Slashdot Mirror
More Accusations of Scientific Abuse by the Bush Administration
Saeed al-Sahaf writes "Last week, the Union of Concerned Scientists released new evidence that the Bush Administration continues to suppress and distort scientific knowledge and undermine scientific advisory panels. Of course we're not talking about such subjective issues like stem cell research which Bush objects to on religious grounds. Here we are talking about money. The cases discussed in this story detail incidents of suppression and distortion of scientific knowledge on issues ranging from mountaintop removal strip mining to endangered species such as wild Salmon in the Pacific Northwest."
Does anyone else find it odd that a story on "scientific abuse" was submitted by a Wiccan?
I don't follow your point. Are only christians allowed to comment on scientific abuse? Or are Wiccans assumed to be anti-science?
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
1) While I appreciate Minister al-Sahaf's acknowledgement that the issues around stem cells are matter of subjectivity, not a science-vs-faith issue like evolution, framing the debate in terms of "religious grounds" isn't all that much better. It's a question of ethics, like other bioethics issues.
2) The Union of Concerned Scientists is a wildly partisan organization, that leans heavily on getting large numbers of scientists to sign their statements and then acting as though that represents an informed expert opinion by the signatories. That doesn't invalidate any particular point they make, of course, but I'd like to examine these accusations on a case by case basis, rather than get excited about "x scientists, including y Nobel Laureates" signing another one of their screeds.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Yes, it hurts when you recommend that a rare swan be saved and nobody listens, but it's likely you don't have any clue what the trade-off would be.
Your point is valid, that we do not possess precise information about the trade-offs of certain decisions (eg, continue logging in old-growth forests vs. effect on those ecosystems). But whitewashing the language of critical reports is not going to further the cause of improving the precision of what we know. The contrary is true.
The main problem is not just that advocates of one particular choice (usually involving the economic well-being of ME and MY_INDUSTRY trading off against some more diffuse, hard-to-measure and potentially severe long-term costs to the public) have great influence on policy-making through financial channels, but that these advocates are attempting to actually bias the raw reports that would potentially improve the situation about things we're trying to find out about.
Don't get me wrong: this kind of strong-arm advocacy would be just as bad done from the left as from the right (which just happens to be where it is happening now).
For example, although I tend to agree with a policy that is somewhat leftward of the current U.S. federal government, that does not mean I would condone policy makers attempting to whitewash the trade-offs that went counter to my preferred policy.
For example, an economic impact statement concluding that the livelihood and economic well-being of loggers and their families would be severely impacted by an abrupt and total moratorium on old-growth logging should be evaluated as a data point. Advocates of a moratorium should not whitewash the language, watering down the conclusions in an effort to promote their cause.
Likewise, people advocating a rape of the environment and "removal of burdensome red-tape regulatory bureaucracy" should not try to whitewash the language of scientific reports.
It reflects poorly on the methods and character of the policy makers, and it cheapens and sets back the cause of dispassionate scientific study that we so desperately need to help in formulating rational policy.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Check this out:
White House Tries to Rein In Scientists
Remember when the Arab world led scientific thought? They invented and led math, geometry, an alphabet, astronomy, engineering, etc. Then the fundies took over. Arab versions of Bush and Pat Robertson.
No one with even a small understanding of the scientific process, let alone an interest in scientific progress, can vote Republican in good conscience. Why? Because both wings of Republican party are actively opposed to scientific progress. They will slow walk, whitewash, and when all else fails, flat out lie, to prevent or obscure the truth.
On the buisness side you have those that ignore 30 years of studies concluding that the average global temperature is increasing, and that this increase is directly caused by human activity. ("Needs more study.") You have those that lie before congress, and in congress, that nicotine is not addictive. Then you have those that spout such nonsense that trees cause polution and ketchup is a vegetable.
Then from the religious wing you've got those not only opposed to teaching evolution and the Big Bang, but promoting that world was formed on a tuesday afternoon 5000 years ago. They've even enlisted the federal govenerment to promoting the myth that the Grand Canyon didn't take million of years to form, but rather was formed over the course of a few hours after a global flood.
First of all, blaming the "Bush administration" for the actions of many varied government agencies is a bit disingenous. Does anyone suppose the FDA takes daily orders from the White House? Our government just doesn't work like that.
Son, sit down and let me explain something to you....
The UCS is attacking the Bush administration, because (and the articles reference this) the Bush administration is directly telling agencies to put policy in place that ignores the scientific facts.
Second, what [these particular] scientists seem to lack is a sense of perspective. There are no solutions to real-world problems. There are only trade-offs. Sure, it would be great to have perfectly clean water, but at what point is "clean enough?" How much effort do you spend saving one endangered species?
