Profits "Not the Main Thing"?

I had someone comment to me that profits at Chick Fil A "were not the main thing for them"?   Did I hear that right?   Since when is a business not there to make money and profit?

I scoured Chick Fil A website and found the following purpose statement under the FAQ.  What is the Corporate purpose of Chick-Fil-A?

Answer:  "To glorify God bybeing a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us. To have a positiveinfluence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A."  

Excuse me.  You are a business and not a non profit organization.    I understand having a social mission and social responsibility as a business but this is not your main purpose.   Your main purpose is making money for the owners.   The owners of Chick-Fil-A are good people with a good purpose but they are interested in profit of the business.   All businesses exist for this reason.  

Deception of the public comes in many forms and many corporations are ashamed to say they exist for profits.   This is one way they can disguise the real purpose for their existence.

If you visit Coca Cola's website it is clear profit is a major part of their corporate vision.   Dell, the computer manufacture goes to great lengths to report on financial performance.    Let's not kid ourselves, companies financial performance is very important.   Profits are very important to Chick Fil A or the company would not be in existence.

The Dragonfly Effect is a website and book that reports on three studies conducted that associates how our society relates high profit motive with low social values.   It seems the more money companies make the less social value they are perceived to have.   The end game here is that to be successful companies now have to disguise the profit motive under a social purpose umbrella.   The example of TOMS shoes is mentioned where the company donates one pair of shoes for everyone purchased.   It seems to be working for them.   The question I have,   Is this really benefiting the consumer?   My thoughts are we are paying a higher price for a pair of shoes if this company has enough profit to give a pair away and still make a profit.    Well maybe it makes us feel good.....

A Famous Type I error by Science

Probably the greatest example of the scientific community making a type I error is the reported Cold Fusion debacle in the 1980s.   A type I error is an error by obtaining a false positive or believing to be true something that is false.    In 1989 Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons published and announced the discovery of cold fusion.    A process by which nuclear fusion could essentially be created at room temperatures.  

The biggest problem was that the experiments they reported just could not be replicated.  Cold Fusion didn't work.    Despite publication in the Journal of Electrochemistry and support by the University of Utah cold fusion was a bust.   Over the next five years several scientists and organizations including the US Navy tried to replicate the work but to no avail.    The initial research started at about $100 thousand dollars but before it was over Fleischmann and Pons had squandered some $40 million. 

Ultimately the scientific community dismissed this work.   The lesson from this is not about cold fusion but about the scientific process.   Having work be peer reviewed is very important before publication.  Also the process of verification and replication of work should happen before announcements of this sort.   The scientific community often has an uphill battle with regard to the general public as a whole and scientists really should be confident and certain before work is published and announced.  

Carl Sagan wrote, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" in his book Cosmos.  This is very true.  The more important the news the more evidence should be amassed for the announcement.