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U.S. Scientists Say They Are Told to Alter Finding
tree3075 writes "The LA Times is reporting that a survey by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility has found hundreds of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientists have been instructed to change findings to favor business interests. I'm not surprised anymore when I read these things."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...even though:
1. In the last 15 years, the majority of most of these scientist's time has been spend under a Democratic president;
2. The "Union of Concerned Scientists" has been a liberal activist organization throughout its history, originally organized to protest the Vietnam war, and with less than 10% of its membership actually from the scientific community[1];
3. Most scientists in FWS reported no such pressure;
To quote the submitter: "I'm not surprised anymore when I read these things."
But since it's an organization with a decidedly and unabashedly liberal political agenda, I guess they must be telling the truth 100%, whereas anyone on the conservative or Republican side of the spectrum is a greedy, money grubbing liar who would just LOVE to see an end to all environmental concerns. Because, you know, there's no balance or anything in environmentalism. I mean, economic development is always bad, and any edict on "endangered species", no matter how shaky, is always good, right?
[1], more: In 1969, forty-eight professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology formed the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) to protest America's involvement in the Vietnam War. The group conducted a highly publicized strike in March 1969, that included such speakers as leftist MIT professor Noam Chomsky, and Eric Mann of the Weatherman faction of the Students for a Democratic Society. (SDS was the terrorist organization responsible for bombing the U.S. Capitol Building in 1971.) The Union used the strike as a forum to declare that "misuse of scientific and technical knowledge presents a major threat to the existence of mankind." This philosophy was starkly articulated by key organizer, Jonathan Kabat: ""You've got to say, 'No, we want capitalism to come to an end."
The Union's trendy radicalism launched it into money, power and influence. A permanent office was opened in Cambridge, and UCS grew into a multimillion dollar activist organization. Three of its original founders still sit on the board: James A. Fay, Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering (MIT); Kurt Gottfried, Chairman of the Physics Department at Cornell University; and Victor Weisskopf, Professor Emeritus of Physics (MIT). The Board of Directors of this organization also includes the standard litany of corporate America special interests, liberal nonprofit foundations, and former government agency employees.
Political activism in UCS's early years was confined primarily to opposing nuclear power and the military defense establishment. Emphasis later shifted to include all energy policy issues and global warming. In 1989, the Union commissioned Republican pollster Vince Breglio of Research/Strategy/Management to conduct a survey on global warming and environmental protection. Breglio found that "the environment is becoming a political issue with some bite." This poll convinced the group to change its focus. In 1990, UCS brought together forty-nine Nobel laureates, and 700 members of the U.S. Academy of Scientists to sign an appeal for action against global warming. The event was highly publicized and called for tougher fuel efficiency standards for U.S. automobiles, centralized government control of energy issues and the continued deactivation of America's nuclear power generating industry. That same year, however, 425 scientists and intellectual leaders presented another document to the world at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janerio. Entitled The Heidelberg Appeal, it condemned UCS's document as "an irrational ideology which is opposed to scientific and industrial progress and impedes economic and social development." Today, more than 2,700 signatories, including dozens of Nobel Prize winners, from 102 countries have signed The Heidelberg Appeal.
Hail to the Thief!
More censorship in the United States? Meh.
I thought the United States would at least set an example after critisizing China of censorship...
Scientists were saying the same thing just under a year ago...
I'm writing this from a house that is made from a lot of wood, sitting on land that used to be the home of some animals who now get hit crossing the street. It would be easy for me to point my finger at "industry" and say they're wrong, but would I be willing to give up my house, land, and paved roads to my job? I don't think so.
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
It is unfortunate that this happens in the scientific community... a community that should have an objective and unbiased interest/perspective.
Same story about "Global Warming". You have scientists that are paid by the oil companies to deny that global temperatures are increasing, when you have other "no biased' scientists that are giving direct proof of anthropogenic interference to the global climate system.
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
Well, let's see. We've had two columnists paid off, party plants in the Presidential press pool, and 200 scientists now reporting they've been pressured to alter results. Yeah, those red staters really are so much smarter than those of us in the blue states. They memorize the propaganda more easily.
Every year I fear more and more for our country, and every year the average American just seems to be that much more baffled by bullshit. We're never going to see anything resembling what we -thought- was a "clean" electoral process again, I'm afraid.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
that not all Bush haters are tree-hugging liberals.
Scientific honesty is the core and foundation of all of our discoverys. If kepler modified his measurements to fit into the then current view of things, astronomy would have been set back 100 years.
It's so encouraging to know that this administration so thoroughly distorts and perverts "facts" that would potentially interfere with business interests.
Intelligence, economics, science ...yep, they've got all the bases covered. Covered in fantasy, but covered nonetheless.
...who don't need direction to skew their results.
A biologist in Alaska wrote in response to the survey: "It is one thing for the department to dismiss our recommendations, it is quite another to be forced (under veiled threat of removal) to say something that is counter to our best professional judgment."
What's worse is that the American people didn't care to open their eyes to this and get rid of W when they had the chance. The scientists can only fight for so long before the next, brain washed generation is far more willing to churn out whatever studies are requested for the right price. Science is becoming another consumable, to be bought and sold like oil and food.
I guess there might be some hope left, but I'd look for a lot more of this in the next 4 years. I don't forsee a Worker's Revolution either, but I think we can do better and leave some things as unbuyable. Maybe I'm just a member of a dying breed that holds onto a bit of dignity. I mean, liars are going to have more money, and morals no longer seem to matter in our reltavistic society. I guess relativistic science is next, and I don't mean Special Relativity.
SAILING MISHAP
This story is about common people: folks like you and I who might happen to buy a nice slab of land on which to start a homestead and raise our families. The federal government has been VERY aggressive in recent decades in condemning the lands owned by private citizens due to the concerns of busybody environmentalists. This means that the land that YOU paid good money for and developed yourself has been TAKEN from you by the state, with no compensation, because they "suspect" that some endangered species might benefit from it.
Enough is enough - the pendulum has swung the other way. It is time for the government to RESPECT the property rights and the 4th Amendment rights of Americans. The federal government must STOP condemning privately owned land under "conservation" statutes. I for one am happy to see this new shift in strategy from the Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Slightly related to the post, but here's my 2 cents. Science is expensive. Very expensive. And when a scientist has the choice between getting his career ruined because of bad results / wrong hypothesis or lie in order to get a second chance, some do chose the second option. Of course, the 'lie' isn't always intentional, even conscious; some tend to alter to reality in order to see what they want to see. You can't be always right, but when you're wrong, funding (private or public) gets a lot tougher to get. It can be fatal to a scientific career... when you put your life behind an idea, you tend to want to be right. No matter what. The funding system is just bad; failure is punished too harshly.
Now back on topic, political ingerence in science is even worse. Especially when motivated by a $$ agenda. Your career versus a should-be-protected plant? Not everyone has the courage to say 'no'... I admire this group of scientist, they had the courage to stand up. Sadly, some don't, and we'll never know it.
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
.. while the US mad cows only need to be sampled at a rate of 1/10,000 cows. May as wll rename USDA to U S Dept of Protectionism while you're at it.
Whether the illegal pressure is applied by left-wingers or right-wingers doesn't matter.
This country needs to start placing truth, justice, and liberty above partisan politics.
People behave in ways they are incented to behave. So we need to either remove the incentives or apply some decentives:
1. Make it a federal crime to pressure scientists to provide incorrect findings.
2. Provide a bi-partisan watchdog that scientists can contact when they are pressured to lie about their findings.
3. Protect both the whistle-blowers and the people they accuse until the facts can be investigated openly.
Who is behind "Activist Cash"?
Don't get me wrong, it does look like the UCS is partisan. But it's not like the rebuttal is coming from a totally neutral voice, either.
there was a huge fire spreading, and in some places people weren't allowed to clear the fire hazard twigs and stuff from the ground because it endangered some animal's habitat.
I suppose the fire came and destroyed their habitat anyway, and the people lost their homes too.
I'm normally disgusted by anything the Republicans say about environmental issues but that one incident really was a black mark on liberalism.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
science should be held above political agendas.
typical republican response:
its not happening.
it is happening, but clinton did it first.
left wing media conspiracy to slam bush. (which is pretty funny considering the whole talon news thing.)
cite another left wing conspiracy. BOOGIE MEN EVERYWHERE!
cite michael crichton.
cite a volcano! think of how many spotted owls have been killed by volcanos! think of how much C02 volcanos release.
like humans can actually damage nature, its so big!
but economic growth is important.
when the real response should be: really? lets fix this. remove politics from the system.
There is one "Bush Basher" so far. Scored a +2 Insightful too! What a site!
Bush sucks -- he sucks really hard. Just because Clinton was every bit as big an asshole, doesn't make Bush any less an asshole.
Face it -- America has become a fascist state, where science is censored in favour of business interests. All that matters anymore is that the trains run on time. The Democrats and the Republicans are both equally culpable, because they are exactly the same party. There's no difference between them anymore, nor has there been any difference for several decades. Clinton may have talked the liberal talk, and Bush may talk the conservative talk, but their policies are virtually indistinguishable.
You see that brine there? That's my brine.
once you pull something like this, you do not deserve to be called a "scientist" any longer
Who is behind "The Center for Media & Democracy"?
:P
Don't get me wrong, it does look like Activist Cash is partisan. But it's not like the rebuttal is coming from a totally neutral voice, either.
There were under 800 cattle from mad cow affected countries imported into Canada before the importations were stopped. And the US imported over 1600 cattle from affected countries.
Yet Canada has found 3, before they entered the human or animal food chains, and the US found one after it was partly processed. Tell us who is doing a better job of detecting mad cow in North America?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
The Republicans and the Democrats are exactly the same. They are both corrupt corporate puppets. They just present different lies about what they stand for.
You see that brine there? That's my brine.
In the Soviet Union, when a biologist's findings did not match the ideals of Histoical Materialism, Lysenko would have the offending scientist sent to the gulag. Or worse...
How much longer before we find out the "Union of Concerned Scientists" is actually an Al-Qaida front organization?
[o]_O
Okay, so "more than half" of 30% makes it a little over 15%. So thats around 210+ scientists. Technically, the summary is right in saying "hundreds", but it sounds a whole lot more sensational than it really is.
Secondly, also from TFA
If that's not dodging the issue, I don't know what is. I would seriously like a spokesman for a scientific agency to give a better defense to his stand than that very vague statement that says nothing.False sensationalism and dodging aside, I believe this is a very serious issue. If the scientific integrity of this office has been reduced because of corporate pressures, there's very little faith left in me for any scientific agency. People generally assume that science works in the best interests of man, even though the results may go against him.
StrayByte.Net
I bow down before your masterful cynicism.
You see that brine there? That's my brine.
Tip: Emphasizing the R, as in DemocRat, makes you look just about as stupid as the people who spell Microsoft as M$.
Try not to embarrass us anymore, please.
News flash: government agencies are political.
#!
Why, Dave, are ANY scientists reporting being pressured into changing the findings of their scientific studies to suit political goals?
And furthermore, why do wingnut assholes like yourself only give a shit about making money? Maybe you guys come off as money grubbing liars cause so often, that's what you really are.
See here.
Dawn of the Dead
root@sabbath:~# GET 'http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la -na-scientists10feb10,0,4954654.story?coll=la-home -nation' | grep -c -e "15|fifteen" ...now where did that number come from?
0
Nice "talking point" you have their chum. It should even last another 3 years. Don't wear it out.... OOOPS. Too late.
Someone had to do it.
Because the real world is a cesspool of lust for power combined with incompetence mostly caused by the inbred no-talent ol' boy networks within business and government, I suggest all citizens take a leaf of the business-government playbook and lie, cheat, steal and do ANYTHING you need to do to get what you want especially when your adversary is government and big business (and they are our adversaries). A machiavellian no-holds barred journey to your personal ends is what we should all aspire to.
GOVERNMENT ANNOUNCMENT: Attention citizens please be good and follow our ethical template which we have given you in the form of religion and law. Do as we say not as we do or you will suffer the consequences in the form of misdirected media propaganda, police action and the social engineering of citizens against you.
George W. Bush
The free market has no friends.
Fuck Slashdot
The Million Dollarman Ted Debiase would approve of this.
lol... mostliberal.story.ever.
In the news today, scientists working on politically sensitive issues are pressured by politicans.
Slashdot readers are shocked and amazed.
"I blame the Bush administration" says one.
