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House Panel Holds Hearing On "Politically Driven Science" - Without Scientists
sciencehabit writes: Representative Louie Gohmert (R–TX) is worried that scientists employed by the U.S. government have been running roughshod over the rights of Americans in pursuit of their personal political goals. So this week Gohmert, the chair of the oversight and investigations subpanel of the U.S. House of Representatives' Natural Resources Committee, held a hearing to explore "the consequences of politically driven science." Notably absent, however, were any scientists, including those alleged to have gone astray.
Actually, it makes sense.
If you were to hold a hearing on Police Abuse and its effect on the minority community, which you feel compelled to invite the Police to speak?
but it's not all science.
Growing up in the 80s, all I heard was how liberal the media was and how we had to fight against it. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, it's clear that the phrase "liberal media" was a conservative talking point that they repeated ad infinitum until people stopped questioning it and just assumed it was true.
The same thing is happening now with claiming scientists are politically or monetarily motivated (the conservative machine hasn't settled on which script to stick with).
Look, I'm a scientist. I know scientists. I know scientists at NOAA, NCAR, NIST, the Labs, in academia, in industry, at biotechs, at agri-science companies, at space exploration companies, and at oil and gas companies. I know conservative scientists, liberal scientists, agnostic scientists, religious scientists, and hedonistic scientists.
You know what motivates scientists? Science. And to a lesser extent, their ego. If someone doesn't love science, there's no way they can cut it as a scientist. There are no political or monetary rewards available to scientists in the same way they're available to lawyers and lobbyists.
Science if hard work for little pay and possibly some recognition. Unfortunately, the conservative noise machine is slowly building a narrative that scientists are all politically and monetarily motivated. The public doesn't really know any better and will believe this to be true if they hear it enough.
This attempt to paint scientists as political actors is pure bullshit and demeans the hard work and great sacrifices working scientists make every day.
-Chris
Nice spin.... how about this: Since there are so many people who do deny it, why not take a different approach that would accomplish the same thing without making Al Gore even more wealthy?
Some things need to be said...
.. Is an old, old, old page out of the tyranny handbook.
The same thing that happens to every Patriot Act power the Republicans voted for themselves when driven by a Democratic agenda? Neither side cares how the other will misuse the powers they grant themselves, they only care that they get to use those powers themselves.
You'll note that not one single Republican (except for the libertarians like the Pauls) suggested that the IRS not have the power to harass any organization when it turned out that the Democrats were using the IRS against conservative organizations. This is because it's terrible, terrible when that power gets misused, but the only thing worse than that misuse is when the Republicans don't have the power to use it themselves "correctly".
Good luck getting this fixed.
Because we can't pander to stupid people who have internalized Republican nonsense. Should we back down every time someone has a stupid belief just because Republicans cherish stupid beliefs?
I think his point is that the Republicans in power seems to be reflexively against anything "those liberals" are in favor of. Liberals say climate change is real and we've got to combat it? Well, obviously, it is false and we need to investigate anyone who says it is true. You've got to wonder if Obama released a statement that read "I like puppies. They're cute.", how quickly would Republicans line up to declare that puppies are evil spawns of Satan and real Americans own cats, not dogs.
The problem with stating that liberals should stop pushing fighting against climate change - targeting clean air/water instead - in the hopes that the Republicans would drop their objections and things would get done is that the Republicans in power have a lot invested in "things are good as-is." Plus, once liberals start decrying polluted air/water, the Republican leadership would reflexively declare all water/air to be 100% clean and would cut EPA funding to match their declaration.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
What different approach? I don't care about Al Gore and fail to see why you even bring him to this thread. However I expect people investing in renewable resources/energy to make money as we fight climate change, and I don't see what's wrong with it.
Liberals wanted hard limits on CO2 emissions, no exceptions. Credits were a conservative-proposed, market-based alternative. Liberals weren't that fond of the idea--allowing swaps makes it more difficult to pinpoint violations and takes longer to hit the desired total CO2 decreases--but it had bipartisan support so could actually be enacted, and would make a measurable improvement. So we agreed that it was an acceptable compromise. At which point conservative politicians and their owners and media outlets howled that CO2 credits were the worst socialist plot since Red October, and the goalpost shifted again.
