Slashdot Mirror
Vint Cerf and Others Form Advocacy Group
Omega writes "Vint Cerf, father of TCP/IP, and several Nobel Prize winners have formed a 527 committee called 'Scientists and Engineers for Change.' Among their major complaints are that the Bush administration has ignored and misused scientific findings to achieve political goals and that it has stifled scientific research. While the group isn't officially endorsing Kerry, Dr. Cerf points out it's pretty obvious what their goal is."
"While the group isn't officially endorsing Kerry, Dr. Cerf points out it's pretty obvious what their goal is."
Yes, it is obvious. They are circumventing campaign finance laws by campaigning for Senator Kerry, and against President Bush, in the guise of an issue advocacy group.
I thought we all decided 527s were evil and borderline-illegal ever since the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth started airing out Senator Kerry's dirty laundry. I guess they are a good thing this week.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
The NY Times article glosses over what they're actually working towards, other than saying they don't want the US "losing the edge" in technology. That's then followed immediately by this paragraph:
Robert Hopkins, a spokesman for the Office of Science and Technology Policy, disputed that opinion. "I don't know where their accounting is coming from," Mr. Hopkins said. "The president has been a strong and generous supporter of science, increasing federal R&D budgets 44 percent to a record $132 billion."
A quick Googling doesn't show anything for their group's name, either.
What the hell? Are they just a few people that doesn't like Bush and decided to form a soft-money group to campaign against him? This article made it to Slashdot how, again?
--trb
> What proof do they have that Kerry will be any different?
Sometimes the devil you know is so bad that you're willing to give the devil you don't know a try.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Scientists should not use their status to give political affiliation a veneer of legitimacy, as our opinions are no more valid than truck drivers, shop assistants or lumberjacks.
Except they are giving lectures on how this administration has been insanely worse than any previous administration when it comes to science. Former administrations simply ignored scientific reports from within the government they didn't like, knowing that few would read a 500 page report on some toad's habitat. But this administration has been so paranoid that they actually rewrite them. Plus there is increasing evidence that they use very shallow political judgements decide how grant money is allocated. This is an issue that effects scientist directly and they have just as much right as lumberjacks to talk about how the administration's contempt for them hurts truck drivers and shop assistants too.
This probably isn't the most important issue on most people's radar this year, but it's still an important issue if you, or someone you care for, plans to live on this planet 10, 20, 30 years from now. The world won't come to an end, but our economy will suffer, and hence people will die, if we don't remove our collective heads from the sand.)
One of the major themes of
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http://scientistsandengineersforchange.org/inde
which is apparently Mr. Cerf's (and other's) website on this issue, is "Science isn't being given enough money." I wonder if these boys and girls realize that Joe Undecided typically takes that kind of approach as admission that this is a special or vested interest speaking, angry that it is being put on a diet after previously being given more generous portions of public funds. Scientists saying "Candidate A is bad because he doesn't give scientists enough money" might carry more weight than drug companies saying "Candidate A is bad because he won't support paying for drugs at the prices we want", but the essential self-interest involved in the opinion speaks loudly.
An illustration that scientists remain human and thus subject to their own delusions about themselves is the site's describing their movement as a "growing consensus". A consensus refers to agreement prevailing among all the parties concerned, and there are vastly more scientists in the US than the 60-some signatories on this site. A small slice with an opinion and an overwhelmingly larger portion with no expressed opinion does not constitute any variety "consensus" in the first place. If 90 fans of kiwi tarts all agree that kiwi tarts are great while 200+ million other Americans have no expressed opinion on the matter, there is no sensible reference to the American "consensus" on kiwi tarts, whether "growing" or otherwise. There is only a consensus among those 90 kiwi tart fans. The bizarre use of "growing consensus" ought to have alerted these people to the idea that they risk being accounted among the spin doctors, but they seem blind to their own illusions under the more generous assessment.
The difference between
On the one hand Kerry says he is personally against abortion. On the other hand Kerry has support Roe v. Wade and keeping abortion legal.
Some people insist there is some contradiction in these two positions. These people see the world as black and white and like simple slogans such as, "you're either with us or against us."
Kerry has a personal, possibly religious, opinion on an issue. Why is it a sign of weakness or deception if he doesn't insist everyone in the US of A (or the world) adhere to that same viewpoint? The church says it's a sin to eat meat on Friday. Is it a travesty Kerry doesn't insist on that law as well? Opps, apparently that's not a sin anymore. Guess the pope likes to flip-flop on the issues.