"Who would of thought there would be a connection between the Federal government and Federally mandated enviromental issues?" Crys another.
"Wait, it doesn't say if enviromental groups were pressuring the Scientists." Commented one before he was quicken beaten down.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
1400 people were sent surveys. 30% responded which means about 420 people responded. These people responded in spite of "...memos from Fish and Wildlife officials that instructed employees not to respond to the survey, even if they did so on their own time. Snow said that agency employees could not use work time to respond to outside surveys."
However, 69% [~300 of the 420 people who responded] said they had never been given such a directive[to alter results]. And, although more than half of the respondents said they had been ordered to alter findings to lessen protection of species, nearly 40% said they had never been required to do so.
So of the 1400 people sent surveys, 420 responded IN SPITE OF ORDERS NOT TO DO SO and of those 420, only 42 said they had been forced to alter results.
That's not to say that science and politics shouldn't be mixed this way. It's bad. But it happens on BOTH SIDES of the political line.
Look at one of the last quotes:
"Sally Stefferud, a biologist who retired in 2002 after 20 years with the agency, said Wednesday she was not surprised by the survey results, saying she had been ordered to change a finding on a biological opinion.
"Political pressures influence the outcome of almost all the cases," she said. "As a scientist, I would probably say you really can't trust the science coming out of the agency.""
That's 12 years under Republican Administrations and 8 years under a Democratic one.
You guys want to stop this? Good. But first realize this is not just a Bush/Republican problem... This is a SYSTEM WIDE problem.
When was the last time you saw a bunch of scientists engage in a group hug, or diversity training? Scientists are NERDs, not a bunch of crybaby hand-wringing whimps! They blast through data with computers and take measurements with slide rules!
Do not be fooled by false scientists!
Okay, so "more than half" of 30% makes it a little over 15%. So thats around 210+ scientists. Technically, the summary is right in saying "hundreds", but it sounds a whole lot more sensational than it really is.
And how is 210+ out of 420 scientists not "sensational"?
Science is scewed to serve the agenda of the politic, and as such has become perverted by money and politics. This problem has precious little to do with political leanings. I just wish that Americans would stop blaming the left and right politics. It has nothing to do with science and precious little to do with right and wrong. Afterall a bird cannot fly with only one wing!
This news in: Slashdot Editors Report being told by the cultocracy to where aim the slashdot effect.
Slashdot, the Weapon of Mass Download.
Someone had to do it.
In other news, the March of Freedom was going to happen anyway.
Bush just knows how to get it done propping up our military industrial complex. Thank God for that! (No, really! Thank the invisible man in the sky.)
"I don't think Osama bin Laden sent those planes to attack us because he hated our freedom. I think he did it because of our support for Israel, our ties with the Saudi family and our military bases in Saudi Arabia. You know why I think that? Because that's what he fucking said! Are we a nation of 6-year-olds?" - David Cross
Chocolate rations are up! There is no environmental problem! The defecit is not a problem! Except social security, that's fucked! But tax breaks for the rich are the best idea since pre-emptive wars! We have always been at war with Oceania^WIraqanistanKorea!
FreeBSD for the impatient.
The big biz side is always the default under W. For example, when pressured about tech visa workers taking away jobs, their cronnies often state that there is no direct evidence that the visa workers are taking away citizen jobs. But, there is no evidence that they are NOT taking away jobs either.
Big biz gets so much attention because they donate to campaigns, not because they are voters. We don't have a true democracy if big biz gets such a large de-facto vote. In a true democracy, they would have no vote.
Table-ized A.I.
Since the trees are being cut down faster than they grow back, [comma] your unwillingness to give up your comforts will affect your children and grandchildren.
If you are going to troll and spread Mac Mini spam, at least use proper grammar so you won't look like an unintelligent mooch =p
My 1st thoughts about the recurring contraversy over airlines neglecting the warnings just happens to be that the executives were placed in a position to decide wether they should lose millions of dollars due to delays and any anti-flying sentiment something like this (or multiple exits and parachutes) could create as a negative image of the safety of their business model ...or ignore the warnings?
Remind me again how our best interests are at heart whenever money is involved? Liberals aren't bad ppl, they tend to be a bit radical at times just because they're against war and exploitation, genocide, etc. It's usually not economically practical to entertain liberal idealists, but it doesn't mean they have nothing to say.
Yet Canada has found 3, before they entered the human or animal food chains, and the US found one after it was partly processed. Tell us who is doing a better job of detecting mad cow in North America?
So finding 3 instead of 1 means you're better at detecting mad cow disease? What if only 1 animal in the US was infected?
Poor logic.
I forget what 8 was for.
The sad or annoying thing is that at least a few of them do know better. Dick Cheney, for example. However, the only concern of those few is with cashing the checks before the reality bounce happens. That's not a question of a statute of limitations, but rather the post facto law thing. Sure, in the future people will regard them as a bunch of criminals--but too late.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Shrub keeps his head up his...in the sand. That's not exactly a news flash. This is a president who has no use for scientific facts or evidence. He decides what he wants to believe then expects someone to show the world why he's right. If someone should have the audacity not to toe the line, they get axed. Is it any wonder that they got such a poor response rate? The point, as I see it, is not that so few responded, but that so few dared to respond. Liberal or Conservative is beside the point. This kind of willful ignorance by a president is bad for America.
What does this button do...
If they were intelligent, they would have develop intelligent, rational philosophies. Two intelligent people can have an honest disagreement over politics, but not when they simply subscribe to a prepackaged ideology based on being a corporate puppet. And no, I don't hate capitalism or corporations; I just think our politicians shouldn't be beholden to corporations.
You see that brine there? That's my brine.
"There is one "Bush Basher" so far. Scored a +2 Insightful too! What a site!"
Because particular reasons for hating Bush can never be insightful, and sites that allow--or even attract--people who would dare biatch about corruption and idiocy, suck.
If, say, Howard Dean or Dennis Kucinich were president, UCS would not have even conducted this "survey" in the first place, without regard to whether or not the problem actually exists.
Does anything I've said speak to the actual problem? No, and I realize that. But I'm not sure UCS really directly cares about that specific issue either; they're more concerned with vilifying people they perceive as their opponents[1] because it has a greater chance of allowing them to advance their general agenda, which I'm sure they all believe is a good and righteous one.
[1] Whether they explicitly state it or not, it's clear from their web site and other materials that they really don't like Bush. And don't be so quick to just say "Well, maybe it's because Bush is a problem." That's not the point: you could uncover "problems" like this in any administration, but their zeal isn't consistently applied. That's what I'm getting at.
it also helps to relieve artificially induced ADD, & is better than the superficial/censored spray on 'news' distributed buy the corepirate nazi death/debt machine to US.
/. posters take to the ether, etc...., to avoid being unheard of/deleted.
/.'s pedigree with whoreabull MiSuse of the patentdead PostBlock censorship devise?
.asp again? the daze of the phonIE bullonly greed/fear/ego based execrable, is WANing into coolapps, as we fail to communicate.
whoreabully MiSguided censorship is no match for the creators, newclear power?
this stuff is unbreakable & wwworks on several (more than 3) dimensions.
to quote from some previously PostBlocked/censored material:
from yet another post aptly titled:
robbIE steps on
(Score: mynuts won, fauxking corepirate nazis' puppets on a string)
by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 08, @03:56AM (#11604730)
what some fools will do for a little more monIE?
lookout bullow.
unprecedented evile et AL, is about to take it in the
all is not lost?
consult with/trust in yOUR creators, supplying more than enough of everything for everyone (without ANY distracting/spiritdead personal gain motives), to facilitate the wildly popular planet/population rescue initiative/mandate, since/until forever. see you there?
it's ok, we're willing to go the extra/last mile with/for you.
Due to excessive bad posting from this IP or Subnet, anonymous comment posting has temporarily been disabled. You can still login to post. However, if bad posting continues from your IP or Subnet that privilege could be revoked as well. If it's you, consider this a chance to sit in the timeout corner (for weeks/months in our case) or login (just makes robbIE turn on the PostBlock devise faster) and improve your posting . If it's someone else, this is a chance to hunt them down (like with the georgewellian nazi bouNTy hunter scam?). If you think this is unfair, we don't care.
Journalism has committed suicide and covered up the act.
Seriously, aren't these environmental issues takes much too seriously. I mean, does it really hurt so badly if a rare bird species dies out because of a new bridge getting built. Likewise, does a redwood tree become worth more just 'cause it's 500 years old?
Nature is always in constant flux, and all that we humans do is at most accelerating the process a bit (if even that much... probably we are rather altering it slightly). It's not like there's a purpose is keeping a rare species in existance. Right? In particular, species die out and come into existance every day anyway -- I don't see the point in keeping one alive just because it would have lived if humans weren't there. It makes it sound as if humans were somehow "outside" the rest of nature, and that it would somehow serve a purpose to leave nature alone. That purpose I cannot see.
Hey, those guys and girl are public sector employees (Dept. of Fish and Game, I think it was called, though now it is apparently Fish and Wildlife Service). Think of the last time you visited your loval DMV office -- maybe most of them have THAT particular type of personalty, you know what I am talking about. In any case, not too many are going to bite the hand which gives them nice govt. job (with GREAT benefits) when there is some "pressure" to look another way. On the other hand, they feel quite free to bitch in an (anonymous?) survey, no, it is almost impossible to fire them!
;-)
I guess the term "scientist" lost it luster when it stopped being applied to indepedently wealthy gentlemen with curiosity about how the World works (or ones so smart that wealthy private persons just feel like funding their work) and started being applied to everyone with some education and certain level in the society. I wish we would go back to 18th century in the way we do science. Otherwise it is all fake, serving this or that special groop (whoever pays).
And yes, technically my job title is "Scientist", working for one of the big defence contractors. No, I do not do "science" in the original sense of this word. But looking back at the University life -- it was prostitution as well...
Paul B.
Let me try: "Some people used their $100 from George Bush to buy drugs. This has forever marred capitalism; the Republican party will forever be politically shunned."
Does that sound stupid to you?
You see that brine there? That's my brine.
I just finished attending a course dealing with applying for contracts and grants with various federal agencies. One of the "must have" aspects is the long-term ability for the idea|product|etc. to become commercial. Depending up on the agency you file with, you may or may not get feedback. And if you do get feedback and you don't provide commercial viability, don't be surprised to see that as a lacking property. I asked if this was something which changed with the political climate. The only effect has to do with how much money is available. Many of the agencies have topics of interest and you can occasionally submit your own but the DOD generally solicits only the topics it posts. So the thing to do is build some rapport and potentially see if your topic might get posted. Anyway, I don't see how which member's member is using the toilet in the White House has anything to do with some secret agenda which doesn't agree with a particular poster's political bent.
They way you Yanks are going you won't need any WOMD to fuck you over - you're doing a fine job all by yourself.
...
Great choice of president, by the way. And secretary of state. And secretary of 'defence'. And
The United States is one of the few industrialized nations NOT to have ratified the Kyoto Protocol. Neither Democrat or Republican have pushed to ratifie it because that would hit big brothr business in the pocket.
If kepler modified his measurements to fit into the then current view of things, astronomy would have been set back 100 years.
;-) ).
Do not you think that there were plenty of astroLOGISTS at the time who might have noticed that things do not exactly add up up there, but just were not interested in following THAT route? Kepler might as well decide to be one of them (and forever forgotten), in which case another bright guy with access to the same technology (best at that time) would publish the same observations.
The problem is that now almost all science is funded from "public funds", so there is really no incentive to go against what the public believes (and public ius represented by the bureocrats in Washington, you know...
Paul B.
"For biologists who do endangered species analysis, my experience is that the majority of them are ordered to reverse their conclusions [if they favor listing]. There are other biologists who will do it if you won't," said the biologist, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Seeing as they couldn't find anyone willing to back up their assertion with their names this accusation is worth as much as any made by an anonymous coward, that is to say, don't assume it's horseshit right away but don't trust it either
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Both countries have a policy of hiding mad cow disease. All efforts are made to ensure cattle are slaughtered before 30 months of age so if they are infected, they will not have had time to develop symtoms. Animals displaying obvious symptoms are shot and listed as arriving dead, and therefore not allowed to be processed for human consumption, and as such not tested. These animals are then fed to your cats and dogs. Look for cats and dogs dying of mad cow related illnesses in north america like they are in Britain in the near future.
As someone who works in the beef industry in the US, and has spoken to many people in similar positions in Canada, I recommend not eating beef.
it's log files
"its".
