Greetings from New Mexico, where I selflessly rise early to share a couple of items on the fight-to-save-honest-science front:
- At Daily Kos, DarkSyde has an interview with Representative Brad Miller (D-NC) about his efforts to ferret out instances of the overt politicization of science within the administration (as we mentioned before). He wants to gather enough evidence to hold an investigation by the House Science Committee.
- Phil Plait points us to Defend Science, a group that is holding protests and circulating a petition decrying attacks on objective scientific thinking within the U.S. I personally wasn’t that fond of the way the petition itself was written — a little too overheated, with a lot of capital letters — but it’s absolutely a worthy cause, and I am happy to go along.
It’s kind of entertaining – although admittedly the humor is black – that DailyKos, the most politicized web blog in the world whose atmosphere is dictated by hundreds of radical far left-wing lunatics, wants to pretend that they fight against politicization of science. I think that organizations whose main purpose is to politicize science and intimidate everyone who is not convenient for their political goals – and yes, I also talk about the Union of “Concerned” “Scientists” – are dangerous and should be looked at. Hansen may indeed believe all these bizarre things he says and he may be clean. But he is insane if he thinks that the ideas about the “climate change catastrophe” are being suppressed by someone. They are, on the contrary, being blown up at least by three orders of magnitude and the people who promote this kind of idiocy receive – although the word “steal” may be more appropriate – roughly 100 times more public money than what they should have under normal circumstances.
Lubos, what exactly would a normal (not meaning gaussian) distribution of money on the sciences be exactly?
DailyKos is the most politicized weblog in the world?
It might be the biggest political weblog, I guess, so if ‘politicisedness’ is an extensive property, it could win that way.
I’m not defending DailyKos, mind you, which is a hang-out for crazy pinkos* if you ask me.
*Or as they might call themselves, ‘grassroots Democrats’.
Sean — Do take advantage of your New Mexican sojourn and try some New Mexican style enchiladas. You’ll certainly be asked the official state question: “Red or green?” Take it from a local, and go with both.
It is pleasure to see a southern congressman behaving like a “pinko-democrat” rather than the standard “blue-dog” democrat.
Dear Chris,
the distribution of money should reflect the actual interest in theoretical value and practical applications, as judged by the part of the public that has some idea what is going on in that field(s). The public should be honestly explained what the science seems to say, and the public should decide how much money it wants to pay to one field or another.
This is not the case of “climate change science” because the people are being literally blackmailed and scared by journalists – and sometimes, indeed, by some scientists – and this fear is used to decide about funding and other things. The state of fear is an irrational state – and irrational states are bad starting points for reasonable policy decisions.
Moreover, the case for the hypothetical importance of climate change science is strengthened by methods that are dishonest not just according to the scientific standards – they are just dishonest. You permanently read (inconsequential) lies about the scientific consensus, lies about the contrarians being bad and corrupt people, and all this stuff. This is not a healthy atmosphere for reasonable decisions.
Climate has always been changing because of many largely uncontrollable and chaotic factors and the value of the research of “climate change” is very limited. The value of “global climate” as a variable is even lower, virtually zero, and I would personally not pay a single dollar if I could decide. Climate is only interesting if it is local because local environment is where the actual interesting and well-defined physics occurs. There are potentially significant changes that can occur in different regions because of a whole plethora of different reasons. The lacking will of many climate scientists to study the diverse family of factors – most of them being obviously natural factors – that are relevant for various local, microscopic quantities shows that the money is not spent effectively in climate science.
Best
Lubos
Thank you Lubos.
Dear Chris,
just a clarifying comment: I don’t want these rather obvious comments to sound as some holy phrases. Obviously, there will always be a lot of freedom and uncertainty what exactly the “right” rules for the co-existence of science and democracy should be, and my personal opinion will always be just one person’s opinion that can shape the rules of co-existence, much like the voice of others.
Have a nice spring day,
Lubos
Interesting, as usual, Lubos homes selectively on only one piece of the politicization of science agenda. Climate change. It’s a lot more than that.. Its abstinence only birth control programs, the morning after pill, evolution, a “hands off” policy on food safety, profit driven energy policies etc. etc. This is a considerably larger issue than climate change alone.
Ellit
Lubos,
With all due respect, there’s no greater raving lunatic than yourself. Good grief buddy, you have a webpage at the Wiki dedicated to your lunacy. But to set the record straight for those who may be unaware of your particular brand of mental pathology, I’m a registered indy, I’ve never been registered dem, and I’ve supported repubs almost entirely. I only recently declared them unfit for command when Bush-Cheney drove the rest of the party– including the reasonable moderates–off the cliff of insanity and incompetence with their reckless, ill conceived policies.
