dnj wrote:
This is complete nonsense and anyone who has driven an ACO GTE (or FIA GT3) spec car will know that they have nothing in common with the road car except for the underlying chassis. And even the “amateur” drivers are mostly very capable, experienced and have achieved at a very high level prior to achieving an International C race license.
I agree. You can’t just turn up and drive and certainly not in a road car. I know several who have driven there as amateurs but they are serious amateur racing drivers who do the Nordschliefe series regularly and are effectively professionals.
Exactly. IMO it’s an order of magnitude more challenging, both physically and mentally, than say an CPL/IR, to use an aviation reference point – more comparable to competition aerobatics in an Extra 300 or even the Red Bull air races. Look at the “amateur” driver third overall with Rebellion this weekend, very talented guy in a race car.
dnj wrote:
This is complete nonsense …
I didn’t invent this myself. The driver we were flying to Le Mans told me that. Maybe just to make it clear that he is a real professional as opposed to some others. And the cars that spent 23 hours in the garage and then were pulled out again for the last lap I saw myself.
Cars have to complete 70% of the winner’s race distance to be classified.
From here
Welcome to science… where there are still two sides and faith is required…
That’s not my idea of science. Faith is what you need if you like homeopathy. science might be wrong, though, of course. (To me the source and the scientist seem credible, and a quick Google search on the topic (seems to) confirms the article.)
(Will read that article after work, thank you for sharing)
Social research is really hard to do well, because doing it well needs a lot more legwork and the grant (most research is the stuff that pays your mortgage etc) only stretches so far… for example you can’t research susceptibility to airliner colds and flus etc without also researching where the subjects spend their normal day.
If you packed a plane with hospital staff, probably almost none would catch anything – because they have immunity to most of what is currently going around, and those who didn’t were not on the flight because they are already ill 
If you packed a plane 50/50 with people who work on a farm (probably a good description of me) and with a load of inner city dwellers who work in big offices, many of the farmers would catch something.
Consequently most “social research” is crap. So, a lot of it gets discredited, often many years later. I won’t go off on a tangent but there are so many examples around us…
That’s before you get onto the hot topic of who funded the “research”. A very hot topic in medicine, especially these days… You can bet most of this one got funded by airline associations.
Whereas if you fly on your own, you eliminate that risk completely.
Consequently most “social research” is crap.
I can accept that this is your opinion. (Is this “social research” or medical research?)
Any research on people is really hard to do well.
Peter you are certainly a good pilot and forum moderator but where do you take your authority from to judge medical research? Which, yes, is hard to do well but so is almost all research.
From following the subject closely over years, with my GF who has a PhD in this stuff.
As you say, it is hard to do well.