Bill Moyers article: http://www.alternet.org/story/20666/
Hey, you think your house is cool?
...is paved with good intentions.
The most amazing thing in this article is how generic it is. It does not specify if the scientists are contract or Federal employee. It does not specify WHO is telling them to change data, nor exactly what kind of data and from exactly what kind of reports. It does not specify the statictical methodology used. I mean, come on. If you think this article is "good", think again.
I'm not saying some part of it, all of it, or even more is the truth. I'm just saying that there is nothing to convince me of it. There is not a single series of supportive, factual pieces of information. It's all heresay and overly political. Nice.
The cow in the US was imported from Canada. Good job on catching that one, canunks. The cow hadn't entered the food chain, human or animal. At least one of the cows in Canada was processed into animal feed, however.
The US has had bans on cow imports from mad cow infected nations since 1989. Canada didn't start until 1990. The US also has bans on using cow parts in feed for other cows, which drastically lowers the chance of BSE spreading. Canada (at least to my knowledge) still has no such rules in place.
So now you tell us who's doing a better job.
.. just not with your subject line (unless you forgot to put quotes around "capitalism" to mean "statist economy"). ;-) Obviously you are coming from the Left, and I am coming from the Top (libertarian, you know...) but yes, Science is becoming another consumable, to be bought and sold like oil and food. -- see my previous comments in this thread.
the only way to give it some dignity back is to detach it from the government oversight (whoever runs the govt. at the moment), and the only way to achieve THAT is to have enough of independent private wealth in society to fund interesting scientific projects. And no, I do not mean "it is cheaper for me to give $1M grant to this professor who will prove that I do not harm anything than $5M fine to the EPA who thinks that I am harming everything around my plant".
Anyther perspective for you -- I grew up in Soviet Union (decidedly non-capitalist country) and the environment there was, to put it mildly, REALLY bad. Free society (which some of us equate with capitalism, obviously in the different sense of the word that you used in your subj) seems to be doing much better.
Paul B.
The last time I looked, falsifying or causing the falsification of Federal government documents, including research was Federal crime.
My grandfather worked at a USDA research station and the scientist there always had to attach some boiler plate to their research submissions saying that the research was sound to the best of their knowledge. I would image that the scientist in the survey had a similar obligation.
If these scientist have real solid evidence that science was altered then they need to provide the names of the studies and the people involved so we can through some people in jail.
If they can't or won't do this I call bullshit.
Slightly off topic...
There's been talk about how we're anywhere as close as a decade from the "point of no return" for the planet. Mainly because politicians are ignoring the scientists. I don't think the scientists are going to change the politicians mind until it's too late.
What the scientists need to do is prepare for when everything's going to hell and the politicians are screaming for help (while probably blaiming them at the same time) - then the scientists have the whip.
You screwed the planet, we'll try to salvage some of it on our own terms...
Reality is that which will kill you if ignored long enough.
Canada has the same stupid law. Not feeding cows to cows is not good enough. Cows are still fed to pigs and chickens, which are then fed to cows. There is nothing to indicate this will prevent the spread of BSE, its a feel good excercise to make it seem like we're doing something.
And ask an inspector how well that law is being followed. I have reported 17 farms for continuing to feed beef based nutritional suppliments to cattle, and although 6 of those places claimed they didn't know of the law and would stop, the others were openly unconcerned with following the law. The official stance of the USDA is that I am incorrect, there is no problem, and what I have seen does not happen. My reports are filed away and never acted on. I am not alone. Disclosure to the media means finding a new job.
Unfortunately the entire LA Times is an opinion piece these days. They are like the boy who cried wolf; Even if it's true, if it's in the times, I can't take it seriously. They tweak polls until they come out right and did their best to throw the gubenatorial election. I like my media political operative free!
Sometimes at night I imagine the darkness is filled with horrible things with too many teeth, like Julia Roberts.
It's just those pesky scientists causing trouble again. They're always trying to stir things up...turn people against the visitors....don't worry about it, Diana will sort them out.
"Slashdot, the Weapon of Mass Download. :-)"
;-)
Which is why I do my part by never RTFA. Mostly cuz the articles are usually basically what the summary says, e.g. "windows teh cool, SCO rulez, linux teh bad!"...
The comments are what I come for
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
... unless you also put the total number of cows in both US and canada into you equation.
Say, there are no cows in Canada and they;ve just imported 800, learned that their precious purchase is at danger of that mad cow desease and screened all of them, finding 3 mad. Depending on the accuracy of their test, they might've missed another 3 or 4 or 400...
Say, there is a million cows in the US and 1600 were added. Learning of the desease, they tested all of them and found just one mad.
Who did better? Again, no one knows...
Paaul B.
Friggin' moderators. Hey, read the damn article before you start slinging flamebait around idjit! It's very relevant to the thread and the post it's attached to.
Hey, you think your house is cool?
If the public doesn't believe the system can ever work properly, it's all that much easier to manipulate it. This seems to be a recurring theme with the current administration. If you screw up, screw up big and everyone will let it slide:
1) Hey, this strategic intelligence stuff is difficult, how could we know there weren't WMDs there?
2) Wars are complicated. Taking control of a nation is complicated. Of course there are bound to be a lot of really, really serious screw-ups in our planning.
3) What is "torture?" I mean, really. Aren't we really just splitting hairs here? One man's "brutal interrogation" is another man's "questioning session." Besides, this sort of thing has always happened throughout history, but in previous American wars there weren't nosy reporters snooping around all over the place.
4) Everyone knows government is inefficient. We're trying to cut the size of the government. If we cut domestic spending, we can slice out the deficit and shrink government. And we all know that the military and government are two totally different things, which is why $8 billion in missing funds in Washington demands outrage, while $8 billion missing in Iraq is just the fog of war.
5) It's impossible to estimate the cost of war in Iraq before we go in. It's impossible to estimate the cost of the war once we're in it. Therefore it is obviously impossible to estimate its cost in the future, which is why it's not in the budget package.
Desensitize the public to gross incompetence by convincing them that it is to be expected, and over time the public will come to expect it. Those who are outraged will be promptly marginalized as hopelessly romantic idiots.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Anyway, this is stupid: It's science. If you report something that's wrong, the next group comes along and makes you look like a twit. Why would anyone risk their professional standing for some transient political nobodies?
They love research grants even more when no strings are attached. Do you really think private entities don't apply pressure when they fund research?
What about Haliburton? The love their federal contracts.
Say, does Haliburton make significant money from anything besides federal contracts? Do they make appliances or aeroplanes? Do they do medical research?
To be consistent, shouldn't you extend your disdain for anyone or group that gets a significant portion of their funds from the government? (And if Haliburton is a bad example, I know there are many, many "private" companies that make all or nearly all of their income from public money.)
There's a lot of fundamental research that happens at Universities that businesses have no interest in. Anthropology, paleontology, history, mathematics, physics, cosmology, geology, biology, etc. You just can't privatize it because no one envisions the payoff. But remember, your CDs and DVDs use error detection/correction mechanisms based on mathematics, specifically group and field theory, developed in the 1700s. This math was viewed as completely without practical application for centuries! Indeed, the founder, Galois I believe, revelled in the fact that his theory had no application but was completely esoteric.Well!! In past 200 years of US history, no administration was ever accused of fiddling with science by a bunch of nobel laurates.
Given that every company and every government department has a "Confidentiality Agreement" (Agreement Ha!), or "Official Secrets Act", or "Commercially Sensitive Information" or "Trade Secret" or....
Conspiracy is this civilization's norm, not something cranky and weird.
It's what we do every week in the monday morning meeting.
Don't believe me? Just try paste the minutes of your last meeting on a publically visible website and see how long you last.
If what were doing is so good, why not let people see, it should be engendering public confidence and hence really good public relations.
Imagine a world in which, by law, if every meeting of three or more held was publically accessible. How would our world change?
How much that we do, which are basically ashamed of, will suddenly not be acceptable?
Which actions would suddenly no longer be orchestrated by these meetings?
I ask you, think back to your last two work meetings. What would have been said or done differently if your customers, shareholders, or the press or other stakeholders were listening?
Quite a lot.
Budget for Fish and Wildlife is now enough for exactly one stamp.
How come stories about how Bush's administration is doing something bad always get some Bush apologist quickly posting "let the Bush bashing begin", but stories that criticize enemies of Bush don't get the same defensive kneejerk? Because Bush apologists have no defense, except to portray critics as being mean, or having an agenda.
"The facts are clearly biased against President Bush"
- (paraphrase) John Stewart, The Daily Show
--
make install -not war
... instead of replying to me (whom you obviously will find in perfect agreement with you! I mentioned my political inclinations quite obviously... ;-) ) try engaging one of those leftist/statist kids/pops -- maybe we even have a chance to put an idea or two in their heads. ;-)
But yes, I do appreciate you making this point -- just a pity that noone will probably see it except for someone who agrees with it anyway.
Paul B.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the only ontopic reply this far.
What's your point? That it's okay to lie about the cost if you think it's worth it? From the article:
If I'm parsing the phony "on the other hand" journalism correctly,
That's not acceptable. I don't care how cozy your house is.
-- . . ramblin' . . .
I, for one, welcome our new censored, creationist supporting theocratic "scientists"
...that you're not surprised when you read these things from the LA Times. http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/004746.php
Dude [comma] you are a fucking loser.
Can you go over that again? I still haven't figured out how Bush thought that going to war shortly before an election, knowing that there were no WMD's to be found, and not bothering to plant any fakes of his own, would work to the benefit of his "holy causes." Qui bono?
Am I missing something? Did not every serious observer, from John Kerry to MI5, believe that Saddam had WMD's prior to the war? Are you saying that they were all so stupid and gullible that they could be misled by the smooth lies of the inarticulate smirking chimp moron Bushitler?
morals no longer seem to matter in our reltavistic society.
You can say that again. Though I must say, that sounds pretty comical coming from the lips of a leftist... Jacques Derrida, call your office....
Too much Law; not enough Order.
Is that you?
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Better yet, tell us why the border should be opened up to livestock exchange between US and Canada?
IBP, Swift et al. want cheap Canadian meat. Kraft, Safeway, Dean's Foods, etc., want cheap replacement dairy cattle.
The cool thing was last summer my sister, who lives about 15 miles south of Canada in Ferndale, WA, was raising chickens at the time they found avian flu in a BC chicken house less than a mile from the border... They killed a lot of birds in BC last year because of that, and were prepared to go similarly ballistic in NW Washington.
Yes, they did come and check on her chickens, in full haz-mat gear...
Then again the Union of Concerned Scientists has a very outspoken agenda, and generally colors all of its statements based on that. I'd take this with a grain of salt.
Glad someone else noticed, I thought I was going insane there when I read the article documents and saw nothing of the sort reported by the original post.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
No really asshat, your mom did swallow.
Middle manager (nervously): Ah, very well, but you might want to take out the part about the President and Halliburton. I don't think that's been proven yet.
Lefty scientist: Oh ho! See? See? Censorship! McCarthy! Halliburton! Enron! Chimpy! Bushitler! WMDs! Arsenic! Kyoto!
Too much Law; not enough Order.
http://www.amconmag.com/2005_02_14/article.html
It's fascism dipshit, not just a cumstain on a blue dress.
fuck off and die.
your comment simply shows your ignorance about the topic.
No one is talking about communism here, but you must realize that capitalism has many flaws when it comes to dealing with the environment. On such flaw is that Economic theory is based on there being substitutions available, so that when one resource becomes scarce, and more expensive an alternative is presented and the demand for the scarce good subsides. There are many aspects of the environment where NO SUBSTITUION exists. What is an appropriate substitute for drinking water, food or clean air??? There are no substitutes for these resources.
PEOPLE MUST STOP TREATING ECONOMIC THEORY AS ECONOMIC FACT.
Your comment that we will be slaves is ridiculous, no one is advocating communism, (there are many examples of how and why it fails). You are the type of people that called Rachel Carson a commie lesbian when she released her book "Silent Spring" which criticized the use of pesticides such as DDT, well Fast forward a few decades and it turns out she was right (bTW it is a great book and I strongly recommend it). Don't discount people because they don't agree with, or have certain criticism with capitalism. Capitalism is not perfect, there are many flaws, we should work to fix the flaws, and realize that business should not always be the number one priority.
I suggest you read the facts (read scientific journals for the least biased data available), or some books by respected authors in their fields (pay greater attention to what biologists and ecologists say about the environment than what economists say about it... after all the biologists and ecologists are more educated when it comes to these issues that the economists.)
