Slashdot Mirror

And you'd most likely be wrong. And that wasn't out of context at all. Who designed the designer?

And Pivar's relationship to Steven Gould.

...you sound rather judgmental and thoughtless to me.

You seem to be implying that's a bad thing. If I said the whole story was total bullshit would that make me more thoughtless and more judgmental? I think doing a deathbed confession hoax would be totally cool. Why? 1. People will believe the dying person has nothing to gain from it so they MUST be telling the truth. 2. Anyone who says it's a hoax will be criticized as being insensitive. 3. There is no way those fooled to get even with the dead person once they figure out they've been duped.

Roswell as an alien spaceship crash has been so thoroughly debunked that it was unnecessary for me to go over the same ground again. But I'm sure aliens abducting a few top officials and giving them a good anal probing should get to the bottom of this.

Why is it not a scientific theory?

Because we can't test with experiments and replicate the results. Put another way, Why "Intelligent Design" (ID) is not science, or AAAS Board Resolution on Intelligent Design Theory.

That's a nice argument.

This result has been challenged numerous times in the Journal of Parasychology. The most notable proponent for staring detection is Rupert Sheldrake who has even created a kit for people to try this themselves. However, a closer inspection of his kit and methodology shows the sequences aren't truly random (2000, Colwell et al., British Journal of Psychology, 2000). Colwell shows that without feedback (or with feedback and truly random sequences of staring vs non-staring) there is no effect.

http://www.csicop.org/si/2000-09/staring.html

You're referring to the "sense of being stared at". People have actually done experiments to test this; most scientists are skeptical that it exists, but some people claim that they have evidence that it does.

In case you don't remember, similar "prophecies" were made from other texts, such as a supreme court ruling, using the same rules. I wasn't aware that a supreme court ruling was such a holy text.

Also I don't remember that the bible code actually predicted anything that hadn't happened already. Prediction is always difficult, especially about the future (N. Bohr).

To follow up on my post: I see, from another post under this story, that CSICOP did finally publish a rebuttal, using the exact figures from that paper, including the one I mentioned: The PEAR Proposition: Fact or Fallacy?. It only took them 16 years: I wrote to the Skeptical Inquirer editor about this around the year 1990, I believe. So if you felt a subtle but unexplainable feeling of relief and enlightenment at about 9:50am this morning, that was just my psi propagating throughout the world. :)

PEARS was defraught of bad method. Google around any good math blog or skeptic report and you will be able to read why. first link I found CSICOP
Conclusion quoted:

In their book Margins of Reality Jahn and Dunne raise this question: "Is modern science, in the name of rigor and objectivity, arbitrarily excluding essential factors from its purview?" Although the question is couched in general terms, the intent is to raise the issue as to whether the claims of the parapsychological community are dismissed out of hand by mainstream science unjustifiably. This paper argues that in the light of the difficulties in replication (even by the PEAR group itself), the lack of anything approaching a theoretical basis for the claims made, and, perhaps most damaging, the published behavior of the baseline data of the PEAR group which by their own criteria indicate nonrandom behavior of the device that they claim is random, then the answer to the question raised has to be no. There are reasonable and rational grounds for questioning these claims. Despite the best efforts of the PEAR group over a twenty-five-year period, their impact on mainstream science has been negligible. The PEAR group might argue that this is due to the biased and blinkered mentality of mainstream scientists. I would argue that it is due to the lack of compelling evidence.

At best this was pseudo science. At worst they scammed private investor from money to study something inexistant (AFAIK this was not public found). They were fitting the data to the conclusion. They were begging for belief, but were quite empty handed on the falsification side. The quicker this shame can be closed, the better. Now if we could do the same for the other 999 pseudo science outfit outside here...

> I bet that crazy fool brought down the median lifespan.

I saw a show on these guys going to the Nobel ceremony. They're actually very funny.

Here's the whacky guy:
http://www.cockeyed.com/citizen/marshall/intro.sht ml

And his research partner. His partner is smarter because (1) he let Barry be the guinea pig, and (2) he hates people who star in informercials.
http://www.vianet.net.au/~jrwarren/

Here's a good piece about their research and the scientific community's sledging:

http://www.csicop.org/si/2004-11/bacteria.html

Penn & Teller are great when it comes to con men, but on other subjects they fail it. Hard. They were wrong about glass recycling. They were wrong about second-hand smoke, using as their sole sources of information a "think tank" run by a woman whose reports echo whatever her tobacco and oil companies want them to as well as to a court case which was vacated by a higher court. They were also as wrong about global warming as Michael Crichton in his horrible passion play, State of Confusion which was wrong, wrong, wrong.