There's no nice way to put this: You are totally fucking stupid.
You have no idea how much dedicated scientists get paid (damn little, especially when you consider the education required to become one). Or how much actual work is involved (a huge amount, one that only someone truly dedicated to their field could ever possibly tolerate).
I know this because I came extremely close to heading back to grad school for a Ph.D., and I would have taken an 85% pay cut for the privilege (for a minimum of four years). And those I know who did take the plunge, got the three letters, endured the low-paying post-doc fellowship, and managed to latch onto an associate professorship.. got very tired very quickly. Tired of hustling for whatever precious grant money they could, and not doing the work they were trained to do, and left academia altogether.
So, Sparky, I would strongly recommend turning off Fox News, leaving your trailer, and enjoying some fresh air.
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
Really? Remind me again who apologized to BP after the worst oil disaster in history.
Hey Louie, you mean like trying to get government to force biology teachers to teach creationism? Is that what you mean by politically driven science?
Oh, one side always thinks the other side is worse. Actually, both sides think that way. And that is how you know you're on one side or the other side.
Here is my question, which is worse? Deleting 18.5 minutes of audio recordings or erasing an entire email server used by the Secretary of State for Official Purposes?
Both are equally wrong. For the same reasons. One guy had to resign in shame, the other is running for president and proud of her accomplishments. Which side is worse? Meh, I can't hardly tell them apart.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I honestly think scientists as politicians wouldn't be so bad.
Almost all of us would be so sick of the bullshit after a term or two would wouldn't try to get reelected. We'd actually like to return to a field where you can get something done and make forward progress.
It's all the assholes who spend 90% of the time in office pandering to their voter base and just trying to undo what the other guys did that are causing half of our problems.
So the politician is worried that the scientists are so politically motivated that they can't do good science?
Here, an apt quote from the Bible:
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
Matthew 7:5
-- "Oh. This guy again."
I am one of those scientists (well, engineer actually these days), and I can say that you've got this pretty far backwards. I am an assistant professor, which means I have 6 years to prove my worth to my university. Part of that proof is that I must raise grants and fund grad students through a Ph.D. program. In fact, grad student support is the bulk of what I request in my grant applications -- my own salary is paid by tuition and legislative appropriations (I do teach classes too after all). But raising grants is currently nearly impossible.
I work on concrete solutions to climate change (e.g., studying how much wind and solar power we can use without cheap storage, or designing home appliances and electric vehicle chargers that can synchronize their demand with the supply of renewable power). Even in these "hot" areas, the funding rate for grant proposals is about 3%. Each proposal takes about a month of intense thinking, writing and document-chasing. Everyone competing for these grants has a Ph.D. from a top school, and the external review process is incredibly rigorous. So I would not call this a gravy train. I do this work because I think that humanity is on a reckless and destructive path, digging up hundreds of millions of years worth of accumulated carbon and poofing it into the atmosphere in 100 years, and because I think we can do better. If I wanted the gravy train, I'd be at Google or Microsoft or Facebook, not writing NSF grant proposals.
Republicans in power seems to be reflexively against anything "those liberals" are in favor of.
There's a lot of that going around, for sure, but the real issue is that science always has the potential of being disruptive to established economic interests. Whether it's Big Tobacco or fossil carbon, those interests are paying the GOP serious money for protection against these kinds of disruptions.
My take on the whole thing, it is only a scandal with the OTHER side does it.
There is such a thing as a manufactured scandal. American politics is replete with them -- esp. conservative politics, which panders to a rather conspiratorial base.
Which is why I am a libertarian, both sides are corrupt
There is also a long well documented history of plutocrats using libertarian talking points to push their cronyism. It's an imperfect world.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
The people doing this work are scientists. That means they work with probabilistic uncertainty bands, not vague measures like "within 80% of the predicted value". They also recognize that you can't make short-term predictions of a noisy system (the Earth's weather) with a narrow uncertainty band. So if anything they have erred on the side of making cautious forecasts -- i.e., things are turning out worse than the thresholds that scientists were willing to go public with (i.e., the lower edge of the 95% uncertainty band around anyone's forecast for a particular year's temperatures will be significantly cooler than their central estimate).