Anyway, those who like to insist someone's political stands must conform to their religious beliefs should remember, the government operates by force. Laws are enforced at gun point, whether by police or armies. I know the US of A is not under martial law, I don't see tanks rolling down the street, so it's easy to forget.
Almost all the people work well in the construct of society almost all the time without the physical manifestation on the government's powers. But every law, every regulation, is backed with that final threat of enforcement. So when you take matters of faith and institute that into law, you are trying to ensure faith by force.
I'm not saying politicians should equivocate and play both sides of an issue without reproach. I'm saying we should expect a politician's personal actions to support what they are saying are their political and personal beliefs. Kerry's record supports what he says is his political stand. As to his personal actions and his religious beliefs--how he would council a family who was considering an abortion--I do not know. How does that make him a lying bastard?
Holding a religious belief makes you a person of faith. Using force, or the threat of force, to make everyone else conform to your religious belief makes you a wakko nut job. These are the people who shoot doctors, kill children, fly planes into buildings, and in general ruin the game for the rest of us.
I'm not expert on Catholic theology, but I'm pretty sure there is wiggle room in Catholic orthodoxy for this.
Kerry is anti-abortion (almost all pro-choice people are). That is, he thinks the best world would be abortion-free, and that the government should encourage sex ed, birth control, adoption, counseling, etc. to reduce abortion and its causes. That is a fine Catholic position.
But Kerry also opposes criminalizing abortion, which the Catholic church is silent on (AFAIK).
-Esme
Several, actually. You can find them on johnkerry.com/issues/technology/plan. I just cherry-picked a few examples:
- Provide substantial research increases for clean energy, medicine, advanced manufacturing, information technology, nanotechnology, and other priorities.
- Extend the Research & Experimentation tax credit
- Provide a tax credit to ensure that broadband access is universal and affordable
- Expand spectrum that is available for wireless broadband
- Remove restrictions on federal funding of stem cell research
These and other ideas are laid out in fairly impressive detail on the site. The first point is most important to me. Bush completed the planned 5-year doubling of the NIH budget only by a technicality in 2003, and both it and the NSF are taking a big hit this year. His budgets plan further cuts in following years. Science is not a priority for him. It is for Kerry.
This is at least the third Slashdot story on scientists - including some 48 Nobel laureates and 62 National Medal of Science recipients - outraged at events of the last few years. Not merely ignoring science or believing one camp over another, we are talking about manipulation, supression, distortion, and general subverion of science. The vast majority of cases are motivated by purely business interests, though a few are motivated by religious/moral positions.
This is NOT a case of looking at the science and then deciding other economic/moral factors outweighted it. This is a case of actively sabotaging science itself. Of figuratively smashing a calculator with a hammer and twiddling the wires until 2+2 yeilds 3.
The Bush administration pressured the Environmental Protection Agency until it completely eliminated the section on climate change from the report. Stacked an enviornmental lead-level commitee with lead industry employees in order to raise permissable levels of lead pollution. Directed mining impact scientists to exclude certain information and reccommendations from their submissions and stated that if they did submit that information and reccommendations it would not be included in the report. Suppressed another EPA study that showed that the administration's proposed Clear Skies Act would do less than current law to reduce air pollution and mercury contamination of fish. The Department of Health and Human Services (including the Center for Disease Control if I am not mistaken) deleted information on disease prevention from its Web sites because it runs contrary to the president's preference for "abstinence only" sex education programs. The Office of Foreign Assets Control made it much more difficult for anyone from "hostile nations" to be published in the U.S., so some scientific journals will no longer consider submissions from them. The Office of Management and Budget has proposed overhauling peer review for funding of science that bears on environmental and health regulations--in effect, industry scientists would get to approve what research is conducted by the EPA. The National Cancer Institute misrepresented the scientific consensus that abortions do not cause breast cancer. A U.S. Department of Agriculture microbiologist who found antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the air near hog confinements was prevented from presenting his findings due to pressure from pork producers. The EPA told rescue personnel and residents that the air around Ground Zero in New York was safe soon after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, despite evidence to the contrary (all the sooner to reopen Wallstreet?).
Not only have scientific committees and panels been stacked with people with severe conflict-of-interest industry ties, but in some cases they are stacked with people who have absolutely no scientific background, because those people will supply the reports the administration wants to receive.
The list just goes on and on. All you have to do is hit Google News: Bush nobel science for countless links.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.