This doesn't mean that anyone challenging a popularly held idea or even accepted theory should be silenced. Far from it. Science needs theories questioned. However, when the questions are being raised by shills in order to confuse and are based in fallacy and reference already disproven works, that's when such "scientists" should have their credentials stripped.

"All of these "educational" dialogues take the same format: A smart-guy character, holding forth in technical banter bearing little resemblance to spoken English, runs rings around a character who holds misguided beliefs that he or she cannot defend with reference to the scientific literature. These erroneous beliefs all hinge on the notion that the earth is warming significantly, that this has resulted at least in part from human activities, and that the consequences have begun to make themselves felt and could grow quite severe over time--a robust mainstream scientific view, although apparently not one shared by Crichton. Hilariously, at the end of his book Crichton states: "A novel such as State of Fear, in which so many divergent views are expressed, may lead the reader to wonder where, exactly, the author stands on these issues...." As if it wasn't obvious." ...

"Let's face it: Such writing is pure porn for global warming deniers, in much the same way that fictional accounts of UFO abduction skeptics converting into true believers titillate UFO fans."

Yet more proof that the moon landings were a hoax.

There's someone you really ought to meet.

No, no, no. The bird flu doesn't have to evolve, it just has to mutate, and since President Bush has seen all three X-Men movies, he acknowledges this possibility.

There are at least three independent processes that, when taken together, form our idea of evolution. These are replication, variation, and selection. Replication is essentially reproduction. Variation refers to the random changes-typically mutations-arising in offspring, making them different from their parents. Selection refers to the process whereby those individuals best adapted to their environment tend to be the ones that survive, passing on their genes. These three processes occur every day in nature, and it is their cumulative effect that we call evolution.

Then again, Bush becoming a president is some powerful evidence against survival of the fittest.

Comparing faith and religious belief to a neurosis or schizophrenic condition is a Freudian way to look at God (and therefore seems to be unquestionably sanctioned by the "scientific" community). But, it is only one way to look at it. The true objective of science is to study all things, whether we believe they are real or not and from multiple perspectives, to determine answers about them. So, if you actually want to understand where people of faith are coming from, you have to study what they believe and whether there is a true basis for believing it. Maybe not in the way a physics or genetic specialist would approach it, but maybe in the way a social scientist does.

Albert Einstein believed in God AND developed the theory of relativity with the belief firmly in his mind that God was the cause of it all. He was unapologetic about that and is on the record as stating so. Yet we do not discredit his work because of his beliefs. Newton, Galileo, Brahe, Copernicus, and others were of the same mind, yet it did not hinder their ability to do solid science. Their only beef about religion was the Vatican's ridiculous interpretation of the nature, composition, and physical workings of the universe. In the case of Copernicus, it's interesting to note that:

"If Copernicus had any genuine fear of publication, it was the reaction of _scientists_, not clerics, that worried him. Other churchmen before him -- Nicole Oresme (a French bishop) in the fourteenth century and Nicolaus Cusanus (a German cardinal) in the fifteenth -- had freely discussed the possible motion of the earth, and there was no reason to suppose that the reappearance of this idea in the sixteenth century would cause a religious stir." (http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1987/PSCF9-87Lindber g.html, emphasis added)

The scientists, even then, thought they had all the answers. Boy, were they wrong.

Neither of us own a private library of primary research conducted by ourselves or our own teams of scientists, so we'll both have to rely on Google-driven quote mining. Here is a small cross section sample of articles found around the keywords "research prayer healing". I've deliberately left the titles off of the link list below so that anyone reading this will have less chance of being biased by the headline. Can't do much about the domain names, though, so I'll just have to trust that anyone really interested in knowing a faith-based perspective will actually click those links. I've also deliberately chosen articles from as many viewpoints as possible, including skepdic.com so that a) I won't be accused of cherry-picking and b) so that, as scientists, we can begin to appreciate that there are many ways of looking at things and at least two ways of "knowing" (faith and experimentation).

