realistic optimism = unadulterated realism?

This zebra is going to find out about Turing's Patterns http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/02/turing-patterns/ seeing as he's covered in patterns he has a different sort of insight into stripes than scientsts and he knows better than them what it's like to live with what they study.

There are so many things to think about when you sit a lot. I found this piece by Dean Burnett pretty amusing http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/brain-flapping/2012/nov/29/pseudoscience-science-argument
I don't wish to disagree with the author in any way - they're all good points but, I feel, when it comes to chronic disease and the treatment of it there are an awful lot of potential income streams and so many vested interests.

you can skip past the next two paragraphs it gets better toward the end (honest). Like many of us I'm not as strict with editing my own work as i should be

So often i start these posts and get back to them after thinking for a bit but sometimes i leave them just a bit too long and what I'd thought were smart and pithy observations appear not to be... at all.

On a good day this post's title is true, life's glass is half full of effervescent, healthful, thirstquenching loveliness but on less good days all I have near my hands are a handful of pointy health and safety hazards where a glass used to be utterly leaving aside considerations of how full it is of which particular fluid for a good day - just not TOday.

...but today i learned a new thing what Potemkin's Villages represent in Russian vernacular: the same thing as Smoke & Mirrors in ours. This is what neurologists have been employing whilst peddling the immunological aspect to MS (since about 1922) and the accompanying array of 'disease modifying' pharmaceuticals. 
"This analogy gives our 'plight' a wider appeal, nice work Dr Franz Schelling." thanQ. 
 atm i'm trying to shoehorn how this referencing could be applied to our current crop of mouse bothering neurologists. The ones I've spoken to have knowledge of Charcot and Carswell's 19thC observations that the veins appear to play some part in the brain damage associated with MS but they don't seem to show as much respect to this history related to their craft  as the many filmmakers of the last century who've referenced the Battleship Potemkin's Odessa Steps scene. This mismatch of acknowledgement of their forebears could lead us into interesting discussions about the inherent qualities of the human sciences and humanities.
But ultimately, both trades are dealing with how the brain functions.

I've mentioned the book Testing Treatments (which the relatively recently published Bad Pharma by Dr Ben Goldacre also references) in previous posts - it talks about the need to make sure that research is cumulative allowing  each new piece of work to build on what's gone before and  contribute to what's to come rather than be trying to reinvent the wheel every time. 

Perhaps filmmakers could teach something to our neurologists?