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Abuses of Science Political Cartoon Contest
AngryNick writes "The Union of Concerned Scientists has announced a cartoon contest for amateur and professional artists.
'The absurdity of political interference in science is fertile ground for satire,' said Dr. Francesca Grifo, Director of the UCS Scientific Integrity Program. 'We hope these contests encourage amateur and professional cartoonists alike to express concern--through humor and art--about the impact of the abuse of science on our safety, health and environment.'
A celebrity judge panel will select twelve finalists and the public will then choose the Grand Prize winner. The winner will receive a host of prizes, including $500 and an all-expenses-paid trip to have lunch with the celebrity judge of his or her choice.
You can read Contest details, sample topics and the list of celebrity judges."
Well, if I had any artistic talent...
A cartoon of Darwin with a turban except the turban is actually a bomb with a lit fuse.
If we're talking political abuse-of-science, can I link to this essay by Michael Crichton about "environmentalism as religion" just to remind everyone that things like this cut both ways?
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Abuses of science.... poorly worded?
Wow, did anyone else read that headline and think that they were inviting people to make their political attacks on science in a cartoon?
I expected a cartoon attacking stem cell research, of maybe a mushroom cloud over hiroshima with the caption "scientific progress".
Of course, it's completely the other way, as I would hope... but yeah, title misleading!
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
dupe this story when the results & cartoons are ready, please :)
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Clearly the winner.
Or maybe ManBearPig.
Nah.....definately Two Days.
-john
Slashdot: you'll not find a more wretched collection of villainy and disreputable types...
We need a cartoon that depicts an email recipient reading about the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide with a send this to everybody you know footer.
When the Republicans (not necessarily the Right) try their hardest to subvert science, then I would expect scientists to lampoon them.
Would you kindly mod me +1 insightful?
Please no flame wars about the old churches stance on celestial mechanics - we've all seen it before, no need to bring it up and get side tracked. We are talking about todays political climate.
And please let's not limit this discussion to evolution and creationists - there's been a great deal of interference on the topic of global warming. The old Republican party stance that it's not occurring has been disproven by the vast majority of atmospheric/climatologists scientists, and have shown it to be a fact. I hate that because Al Gore (A Democrat) is pro-environment, that many Republicans feel that they have to take an opposing viewpoint - what gives!? Yes, I'm sure the Dems do the same with other issues, but we are talking about science here, so let's keep our egos and passions aside and behave like rational thinkers.
..........FULL STOP.
Given the fact that you posted it I have to presume that you are unaware of the fact that your post is a reasonably good example of why this contest is a good idea and the sponsoring organization is necessary.
Yes, you are right. (That was sarcasm)
If you take the time to read the sponsoring organization they are clearly promoting a liberal socialist agenda. One side, anti Bush, Anti republican, etc etc. The kind of organization they are would not let out cartoons critiquing their side.
But ultimately this has no place on slashdots main page. Let people only listen to one side, I do not care. I take the time to read both sides, and I understand both sides are morons. Thank you for proving though that you have no clue about one sided propaganda.
Right.... the republicans are raping the environment because they want to stick it to the democrats. It has NOTHING to do with the millions of campaign dollars contributed by companies that profit from the destruction of the planet.
People of religion have been studying science for decades.
There is no disparity.
Those who seek conflict only search to reaffirm their own personal beliefs about the world.
The "debate" deserves parody.
It is a political, not a scientific organization.
Those of you not old enough to remember its 'fellow traveler' support of the Soviet Union and its geopolitical aims can do some reading instead of mouthing off. Learn something.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
When I read the New Testament, one thing that really stands out to me is the emphasis Jesus placed on always asking questions. He never told his followers to obey him obediently. He wanted them to question his actions and words. He wanted them to think for themselves, and analyze the world around them, for themselves. That's the very essence of science: understanding nature via observation and experimentation.
A common theme throughout the Gospels is somebody asking Jesus a question, and Jesus telling them to look. Sometimes they would have to look inside themselves, but other times they were told to look at the world around them. They could find the answers there. All they had to do was look.