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/366162p-311 612c.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/03/23/AR2006032302177.html
http://realityshifters.com/pages/articles/research confirmsdh.html
http://www.csicop.org/sb/2001-12/reality-check.htm l
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/07/14/AR2005071401695.html
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.12/prayer.ht ml
http://www.stnews.org/News-1590.htm
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/religion/healing_pr

Heck, if we're talking abuse of science, I can't think of any better subject to discuss than the author of Andromeda Strain, Prey, and State of Fear. The man's been mangling science for years and then making his books look better by tossing a gratuitous biblography of all the papers he supposedly read to justify his plots. (Alien crystal viruses, grey goo, and local cooling disproving global warming, oh my!)

Michael Crichton doesn't know what he's talking about. State of Fear is filled with junk science. Read a more thorough debunking here.

The essay you link is nothing but an attack on the argument by attacking the source of the argument as being from zealots. He accuses the environmental movement of being responsible for massive deaths, and claims that they're distorting facts without backing any of it up with "facts" of his own -- except for "facts" like the harmlessness of second-hand smoke. Crichton's a loon and an asshole for making that last argument in particular, but the bulk of the essay argument is that environmentalists are wrong in their assertions (without any justification of why) and thus religious nuts for asserting something that his holiness Crichton declares to be wrong. (Oh, he could cite mainstream articles, but you wouldn't believe him anyway, so why back up his bald-faced lies?)

He attacks environmentalists as being the same as people who romanticize primativism, use errors on predictions of a socially affected phenomena like population growth show that scientists who care about the environment can't be trusted. He claims that DDT is harmless because it's not a carcinogenic (when it's the liver, immune, and nervous toxicity that actually caused it to be banned). He states that we can't totally roll back carbon emissions without fusion technology, so it's a waste of time to bother reducing them in the meantime. He falls back on the old saw of the environment being a complex system that's hard to understand as justification for not erring on the side of safety.

His speech is nothing but a litany of half-truths, distortions, unbacked assertions, and ad hominem attacks. So, yes, let's start our discussion of abuse of science with a discussion of Crichton. It's only appropriate.

This one and this are vaguely interesting. This is sort of appeal-to-authority-ish, but they're real authorities, and here's what they had to say about the novel:

"Notable mainly for its nuttiness," an analysis from the Brookings Institution said.

"Does not reflect scientific fact," the Union of Concerned Scientists said.

Oh, PLEASE.

Michael Crichton is out to make money. He gets money for giving his "daring" speech on the rubber chicken circuit. He gets money on sales of his latest shlock thriller, which has evil grant-hungry climate scientists running weather control machines to terrorize the populace.

Here is what actual climate scientists have to say about the claims in his novel:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74

At CISCOP, Chris Mooney reviews State of Fear:

http://www.csicop.org/doubtandabout/crichton/

A look at the politics behind Crichton's crusade:

http://www.grist.org/advice/books/2005/02/01/rober ts-fear/

Who are your going trust, Crichton or scientists?

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2005/1/20/234126/ 976

OK. Maybe you can't trust scientists. How about the opinions of another author? Here is what Gregory Benford has to say:

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050121/n ews_lz1e21benford.html

The Duke Nukem Forever Delayed jokes may now be dead but we now have the undying ID (Intelligent Design) joke, which may indeed be forever.

Joke Intelligent designers:
Aliens(1)
Aliens(2)
God(1)
God(2)

General:
The Skeptic's Dictionary
Creation & Intelligent Design Watch
National Center for Science Education

Ok, here's one from kindergarten: Actions speak louder than words.

Ok, I'm fairly certain that I can find a lot of evidence revealing how many leaders of academia actually feel about George W. Bush. And there's a lot of documentation on his actual actions regarding science and research in the nation.

Harvard's Howard Gardner calls Bush's science adviser a "prostitute." And we all remember the Scientists and Engineers for Change organization compromised of sixty Nobel scientists and Tech Leaders. I'll let you guess out their stance on bush. Don't forget their open letter to the American people stating, " President Bush and his administration are compromising our future."

Remember, he only said he supports it. Let's see some actual actions to follow that up.

And if you have time to read up on Bush's actions in the science community, take a look at the Politics and Science in the Bush Administration. I find it hilarious that anyone could expect me to swallow Bush's "scientific research and technology proposals" when his actions are no more proposals than death knells.

Indeed, it seems the hardest issue regarding science that Bush is struggling with is how to silence it.