The western life style of consumption is not sustainable, and changes are necessary. We are consuming resources faster than nature can replenish them. Changes will either come willingly, or they will be forced upon us, change is coming, we cannot continue to live with our levels of consumption.
We are dependent on a healthy environment to survive and if we degrade it, then our ability to live in it is also degraded.
Look at the long-term, we may not bet as wealthy today, but our children and our children's children will have a healthy planet to live on.
Hunger for Dictatorship
... advocating nuclear holocaust and mass bloodshed for more than a year now." One of the biggest right-wing talk-radio hosts regularly calls for the mass destruction of Arab cities. Letters that come to this magazine from the pro-war Right leave no doubt that their writers would welcome the jailing of dissidents. And of course it's not just us. When USA Today founder Al Neuharth wrote a column suggesting that American troops be brought home sooner rather than later, he was blown away by letters comparing him to Tokyo Rose and demanding that he be tried as a traitor. That mood, Rockwell notes, dwarfs anything that existed during the Cold War. "It celebrates the shedding of blood, and exhibits a maniacal love of the state. The new ideology of the red-state bourgeoisie se
War to export democracy may wreck our own.
by Scott McConnell
Students of history inevitably think in terms of periods: the New Deal, McCarthyism, "the Sixties" (1964-1973), the NEP, the purge trials--all have their dates. Weimar, whose cultural excesses made effective propaganda for the Nazis, now seems like the antechamber to Nazism, though surely no Weimar figures perceived their time that way as they were living it. We may pretend to know what lies ahead, feigning certainty to score polemical points, but we never do.
Nonetheless, there are foreshadowings well worth noting. The last weeks of 2004 saw several explicit warnings from the antiwar Right about the coming of an American fascism. Paul Craig Roberts in these pages wrote of the "brownshirting" of American conservatism--a word that might not have surprised had it come from Michael Moore or Michael Lerner. But from a Hoover Institution senior fellow, former assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, and one-time Wall Street Journal editor, it was striking.
Several weeks later, Justin Raimondo, editor of the popular Antiwar.com website, wrote a column headlined, "Today's Conservatives are Fascists." Pointing to the justification of torture by conservative legal theorists, widespread support for a militaristic foreign policy, and a retrospective backing of Japanese internment during World War II, Raimondo raised the prospect of "fascism with a democratic face." His fellow libertarian, Mises Institute president Lew Rockwell, wrote a year-end piece called "The Reality of Red State Fascism," which claimed that "the most significant socio-political shift in our time has gone almost completely unremarked, and even unnoticed. It is the dramatic shift of the red-state bourgeoisie from leave-us-alone libertarianism, manifested in the Congressional elections of 1994, to almost totalitarian statist nationalism. Whereas the conservative middle class once cheered the circumscribing of the federal government, it now celebrates power and adores the central state, particularly its military wing."
I would argue that Rockwell--who makes the most systematic argument of the three--overstates the libertarian component of the 1994 Republican victory, which could just as readily be credited to heartland rejection of the '60s cultural liberalism that came into office with the Clintons. And it is difficult to imagine any scenario, after 9/11, that would not lead to some expansion of federal power. The United States was suddenly at war, mobilizing to strike at a Taliban government on the other side of the world. The emergence of terrorism as the central security issue had to lead, at the very least, to increased domestic surveillance--of Muslim immigrants especially. War is the health of the state, as the libertarians helpfully remind us, but it doesn't mean that war leads to fascism.
But Rockwell (and Roberts and Raimondo) is correct in drawing attention to a mood among some conservatives that is at least latently fascist. Rockwell describes a populist Right website that originally rallied for the impeachment of Bill Clinton as "hate-filled
Look at the science and not the crazy green religion preachers. scientists are have teh most knowledge and what they say shoud be heard better
At least, the bad genocides, where people we don't dislike are getting killed by people we do dislike.
I mean, even the Republicans would probably issue at statement condemning them or something.
As long as it wasn't someone we were actively trading with. Or might want to in the future.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Did you read the survey? (Available here)
It's phrased in the present tense.
same song, different verse
"If it's real, then it gets more interesting the closer you examine it. If it's not real, just the opposite is true." -
This goes for loud mouthed celebrities and professional do-gooders of all stripes as well.
RFK Jr. has all kinds of coercive, job-killing prescriptions for how the average American should live his life, yet flies around in private jets and opposes wind power in Nantucket Sound because it would spoil the view from the deck of his yacht.
Barbara Streisand and a hundred other Hollywood locusts never shut up about the environment, but live in monstrously wasteful air-conditioned mansions, and tool around Malibu and Beverly Hills in limousines.
Al Gore pompously lectures Middle America about the need for "wrenching change" to their comfortable lifestyles, then goes and has four kids, doubling his own claim on the Earth's non-renewable resources.
If these leftist scumbags really cared about any of this shit, rather than self-aggrandizement and the ammassing of political power, they'd shut up and set a good example through their own actions. But as long as they do not, I will happily and proudly drive around in my Land Cruiser, and global warming be damned.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
This has nothing to do with online rights. If anything, it belongs in the "Politics" section.
We don't have true democracy. We have a republic. We have a republic because tyrrany of numbers sucks.
It's not a bug, it's a feature.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
I actually remember a time when right-wing and libertarian opinion on this site was as common as all this leftist drivel. Then all the college English-Lit majors thought it would be so kewl to come and hang out with the nerds. Fuck off commie wankers!
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
This is a case where RTFA is almost worse than nothing. Not only is the article biased, but the survey and those who made it is biased - and their reporting of the results is beyond biased.
e su lts.pdf
Here's a link to the survey questions and results:
http://ucsusa.org/documents/FWS_questions_and_r
Reading the actual results of the survey tells a far different story than that reported by those conducting the survey - or the LA times who seem to have just regurgitated the PEER/UCS press release without doing any kind of actual reporting.
Based on their own survey results most respondants feel the opposite of what is being portrayed in this story. Most of them are happy with the FWS and don't feel pressured.
Of course also keep in mind that the FWS told it's employees not to respond to this survey (most likely because they knew UCS/PEER were just looking to create another hit piece since that's what PEER does full-time.) So those who did respond are already those who aren't good at following directions and are probably upset with their jobs for one reason or another.
That this even counts as news is either a testament to how liberally biased the LA times is or just how poor "news" reporting in this country has become.
--- Juggle juggle@hitesman.com
Don't you (and other above posters) remember basic statistics?
You should know that your sample space does not have to equal the population to get informative results....
But your a good scientific skeptic, right??? Got the process down done good!
Being critical of both sides doesn't mean your insightful.... except on slashdot..
Says who? I don't believe you. This country is more heavily forested now than it has been in the past hundred years. Abandoned agricultural land is returning to forest everywhere.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
I have heard scientists who have told said that their science supports something *it does not support*. Then when overruled, they complain that political or business interests are overriding science. But it often is not true. Don't believe them just because they say it.
For example, here in WA, we have a lot of land use issues. A common practice is for the environmental lobby to say that the "best available science" says that for a certain type of environment with a certain type of animal, a certain buffer size is required. But often they are just wrong.
There are many ways in which they are wrong. Sometimes they unscientifically compare different types of environments as though they are the same. Sometimes they don't take preexisting man-made structures into account. Sometimes -- this is no joke -- they mistake the size of the study for the recommended buffer size.
These sorts of things go on all the time. And there's no justification for taking their word for it, especially when they have their own political agenda.
Okay, I'll bite. The post title says "U.S. Scientists Say They Are Told to Alter Finding". 30% of the scientists within one single organisation is not a valid sample space. If, instead, the post title was "U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientists say they are told to alter finding", it would be a valid sample space. Otherwise, this number is not representative of the scientific community at all.
Rwanda.... "So horrible!" "won't happen again". A Republican shakes his head at the ineptness of the Clinton administration, looks up, and says "Darfur, what? Huh?, nothing to see there".
We're all bastards for doing nothing about genocide. Including my lazy ass.
Until recently, few of them were partisan in a direction with which you disagreed.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Cute pic of you in your undies, faggot.
Why they even agree with William MacNamera's opinions on the Vietnam war. Amazingly they arrived at them first, without the need for 50,000 American data points and a lifetime of reflection. Those communists, thinking that a careful examination of the facts, and a dogged pursuit of the truth can lead to wiser decisions, I bet they hate America!
They should have just been good citizens and supported the Commander-in-Chief no matter what (Unless he authorized use of force against Kosovo which Newt Gingrich described as "another Vietnam.")
They're being good critics of an administration, which is the most American thing a person can do (see The Declaration of Independance). Once more, as the grandparent poster notes they have a track record of being accurate dating back to the organizations founding in 1969.
The people who really hate America are the ones who think God should run the country. He doesn't want the job, if he did, he'd be here. Since he's a supremely powerful being it seems unlikely he trust anything he wanted done right to remote control fuckwits given to tragic misinterpretations.
If they looked ahead, they'd realize that extinct wildlife won't give any revenues.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Were you aware that under the laws of Texas, the Governor is powerless to prevent an execution? He can issue a one-time stay of execution for six months, but all pardons, paroles, and commutations have to originate with the state board of pardons.
Personally, I don't think we're putting nearly enough people to death. Most violent felonies, child molestation, etc., ought to be death on the first offense. Three felonies of any kind are proof enough for me that the perpetrator is a sub-human monster who ought to be put down with no more remorse than we spare for a rabid dog.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
"In Australia, some call it bush bashing. Others call it four wheel driving!"
And in America it's called "Four more years of hell".
For those of you who wonder what "party plants in the Presidential press pool" refers to in TellarHK's comment, I have a link to a Guardian (a UK paper) article on Jeff Gannon, the fake reporter representing a right-wing news organization who got outed and resigned, on my blog at: http://sundroid.blogspot.com/. By the way, the news is being reported in every major U. S. paper, I picked Guardian because it does not require registration.
Sun and Fun
I believe so. Or something very much like it. Remember, Osama and his ilk don't just want us out of the Middle East. They want to wipe Israel off the map, kill every Jew, re-conquer lost Muslim lands such as Spain, and eventually force everyone in the world to become Muslim or die. They are quite clear and vocal about this. So long as we exist in a non-Muslim nation, we are targets for this type of Muslim.
I want my government to find all Muslims who think like this and kill them quickly and ruthlessly.
--ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
Back in 1981, I worked at CDC. At that time, a branch became aware of a new disease that was spreading. When they approached the White house for several millions to stop the spread, they were told no. The CDC was so sure that this would be a nightmare, that they sent in some of the top guns to convince Reagan to fund it (one was a mormon bishop whose lab had won numerous awards for its' work). Of course, it was just in the gay community, and Reagan talked to his priest and came back and still said no. Obviously, this was AIDS. When my boss was asked to take on the AIDS research, he turned it down and it went to Gallo.
What I found interesting was that much of this never made the history books. We were told to just forget it. From much higher.
Of course, we have another disaster brewing with "Mad Cow"/Scrappies/CWD/KJD. It is thought that these are the same prion in different animals. But this admin is ignoring due to the possibility of hurting cattle export for the large agri companies (esp in Texas).
Many Leaders today, have hidden agendas. You need to be sure that it is in our best interest.
"The free market has no friends."
Since there's no such thing as a "free market", and has never been. Your statement is meaningless.
Damn, I used my mod points yesterday.
This is very insightful. If we don't understand our enemies real motives we can't hope to defeat them.
"Drug related crime" is a misnomer, "prohibition related crime" is the more accurate and correct phrase.
The start of the red/blue mess is a moron.
People who say both sides are just as bad as a start are ignorant or just trying to lay an "unbiased" opinion.
Go read up what people said about hitler before the shit hit the fan. Same sort of crap; bunch of morons doing the same crap and calling the people who were dead accurate--- extremists who were not being fair to hitler, who never could be that bad.
FACT is bush is far worse than most the world realizes. He is also more facist than most people realize. But anyone with an education and a brain can't speak the truth.
You say the truth and you get labeled and marginalized. THAT is how the game works.
I just hope it does not have to get extremely obvious for the slow people to catch up. (like it did with hitler---the americans being rather slow on the uptake then as they are now)
In the information age, misinformation is the means of censorship.
"Great choice of president, by the way. And secretary of state. And secretary of 'defence'. And ..."
Uh, huh. That reminds me. How's Blair doing? Have his chapped lips healed yet?