Frankly, we don't need comics to prove wrong those Republicans, neoconservatives, evangelists, etc., who have perverted the teachings of Christ. As Christ taught us to do, all we need to do is look! We can look for ourselves at his very teachings just to see how perverted some people's interpretations of them are. And we can use his wisdom in our pursuit of science. As scientists, we always need to be continuously observing, experimenting, and otherwise understanding the world around us. That's exactly what Jesus encouraged his followers to do.
But bring up the Nazi eugenics experiments--and bear in mind the eugenics is scientifically established--and they just mumble and walk away.
Um, Nazi Germany was a self-avowed christian society; atheists were harassed and killed right along with other "undesirables". Does that make christianity bad?
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Me, I do believe it's happening--but that human activity has absolutely nothing to do with it. Rather, it's part of the natural cycle that has been in effect since before there WERE human beings on earth.
The notion that it is caused by what puny humans can do is just laughable. One has only to look at the phenomenon of Mt. Pinatubo and Mt. St. Helens--both of which put more particulates into the atmosphere in DAYS than humans have throughout their history--to realize the earth is a self-regulating system.
Global warming, if it is really happening, is a natural occurence, and will bring as much benefit as it does harm.
However, socialist politicians, who lust for the power to establish their order in the lives of individuals, are using it as a pretext for a power grab. This must NEVER be allowed to happen.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
There is significant evidence for global warming, but less showing that it is caused by people. It seems to me that scientists are politically pressured to support global warming, just like evolution (Which I don't necessarily disagree with, but I doubt many scientific organizations would give support to a scientist with another theory, even if it wasn't in any way similar to intelligent design.).
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
Heck, if we're talking abuse of science, I can't think of any better subject to discuss than the author of Andromeda Strain, Prey, and State of Fear. The man's been mangling science for years and then making his books look better by tossing a gratuitous biblography of all the papers he supposedly read to justify his plots. (Alien crystal viruses, grey goo, and local cooling disproving global warming, oh my!)
Michael Crichton doesn't know what he's talking about. State of Fear is filled with junk science. Read a more thorough debunking here.
The essay you link is nothing but an attack on the argument by attacking the source of the argument as being from zealots. He accuses the environmental movement of being responsible for massive deaths, and claims that they're distorting facts without backing any of it up with "facts" of his own -- except for "facts" like the harmlessness of second-hand smoke. Crichton's a loon and an asshole for making that last argument in particular, but the bulk of the essay argument is that environmentalists are wrong in their assertions (without any justification of why) and thus religious nuts for asserting something that his holiness Crichton declares to be wrong. (Oh, he could cite mainstream articles, but you wouldn't believe him anyway, so why back up his bald-faced lies?)
He attacks environmentalists as being the same as people who romanticize primativism, use errors on predictions of a socially affected phenomena like population growth show that scientists who care about the environment can't be trusted. He claims that DDT is harmless because it's not a carcinogenic (when it's the liver, immune, and nervous toxicity that actually caused it to be banned). He states that we can't totally roll back carbon emissions without fusion technology, so it's a waste of time to bother reducing them in the meantime. He falls back on the old saw of the environment being a complex system that's hard to understand as justification for not erring on the side of safety.
His speech is nothing but a litany of half-truths, distortions, unbacked assertions, and ad hominem attacks. So, yes, let's start our discussion of abuse of science with a discussion of Crichton. It's only appropriate.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Nazis were SOCIALISTS
Actually, no they were not, although there seem to be many poorly educated people in the US who think they were.
Hitler took over a small party which started his rise to power, and this party had socialist elements in it. But nothing Nazis did after getting into power had anything to do with socialism.
Slave labour has nothing to do with socialism.
So abuse of science, how far does that stretch?
Could I not argue that science invented weapons so the Iraq invasion is an abuse of science.
Could I argue that nuclear power was invented to save people, so using it as an excuse to pressure Iran is an abuse of science?
