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U.S. Pushing Conservative Science
mozumder writes "Does abortion lead to breast cancer? Does condom use lead to increased sexual activity? According to the government, the answer is now inconclusive. The New York Times has a story on how the government is altering low-level scientific conclusions to satisfy conservatives. Will this lead to a mistrust of the government? Or is the government now correct?"
You see, there *are* consequences to *not* voting, Virginia.
What else is there really to comment on?
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
the majority of studies suggesting a link between abortion and cancer
You didn't post any links or references, so I'm curious. Did this "majority of studies" find a link between abortion and breast cancer, or a link between not carrying a pregnancy to term and breast cancer?
Disclaimer: For the last 20 years, I have been a legal resident that cannot vote in the U.S., and on every political placement test I've taken, be they from the right or the left, I have landed smack dab in the middle.(end disclaimer)
That no one ever mentions the idea of "Liberal Science" I find somewhat amusing (and quite frankly, a little biased). Do we all think that products like RU-486 sprung from the ground unaided? The findings of science have ALWAYS been slanted to advance someone's politics, be they environmentalists, cultural conservatives, radical feminists or bomb-throwing moderates such as myself."Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
I hate to be a party pooper, but there actually may be something to the abortion theory. To be fair, however, it probably has little to do with the act of abortion itself.
The human breast does not reach full maturity until at least one pregnancy is completed. If a person has multiple abortions and never carries a pregnancy to term, their risk for breast cancer COULD be higher, but it may be because of never having children; the fact that the woman aborted all her pregnancies is just the method. She could just as easily be a spinster or nun, and carry the same risk.
It's shortsighted to automatically assume that science is bad, simply because it contradicts some concept one holds dear. Look at the research objectively, and judge it on its merits.
Knowledge is Good.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
How can there be any such thing as liberal or conservative science? If the new conclusions are consistent with scientific principles, then they are scientific. The end.
Oh, you don't like them? BFD. Science doesn't care what you think or what you wish to be true. And guess what -- sometimes science just happens to support the positions of the political right. Anyone who is intellectually honest will just have to accept that.
And I'm not just some right-wing Bible thumper. I happen to be an atheist and a strong advocate of science. But even I can see how the political left in this country has politicized science and it fucking pisses me off. Science isn't about trying to verify your political prejudices and the political left doesn't have a monopoly on science.
The sad thing is that, as the condom information permeates through the population, the message will end up as "condoms aren't any use" and a load of teens won't bother with them (amazingly they'll still have sex) and infection and pregnancy rates will go up. Tom
then guns must lead to more killing, no?
;-P
i'd like to hear the conservative gun crowd scream "it's not the gun, it's the criminal" and then in the same breath tell us it's not the teenager, it's the condom.
so which do we get rid of? condoms? or guns?
that personal accountability thing is pretty sneaky!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As someone wiser than me already noticed: This century, it ain't about xianity vs. islam or any that media bullshit. It's about fundamentalism vs. people-with-brains. There really isn't much difference between xian right or conservatives of the bush streak, or islamist terrorists. They're all bludgoning their world-view into other peoples heads with whatever tools are available, and moral is something that applies only to other people.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
OK. For some reason, all the posts sem to say the same thing.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
More than that, the same thing happened in the opposite direction under the Clinton administration. It is one of the reasons that Ayn Rand (and no, I'm not a Randian; I think her books are lousy) claimed that government-sponsored science cannot be science.
That said, this problem is everywhere. Take a look at science news this week, for example. Every week, at least two of their articles are directly politically topics, mostly on the liberal end.
Or try Scientific American. Just in time for a big Democrat Party gun-control push, they came out with a whole issue complete devoted to the source of terrorist and revolutionary-army weaponry.
I have no inherent reason to believe the latest results any less or any more than the results that came out of the Clinton Administration, "proving" that condom use reduced the incidence of STDs, or anything else of a political nature, for that matter. The real benefit (if you want to call it that) of all this pseudo-scientific politics is that it allows anyone to believe whatever they want, and draws all of society away from reality into a fantasy land.
I'll go one step farther and personalize the statement: if this is the first time that you noticed anything, or if this is the first time you complained -- then you need to rethink whether what you call "science" really is science.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
You guys are trying to mix political terms with science in a very odd way just to stir something up here. Anywhere else on here and this would be modded down.
/. editiors it seems, had a political axe to grind.
Conservative science means running the experiment twice instead of once.
It is not the same as conservative politics, which I think all this was supposed to be about. Unfortunatly the author, and the
So now we are left with a parent post that is not a good report on politics, not a good report on science, and is just not good reporting at all.
Or am I wrong? Is it more important to grind the political axe than to have honor in journalism?