For a list of "scientists" who are really shills for big industry denying global warming, see:
environmentaldefense.org
Also, when your right-wing relatives start citing contrary "legitimate sources", it's always good to look them up at the Disinfopedia:
sourcewatch.org
Here you can easily identify sheep-skinned pundits and astroturfers.
"You have liberated me from thought."
"That this even counts as news is either a testament to how liberally biased the LA times is or just how poor "news" reporting in this country has become."
Or the fact that the majority of the readership failed in their duties. Remember regardless of how bad the reporting system is. It's still the job of the readership to think, and if need be, dig.*
*Especially for the denizins of "/." who are suppose to be the future of the intellectual community.
The best arguments always occur with the maximum number of participants on each side.
:)
I love these republican/democrat debates
i hate pansy republicans
"Since his mindless followers don't have that kind of power, they resort to building strawmen to tear down."
Sorry. That constitutes "destroying the environment".
(disclaimer: I'm not American, I'm just calling this as I see it. Some may be offended by this, sorry.)
America is no longer the land of the free, and the home of the brave. It's just a haven for corporate controlled special interest groups. Too bad, if people (meaning the government, and the corporations they're tied to) were less interested in making money, and more interested in helping their own country, and the planet as a whole, they really could be what they claim they are. As it stands, it's pretty much a lie. We see this all the time in things ranging from the war in iraq (which was based on a false premise to begin with), to ridiculous patent grants, to other environmentally important things like the Kyoto Accord. All the while, these people who make the key decisions are not held accountable for their actions. And when they are held accountable, which is rare, they're treated with more respect than they should be due. Got a CEO who made millions off the suffering of others? I got two words for you: General Population. Right beside the murderers, car thieves and rapists. Too bad it doesn't happen.
Frankly, I don't blame American individuals per-se. Some might say "well, you voted them in!" but if you have a good long look at the choices, there may as well not be any choices. Like people anywhere, they have their own worries on an individual level. It's not surprising that some of these scientists who are coerced by corporations with extreme power just comply. I mean, they have their own families to feed, and that has to be a primary worry of many of them. What would you do if someone threatened to take away your ability to provide for your kids? Lets face it, these people are caught in an economical machine they just can't change.
The truth is, capitolism doesn't work in favour of the base population. It's a system based on keeping the poor as poor as possible, and the rich as rich as possible, with a mid-point "hump" that's really hard to get past, even if you work your ass off. The government tends to make this whole thing far worse by letting large business entities get away with murder.
If I were American, I'd move. Anywhere has got to be better than where America is currently heading. You may wake up one day to find out your country has become the very thing you hate, assuming it's not there already.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
"I beg to differ. Free markets exist in places without law."
The Guilds would disagree.
To the intelligent Slashdotters:
Thank you for being able to cite evidence backing your points and for being able to debate without turning something into a flamewar.
To the rest of you:
[Group name/individual] is destroying (pick one)[our way of life/the economy/our country]! Those who disagree with me are all lying self-serving hypocrites painting a false picture of my side! Blame [the opposing side] for everything!
Just insert the appropriate phrases and presto! It's the average Slashdoter response.
For all of the shouting I see precious little debate going on. Mostly I see a lot of purely partisan bullshit flying from both sides. being a Slashdotter doesn't automatically make you smarter than everyone else. Cut the crap and take lessons from the Slashdotters who know how to debate.
Yes I know it's a rant, but I just had to get that off my chest.
Science should never be forced to change accordingly to politics. Didn't we learn anything from the past? Galileo Galilei, for example, was forced to change his mind because the backwards church demanded it. To say that these scientists today were silenced because during the last 15 years there was a democratic presient for 8 years is simply ridiculous. Are they complaining about how they were silenced back then, or are they complaining about how they're silenced now? I have read about how conservatives (who, for some reason, seem to believe in mythological creatures a lot) are trying to skew data to fit their own ideas on how reality should be. This doesn't have to do with biology alone, but also things such as abortion. There are more examples where science is slowly being forced to move to give room for personal beliefs and religion and politics. This is dangerous and dishonest and, yes, evil.
"In Australia, some call it bush bashing. Others call it four wheel driving!"
I don't think your women appreciate you four-wheeling through their bushes.
Where I live, there are generally three kinds of government sponsored science. I suspect it is the same in the US.
The first is done by the fixed grants to the universities, going to teachers/researchers with tenure, who can research any subject they want. There is so little of this left that it is probably insignificant.
The second is more or less generic grants everybody can seek. Probably similar to the NSF. We can not choose what we want to research, we send in proposals within the scope of the grant, and some get funded, presumably based on scientific merit. But we can publish any results, subject only to the traditional peer-review by journals. This is where the largest share of research today happens.
The third is the research insititutions who are directly part of the various branches of government. Research there are directly related to specific tasks required by the department. Researchers are not asked to lie, but results that does not support the policy of the government are not published, and the summary and consclusion of published reports are written "politically", and sometimes contradict the scientific meat of the reports. But journalists doesn't speak science, so the contradiction is seldom discovered.
Privately funded research are mostly similar to category three.
You're worse than a fucking loser.. you read sla.. oh wait, nevermind =)
Very strange that when most non-US citizens say "hmmm, reasonable", most US-citizens shout "Liberal liberal"...
..." It would really be a nice thing to have a few more political parties in the US - official ones, say ones that get invited to debates...
As if, as if this label excuses anybody to use his/her (godgiven?) brains and run back to daddy Bush or mummy Kerry.
While it is true that in certain key area's the Democrats in the US are every bit as ugly as the Republicans - who at least do it in the open - that doesn't mean all is said or all is excused.
The land of the free doesn't seem to offer much debate culture. Everything is instantly polarized, categorized and thus excused from further intelligent debate, because "Liberal Liberal - Communist Communist - Unbeliever Unbeliever -
Anyway in this case some scientists from an organization with more democratic roots than republican roots say worriesome things.
What? They CAN'T BE TRUE because of their alleged political agenda?
The opposite however is very plausible I presume, that a government that has a history of noncooperation, changing the facts and bending the media by methods that are frowned upon by every side of any spectrum DOES NOT however interfere in the scientific process.
Right. I think I'll go with the side of the actual scientists who're reporting facts that can be verified here and there before shouting foul.
But hey, you know, if that gets to you, just shout "Liberal Liberal" a few times. I'm sure you'll feel better in no time.
note: the term liberal means conservative right-ish bastard where I come from, so it indeed is slightly insulting...
I think, therefore I am...I think.
So the point here is that we can't take what scientists say at face value, because the chances are good they may have been co-opted.
So all that stuff about evolution and global warming and everything else we're told is the gospel truth could be little more than a load of cow patties.
Right?
The survey results are extremely helpful in understanding the numbers cited by the article. Why is this a troll?
Please learn how statistics work before saying that a low response rate plays a role in the actual statistics. A low response rate changes the margin of error, not the percentages. The actual statistic is >50% of 1,400 scientists +/- some margin of error that they don't give, not 15% of scientists, since you have no data on what those other 70% who didn't respond think.
I thought the presidental election is over. I mean, the U.S. people has voted for HIM, so now don't squeal. Ask Mr. Starr, maybe he's ready for another witch hunt.
lets skew the facts and develop as much land as possible and put up parking lots, Walmarts & shopping malls, never mind what a bull dozer does to a hillside when it terraces it and later when it rains like hell and half the hillside goes sliding down in to your homes & businesses...
Correction: We have a tyrannical republic.
Sort of like a drug. You know it is killing you but you keep coming back for more..
Is there a slashdot addict support group?
Yeah.
are the literal "canaries in the coal mine" of the environement. They're warning bells for more serious consequences.
You're right, censorship is bad. The only thing worse is complete ignorance of spelling and grammar.
That was classic intercourse!
Yeah, we meet everyday at 1 o'clock at my slashdot journal.
But remember, we aren't spamming for iPods, so we can still hold our heads up high.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Don't you people understand that your system is 100% corrupt from bottom to top? That's what happens in a dog eat dog society where the only thing that counts is money and material goods.
You better get your shit together soon. The world doesn't want your culture of corruption, greed and hate to spread anymore than it already has.
Let me see if I'm following your argument. If your house is made of wood, it should float. If it floats, that means it weighs the same as a duck.
Therefore, if George Bush weighs the same as a duck, his administration isn't pressuring scientists to lie to promote the lumber businesses of that he and his friends own.
Quod Erat Demonstrandum
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
From TFA:
"But when it comes to altering data, that is a serious matter. I am really sorry to hear that scientists working for the service feel they have to do that. Changing facts to fit the politics -- that is a very unhealthy thing. If I were a scientist in that position I would just refuse to do it."
The "scientist" who alters data is simply not a scientist. Period. It's like a preacher who is an atheist. It simply doesn't make sense. Science is all about the data, and facts - even if your results fly into the face of your hypothesis, you have to accept them and find another explanation for them - not alter them.
If politicians found out that scientists cannot be pressured they'd have to stop doing it. You shouldn't be able to "rent" a PhD and tell them what to say. I might as well buy my degree on the internet if I let that be done to me. But there are always spineless individuals in every field and they give the rest of us a bad name.
Good for them for going public with this - one has to ask: exactly how long has this been going on, and where else has this junk science been taking place...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
...that nowhere in the article is it explicitly stated just *who* supposedly instructed these scientists to fiddle with their data, conclusions, etc? Scientists were mentioned, the Fed was mentioned, the Game & WL folks were mentioned, and assertions of interferance were mentioned, but there is not one sentence explicitly linking them together. That brings to mind the old addage: "Consider the source".
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
That's pretty pathetic, not to mention cynical, that because you are a corrupt and miserable excuse for a human being that everyone else who claims to be a scientist must also be just as corrupt.
And your harkening back to the "good old days" of the 18th C. is equally pathetic.
My guess is that your career as a corporate prostitute began long before you ever got to college. My question is how do you deaden the pain you must have knowing what a waste of space you are?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
The scientists' incompetence or political agenda is not even at issue. The alleged problem is that are being ordered to alter data and sign their names to conclusions they don't believe in.
Consider the motivations for doing such a thing. One asks someone to sign something in order to add their credibility to the conclusions. So this is not about some more-competent scientist overruling some incompetent hippie employees. The conclusions clearly come from sources who do not have the independence or qualifications to be taken seriously.
I do admire your skepticism -- you're not intimidated by someone in a white coat. But don't extend that to contempt of them. Do you really think there's no difference in competence between the local enviro-crank group and federal scientists? Seriously.
In the places I've worked where the management was constantly overriding the technical employees, it's never been the employees' fault, and the management has never been right. When there's a pattern of overruling, invariably it was the boss who was incompetent, or some procurer was getting a kickback, or there was some other agenda.
And there's no justification for taking their word for it, especially when they have their own political agenda.
Myself, I find it a little bit easier to believe that the political administration is the side with the political agenda.
Guess what most scientists in the world do for a living? Give up? They work in military R&D. Even the US, which has more R&D budget per GNP applied to general science than anywhere else, has more scientists working for the military-industrial complex than anywhere else.
Now, we know they want that Alaskan oil. No eskimo, caribou or sanctuary are going to stop them. And you think a bunch of *scientists* are going to fight back? With whose grant/tenure? They're already owned, forget it.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
So you like reading your daily 'first post' comment, eh? :->
I bet you're a communist, hate America and speak French!
n+1. The people writing this survey like to wantonly split infinitives.
strongly agree | agree | don't know | disagree | strongly disagree
Man, this is so funny!
;-)
;-)
The parent poster:
- typical republican response: "it is happening, but clinton did it first."
- you: "If you really think it's only "Republicans" bending science, it's probably because the bending done by "Democrats" is invisible to you."
Now, I'm just wondering: ARE you a republican? That would top it off.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
When I started college I wanted to be a biologist. After a year of wrangling with lame pseudo science I just plain gave up on biology. Biologists tend to make up some wild ass assertion and try to find the facts to meet that assertion. The straw that broke the camel's back was when a lab professor gave me a "B" because I wouldn't fudge a lab experiment. The experiment was supposed to show a specific photosynthetic reaction in the absence of light. During the weekend some lab assistant left the lab door open and spoiled the experiment. The lab professor said to pretend that the experiment had gone as planned. I spoke to her and said I didn't think that was a good precedent to set with students and she just got mad at me. The paper I turned in explained the failed experiment as well as what should have happened. She hosed me by giving nearly everyone else an "A" and me a "B" in what should have been easy credit. Only one of the two non-"A" grades I earned in undergrad school. Both were for disagreeing with a professor and standing my ground.