We could push this so far it's insane.
I like muppets.
But as the quote a few stories down, praising Michael Bloomberg for "It is impressive how he very directly demonizes those that would politicize stem cell research, global warming, Terry Schaivo, and evolution" demonstrates -- the lure of conflating them in order to reduce everything to A War On Science is irresistible to a lot of lazy thinkers.
(I love, by the way, the notion that "demonizing" ideas marks one as an advocate of science against religion.)
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
eg: NASA is currently cutting back or eliminating many science missions in order to pay for the next-gen shuttle, which assumes Congress won't cut NASA's budget over the next ten years -and- there are no cost overruns anywhere, according to the New Scientist.
eg: The US has spent a miniscule fraction of what it pledged and committed in the fight against bird flu, according to the World Bank. Whether an epidemic ever occurs is irrelevant in this. What matters is that even hard-nosed financial institutions are getting concerned. When the economists think Government is spending too little, it's time to be worried.
(I'm not singling out the US because it's particularly bad amongst nations - it actually does better than most - but because that's what the contest is about. Had this been an international contest, I'm sure I could find alarming attitudes in every civilized nation on the planet. It wasn't that long ago that the South African Health Minister promoted garlic as a cure for AIDS. Although I suppose there might be a lot of vampires in South African politics.)
I just don't know how this project can possibly reach its true potential with such limited backing. Most who could enter a truly biting cartoon won't be bothered, because there won't be any perceived value. If getting into the final rounds constituted a publication in a peer-reviewed forum, then perhaps there would be more interest. Money from pro-science organizations towards prizes would have been good, too.
For those on Slashdot with no artistic talents - enter anyway. Most scientists can't draw worth a damn, so it'll be purely down to the ideas in the cartoon anyway. Besides, there are valid reasons for believing the readers here have a broader understanding of the state of science and the attitudes around it - those focused totally on their subject won't have time to read up on anything much outside of their speciality and so won't be able to so easily draw on attitudes and perceptions that are universal.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Michael Crichton once again shows how focusing on local differences and exceptions and extrapolating them as a trend is an intellectual folly. If you want to seriously argue that the EPA budget-cutting, pro-mercury in the air, pro-arsenic in the water, pro-relaxation of pesticide rules Republicans that adamantly refuse to entertain the idea of ratifying Kyoto treaty are no different from the Democrats, then you're deliberately cherry-picking your facts to bolster your dellusional worldview -- you know, like Michael Crichton does.
Nixon was moderate to liberal on a number of domestic issues from wage controls to gun control to affirmative action to establishing the EPA, OSHA, and NOAA. He supported a lot of market regulation in a time period that pundits were saying that conservatism was dead. He was very different from many conservatives today, and many of his policies were great successes that were overshadowed by his personal corruption.
As for Johnson, he did open up a pristine area to drilling. However, he also said the following when signing the Clean Water Act:
Johnson's record on the environment was overall quite good. His wife Lady Bird Johnson was a tireless environmental advocate. It was Johnson's administration that first started looking into the environment as a matter of air and water pollution instead of just protected land conservation. Nixon just kept the ball rolling that Johnson kicked off. From the Wikipedia, here is a list of environmental regulations kicked off in the Johnson era:
To suggest that Johnson (and thus Democrats) are and were not environmentalists based on one single action against shows Crichton's lack of intellectual integrity.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
From what I've seen, any area on the political playing field will try to attack science if it hurts their sacred cows.
Bring up the cost/benefits of Kyoto, and most of the objections won't be from Republicans.
He falls back on the old saw of the environment being a complex system that's hard to understand as justification for not erring on the side of safety.
You had me interested until that point. Come on, that's just a little too obviously biased to let slide - side of safety for whom? Future generations who might be affected? Or current generations whose economic interests *will* be significantly affected?
I'm not arguing against the theory of global warming, but merely stating that "playing it safe" is an arbitrary term. Some of the anti-global-warming-hype people do think they're playing it safe, but they're looking out for different interests than those you espouse.