When Carl Sagan studied the cancer cures resulting from a visit to Lourdes, he found that the cure rate was, if anything, lower than the one for spontaneous remission. It was lower than the average for those who didn't go to Lourdes at all. --

Yeah, he even defended his experiences with a swift left hook. Some conspiracy theorist named Bart Sibrel called him a liar and a coward to his face once and got an appropriate response.

http://www.csicop.org/articles/20021018-aldrin/

Link to video for anyone who didn't get the above post. Or for anyone who wants to see it again.

Wow. There are so many contradictions and logical fallacies in your post here that I am simply going to ignore most of it. It's not even worth discussing when the person you are discussing with contradicts themselves.

I am, however, going to respond to a single statement you made, which just about sums this whole discussion up for me, and then I am going to go my merry way and never look at this discussion again.

"In fact, the "God-of-the-gaps" theory is quite unscientific and illogical, and, contrary to what you seem believe, is widely unpopular among I.D.ers (and creationists), for exactly those reasons."

News flash: then these people don't believe in intelligent design, or creationism, for that matter.

Scientist who believes in God != intelligent design proponent

If someone truly admits that they don't know why an evolutionary process happens, makes no presuppositions, and does not invoke the name of some divine being who exists outside the universe, then that person does not believe in intelligent design. Period.

As I have said before, those who believe that intelligent design is science apparently know nothing about intelligent design. They are simply trying to reconcile their own religious beliefs with the factual world around them and are mistakenly latching onto a deliberate propoganda campaign by the Discovery Institute, who are a bunch of fundamentalist quacks with nice suits and a well-paid PR department. Don't buy into it. You will only be labeled as a pseudo-science jerk and lumped in with every other wacko that investigates alien abductions, magnetic healing bracelets, and the theory of Atlantis.

You are obviously very confused about what intelligent design really is and what its goals are. I encourage you to read this very fine article from the November 2004 issue of National Geographic, because it has a very clear explanation of what evolution is, why most people don't truly understand it, and consequently why people seem to buy into this intelligent design garbage. I would also encourage you to read this article from the September 2001 issue of Skeptical Inquiry on the logical fallicies inherent in all intelligent design arguments, and how evidence of such a thing is currently non-existent.

Then, just for kicks, read up on the Discovery Institute to learn about the nutjobs that started most of this nonsense.

ID was thought up by creationists. If others have discarded the obviously stupid portions of their beliefs then good for them. Since you are using analogies. I put forward this one [csicop.org] in rebuttal.

From your link:

The natural question ... is who designed this marvel of complexity [modern free market economies]? Which commissar decreed the number of packets of dental floss for each retail outlet? The answer, of course, is that no economic god designed this system. It emerged and grew by itself. No one argues that all the components of the candy bar distribution system must have been put into place at once, or else there would be no Snickers at the corner store.

I was looking for the rebuttal. I couldn't find one. Someone thinks that comparing the activity of many, purposeful, creative, intelligent people is comparable to an unguided random process?? I guess he is trying to say that this marvel of complexity is "undesigned". He might as well say that the Internet was undesigned (which he basically did say in his reference to email). I have news for him. Both of them arose from the dedicated, persistent, intelligent work of countless individuals. If it is all just so random, then why is it that some countries have better economic systems then others? Shouldn't every country's economic system have randomly evolved in the same way to the same level of perfection?

And this somehow proves that complex systems arise from unguided random processes? I've heard of better arguments using genetic algorithms. But even these are not persuasive because they never model real evolution very well.

There are better arguments against ID. I encourage you to find them and intelligently engage in the issue. This is the only way we will find the truth.

My audience, and the people who were responding to my posts were creationists who were pushing Intelligent Design as science.

You seem to be confusing IDers with creationists. They are not the same thing. If I look at a mouse trap, not knowing its origin, I might conclude that it is designed, and not the result of unguided random processes. Likewise, if I look at certain structures of a cell, I might come to the same conclusion. Making observations and coming up with hypotheses does not suddenly make one a young earth creationist.

ID was thought up by creationists. If others have discarded the obviously stupid portions of their beliefs then good for them. Since you are using analogies. I put forward this one in rebuttal.

Reminds me of the classic video clip of Buzz Aldrin cold-cocking a heckler who accused him of lying. He may be 72, but don't forget he used to be a macho USAF test pilot.

http://www.csicop.org/articles/20021018-aldrin/

It's too bad that now fundamentalists are going to have this news story as a weapon against proponents of science. This is despite this person apparently having nothing to do with science. We need better representatives, like the following:

Skeptical Inquirer: The Magazine for Science and Reason
http://www.csicop.org/si/

Discussion and debate of biological and physical origins
http://www.talkorigins.org/

Understanding Evolution
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/

Creation Watch is a good resource to know about these pityful facts. By the way, the whole world is laughing at the USA.