So I think a bigger problem is that the biology field is populated with too many pseudo-soft science adherents. What is taken for science in the biology community is shameful.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Posts like that remind me that reading slashdot isn't always the intellectual equivalent of masturbation.
scientists prove earth created by god...
I mean, do you really want to love and worship an all powerfull God that allows the staggering amount of suffering to humans (and even animals) that occurs on our planet.
Any decent sort of God would make like happy and (at least) tolerable for his creations don't you think?
Unless he were some sort of peverse sadist, which he appears to be.
Without the acts done in the 'Name of God' our planet would be a safer, happier place.
Stick your God up your ass!
I do.
I really worry about the sort of world we're leaving them, and their children, and their children's children - and so on.
It's got nothing to do with being 'anti-capitalist' - I'm a businessman and fully approve of capitalism within and eithical and morally-resonsible framework.
It's not 'anti-American' either - although the US seems to be taking an agressively antagonistic attitude to almost every opinion that favours the common good these days.
Hubris comes before a fall and the USA is going to fall - no doubt about it.
Really!
Think about it.
Even in a bad econony you have air to breath and clean water to drink.
Nobody wants to listen. Should I give up my job so that I can change nothing and have nobody do anything different? I tell people not to eat beef every chance I get, and so far 2 people have actually listened. The disease doesn't develop in very many people who eat tainted meat, and it takes a long time to develop, so people just plain don't care. They would rather risk a slow death than stop eating beef because it doesn't seem urgent enough. Even people in Britain are trying to convince the media and goverments of the US and Canada to adopt policies like the ones they have over there, but nobody will listen. Its not like they know anything about BSE over there.
Exactly!
The human 'drive to survive' will ultimatly be our downfall as it is misappropriated into personal acquisition and greed.
You can see it every day with the "soccer mom" taking her kid to school in a 2-ton truck because she feels "safe" and can intimidate/subjugate other road users to notionally protect her offspring.
We're all doomed!
Such as the military budget taking up 45% of the total budget. That and the clear bias they have in stretching their points make this a long stretch.
a complete CUNT.
Moreover, you are purposely setting out to be a cunt and annoy people with your made-up reactionary, supposedly-right-wing views on every subject.
Grow up. Get a life. Fuck off.
Which is why I do my part by never RTFA. Mostly cuz the articles are usually basically what the summary says
Wait, are you reading the same slashdot I'm reading?
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
I think we need to start a fucking campaign and educate the masses about democracy vs. republic. I fucking HATE the fact that we're out trying to spread democracy in the middle east. All they have to do under a democract is convince 51% of the population that keeping 49% of the population down is a good thing and you have a wonderful democracy.
We are a fucking republic people. The rule of law rules not the majority.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
Exactly so.
I have come to the conclusion that the Bush
administration does not care one whit for
the American taxpayer and consumer, but only
for the interests of their "corporate sponsers".
Once the reports of BSE in American beef stocks
became apparent, the importation of USA beef into
Korea and Japan were curtailed. With some minor
changes to testing for BSE, and some serious
pressure from the Bush administration, those
beef exports are now on the increase again.
A small Kansas meat packer that spent millions of
dollars building a new feedlot, slaughterhouse,
and meat packing facility was shut down by the
Bush administration (FDA & USDA) because they
wanted to test each and every cow before they
were processed -- a testing regimen that would
have garnered them most (if not all) of the
export market to Japan and Korea. The attitude
of the Bush administration would appear to be
that small business interests that promote food
safety must be suppressed in favor of the big
corporate meatpackers that don't test.
Personally, I have stopped eating beef because
I don't trust the Bush administration to protect
my interests. Fat corporate profits trump food
safety and the environment in the USA these days.
And there really is no downside for the Bush
administration in taking these actions, because
by the time widespread human infection by BSE
becomes readily apparent, they will be long out
of office.
Am I cynical? You bet I am! With good reason.
Didnt you know that logic and commonsence doesnt apply to politics?
Its all about who's side you are on.. Nothing more..
Bash the other's guy.. Even when it makes you look like an idiot.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Yet another reason to call for the impeachment of the brainless horse's arse we have for a president. (If the story is true)
It's amazing nobody quoted Richard Feynman yet.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
He isn't the one engaging in "Bush bashing".
He is replying to a reply to a reply to a comment about how this is about "Bush bashing".
That first post was a troll that included the troll phrase "Bush bashing". People replied to the troll.
People replied to the people who replied to the troll.
People replied to the people who replied to the people who replied to the troll.
Now you're getting bent out of shape because you cannot distinguish between one of those 3rd generation replies and the original troll.
That's simple Pavlovian response on your part. You react to the phrase you've seen and not to the content of the message you are replying to.
THAT'S HOW TROLLING WORKS.
Until recently, few of them were partisan in a direction with which you disagreed.
I'm sorry, but you're going to have to justify that statement. You aren't going to prove it to me just by saying it and expecting me to roll over. You have not added information to dialogue that would challenge any previous notions I had.
I'm not aware of there being reports from the Clinton administration of this many (or any, but hey) scientists coming forward to complain of top-down meddling in their reports. I'm certainly not aware that they told employed researchers not to participate in a survey designed to detect such tampering, even on their own time.
This administration has been unprecidented in the amount with which they monkey around with the actions of governmental agencies, especially over environmental concerns.
Can you find evidence to the contrary?
Unfortunately the journal gets /.'d real quick, so only the first 5 viewers/day can actually see it.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
I just HAD to reply to this telling you how litteraly hilarious the parent post was to me. I spewed water out my nose, which I mistakenly was drinking while reading your submission.
Thanks Tom, you just made my day.
ROFL
/* sig */
If this isn't modded up it will be the ultimate proof of a Republikan moderator conspiracy.
Insert a 'Mwahaha' at will.
I propose this:
"We have morals, so we don't need ethics."
I attribute this idea to my friend Bart.
Insert lament about whiny liberals crying about truth, science, and freedom of speech from short sighted right wing tax cut reactionary here....>
The United States of America:
Of the corporations,
For the corporations,
And by the corporations.
God help us all.
Just one comment: the regime in Saudi Arabia isn't theocratic, it's secular. That's why bin Laden hates it so much.
Regardless of all the unethical shit that goes on, 50 million+ idiots still re-elected the worst administration we've ever seen. Great job, folks.
Government and big business will always cozy up to each other for the sake of common interests, like power and money.
Meanwhile, the common folk complain about it, "Oh, look what they're up to now!" but do nothing to actually hold anyone's feet to the fire.
Pass the potato chips, I think Desperate Housewives is on.
**************
Stop hurting America
- Jon Stewart
...and the Earth isn't warming either.
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
The Union of Concerned Scientist has done more to accelerate global warming than any other activist group. These are the people that made nuclear power a non-viable alternative in the United States. Reactionary enviromentalism at it's worst.
What was lost from the initial enforcement of the endangered species act is that it is functionally a Taking. If I buy or own property to build something, then the government says I can't and it loses value, they have "taken" the property.
The government should be free to buy up property to protect species, but not prevent private property owners from doing what they want with their property.
Most people here complain about the DCMA - they buy $10 software and the government says they can't change skins, transfer pictures to a PDA or whatever, but ignore $250,000 that government says (after the fact, or capriciously) you can't build on or alter.
Maybe if they called the DMCA the Endangered Software Species Act, everyone here would stop complaining about restrictions on the use of something they theoretically own.
It's becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between reading /. and http://www.thenation.com/
A few points.
1) All of you who are vigorously defending the scientific method- relax. Scientists are people too. Saying that they are immune from bias just because their field is objective ignores the massive differences of opinion WITHIN every field of science. It's just an absurd non-argument. OF COURSE 'scientists' are EVERY BIT as prone to political position-taking as anyone else. I do trust 'SCIENCE' but I do not particularly trust any organization just because it has scientists as members and the word 'science' in its name.
2) The group in question is largely composed of non-scientists.
3) Science groups have made other wonderful, politically motivated claims in the past. Nazi 'scientists' had all sorts of wonderful positions on scientific issues. At one time it was mainstream scientific belief that black Africans are objectively inferior to Europeans due to a supposed (and of course actually non-existent) lack of cranial capacity. At one time it was absurd to believe men build flying machines, that a universal calculating machine could be devised, that man could break the 4-minute mile. Alar was going to kill all of our children. Etc, etc, etc. Science is simply not sacrosanct.
4) The WHOLE POINT of the original post is to complain about political pressure and/or political motives distorting science. The very idea that it's reasonable to MAKE THAT COMPLAINT, then follow up with self-righteous bleating about how pure science is when someone you disagree with points out that there's bias in all directions- it's kinda lame.
I think this is an excellent example of how having two strong parties really can fail the middle. The problem isn't so much the watering down of points to talking points, it's that neither side of the argument has any real need to actually learn what the other side's position is and seriously debate it.
Your pro-life pro-choice examples demonstrates it. NO ONE (credible) even among the religious community is pushing against abortions for the life of the mother. Even before Roe Vs. Wade that was legal. Watering the issue down into that point is intellectually dishonest, just like it's hypocritical for the pro-life people to protest without being willing to pay medical bills and agree to adopt right on the spot.
The debate in that arguement is whether abortion is a valid form of birth control for arbitrary reasons, not a health of the mother issue.
Never confuse volume with power.
I read your comment, and made judgements about you based on it. Is that generalizing?
Good job ignoring the question, though.
Republican's goal of reduced taxes is great ...
Huh? I see no signs that the Republicans are trying to lower taxes. Take a look at the deficit.
It appears to me the Republicans are trying to increase power by whatever means possible, including telling people their taxes will be reduced, while at the same time spending money like drunken sailors on ends that, you guessed it, will increase power. The Republicans may have some redeeming quality, but reducing taxes is not it. End the brainwashing now, please. Or perhaps you are confusing them with the Libertarians?
.... but I just can't understand why they actually went head and did it. I mean, I get told to do things all the time which are, frankly, hazardous, illegal, and just plain wrong, but I never did any of them.
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
The US used to be the leader in scientific research, but with such dictorial control of corporations, and there only care "profit", we are bound to see more of this. Such sad days we live in, everyone reject Christianity and proper moral's from which the US was founded on and this is what you get I'm afraid, tremendous acts of amoral deeds. If you think I'm wrong just take a look at our world we live today, exactly! Your own measily human made laws will not change this world for the better FOOLS, they will create atrocities that we haven't seen yet in human history. We all live in the same physical world...should we not atleast try to coincide with each other. :)
Fire away the flames my friends
Based on their own survey results most respondants feel the opposite of what is being portrayed in this story. Most of them are happy with the FWS and don't feel pressured.
The fact that the majority had NOT been pressured doesn't mean that it's OK. 30% of those who answered feel pressured.
Even 5% shouldn't be acceptable.
In high school I got in a B in AP Chemistry because I didn't make up fake results but turned in my lab late so I could finish the experiment.
We were supposed to grind up antacids and titrate them, but there are so many other ingredients that they didn't dissolve in water in a nice homogeneous solution.
Everyone else in the class made up fake data to turn it in on time. I came back outside of class time to finish it and mine was late. Even my lab partner turned in fake data.
They got A's. I got a B. I was pretty pissed.
The teacher was new and was teaching the class for the first time, though--her inexperience was showing.
(Any science teacher who values conformity over actually doing the experiments should not be a science teacher, however.)
Also, I agree there is a lot of nonsense in biology. There is some pretty good bio out there, in the more specialized fields, like biochem, biophys (mostly physicists, actually), and microbiology. The intro classes are often taught by idiots, though. Heck, I've heard horror stories about a right-wing animal behavior expert for whom animal behavior was like a Rorshach test. Instead of analysing it in Darwinian terms (which leads to testable hypotheses), he went off on pseudoscientific tangents, speaking ex Cathedra like Freud. After all, the students are a captive audience. Idiocy.
Man. I don't even know where to begin. Go to Kuro5hin or something. They are a lot less intelligent there, and you'll get away with more.
Fundamentalist Christians. Get it right. I went to a Catholic school and Catholic high school, and what do you think they taught in their classrooms? Evolution, Big Bang theory, and all of the other real sciences. The only time Creationism was even mentioned was in Religion/Theology classes, where they said that it was wrong, and that science must be listened to in order to fully understand your faith. FYI, the guy who first proposed the "hypothesis of the primeval atom" in 1927, Georges LeMaitre, was a priest. This theory later came to be known as the Big Bang theory.
those same fundamentalist christians will say that a catholic school isn't really christian because catholics aren't really christians. i've known too many people who were "born again".
i agree though... i went to catholic school and even though there was a disclaimer in bio class, the teacher said "this goes against some of the catholic teachings, but it's science and we feel it's important you know this". or something to that extent. and then she taught us all about darwin and evolution...
please me, have no regrets.
Please make the distinction. We're not all ignorant.
Howdy.
Interesting that you would pick the number of years as 15 to describe the past. Let's pick the number 24 and see what happens. 2/3 Republican. But that's not my real worry about you. You seem to want to; Justify the Vietnam war, overthrow the constitution of the United States (free speech, freedom of assembly, etc), politicize what should be scientific research. Sounds like a Republican. Oh, by the way, anti-extremeist right wing does not equal liberal Democrat.
Best regards.
And, no, this isn't flamebait since this is exactly what fascism does do - among other things.
But yeah, I'm not surprised what this intellectually dull, narrow-minded, oligarchical administration pulls anymore.
Next thing you know, they'll be telling us the Grand Canyon was a result of one freak flood! DOH!
What does surprise me is that so few people seem to care that we no longer live in a representative republic. But this type of thing happens everywhere in the U.S. now, not just on the federal level. Here in Virginia while George Allen was governor, a person similar in his dictatorial and screwy religious beliefs to president shrub, the state version of the EPA was being told what its findings would be. In one case, scientists were told what their study's conclusions would say since the actual conclusions were contradictory to what the governor wanted to see.
Beware people. Fascists are here and are running our state and federal governments and I don't doubt many local governments too!
Perhaps they are educated enough to see through the sham of the social security ponzi scheme. Perhaps they are perceptive enough to see the farm subsidies benefit multi-national corporations. Perhaps they have found sending tax dollars through a federal political system is the worst way to be spending their money. Perhaps the progressives are wrong and these people ARE voting for their own self-interests by getting the government off their back (at least the federal government that has NO constitutional authority to be planning retirements or giving preferential treatment to farmers).
"I still hold as most true and indisputable the stability of the earth and the motion of the sun." -- Galileo Galilei, June 22, 1633 after being tortured by the Inquisition.
this is loaner...my sig is in the shop
Microsoft has been doing it for years with their Windows is more secure than (Li | U)nix studies. -- TMK
I believe the Pope even made a statement validating evolution, stating that believing in evolution and science does not preclude belief in God and Catholic faith. So technically, evolution doesn't go against Catholic teachings either.
This being said, science in the public domain is one of those areas where the 'adjusting' of facts can be especially pernicious. As a society, we need to make the smartest choices we can. In order to do this, we should base our inferences on the best evidence available. It is in this respect that this report is especially troubling.
What is perhaps worse is that the manipulation of truth seems to be a common strategy by the current administration. This is decidedly Orwellian. The site truthout.org continues to raise excamples. What worries me the most is that there is some evidence that the entire democratic process may have been under attack in the recent elections. I did some research myself on this issue, and was horrified by the conclusions (see http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~isb9112/election/). I may not be an American, but I am a scientist. When it is so easy to smell a rat, it amazes me that so many normal people and folks in the (allegedly 'liberal') media can swallow the utter rubbish they are told. Hopefully, the folks at /. are smart enough and well educated enough to see how dangerous these trends are.
Everyone knows that global warming is a catastrophic problem and that humans are messing with the natural, balanced flow of the environment. Well, the reality is that scientific studies and scientists themselves are providing evidence that this is not so. The balanced and ancient flow of nature?... nope. The environment is always evolving and changing. Example: the ancient redwood forests of California. They are only six thousand years old and their current presence is because they invaded the primary forests that were there before that. Is this what your post metaphorically implies: People don't care about the facts and science, only what they percieve to be common knowledge or the rhetoric they heard on the 10 o'clock news?
Because when you have a bunch of dispicable liberal a**holes who just loath off road vehicles (oh they're so noisy and dirty), recreational gold panners, parasailers, mountain bike riders, snowboarding and skiing, remote controlled airplanes, and on and on and on and want to eliminate those activities off the earth, they turn to the Endangered Species Act as a tool of choice to eliminate any group of people from "their" area.
All these liberal weenies do is just
1) turn to well funded environmental lawyer groups such as the Environmental Defense Center
2) EDC et all calls up the Fish and Game service to find a unique weed or bug (ironically using park fee money paid by the people they're trying to eliminate) without any analysis on exactly how this will impact the ecosystem. Please note that because of evolution, it's pretty easy to find some unique flora or fauna species of any given area that has to be "protected" from the big bad public
3) and then claim through the Endangered Species act that people cannot use said park for recreation anymore
4) Activity eliminated
That's why when an average person reads the original topic, they will say "great, I'm glad the Bush administration is on our side...
Although the Endangered Species Act is a noble cause and wilderness areas have a good purpose, there are many people (growing by the day). Look, there needs to be places for untouched habitat, but don't humans need areas to explore and for recreation also?
For most Slashdotters who don't ever get off the keyboard, this may be a non-issue, but for many others, this issue has turned many people against environmental causes...
You can trust everything printed in the the LA Times. NY Times too. Just go to moveon.org where you can get it before the newspapers have a chance to print it.
http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn?stag e=1&word=species
1. species -- ((biology) taxonomic group whose members can interbreed)
Is that how species is defined in the endangered species act?
A Nony Mouse
Ghoul, you are a gentleman, and a scholar.
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All they have to do under a democract is convince 51% of the population that keeping 49% of the population down is a good thing and you have a wonderful democracy.
What is the alternative? To paraphrase Churchill, democracy sucks, but other forms of government suck more.
Table-ized A.I.
I can't take this story at face value, since the UoCS has a history or taking a position and then "proving" the validity the their position with data that was either very selective or just plain fabricated
Given the past exploits of the UoCS, it is quite possible that the pool of respondants was tweaked by throwing out enough negative responses to create the desired end result.
The only thing I would take seriously from these guys, is a treatise on how to lie with statistics
Ah Science.
"However, there is one thing which science is fantastic at. All worthy science must be reproducible and disputable."
"Don't trust scientists, but do trust the scientific process, because it doesn't trust anyone."
And how many independant groups took the data that went into these studies?
In other words, was the "experiment" done more than once by "opposing" parties and was the data in agreement in all cases?
A Nony Mouse
Yes! Thank you.
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you're absolutely right. unerring use and complete knowledge of standard english is much more important than the ideas it communicates.
I'm reminded of how two local TV channels reported a commercial airliner crash:
ch.7: "In all its history, the DC-n has had only two crashes."
ch.9: "The DC-n has a history of crashes!!"
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
"Two and two are four." "Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder." (Quote from Orwell's 1984). A little scary how dead on he was.
Maybe you are confusing Galileo with Giordano Bruno who is often described as a martyr for heliocentrism even though there are no documents proving it.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
No mod points today, but mod points aren't enough praise for putting this so well anyway.
It's a shame that transparent piece of the "repetoire" needs to be rebutted afresh every day, isntead of being dispensed with trivially like the FAQ it is.
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Some Federal biologists are friends of mine, and during the Clinton administration (or Gore - since the Gore n00bs ran all the envionmental programs) when biologists came up with a conclusion favoring development, it was occasionally shit-canned, just as the Bush administration is shit-canning conclusions favorable to preservation. The Bush administration is doing more of this, mostly because it's harder to come up with scenarios favoring development because we're running out of space for the Hummer-driving, latte-slurping General Public.
So in conclusion: WTF does this have to do with YRO? Nothing!
As a reptile keeper/breeder, I might have a little more insight into how USFW works than the average slashdotter. It is nothing like you think, with the DEA-style "raid and seizure" end weighing a lot more than the "save the wetlands" end. Of course, one of those is job security, while the other is charity. Maybe you wouldn't be suprised. At any rate, science is not the order of the day there...it's stings, raids, and justifying their existence.
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
If you think that's so bad, I guess you didn't know what the Soviet Union did back when the Chernobyl Disaster occurred, the Soviet government refused to keep the radiation tainted meat off the market, and keep the economy of Chernobyl from collapsing compleatly, the government randomly distributed the tainted meat throughout the country so that it was impossible for any average citizen to know they where eating potentially poisonous meat. Who knows what the long term ramafacations of that incident was... not like they kept records of who got what meat. Anytime someone gets cancer that lived in the former USSR, won't know for sure if it was from eating tainted meat.
He implied that the Bush supporters spouting their "Bush bashing" lingo were fascist.
There's a huge difference there. Learn to read.No, that is NOT propaganda. That is his opinion.The thread flows thusly:
daveschroeder - initial post in this thread
sahrss
TheFlyingGoat
Doc Ruby
ifwm - your postI believe the phrase is "GET OVER IT".
So you're response to his current post may have NOTHING to do with that post? What kind of idiot are you?Once again, your reply has NOTHING to do with his post, and you even admit that.
I'm not being an asshole because I'm pointing out that fact.
And no, carrying a grudge because of something that someone said sometime before and then bringing it up again is NOT being "reasonable". Nor is it indicative of normally developed social skills.
I don't care if you're a geek or not. Your reply still had NOTHING to do with his comment and EVERYTHING to do with a grudge you hold because of things he has said in the past.
GET
OVER
IT
The wise act on principle and thus use facts to refine their positions.
This "forcing" has and is being done both for and against environmental concerns and additionally is both done internal and external to the various research groups. There are many ways to coerce unprincipled people to give in, but money seems to be the most popular.
Keep in mind that reformed con-artists consistently warn that it is greed and lack of character that they exploit successfully.
As he pointed out, a Fascist government CAN be democratically elected.
Now it is time for YOU to show that YOU understand the terms YOU like to toss around.
#1. WHAT are the characteristics of a "Fascist" government. (No stupid examples such as "the Nazis were Fascist". State the specific characteristics that defined them as "Fascist".)
#2. HOW does it differ from other forms of government?
I'm going to bet that you can't do those. I'm going to say that because you've used those terms incorrectly so many times in the past.
It's all about power.
If you have power at the state level, but not the federal level, you push State's Rights.
If you have power at the federal level, but not the state level, you push Federalism.
If you have neither, you talk about the corruption at those levels.
The Power is then used to push your ideological agenda (which may or may not be 100% coincident with your Party's agenda).
What is "bad" when "they" do it is "good" when "we" do it. No matter what "it" is. It's all about Power. How to get it, how to keep it and how to use it.
And why are only these two standpoints ever mentioned?
Are there only two parties? What if I'm not satisfied with those two? Am I allowed to start my own party?
The problem with the US's political parties is the existence of the electoral college. The President -- head of the executive branch of government (which is currently arguably the most powerful branch) -- is elected through the electoral college, a system by which each state selects a group of electors to go and cast votes for President on behalf of the people. In 48 out of 50 states, all electors go to whichever candidate gets the most votes in that state. An in-depth history is here.
The country can only support two viable parties as a mathematical consequence. If a third party gains a significant share of the vote (say 5% or more), it will sap strength from the party whose views are closest to theirs in a Presidential like the Reform party did to the Republicans when Clinton was elected and like the Green Party did to the Democrats when Bush was elected. This causes people who may like a third party candidate better to vote with the lesser of two evils instead to prevent the worst-case scenario. As a result, no third party ever gains enough political clout and campaign financing to compete.
There have been few exceptions to this and all have been as a result of the death of one of the two major parties. Here's a nice webpage showing the history of the two major US political parties and how they grew and shifted. Third parties as you can see are pretty ephemeral in the US, and major parties only survive a split by having eliminated the competition or by rejoining.
The electoral college also has a few other effects on American politics. Since almost all states have an all-or-nothing approach to portioning out votes, there are only a few states in each election that can swing either way, which are called swing states. In 2000, it was said that Bush won by only a few hundred votes (despite losing the national popular vote) by winning that margin in the swing state of Florida. In this past election, Ohio was the deciding state. Republican sentiment typicall has strongest sway in rural and suburban areas while Democratic sentiment has strongest sway in urban and coastal areas. If you're a liberal in Atlanta, Georgia or a conservative in northern California, your vote doesn't mean jack except for your House and state government officials despite the fact that most of your neighbors agree with you. Presidential and Senate votes are going to be dominated by the rest of the state. Also, thanks to the small state-large state compromise behind the way that electoral seats are proportioned out, states with low population density have more say than they would if seats were based purely on population.