Wow, you got me. I've fallen into the deep canyon of environmental responsibility. Please save me from my recycling bin and my daily walk to work through the park (or the bus on rainy days). Please open my eyes to the dangers of NOT polluting the air I breathe. Oh, what a fool I've been!
Somone steal this and submit it:
Devil holding up a sign, "My gandpa ain't no monkey!" in a group of evolution protestors. One guys turns and says, "YOU'RE here too?" And the devil replys, "What? And let even MORE people see how brilliant he can be?"
Don't like it when Republicans are criticized on science? Fine. Then get your Republican leaders not to downplay all climate research that doesn't reflect corporate interests, and not talk about evolution and "intelligent design" as though they were competing ideas of roughly comparable credibility, or treat evolutionary theory as though it were some radical, unsubstantiated idea that wasn't accepted by the overwhelming majority of biologists.
Yes, science has been politicized terribly by people and governments at both ends of the political scale, and I won't hesitate to acknowledge one of the worst examples I can think of came from Soviet-style "communism," in which Soviet geneticists were hobbled by a state mandate to adhere to a hopelessly outdated and long discredited model of inheritance because it was thought to provide a natural parallel and support for elements of Soviet doctrine.
However comma in the US, which is a major venue for scientific research and technological innovation (not to mention simply being an enormously powerful and influential nation), as well as the area in which the organization sponsoring this contest is based, political constraints upon or interference with science have typically come from the political right - sometimes because scientific findings are thought to pose a challenge to religious belief, sometimes because they have implications for social policy that don't reflect conservative ideals or that challenge corporate interests, and so on. The Bush administration has repeatedly shown it is one of the worst offenders in this regard.
Are you serious? There is no question that the U.S. Ban on DDT has resulted in supply shortages such that millions of Africans and South Americans are dying each year from malaria. This site and this reference at the the CDC are good places to start.
Even the New York Times has begun to accept the truth on this.
What is worse is that the philisophical routes of this ban were explicitly anti-human. Rachel Carson barely mentioned any negative impact on humans in 'Silent Spring'. Certainly, there were no such studies at the time (and studies since then have shown 0 ill effects to humans). Carson's main complaint was that DDT weakened the shells of bird eggs, thereby disrupting their cycle. This too has been disproven.
So, we have essentially sacrificed the lives of millions of humans in the name of speculation regarding the potential damage to birds! If that's not religion, I don't know what is.
If humans are mostly water, and beer is mostly water, then humans must be mostly beer.
That's like saying it was the staph that killed him, not the ban on penicilin. Stupid.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
For all this discussion has focused on the "debate" about global warming, if you think that political interference is limited to environmental science, you're missing a very, very big picture.
Let me start off by saying that scientific advancement is not a left-right issue, and should never be viewed through the narrow prism of party politics. However, the United States has fallen into a (man-made) rut of EVERYTHING being split down partisan lines (even national security, even voting integrity, even scientific research) so that is the playing field we are on, whether we like it or not. Wedge politics infect every issue now.
Under this administration, the religious right has exerted undue influence over decisions ranging from:
(source article for that list, a must-read)
And without going on a daylong linkhunt, they are passing bad information about condom effectiveness, intimidating non-profit organizations which do not toe the party line on reproductive issues, and denying USAID funds to overseas orgs which even mention abortion, or distribute condoms as part of family planning efforts. (Imagine sending $15B to Africa to fight AIDS without distributing or even even mentioning condoms! Talk about throwing good money away...It's like fighting fires without water, it's that foolish.)
And don't even let's discuss the bi-partisan support for embryonic stem cell research which has been effectively neutered under this administration. Or the medical expertise of Dr. Bill Frist in the case of a braindead woman he never examined, or his patently absurd claim that AIDS may be transmitted via tears and sweat.
Sadly, I could document this sort of war on objective science all day, but I think I've made my point. It infests the policy debate over far more than global warming, and if you think there's no difference between the parties on this, you're sadly, tragically mistaken.