Because of this, no one would have been willing to predict (with high degree of certainty) that 13 of the warmest years since 1880 would occur in 2000-2014. But they have.
I challenge you to show me any global climate model that predicts that doubling CO2 concentrations won't warm the planet, or that shows that we would have had this century's steady increase in temperatures even if we hadn't increased CO2 concentrations. You can pretend there is no connection between CO2 and temperature, but you are the one burying your head in the sand.
So, you've got one guy on a political-agenda-driven website, who is not a lawyer, who says *in his opinion*, that's what the bill would do.
What specific parts/language of/in the bill forbids anonymized personal, individual data to be used in otherwise open and reproducible studies?
If the bill does contain such wording.language, if it were altered so that such pragmatic and practical concerns are handled, would you then support it?
Or is this just a vector of attack on a bill which you do not support the main intent (eliminating regulation-creation within Federal agencies/Depts with force of law based on secret studies/data) of?
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
You have to understand that when he says things like "politically driven science" he is intending, not to communicate, but to bamboozle and deceive. This has been pointed out before:
(Politics and the English Language, 1946.)
I do see the need to stop polluting our water, air and land.
This whole thing reminds me of the entire "Lead in Gasoline" fight back in the 60's.
I wish liberals would abandon the "climate change" mantra and focus on air and water quality. It's fairly easy to prove that we are poisoning everything.
Why do "liberals" have to "abandon the climate change mantra" to do something about air and water quality? Can't "conservatives" do something about air and water for their own reasons? Howabout a clean air and water bill, bi-partisan, the "conservatives" support it because we are "poisoning everything" and "liberals" support it because of "climate change". There. Bill passed, clean air and water, and Richard Nixon smiles in his grave. Everybody wins.
Except, THAT WOULD SUCK, because if Republicans vote with Democrats, Republicans might jeopardize their precious "brand" of being against all things liberal, and then voters might get confused, not give as much of a shit at the next election from one party to the other, and those safe majorities might not be so safe anymore. Furthermore, the ultra-libertarians in the Tea Party wing will attack the incumbents in the Primaries, claiming that the new regulation for protecting clean air and water is evil, liberal, communist, twinkle-toed Kenyan-Muslim interference on one's God-given right to pour shit all over your own land if you damn-well want to. And, of course, who's going to PAY for your clean air and water? Regulators, agents, inspectors, prosecutors, none of them work for free! Our Lord Grover Norquist will not permit any new taxes for yet more wasteful government spending!
Nope, too risky. New election cycle coming up. Gotta keep up the pressure, and cooperation doesn't do any good for anybody.
On the other hand, making friends with big industrial polluters yields nice election contributions, which pays for TV, radio, and print ads to whip up rage and FUD against the other Party, at least until election day.
Clean air and water? Not this year. Not next year either. In fact, never so long as it might validate those foul godless liberals and that *spit* asshat Al Gore with his "climate change" bullshit.
But thanks for your vote.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
It used to be that at one time, republicans believed in the importance of science to inform them and make for a better world and ensure America's preeminence in the world. Now, republicans hate science as it is the bearer of bad news, namely that republicans are bad for the environment, the long term technological security of the country, and for social progress.
It used to be that the accused were entitled to stand before their accusers to rebut their accusations. In modern republican America this right is being taken away because republicans find it politically convenient.
Sadly, it looks as if this trend will continue until global warming gets so bad that no one will be able to live in Victoria, Texas and consequently, won't be able to vote for Louis Gohmert, who seems intent on killing the messenger of the bad news rather than addressing the problem.
Yes, politicians and voters imagine themselves to be Canute, without understanding the moral of the story.
The real moral, of course, is that the Universe doesn't give a fuck about Congress, democracy, the GOP, the Democrats or the economy. It obeys specific laws that humans can harness and manipulate, but not change. Blaming scientists because some of their theories make people uncomfortable or because they challenge ideological, economic or political models is a pointless, futile exercise. The laws of physics owe humanity no favors.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Kinda like there are some people so blinded by partisan hatred they are convinced she did something wrong even though there is no evidence she did, nor was any law that actually prohibited her actions?
Kinda like....you?