Personally, I think the electoral college should be abolished. It promotes political stagnation, unfairly rewards small population states, and is obsolete for many of the purposes it was intended for. Third parties will never stand a chance so long as it exists, which has made both parties corrupt and complacent.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
And if the DC-n crashed thirty percent of the time, would the media be sensationalist to report a history of crashes?
Not only sensational. I'm rusty on my statistics, but isn't 15% considered "significant".
Ummm, Jon, aren't you supposed to be dead...? - Otter(3800)
Since when does a language communicate "ideas"? If I can communicate an idea in English, exactly why can I not communicate the _exact_ same idea in Spanish?
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
The article says, "The survey of the agency's scientific staff of 1,400 had a 30% response rate..."
That means 420 responded. If 200 claim they are being coerce, that is a rather more significant percentage than I expected.
A previous commenter said that since only 200 claimed this coercion, the majority were NOT coerced. Looks to me like the significant figure here is that 48% of this group of scientists are claiming they have been pressured to change results. That is pretty significant in my view.
p.s. Upon further reflection, to be fair, 48% IS a minority so I suppose the pro-Bush crowd can still path themselves on the back and claim their version of the moral high ground. At this rate, the U.S. will soon enough be drilling for oil without restraint, be pro-life while killing thousands of non-americans, be purging "closed minded" evolutionists from our public school faculties and teaching our children that dinosaurs are, in fact, Jesus Horses (hee, hee... I love that one. Courtesy John Stewart). Yee haw. Go U.S.A.
This is great. And I can unite the threads by Bush-bashing with his own words!
All of us here in America should believe, and I think we do, that we should be, as I mentioned, a nation of owners. Owning something is freedom, as far as I'm concerned.
--George W. Bush, Oct. 15, 2002
The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else. That is one of the main differences between us and our enemies.
-- George W. Bush, Feb. 2, 2005
We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace.
-- G. W. Bush, Sep. 21, 2004
It would be a heck of a lot easier to be a dictator than work in a democracy.
--George W. Bush, 1996 (per J.H. Hatfield)
You don't get everything you want. A dictatorship would be a lot easier.
--George W. Bush, July 1998
If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier... just so long as I'm the dictator.
--George W. Bush, Dec. 18, 2000
A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it.
--George W. Bush, July 26, 2001
It's not a dictatorship in Washington, but I tried to make it one in that instance. We are beginning to see some success in opening up federal coffers for faith-based programs.
--George W. Bush, Jan. 15, 2004
Hey does anyone have that quote where Ronald Reagan basically calls dubya a worthless party boy? It's great too.
Nope, but in this case, it was a total of 6 or 7 crashes for all the hundreds of DC-n (I forget which model) over 30+ years of service. So yes, the second station was just sensationalizing (which was par for the course for them -- they do that with *everything*, which is why I stopped watching their news entirely).
If one pedestrian got accidentally hit by a car, instead of saying just that, their notion of reporting would have been "People are being run down on the streets of Los Angeles!!"
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
they do not even know what free market econ is.
it is REALLLY SKREWED UP.
you need to read the book:
"The United States of Europe"
To me, the USA is really a torture chamber for a lot of working people. Open Yo Eyes
ideas are communicated by way of language, but, of course, all such communications are approximate. are you suggesting that no communication at all is possible?
More like, "Stoopid and Proud!".
Why is it that simpleness to the point of retardation is an admirable trait in America?
Anonymous only because I'm too lazy to set up an account (and someone else already has my standard username here anyway).
I'm not going to pretend I know all the goings-on at all levels, and perhaps things were run differently in your district. But at the Georgetown Ranger District, the "young and naive" wildlife crew members wouldn't have been easily fooled by canned responses from a bullhorn. Ignoring the tonal differences between live and canned (bullhorns ain't exactly hi-fi), every owl has its own signature. Sure, the general pattern of each species is identifiable, but every bird has a slightly different flourish they throw in--one of the favorites from our crew being the James Brown owl.
Even discounting that, we also went back later for visual confirmation for nesting/pairing status, within time constraints and with extra emphasis on at-risk areas. Perhaps your crews were more naive than ours, 'cause none of us would likely believe a bullhorn swooping down to snag our proffered mouse was actually an owl.
So, did you actually work with the USDA Forest Service, or are you just pulling all this out of your ass?
-the real Urocyon
This was reported in the Washington Times 12/17/01
.
I remember reading the original there, but it seems to have expired. Some googling for: fish game washington fur dna lynx wenatchee
What happened: They took fur from a captured lynx and planted it in a few different parks to show proof that endangered lynx were in the parks. This would have closed the parks to most recreation (fishing, hunting, mountain biking, motorcycling). They were found out by DNA testing
Things have turned the other way. I'm not sure which is worse.
Yes, but the Pope didn't make that statement until the 1990's. The other poster probably went to school before then.
A small Kansas meat packer that spent millions of dollars building a new feedlot, slaughterhouse, and meat packing facility was shut down by the Bush administration (FDA & USDA) because they wanted to test each and every cow before they were processed -- a testing regimen that would have garnered them most (if not all) of the export market to Japan and Korea. The attitude of the Bush administration would appear to be that small business interests that promote food safety must be suppressed in favor of the big corporate meatpackers that don't test.
got a credible link to back that up or am i to assume you are just talking out of your ass (newstarget and it's loads of incestuous links does not count as a credible source)
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Maybe you are an idiot.Again, who gives a shit what the people that YOU talk to think? Focus on the definitions.
Or do the definitions contradict your point? Yes? They do? Well then you're wrong and the people you talked to are wrong.You're the one who thinks that claiming that 10 anonymous people at some annoymous "school" say something has any meaning here.
Post the references that support your statement. It should be easy to find them since you work at a school.
Oh, you're the janitor at one of those "schools" for kids with "special needs", aren't you?
Why yes, I certainly see how the opinion of a janitor would be ranked higher than the regular definition of what "propaganda" is.
Here's a free clue, claiming that other, annonymous, people agree with you is NOT furthering your case. It is only showing how idiotic and un-informed you are for believing that it does.
And "liar" has to do with telling "lies". Not with "you can't get the main idea of a post, and that you are a liar". Find where I told a lie and link to it.
Otherwise, "liar" will be added to the list of words you do not understand (along with "propaganda" and "fascist").
So you're an idiot. Be happy. You've found a slot in life as the janitor of a "school" for kids with "special" needs. At least there you can pretend that you're smart.
Because the Spanish syntax and vocab may not allow you to do so.
That was classic intercourse!
Let me put it to you this way. How would you feel if these sorts of things were going on with American detainess in some future war? We'd all be outraged and appalled, and we'd quickly point to the barbarism of the captors.
It's also important to note that the US military knows full well what the definition of "torture" is and that several of the things that went on in Abu Ghraib and Gitmo fit the international definitiion of "torture." That is precisely why our new Attorney General, the man who is supposed to be the highest officer of the law in the US, spent so much effort coming up with creative legal interpretations of the law. He, and the Administration, knew that they wanted to torture people, and they wanted a legal loophole to exploit.
You can say whatever you want about this being a new war, a different kind of war, a war without end, etc. But America did not resort to systematic torture in WWII, even in the midst of tremendous, wide-scale mechanized warfare. We engaged in a fair number of violations of the Geneva and Hague Conventions during the Vietnam War, and that certainly didn't win any hearts and minds.
To me this is not just about whether something is torture or isn't torture. The semantics of it don't matter if the result is the same: Iraqis see it as barbaric and evil, and people around the world look at it the same way. It is unsettling that our national leaders (in particular our Secretary of Defense) have such a one-dimensional view of the global fight against Islamic terrorists that they established such a counterproductive system for dealing with detainees.
The bottom line is that Abu Ghraib has made the fight in Iraq and around the world much more difficult, by further radicalizing Islamic populations and weakening support among our allies.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Better not move too fast... You might miss something important. http://www.newpath4.com/forsalespacecraftenginecon stantpowertheory.htm
I think you're argueing *degrees* of ignorance here.
But be that as it may, non-fundie, non-born-again Christians are so silent and invisible in today's political and educational debates that they might as well not exist. So don't bitch at anyone who says "Christian" as if it were synonymous with right-wing religious fundamentalists. Because that's effectively true. If you want to change that, then start getting you and yours to stand up and be as loud and in your face against these ignorants and bigots as they are, so at least people will know you and your kind exist.
You, for one, need to correct that to:
"welcome our new, censored, creationist-supporting, theocratic 'scientists'".
OK?
Alcaide's Cafe,
It would be more impressive if Nature or some other scientific journal provided documented proof of this. As it comes from the main mouth piece of the Left Coast one has to view the article with just a hint of skepticism.
Since we all know the world is going to end come Y2k, I see no reason why scientists should be allowed to do anything but cut purple diamonds for public transmigration. Who wants to waste time scientificing?
Don't you mean.. BIZZARO!
You can write in "Micky Mouse" on the ballot if it really struck your fancy.
The trouble is, he won the Congress in 1998.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Note how five completely distinct species are discovered every time California attempts to build a power plant, always conveniently existing only in the spot that the plant would occupy. Scientists are no more immune to external agendas than anyone else. That's what the peer review system is for. And "unprecedented" statements are generally incorrect: off the top of my head, Theodore Roosevelt's administration did a lot more "monkeying around with government agencies, especially over environmental concerns" than any current administration could probably accomplish.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Note how five completely distinct species are discovered every time California attempts to build a power plant, always conveniently existing only in the spot that the plant would occupy.
? co ntentid=2759
I take it you can back this up? It's not that I don't trust you, but because ancedotal evidence is the bane of public discourse, to such a degree, so many times have I heard agenda'd, "Did you know?" style factoids that turn out to be false later, that I tend to discount them out-of-hand these days.
I did quickie Google News searches for:
California species "power plant"
California species "power plants"
Neither turned up large numbers of hits (9 for the first, 24 for the second), so I'm afraid if I'm going to believe you you're going to have to provide a link I can follow, or at least the name of an article, that I can get sufficently clued-in by.
Scientists are no more immune to external agendas than anyone else. That's what the peer review system is for.
I dispute this, the scientific process, if accurately followed, works against agendas. That's not to say you receive a free halo and wings when you get your doctorate, and there are certainly junk scientists out there, but the whole point of science is to discover things through observation instead of preconcieved notions.
I think what a lot of conservatives hate is that the views that tend to be held by a lot of scientists might actually have gotten to that place by holding merit, and that the procedures used to erect them are difficult to tear down logically (because science is nothing if not logical). Which may explain why there are so many unusually defensive posts in this discussion.
And "unprecedented" statements are generally incorrect: off the top of my head, Theodore Roosevelt's administration did a lot more "monkeying around with government agencies, especially over environmental concerns" than any current administration could probably accomplish.
1. You have to go that far back for a counter-example?
2. Actually I'm absolutely sure the current administration could do a lot more monkeying around. For starters, there's a lot more agencies that must be monkeyed with.
3. Conservation was less a matter of science back in those days, as demonstrated by the rapid decline of the Passenger Pigeon not long before.
4. In any case, you're going to have to back that up as well I'm afraid. A quicky Google search turned up these sites:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/tr/envir.html
(T. Roosevelt as environmentalist.)
http://www.environmentaldefense.org/article.cfm
(Calls T. Roosevelt the nation's first conservationalist president.)
I wouldn't say those sites do much to support your argument, but maybe you're aware of something I am not; I didn't browse beyond the first page of results.
Actually, the rapture was last Thursday.
Didn't ya'll get the memo?
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
If one pedestrian got accidentally hit by a car, instead of saying just that, their notion of reporting would have been "People are being run down on the streets of Los Angeles!!"
Incorrect. The corrected analogy reads "If 30% of the pedestrians in Los Angeles got hit by a car, instead of saying just that, their notion of reporting would have been..."
Given that case, even though (in theory) it would be a minority of LA's population, would such a report be sensationalistic? That would be a massive, unprecedented number of people, even though technically a "minority." We're not talking about ONE PERSON here.
Of course, in the case of critical environmental research, it's not acceptable for them to even be pressuring ONE scientist in ONE case to alter findings for political reasons. A systematic abuse such as this is absolutely cause for outrage, and when a third of scientists are under such pressure, calling it a widespread problem is NOT sensationalism. We call cancer a widespread, far-reaching problem, but that doesn't mean over 50% of the US population has cancer.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
You didn't backtrack the thread far enough -- by the time we got to my analogy, we were talking not about the original article, but about sensationalist journalism in general.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?