Not only that, the one guy from the Christian science museum or whatever claimed that the Grand Canyon was created in one day by the flood that Noah escaped on his ark! Fucking senile geezer.

Heh.. I suspect that would be Kent Hovind, a.k.a. Dr Dino, who runs the Dino Adventureland "theme park" in his back yard in an effort to brainwash kids into accepting fradulent evidence for biblical creationism while enjoying exciting low budget rides.
I won't link because I don't want to help any search engines reach his site, but check out drdino.com sometime, though beware, it may make you violently ill when you see how hard he works to try and indoctrinate kids.
On a rather less brain-rotting note, Skeptical Inquirer magazine visited his "theme park" and did a write up on it a couple of years back, which you can read here. Needless to say the verdict is pretty damning.

You're painting with far too wide a brush. Many alternative medicine practitioners and researchers are using the scientific method and expanding our knowledge of medicine. Take a look at the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine - part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health. http://nccam.nih.gov/

I've already taken a look. I recommend you look at this.

GMD

not really.

I was told that Barry Marshall and Robin Warren's discovery that peptic ulcers could be frequently cured by antibiotics instead of maintained with proton-pump inhibitors was suppressed until some major patent or another ran out and the discovery was no longer a threat to someone's monopoly.

But that's a rather weak case, so never mind.

*shrug* there doesn't have to be any evidence. but, that does mean it shouldn't be taught alongside evolution as an "alternate theory"

In order for something to be taught in science it has to be a scientific theory. As most /. readers knows, most of what scientists deal with are theories. Some of them are only approximations, like some of what Newton did - later Einstein found some better approximations which probably aren't 100% accurate either.

ID isn't a scientific theory, and therefore should not be taught next to evolution as an alternative theory. ID is superstitious goobledigook dressed in scientific language to make it palatable to more people. That doesn't make it a scientific theory though.

Lots have been writen about this, check out, for example, http://www.csicop.org/ or http://www.skeptic.com/

And if you are a conspiracy theorist, you'll get a free pair of 3-D glasses and get punched out by Buzz Aldrin!

"overall the world is heating up dramatically"

Here's a useful qoute from the National Science Foundation:

"Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise. Temperatures are, in fact, rising. The changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule out that some significant part of these changes is also a reflection of natural variability. Human-induced warming and associated sea level rises are expected to continue through the 21st century. Secondary effects are suggested by computer model simulations and basic physical reasoning. These include increases in rainfall rates and increased susceptibility of semi-arid regions to drought. The impacts of these changes will be critically dependent on the magnitude of the warming and the rate with which it occurs."

Quoted via:
http://www.csicop.org/doubtandabout/crichton/

Notice the part about "but we cannot rule out that some significant part of these changes is also a reflection of natural variability" ?

Also, measured warming is 0.8 degrees (C) in 100 years. Yes, it's warming, but that's not really terribly dramatic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Warming

The Little Ice Age was dramatic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

All I'm saying is that there is some doubt that humans are causing global warming, and the extent to which the climate is changing. If that makes me ridiculous in your eyes, then that's OK by me.

"I said the US was bad at it because the ratio of GDP:CO2 emissions is about half that of the EU countries."

The only comparitive reference I found was from the government of Romania:

http://www.gefonline.org/ProjectDocs/Climate%20Cha nge/Romania-Energy%20Efficient%20Project/PAD-P0680 62-toc.pdf

It looks like the US is right about in the middle of the pack.

He's never been one to bury his feelings deep deep down inside. Like when he beat up the moon landing conspiracist. That was awesome.

http://www.csicop.org/articles/20021018-aldrin/

Here's a link. This guy's my hero.

I landed on the moon, You insensitive clod!

Hey I landed on the moon you insensitive clod!

Or an Eevil Buzz Aldrin who punches people... Wait a minute .. that was our planet! God damn you, damn you all to hell!

Yup. Ironically, the litigious public provides an environment favoring quackery: for example, homeopathic "medicines," since they're all inert ingredients, are sure not to cause side-effects that would induce a lawsuit. (Never mind that they don't do any good...)

I think you are mistaken. Quack medicine has had a long and successful history in the US. Homeopathy is nothing new.

