Slashdot Mirror
Unfriendly Climate Greets Gore At Apple Meeting
theodp writes "Apple's shareholder meeting this week took on a Jerry Springer vibe, with harsh comments about Al Gore, former VP and Apple board member, setting the tone. Several stockholders took turns either bashing or praising Gore's high-profile views on climate change. Apple shareholder Shelton Ehrlich urged against Gore's re-election to the board, claiming that Gore 'has become a laughingstock. The glaciers have not melted. If [the] advice he gives to Apple is as faulty as his views on the environment then he doesn't need to be re-elected.' Hey, at least he moved a few copies of Keynote, Shelton. Shareholders introduced proposals regarding Apple's environmental impact — one asking Apple to commit publicly to greenhouse gas reduction goals and to publish a formal sustainability report; another proposing that Apple's board establish a sustainability committee. These proposals were rejected by shareholders. However, preliminary voting results indicated that Gore was re-elected to Apple's Board."
Those who denied that a bacteria (imagine that) was responsible for most stomach ulcers were ridiculed by the established medical community (until they were proven wrong).
Wow, that's an interesting example you've picked there. I happen to know a bit about the "stomach ulcers are caused by bacteria" theory as there's a lot of Australian scientists involved. The controversy is over the claim that stomach ulcers may be caused by or made worse by bacteria in the stomach. This was considered controversial for a very simple scientific reason: no-one had found bacteria in the stomach. However there was a single data point which suggested they might actually exist.. and there were other explanations for how that single data point might be wrong, contamination being the most important.
So, for years, doctors took samples from patients with stomach ulcers and sent them to researchers who tried various methods to culture them. When they failed the objectors to the theory repeated the mantra that the same thing that makes culturing bacteria in stomach samples hard is what makes it so unlikely that there's any bacteria that live in the stomach. After lots of good science, Robin Warren and Barry Marshall managed to culture and isolate bacteria from some samples. They contended that most stomach ulcers were caused by the bacteria they had isolated and Marshall dramatically demonstrated this by drinking some of the cultures and getting very sick.
This was met with a lot of skepticism, but after careful study, by various independent groups, it was found the Warren and Marshall's technique did indeed result in measurable cultures in patients with gastritis and to a lesser extent stomach ulcers. To-date no clear link has been established between H. pylori and the majority of stomach ulcers. So really, although their work was good science and improved our understanding of stomach pathogens, they were wrong, it doesn't cause most stomach ulcers. Maybe time will prove them right, but for the attention span of the media it doesn't matter, the media will keep repeating that Warren and Marshall defied the conventional wisdom of the day and proved that bacteria cause all forms of stomach ulcer because that's an interesting story.
How we know is more important than what we know.
"Science also didn't care if preservatives in vaccines led to autism. The media cared a lot. Articles in peer reviewed journals thought it did "
There was _one_ paper, in _one_ journal that suggested a link between vaccines and autism. The study was widely criticised by many scientists and was subsequently retracted. Hardly the protracted controversy that you imply it was.
I see someone else has already discredited your claim about stomach ulcers also.
Look, no one is saying science is perfect, but in general: when there is a scientific consensus it implies there is a modicum of truth.
You mean this one?
Why yes, I have. You quite obviously have not or you wouldn't have come up with this bullshit:
This can only be described as a blatant lie, given that when the BBC asked him "How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?", his reply was actually: