce my presentation on ‘how to ask good questions’ to keep the schedule. I obtained to keep the attention of them, that they had given one waked up for the following lecture, of the Dr. Marlon Fonseca. This anesthetist by profession and ecotoxicologist by heart, studies mercury environmental and human contamination since he is an undergrad. Unfortunately, his results do not interest a powerful scientific community that created fame over questionable conclusions on mercury effects. Studying the environmental problems in the Amazon, Marlon discovered that social problems are much, much more important. After lunch it was the turn of the epidemiologist Antonio Pacheco. Once, in a bar, Antonio demystified our evidence-less opinions on how tubercuose, AIDS and lung cancer among smokers were really frequent. If assumptions without evidence are bad for the laypeople, imagine for a scientist?! Therefore I invited him to speaking about the NEED to use statistics to decide the everyday challenges that we face on the laboratory. At night I took professors to visit Búzios, the Brigitte Bardot’s resort, but we were all exhausted and the trip long. Unfortunately, Milton Moraes, Ricardo Zaluar and Aurélio Graça, three out of five of Saturday speakers, cancelled their talks and I had to reorganize the following day as I could.
Tags
Amazon, Búzios, Frequency, Mercury, social problems, statistics