Vonnegut: "What is the purpose of life? To be the eyes, ears, and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool."
I wonder if we are going to see only one side, overly liberal people who believe whatever people say is science as long as they are saying the right and/or republicans are ignoring it, abusing it, etc etc.
Setting up a dichotomy (badly).
This is stupid, and does not belong on Slashdot at all.
Summing up his own post.
it will be a right/republican bashing contest. And sorry to say for all you super liberals here on Slashdot
Flamebaiting one side of the dichotomy and propping up the other as victims.
I remember when Slashdot use to be about science and geekyness.....
Which somehow doesn't include cartoons about science (in trollland): An obvious falsehood baiting for an easy correction.
You can't take the sky from me...
You need to re-evaluate your understanding of science. Science proves nothing. Science is the process of creating models of natural (or even unnatural) phenomena, and empirically testing these models via experimentation. But no amount of experimentation will prove that a model is right. Experimentation can only show that a model is flawed, at which point a new model is proposed.
After all, I am strangely colored.
I think the point that he so ineloquently stated is that Al Gore and his followers are just as guilty of eco-extremism as Bush and his followers are as guilty of corporate-extremism. Just because Al Gore is blinded by his hatred for modern man and most Slashdotters are of his particular political party does not mean that he's absolutely correct. He's an extremist; but, at least I refuse to lump all environmentalists with his extremism.
On the opposite side, however, those of us who do NOT agree with Al Gore are automatically tagged as those who want to destroy the atmosphere in the name of the all-mighty dollar. It's completely hypocritical to despise when the right vilifies the extremist left but accept when the left vilifies the extremist right; yet that's what's most likely going to happen not only throughout this thread but also in this political cartoon contest.
Even though I'm a staunch, evil Republican, I'm also a staunch conservationist. I do not accept the extremist, global warming theories that Al Gore and the majority of Slashdotters take as gospel. Even so, I make sure to recycle everything from plastic to office paper, newspapers, and cardboard; I make sure to keep my car properly tuned and maintained to maximize my fuel efficiency; I complain to corporations who make products that can be recycled but aren't, such as the Brita water filters; but I guarantee that I will be lumped in with the anti-environmentalist crowd because of my political affiliation and because I think that Al Gore is a freakin' nutcase with too much time on his hands and too much exporsure to abuse.
That's the problem with Slashdot and topics that intermingle politics with science. Anyone with any inclination to doubt the extremist beliefs of people like Al Gore and TripMaster Monkey is automatically tagged as anti-environment, which is complete BS, just like anyone who says that we need to lower pollution and sign Kyoto (which I am fervently against because of the way it singles out the U.S.) is suddenly tagged as a tree hugger.
And to prove that even further, I guarantee that I'll be modded as troll or flamebait, even though there are thousands if not tens of thousands of posts in Slashdot's archive to prove this. After all, anyone who dares to challenge the Slashdot groupthink is vilified because that's an acceptable practice, although the opposite is not. So be it.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to take my over-flowing, recycling bin out for collection tomorrow and take several bags of shredded office paper down to my township's collection facility. Yessir, just another evil, Republican doing his part to further ruin the environment.
*sigh*
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
East Germany was formally named German Democratic Republic. I'm guessing that makes them democratic in your book.
Je ne parle pas francais.
Generally, you're wrong. The left wants to hear what they already believe, no matter how fantastic. The right wants to hear what they already believe, no matter how fantanstic. Moderates want to hear both sides, often so that they can use the confusion as an excuse not to make a decision.
No he's not, you are. And it's funny, because you are spewing the same "balance" nonsense that the link was lampooning. Even going back to the days of Nixon and Goldwater (who would both be loony liberals in today's GOP), conservative complaints about "liberal bias in the media" were based on their idea that conservative positions weren't given equal time. Whereas liberal complaints are based around the fact that the media not only does not challenge GOP politicians, but are willing deciminators of their propoganda.
