What is Hojo a Professor of?

[Clement Rage]

What do you think he's qualified in? Lucrecia is in Biotech, but what qualification would fit Hojo's responsibilities as we know of them. Assuming no customised Shinra qualification, what's he most likely to need in his line of work? Biomedical engineering? Natural Sciences? Medicine?

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Genetic engineering at least. Might want to throw in whatever school the study of mako goes into too. We do know he's the one who's been messing with Sephiroth's, Cloud's, Vincent's and Zack's DNA. I don't seem him letting anyone else do that for him.

It also kinda begs the question where did Hojo (and Gast and Hollander) get the Professor title from. 'Cause IRL that's usually associated with teaching jobs that happen at universities and we don't see any universities in FFVII. Instead Hojo and all the other scientists are working for/at Shin-Ra. If they didn't have the "Professor" title, I'd assume they were more like scientists with PhDs or Doctorate degrees. It seems less confusing to call them "Doctor" (as in someone with a Doctorate) then "Professor", but I have no idea what their Japaneses title is or what the normal English translation of it would be.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Biochemistry?

His title in Japanese may mean something different from "Professor".

 

[jazzflower92]

What ever it is it sure ain't ethics?

 

[Jason Tandro]

Lovemaking.

After all. He's got a P. H. D.

 

[Ite]

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

It seems less confusing to call them "Doctor" (as in someone with a Doctorate) then "Professor", but I have no idea what their Japaneses title is or what the normal English translation of it would be.

Their Japanese title is 博士, which is basically what you said. It's someone with a Ph.D./doctorate.

 

[Kionae]

I'm going with genetic engineering. The guy created a super soldier by splicing together DNA from Jenova with that of a human embryo, and attempted to breed a half-human/half-Cetra with Nanaki (who's species isn't even humanoid) to increase the offspring's lifespan.

 

[ForceStealer]

Splicing the DNA of an alien onto that of a human is definitely impressive, but I could never figure out if the Aerith/Nanaki thing was something he had cause to think would work or was just a CRAZY MAD SCIENTIST moment

 

[Clement Rage]

we don't see any universities in FFVII.

We also don't see any schools and the only farm specialises in high end racing birds, so we're probably meant to assume there's one somewhere that never came up.

What ever it is it sure ain't ethics?

And now I kind of want to listen to him doing a bioethics lecture.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

Splicing the DNA of an alien onto that of a human is definitely impressive, but I could never figure out if the Aerith/Nanaki thing was something he had cause to think would work or was just a CRAZY MAD SCIENTIST moment

Given his other utter monstrosities in his lab, I have reason to think he was confident it'd yield satisfactory results – especially since he was doing it for preservation & study of of two members who were ultimately the last of their kind – especially as one of them's supposed to be your best connection to the Promised Land & all that.




X

 

[Kionae]

Splicing the DNA of an alien onto that of a human is definitely impressive, but I could never figure out if the Aerith/Nanaki thing was something he had cause to think would work or was just a CRAZY MAD SCIENTIST moment

Is there any particular reason it couldn't be both? Just because something appears to absolutely bat-shit insane doesn't necessarily mean there's no logic behind it.

Of course, it's also entirely possible that Hojo may have just had a very odd fetish and had been spending a little too much time alone in the lab.

 

[Flare]

it's also entirely possible that Hojo may have just had a very odd fetish

Mother of God, he was trying to create a furry race

 

[ForceStealer]

Maybe he was trying to recreate the long-lost Ronso

 

[Clement Rage]

it's also entirely possible that Hojo may have just had a very odd fetish

Mother of God, he was trying to create a furry race

Hwahahhahahhahaha. That is all.

 

[jazzflower92]

it's also entirely possible that Hojo may have just had a very odd fetish

Mother of God, he was trying to create a furry race

Just when you thought he couldn't get more disturbing.

 

[Ite]

"If I don't intervene, all of these animals will disappear!"

 

[jazzflower92]

I wonder if he got his degree from a university that had no ethical standards.

 

[Kieron_ODuibhir]

Well, I mean. Bioethics in our world were only formally invented after the Holocaust, and it took the turnover to a new generation of doctors for them to be reliably taken seriously. Look at how many medical experiments governments in the US ran on black convicts and other vulnerable populations without consent or even notification throughout the 50s, or the fact that it took until the late seventies for using Mengele's data to begin to be considered problematic. It's easy to take ethics standards for granted as part of science, but they aren't automatic, they had to be developed and agreed upon before they existed to be departed from.

XD Like Clement Rage said, we don't lay eyes on the agricultural or industrial production base of this society, so it's not hard to believe there's an academic infrastructure we never meet either. But it's not necessarily up to our standards.

I haven't played Before Crisis, but I heard rumor Rufus' exile to Junon involved college? Or is that just something people have assumed because he has to have been doing something and he was the right age for education?

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Canonically there is a military academy at Junon. Rufus was never exiled to Junon, that's just a pervasive fanon. According to Before Crisis, he spent the whole of his four years of "exile/extended business trip" on the Turks' floor of the Shinra building.

 

[Kieron_ODuibhir]

...going to college would make more sense, I can see why the fanon caught on. *How* does he canonically spend four years on the Turk floor?

^^ I know Junon is full of trainee troops, but I somehow doubt the educational track that Mr. 'Lucky me, Weapon killed all of my rivals while I was in here studying' is on leads to labcoats.

Hey, it's possible all the scientists are educated on an individual mentorship/internship basis, just like it's possible there is no mass production of clothing and the entire fashion industry is artisan-based. Gaia's infrastucture makes no sense, so we have to make large assumptions at some stage. Could be all Hojo's grey-suit guys are technically students!

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

...going to college would make more sense, I can see why the fanon caught on. *How* does he canonically spend four years on the Turk floor?

He was their prisoner.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

...going to college would make more sense, I can see why the fanon caught on. *How* does he canonically spend four years on the Turk floor?

President Shin-Ra found out that Rufus was backing the original AVALANCE becasue of a bunch of fieldwork the Turks did. So he decided that they should be the ones to keep an eye on Rufus. This would be after Rufus sold out their former boss and the Turks really didn't like him at the point in time...

Four years later Rufus essentially lies to the President so that he doesn't execute the Turks and completely gets away with it. The Turks have since been more loyal to him then the actual President...

 

[Kieron_ODuibhir]

XD I know that much of the why, I was more boggled over the logistics of the titular Vice-President spending four years imprisoned in the Department's of Administrative Research's office space. Did he have, like, a cot in a corner of somebody's office, or a proper living space? I am really amused to imagine him sleeping under a desk but am sure this did not happen.

Meanwhile to avoid getting too far off topic, the Aerith/Nanaki plan has always struck me as a point in favor of Hojo being as bad at science as Sephiroth claimed. I mean, he gets the credit for making Sephiroth, and he gave Cloud his enhancements, but the cell-infusion technique seems to have been standard across the Jenova Project, and Lucretia is unlikely to have *not* made scientific contributions and we know she was very good at making human bodies sync well with nonhuman energy...

;] Plus Jenova is highly contagious. I don't think transferring her genes is as hard as it would be with anything else.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I didn't say it made sense. It's just what BC says happened. He seems to have been imprisoned in some sort of secret ops room where he was able to have complete access to whatever their equivalent of the Internet is, including access to all of Shinra's most top-secret files.

I've always been interested to know where that pervasive Junon fanon thing came from.

I have no explanation for why Hojo decided to try to mate Aerith with Red XIII. How can he not have known it wouldn't work? That's not just being bad at science, that's being totally ignorant of the most fundamental principles of biology!