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
The cost is already being passed onto me, and other American citizens: In the health damage associated with petro pollution. In the incoherence of foreign policy. In the instability in the Middle East and South America. In the sons and daughters sent to die to maintain our petroleum addicition -- and in the conscience and psyche of our sons and daughters sent to kill others to maintain our petroluem addiction.
Not all value is economic value. We are already paying for these failures... we might as well translate it to simple economic cost (and safeguard the environment while we're at it).
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
"The gun is good. The penis is evil. The penis shoots seeds, and makes new life, and poisons the earth with a plague of men, as once it was. But the gun shoots death, and purifies the earth of the filth of brutals. Go forth and kill!"
Freedom: "I won't!"
It's funny how people believe in capitalism
In the long term, one of two things happens:
PolluteCo gets wise, invests in cleaner technology, reduces its emissions, and so escapes the need to buy credits. End result: The industry as a whole is cleaner.
PolluteCo never wises up, remains dirty, fails to invest in clean tech, continues to pay for the credits. CleanCo continues to derive economic benefit from its clean technologies, so it maintains its lower prices and draws more of the market to it. PolluteCo ramps down production (due to falling orders) and/or eventually goes out of business. End result: The industry as a whole is cleaner.
Either way, pollution credits lead to the desired result. And amazingly they do so through clear, clean market efficiency. (For those who complain that the setting of credits is an intervention, I riposte that costs and prices are measures of desires, which lie outside the market paradigm. Why did everyone want a beanie baby? Not due to market forces.)
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
They often ask me what Japan can do to improve its economy, and I usually tell them that Japan needs to get all of its eggs out of the US Economic basket and spread them around, so if that basket falls, not all of the eggs will break. They often ask me why I don't like the US and I usually respond by asking them why they aren't afraid of George W. Bush.
Maybe you should advise them to fix their banking system and start dealing with their massive national debt (which, as a percentage of GDP, is more than twice as big as America's). Your platitude sounds meaningful - an American warning about America - but it is actually meaningless. Japan's major problem economically is the domestic basis of its economy.
Yes, if America collapses economically then Japan is screwed. So is the rest of the world. But one of the reasons America's economy is so important to the world right now is because Japan and Europe have not fixed their economies. America, South Korea, China, and India are driving world economic growth right now. But because China and India are mainly exporters, and South Korea isn't that big, only America can really help the rest of the world. Traditionally, when America was going into recession, we could expect European and Japanese growth to help counteract the American recession. But now, because Japan and Europe have been stagnant for years, it is left up to America's economy alone.
What's _pretty_safe_ about those figures?
a ts.html
98%-100%? That's a wide range isn't it? There is a big difference between 1 in 50 being infected and 0 in infinity.
1 in 50 FUBAR rate is a lot worse than skydiving when I last checked (1 in 3800 participants).
http://www.afn.org/skydive/sta/st
People nowadays seem to give more respect to leaping out of an airplane than to sex.
0.5-3% is pretty much in line of typical condom failure rates in various studies. Note for most contraceptive studies failure = pregnancy, not infection. Humans aren't very fertile, so it is likely that the barrier failure rates are higher. While AIDS isn't that infectious, hepatitis B/C and other dangerous STDs are significantly more infectious.
People who keep saying condoms = safe sex are irresponsible.
Hot-blooded youth need to know the true risks. Given a real idea of the risks some may indeed decide to make safer choices.
Saying they'll all be promiscuous anyway is wrong and patronising. Some sex surveys have indicated that in some countries premarital sex isn't that common. If the prevalent culture is risky and the risk/benefit ratio is bad, work to change the culture.
All through the '70s and '80s there was a push to fund the panicmonger scientists on the left - The new ice age (switched to global warming, but they will probably be back to Ice Age in a decade or so), Acid Rain (lakes that were highly acid in 1800 but were limed returned to becoming acid, but it was our fault).
The Hyperliberal New York Times is now upset that instead of giving THE LIBERAL PSEUDOSCIENTIFIC LINE they National Cancer Institute is actually looking at data.
Abortion is either a factor or a nonfactor in breast cancer. There have been studies validating both sides, but Bill Clinton will have the NCI say there is no effect, and GWB will have it say there is a clear causal connection.
Condoms are another problem. If they were a drug the FDA would ban them for not being effective or being too hard to use. "Those who used latex condoms correctly and consistently". But how many is that out of everyone who uses condoms? And what of things like HPV that isn't covered by the condom. That, and abstinence. was being censored by the previous administration.
Maybe there will be a page saying "We recommend the use of low-tar cigarettes and filters" and not making any mention of quitting or abstinence of cigarettes if a Tobacco state politician becomes president.
The government should stay out of this too. Where in the constitution does it give them the power to do this?