I might be willing to buy the bit about recycling paper being bad for the environment with some evidence to back it up, but there are a couple of points you made that are invalid or misleading.
1. Gore was never "in power". Bill Clinton was President and he took more input from his wife than from Gore. You could criticize Gore for not asserting himself more, but very few VPs before Cheney have, that I am aware of (I'm young, Dan Quayle's my major point of reference here).
2. As far as the private jet goes, my understanding is that Gore calculates his entire carbon footprint (home, cars, jets, etc) and purchases offsets in renewable energy from sites like www.carbonfund.org to make his effective footprint zero. How much faith you have in carbon footprint calculations or the effectiveness of purchased offsets is another matter, but you can't call Gore a hypocrite if he believes in both of these things. Another way to look at it is that, if his efforts, wasteful as they may be, result in lots of people collectively reducing their CO2 output by more than Gore is expending, then it will be worthwhile. Either way, you can't seriously expect him to bike across the country or row across the sea to promote his movie.
And once sea level rises, and weather systems move as a result of increased heat, are those still going to be your best farmlands ? Or are they going to dry up and become deserts ?
And what will you do if, say, the best farmlands of China turn out to be too low and are buried underwater ? Do you think that the chinese are going to simply starve silently, or are they going to try to take yours ?
I see my original post was modded Overrated. I guess the pro-industry astroturfers are out again tonight. Makes me wonder if Slashdot was given any "donations" to make the two mods unmetamoderable...
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
or worse yet:
"Stuffing cattle into crowded pens can lead to disease outbreaks. Better put antibiotics in their feed."
Still, until you can show widespread DDT resistance, the analogy isn't entirely apt.
Here here to that! Micahel Crichton's works are disturbingly close to science, without actually being accurate (that is the danger - that they are confused with science by young/uneducated minds).
The essay you link is nothing but an attack on the argument by attacking the source of the argument as being from zealots. He accuses the environmental movement of being responsible for massive deaths.
Ad hominem attacks are highly effective. Why is this? Is it a quirk of human nature "I hate this guy so I don't listen to anything he says," or is it actually rational? Think about this for a moment:
If one takes a Bayesian view of probability (probability represents one's degree of belief in a proposition, not a frequency of occurrance), then if one is a rational Bayesian agent, one must incorporate all "relevant" information when ascertaining the belief of a hypothesis, through the chaining of probabilities. Starting with a prior on a statement (unfortunately what prior to choose is often unclear, and is perhaps even arbitrary), one modifies the belief by multiplying by conditional probabilities as gathered by evidence.
One can easily make the claim (the "proof" for this shall be left as an exercise to the reader) that given the sum of experiences one has collected over their lifetime, (direct experience or transitive experience through discussion, books, and other media) one can infer that there is indeed a conditional probability connecting the probability that entity A is a "zealot" and that information from entity A is incorrect.
Bayesian reasoning/inference differs significantly from "pure" boolean reasoning in that it captures this information in a way tha tis actually useful in real life. For instance, the statement "if someone is pointing a gun at you, they will kill you" is obviously false under boolean logic systems, however in real life it is prudent to infer that it is likely enough that htey will kill you that you should take it into account in your planning process. Similarly with the "ad hominem" attacks. The following statements are all valid in a Bayesian framework (when one takes into account the independence of these propositions from other information known about entity A):
All of these statements are fairly vague (I'm sure one can find a far more rigorous discussion of this somewhere online), however I trust you can see that independent of all other information on Entity A these statements are correct.
That leads me to conclude (in an albeit simplified fashion) that because information on a subject/individual/particular point is highly limited (indeed, with things like global warming, etc, even having a PhD in the field is only a reasonable start, not a comprehensive, authoritative educaiton), one must consider all information about an argument (and weight it according to statistical correlation) when one makes an inference (once again assuming one is a Bayesian, which is a strong assumption, but definitely closer to human reasoning under uncertainty than pure boolean logic, or
The hallmarks of dishonet argument on DDT are as follows:
1. Accuse DDT regulation of being motivated to protect birds for their own sake. Do not mention that birds are the primary preditors of malaria-carrying insects.