Unfortunately, much of the population is missing critical thinking skills. Part of this may be due to evolution: We evolved in small tribes, thus we may give anecdotal evidence more credit than its worth. Part of this is probably due to the fact that medicine tends to be rather advanced technology and requires knowledge to understand and evaluate.

As a footnote, homeopathy may not be quack medicine. It may be possible that there is more than a placebo effect at work, and that water does "remember" what was contained in it, and that the memory of the non-diluted compound has a healing effect. This is judged extremely unlikely by most people (including myself) because it requires several possibilities that are almost certainly non-tree.

This brings up another issue: Modern medicine, like many fields, tends to be based upon the probability that something is true or not true. There are uncertainties at the core of medicine. We don't know how some things work and why some people get better. We tend to use research and scientific models and check if the clinical evidence supports them. Small shifts in thought happen in medince all the time: mouth germs can cause heart disease, ulcers can be caused by bacteria. In all probability, there are mainstream medical treatments being prescriped today that are either not effective or harmful to the patient (proportionally, such treatments are probably not very common). In all probability, there are probably more effective treatments out there as well. If you are ignorant of scientific method, research studies, and statistics, its rather easy to start to believe that homeopathy is effective, especially when the homeopath explains what he does in psuedoscientific jargon.

In the course of writing this comment, I found a slightly off-topic link discussing the 'myth' of the medical establishment fighting against the idea that bacteria causes stomach ulcers. The idea of a lone research fighting against the establishment makes a good story and for those unfamiliar with research, it may seem true, which is probably why such stories enter the pool of common knowledge. Unfortunately, with little else to go on, 'common knowledge' often leads to the wrong conclusion.

It's not a liberal treehugger fantasy, people: When a leading psychologist like Harvard's Howard Gardner calls the president's science adviser a "prostitute," it's a safe bet that all is not well in the realm of government science policy. Indeed, in the past month, the United States has been engulfed by a kind of "science war," one pitting much of the nation's scientific community against the current administration. Led by twenty Nobel laureates, the scientists say Bush's government has systematically distorted and undermined scientific information in pursuit of political objectives. Examples include the suppression and censorship of reports on subjects like climate change and mercury pollution, the stacking of scientific advisory panels, and the suspicious removal of scientific information from government Web sites.

What I don't get is where all the fundies think they're going to get medicine from without science.

Oh, I forgot. Only gays get AIDS, and other diseases are simply God punishing the poor and the unwed, like Ronald Reagan. Never mind.

Buzz Aldrin should pay you a visit and do this!

As of 1996, your categorization of the US's murder rate as "one of the lowest in the world" is misleading. Only 23 of 86 surveyed countries had higher rates.

http://www.haciendapub.com/stolinsky.html/

Despite pro-death marketing, studies pretty consistently show that capital punishment has no deterrent effect.

http://www.csicop.org/si/2004-07/capital-punishmen t.html/

In fact, murder rates tend to go up during periods in which death sentences are actually carried out.

http://www.prisonactivist.org/death-penalty/dpstud y.html/

This old wives' tale needs to die, thanks!

I wish we had the money

"Report Says Pentagon Spending on Weapons to Soar"

"The government is readying a plan to spend more than $2 billion on a routine 10-year overhaul to extend the life of the aging warheads. At the same time, some weapons scientists say the warheads have a fundamental design flaw...."

"The shift away from basic research is alarming many leading computer scientists and electrical engineers, who warn that there will be long-term consequences for the nation's economy."

"The voice of science is being stifled in the Bush administration"

"Led by twenty Nobel laureates, the scientists say Bush's government has systematically distorted and undermined scientific information in pursuit of political objectives."

"For Bush, science is a dirty word"

Perhaps you should read an example of the logical fallacies of ID \ Young Earth\ Creationist, including Mr. Dembski before you so glibly dismiss my assertion. That people aren't ID, Young Earth or Creationists at the same time is irrelevant. All three are based on flawed logic, questionable evidence and bad science (or no science for Creationists). Therefore, they are all illogical.

I'm more curious how you got modded as 'Informative' since you actually provide little real information and go out of your way to spread disinformation.

Ah the joys of Slashdot.

Why not include the Columbia prayer study? Oh, yea, because it's been thoroughly discredited. Just like the Belfast study will be soon enough.

One million dollars says homeopathy is a placebo. Do you want to argue with it?

Please send a copy of this paper to everybody that you think is smart enough to understand it.