You're so ignorant of this case it's not funny. Bush is allowing power plants to dump higher levels of mercury into water supplies for starters. The Bush administration is rolling back environmental protections anywhere and everywhere it allows some business to make a buck, especially RNC contributors. This isn't some nitpicking little lefties handwringing over some endangered swan. This is a wholesale assault on our health and safety. We're not talking about perfectly clean water, we're talking about water that causes massive increases in birth defects. And guess what, contaminated water doesn't wind up in rich neighborhoods where they can afford to take care of expensive birth defects, it happens in poor ones, where people don't know any better. And what happens when half the kids in the trailer park turn out retards cause of the mercury? You pay for it in higher taxes and social costs. Unless you want some eugenics along with your laissez faire environmental policy, it's going to wind up costing you way more to let pollution go than it does to regulate it.
The progressive movement (modern lefties, Clinton Third Way folks and all) believes in regulating business and green environmental policies because the others just hide the cost. You may think you're getting cheap stuff out of this, or the economy will do better, but it will wind up costing you more in the long run.
The only people who are being unreasonable in this situation are the people on the right. But don't believe me, go do some freaking research. Quit trying to be so non-partisan, the Bush administration have demonstrated that they are irresponsible and incompetent time and again. They don't deserve your benefit of the doubt, everytime anyone gives it to them, it turns out to be a bad idea (i.e. War in Iraq).
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
Interesting.
I don't see any evidence of censorship, even in the PDF report. The reports were still published, albeit without the administration's blessings. All bark and no bite.
It is hardly surprising that the administration would encourage reports to be more apolitical and objective, to include results from related experiments that have contradictory results, and to qualify statements with "may" and "is likely to". This is what they should've been doing in the first place.
For instance, if I am doing a study on the mass of the election, and I do the experiment and get a result different than other experiments, I am going to have to explain why my results are different. Were those studies wrong? Was my study wrong? Is the entire model wrong?
If I can't reconcile the differences, then I have to start writing things like "The experiment suggested that the mass of the electron may be X." rather than "The mass of the electron is X."
And I find the "science" quoted in the article humorous. One of the lines reads, summarized: "Abstinence may cause an increase in pregnancies among partners of male participants". In other words, if you teach abstinence, and they have sex anyways, they are more likely to get pregnant.
They distort this conclusion to represent that Texas has higher pregnancy rates that most other states. Of course, they really mean that Texas has higher rates among secually active couples. They don't talk about the most important figure - the overall pregnancy and STD rate among all teens.
I'm sorry, but the political overtones and lack of objectivity is blatantly apparent in this one. We already know that there is a lot of tension between the EPA and the administration. We already know a lot of eggheads don't like our cowboy president. It sounds like a lot of whining to me.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Not any more. I've gotten to know some, and while we disagree, I understand their viewpoint.
For my money, what's been going on is the Republican party has been hijacked, just as surely as the Taliban hijacked Afghanistan. It's been taken over by business "interests" to the point that public policy is not created without it being directed in some way towards making someone money.
A good friend of mine is a policeman at the VA hospital where I work. He's clearly very conservative, and I'm quite the opposite, and we're both vets. We don't agree on much but we enjoy talking. One thing we do agree on: this is not the country we promised to defend. We don't know where it is, what happened to it or when, but we're both damn sure this ain't it.
And I doubt the Democrats are much different, except for the fact that the richer and therefore more powerful "interests" have collected within the Republican party, leaving the Dems weaker.
I've seen exactly this sort of political driving of science done at NIH. If it's not popular with the administration, you risk your career to pursue it, and it's a damn long way to fall if you fall from NIH.
The US is losing its edge in science in part because researchers are not moving to the US to work, and some US researchers are leaving.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Alright, no one mentioned souls or spirits but you. Do you accept that it is possible to advance the belief that life (or at least human life) is important in some manner without having a religious angle?
If so, then explain why passing through a vagina (or a surgical opening) changes a newborn from property to a person. Explain, then, why only partially passing through it (as in some late-term abortion methods) does not.
If you use the "dependent on the mother" argument, please explain why it's not okay to kill the child after birth. Would an advance in technology that allowed for the child to develop to term in an artificial womb be grounds for banning abortion since a child would no longer be dependent on the mother? If not, when does a tank-grown child gain personhood and why?
If you use the developmental stages argument, explain why a 5 month-old prematurely birthed baby has human rights that a 6 month-old fetus still in a womb does not.
In my opinion, the best atheistic argument against abortion is that all dividing lines for determining personhood are either arbitrary and/or hypocritical. Birth is arbitrary. Developmental stages can be hypocritical in the face of the rights of premature babies and can be arbitrary and hard to determine. The only absolute for determining humanity is fertilization, when the number of genes in the egg cell equals that of a full-fleged diploid human organism.
Restated: Show me one (non-Buddhist) atheist who is ethically against stem cell research.
I assume by "atheist" you restrict the category to people who weren't raised in a religious setting, right? I can't do that, but I do know former Christian atheists and agnostics who object. You could argue that their beliefs are influenced by religion, but they've managed to cling to a belief in the "sanctity" of life even after no longer truly believing in God. It is rare, though. Most become very utilitarian about the issue.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").