2. Assume that the effects of DDT use are stable; do not assume that insects will become resistant.
3. Assume that the number of infections prevented similarly follows a constant rate ad infinitum.
The argument FOR banning DDT that I've always heard was the the benefits of DDT are strong at first but are quickly reversed due to its effect on and the differing adaption rate of birds and insects. While the initial number of insects killed and human lives saved from DDT application is very high, the insects which are affected by DDT adapt in short order and become resistant while bird species (their primary preditors) die off, resulting in far, far more malaria-carrying insects and human lives lost to malaria infection than before DDT was introducted.
I suppose that there are portions of this argument that could be debated, but rarely do I see it addressed other than a bunch of malarky about how it makes birds egg shells thinner (remember, kills off insects' primary preditor) and that egg shell thinness was the sole reason why DDT was banned across the world.
The UCS is never wrong. Just like the scientists at realclimate.org they are careful not to over-hype scientific data. They reference scientific journals and government agencies for their data (fact), whereas people who call environmentalists communists reference Michael Crichton (fiction).
This posting continues to repeat common distortions and false dichotomies about DDT, malaria, and the environment.
The use of DDT to prevent malaria is not an environmental issue. The amounts used are tiny when compared to what was used in agriculture.
Millions of tons of DDT were applied agriculturally, resulting in the wide-spreed environmental contamination and non-consented exposure of humans. This also resulted in the evolution of strains of DDT-resistant mosquitoes, making DDT less effective in malaria control.
A large about of the agricultural use in developed countries was to produce cheaper cotton. Yet this misuse that lead to the ban on the agricultural never seems to be criticized by the so-called DDT defenders.
The weakening of egg shells of birds by the DDT metabolite DDE has not been disproved.
The implication that individuals who are concerned about the environment and other species are not concerned about people in third world countries. There are extremists in every corner, but as a rule, no evidence ever presented to back this up.
Personally, I have had malaria while in a developing country, with out access to western medical facilities. I have a greater appreciation than most of the direct affects of malaria.
Liberal Party of Australia is the conservative Australian party. It seems odd that some people don't understand that names don't prove anything. I guess this guy is why the Clear Skies, Healthy Forests, and No Child Left Behind got the names they did. How can you argue against a name?
I suppose framing things as such helps. Renaming Creationism to Creation Science was probably a slick move. Hitler did just take over a small socialist party and had absolutly nothing to do with socialism (as anybody can tell by his post election activities). Nazi Germany != Sweden.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
What are you talking about exactly? UCS's opposition to the Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative on scientific grounds? That hardly amounts to support of Soviet geopolitical aims, no matter how you slice it. Perhaps I am ignorant of something else? if so, please enlighten me; otherwise I think the assertion is nonsense.
Actually, most bacteria resistant to antibiotics became that way through no small part by patient non-compliance. The too many people see the directions to finish all the medication in the bottle, but pay it no heed. Instead, they stop taking their prescriptions when they feel better. Unfortunately, feeling better and being infection free are two very different conditions. When a person feels better it is likely that that person just has a level of infection that has no ill effect on the body. Unfortunately, since those bacteria have been exposed the longest to the antibiotic they are more likely to contain genetic mutations indicative of resistance. Perhaps continued treatment could have provided sufficient dosage to kill even these bacteria, but the premature cessation now gives that mutation a chance to strengthen in subsequent generations.
Unfortunately, those who stop taking their medications early do so for what they feel are good reasons, and, being ignorant of the negative effects, they don't see how their reasons don't out weigh the negative. For example, some people stop when they feel better because they think they'll save money. Next time they get sick they believe they can just use their leftovers. Save money not only at the pharmacy but also by doing away with the need for a visit to the doctor. Obviously, the problems here are: 1. most "illnesses" are caused by a virus, thus their leftovers will not help an ounce, and 2. they are contributing to the resistance of bacteria at least twice--first when they fail to finish their prescribed medicine when infected, and secondly they take another abbreviated treatment increasing the chance of resistance in the multiple bacterium inhabiting their bodies. The long-term ramifications of these actions will likely only increase their total medical expense, thus is counter-productive in more than one one.
