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Trump Administration Prohibits CDC Policy Analysts From Using the Words 'Science-Based' (washingtonpost.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader hey! writes: On Friday the Washington Post reported that the Trump Administration has forbidden the Centers for Disease Control from using seven terms in certain documents: "science-based", "evidence-based", "vulnerable," "entitlement," "diversity," "transgender," and "fetus".
It's important to note that the precise scope and intent of the ban is unknown at present. Scientific and medical personnel as of now have not been affected, only policy analysts preparing budgetary proposals and supporting data that is being sent to Congress. So it is unclear the degree to which the language mandates represent a change in agency priorities vs. a change in how it presents itself to Congress. However banning the scientifically precise term "fetus" will certainly complicate budgeting for things like Zika research and monitoring.
According to the Post's article, "Instead of 'science-based' or 'evidence-based,' the suggested phrase is 'CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes."
The New York Times confirmed the story with several officials, although "a few suggested that the proposal was not so much a ban on words but recommendations to avoid some language to ease the path toward budget approval by Republicans."
It's important to note that the precise scope and intent of the ban is unknown at present. Scientific and medical personnel as of now have not been affected, only policy analysts preparing budgetary proposals and supporting data that is being sent to Congress. So it is unclear the degree to which the language mandates represent a change in agency priorities vs. a change in how it presents itself to Congress. However banning the scientifically precise term "fetus" will certainly complicate budgeting for things like Zika research and monitoring.
According to the Post's article, "Instead of 'science-based' or 'evidence-based,' the suggested phrase is 'CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes."
The New York Times confirmed the story with several officials, although "a few suggested that the proposal was not so much a ban on words but recommendations to avoid some language to ease the path toward budget approval by Republicans."
As someone who had to work with crassly incompetent bosses, too, I can feel for them. This must really be really painful. The best thing they can do is leaking every bullshit those Trumpist idiots are demanding and destroying to the press.
"in official documents being prepared for next year’s budget"
I work in a scientific field and I consider myself to be a religious person. I don't think this is inherently a conflict. I think what most people have a problem with is the behavior of some loud followers of the Abrahamic religions (specifically Christianity and Islam). I don't see Taoists, for example, or Hellenic Reconstructionists causing all these problems.
Except that it is only the Judaeo-Christian worldview of objective truth and beleif of a knowable universe that drove science. Not Islam with its capricious Allah, not the Eastern religions that argue that there is no objective truth, not tribal and pagan religions. Only Christianity and Judaism maintain that God created a material reality that was (1) separate from Him, and (2) knowable.
Worldviews matter. You may disagree about the cross, but to argue that Christianity held science back is to ignore the very fact that it was this Christian worldview that drove the development of science as such (as opposed to alchemy and its ilk) in the first place.
Only Christianity and Judaism maintain that God created a material reality that was (1) separate from Him, and (2) knowable.
LMAO. Trends come and go in all religions. The Islamic Golden Age was a time of amazing scientific and philosophical progress, but they gave it up. Catholics rejected science, then eventually came to embrace it. Protestants loved science, then modern evangelical sects came to despise it.
I was raised Southern Baptist, but wholly abandoned it because of their insane insistence that reality was wrong. When a man tells you the sky is green and Jesus rode a dinosaur, it's awfully hard not to laugh at his opinions on anything else. Whatever else I might think about their organization, the Catholic church seems to be pretty good about science these days. I don't hear anything bad about the scientific beliefs of mainstream protestant groups (that is, ones that aren't American extremists). That said, Hindu and Taoist countries are doing lots of amazing science, and the OECD says that lots of barely religious countries are beating the US in science education.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
And yet a fetus is a baby, just still in the womb. If you remove the baby from the womb, it is still a baby, thus all fetus are babies, but according to the pro baby killers, fetus are not babies and that distinction in language has made the murder of millions of babies easier to get away with by calling them fetus, parasites and blobs of tissue instead of what they are, babies.
100 years from now abortion will be viewed as we today view slavery, with horror and disbelief that a civilized society could condone and legalize the murder of their own children for the sake of convenience.
You are aware that quite consistently the abortion rates are lowest in non-conservative countries like the Netherlands where the legal and social barriers against abortion are lower that in countries like the U.S.?
Treating women as breeding cattle not permitted to control their own body results in less rather than more responsible behavior. Puritans have much higher abortion rates than atheists. Your ways don't work. And upping the punishment for being a woman doesn't work.