I've heard other reasons for stopping treatment early. For example, some people feel once they feel better they should stop taking a prescription because they feel the need to limit their exposure to a drug to avoid any ill effects it may have on their body, and even people who stop because they think overuse causing resistances can be stopped by using the drug for a shorter period of time. Both of these reasons have no more effect than to increase the resistance of bacteria to antibiotics and are thus counterproductive to their underlying aims--decreasing negative effects on the body and stopping the development. Such ideas would be like two people dying in the Arctic from hypothermia even though they had matches and plenty of wood both of whom stop trying to make a fire after several failed attempts--one because he wished to decrease the chance he'd burn his fingers with the matches, and the other because he wanted make sure he didn't run out of matches. In this situation both will continue to get colder and, if they happen to abandon their original reasonings, will find their half dead fingers have an even tougher time lighting the matches.
Since this is a thread about political interference in science, I should point out that the only solution to this problem is education. People need to be educated about the consequences of their actions; the absence of this education I would lay blame to those who should be safe guarding the public welfare, the government. Simply adding this material to the required syllabus for health classes in public schools would help, but something more would need to be done as many people would forget much of what they learned in such situations. Some other forms of consistent reminders (PSA's perhaps, or maybe information in freely distributed health magazines subsidized by the government) would really be necessary to get the point across. I'm sure there is someone out there intelligent enough to come up with an intervention to educate the public utilizing all this modern technology we have. Of course the only way to stop bacterial resistance is to not use the medications at all, which, in my opinion, is just as idiotic, if not more, than any of the above described behaviors. The best we can do is use the drugs to lessen suffering and try to slow the development of any resistance.
I am not a climatologist, but I have spent time with the solar physics community. From the records we look at, there is a relation between solar activity and climate, but no one outside of the field will listen. We can even point to evidence of rising temperatures on Mars and Jupiter.
I don't know why global warming is happening, but I weary of people presenting part of the evidence, and then shouting down any who don't completely agree.
Malaria is not a terrible scourge that puts people in fear of their lives. It is a common disease that, much like the flu, is unlikely to be fatal except in those who were already ill or infirm. Those deaths are still sad and should be prevented where possible, but people have a very distorted perspective of it because they only know about it by the death count and not through personal experience. The flu has a non-negligible death toll, and pretty much everyone gets the flu at some point during their lives, but this is rarely seen as a scourge of mankind, just a disease that is worthy of reasonable preventative measures.
Your implicit claim "and there is absolutely no possible issue or complication with DDT, which will completely eliminate malaria" is silly. First, it won't completely eliminate malaria. DDT-resistant mosquitos already exist. If DDT use was truly widespread, this would be the dominant strain within a generation, and then we'd have no way to respond. Second, even if DDT is safe, this has not been sufficiently demonstrated. DDT is very unique in terms of how it accrues and remains within the human body for a very long time, and just stays there. Unlike many substances humans could be exposed to, you can't just observe people closely for a few years and say "Yep! They seem okay!" It's very dangerous to say "Well, we don't know exactly what the consequences of this will be 40 years down the road, but let's go ahead and use it!" especially with such a dubious benefit as temporarily reducing a single not-terribly-dangerous disease.
I would be very skeptical about deploying drugs that have not been fully studied, that collect in the human body for a very long time, with unknown consequences, on a large chunk of the population, just to decrease incidences of the flu for the next 10 years. The benefit just wouldn't be worth such a risk. But that's essentially the equivalent of what you're advocating, it's just a more exotic-sounding disease that many people mistakenly believe is dangerous to the general population in these countries.
I am the man with no sig!