Lubos, your argument on climate change is only valid if one examines the history of climate change prior to the industrial evolution. This recent “unconstrained” growth of carbon emissions can only be explained by a human-induced model of climate change. This human-induced climate change is over-stressing the ability of the planet’s carbon cycle to maintain a viable degree of dynamics. If the carbon cycle becomes over-stressed, in turn, loses its dynamics ( the cycle becomes fixed/the cycle fails to cycle), the planet will transform into either a permanent Snowball Earth or a permanent Venusian Inferno. Despite the rather chaotic nature of global climate, what permanent outcome would you choose for Planet Earth?
Lubos,
The concept of a global climate makes perfect sense when you interpret it as the sum of all local climates (including their correlations). If enough local climates change, you can indeed talk about global climate change. Pretty straightforward logic, I should say.
I do agree with your assertion that a state of fear is a bad starting point for policy decisions. So your buddies in the White House should stop simplifying foreign policy as a “war on terror”.
the distribution of money should reflect the actual interest in theoretical value and practical applications, as judged by the part of the public that has some idea what is going on in that field(s). The public should be honestly explained what the science seems to say, and the public should decide how much money it wants to pay to one field or another.
Sounds like a free market to me.
Dear DarkSyde,
I don’t care whether you are a registered Indy or communist or whatever. What I wrote was that it is ironic that the most politicized weblog in the world wants to “defend” science from politics. You know very well that there is not a single letter to be changed on this important statement of mine, and all other readers of this blog and other blogs know it, too. I have already heard your bizarre story about your being a moderate. Whether or not the article was written by you is not too important but the fact that it has been written on DailyKos matters.
Also, I don’t care whether you’re vandalizing a wikipedia page by inserting dumb insults.
Best
Lubos
Cynthia,
in your comment, you are apparently uncertain whether our planet will end up as Mars or Venus, but at any rate, it will be a disaster. This is exactly the type of anti-scientific, hysterical thinking – if the word “thinking” is appropriate – that I criticized and still criticize. Your statement that a “carbon cycle loses dynamics” is unsubstantiated and nonsensical. There are no perfect cycles in Nature, there have never been any perfect cycles, and there won’t ever be any perfect cycles. Moreover, there exists no scientific reason to think that some processes of your cycle, whatever it exactly means, will slow down because of increased carbon dioxide concentrations. What you write is simply nonsense that cannot survive a more detailed scrutiny – and it is exactly this kind of superficial, emotional, confusing remarks that become absurd whenever they are investigated in detail that should have no room in policymaking.
Best
Lubos
Dear PK,
your definition of “global climate” as “everything that can be said about climate anywhere and at any time” differs from the conventional definition. When people talk about “global warming”, they surely don’t mean that every point on the Earth is getting warmer at every moment.
Only some kind of global averages that are moreover averaged over several years are growing. The point of “global climate science” is to elevate these averages to the status of quantities that are more interesting than the initial detailed data used to construct these averages.
It’s only the gross, average features – macroscopic features that can be encoded in a few numbers – that are normally counted as “global climate”. The research of these “overall” quantities is neither too important nor much easier than the research of the microscopic structure and the local climate.
I am happy that you agree that fear is not a good starting point. Concerning “war on terror”, you apparently have not noticed that “war on terror” has been renamed twice. First, it became a “global war on terror” and in July 2005 it became the “struggle against extremism”.
http://latte.blogs.com/welcome/2005/07/bush_administra.html
This is not an overly dramatic term ;-), and if someone still uses the words “war on terror”, you can tell her or him that it contradicts the official current terminology of the White House. 😉
Best
Lubos
Dear Elliot,
I do agree with you that there are dozens of questions that are more important than the “global climate” but I disagree that you have the right answers to all of them.
Whether or not the government should support abortions and advanced methods of birth control is a political question, not a scientific question. The same description holds for the identification of the ideal energy policies; for the amount and kind of regulation that the government chooses to impose for food safety, and many other decisions that you did not mention.
Pretending that these political questions are scientific is a part of what I call politicization of science. Science itself cannot tell us whether abortion is better than abstinence. Science cannot tell us that we should be afraid of every potential microorganism or a new chemical compound that can occur in your food. Science cannot tell us that there are more important things for an energy company than its profit.
I don’t really think that evolution – or any other aspect of biological research – is currently under any kind of threat, so I don’t have anything interesting to say about this issue.
Best wishes
Lubos
Lubos,
Then you are either careless for writing this:
Or you are a selling lie. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume carelessness on your part.
Dear Darksyde,
thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt – but it would be even better if you gave me a hint what you exactly find inaccurate about my statement. Your assertion certainly sounds as if you want to accuse me of an inaccuracy. Either it’s true or you’re just being careless for writing what you’re writing. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume carelessness on your part. 😉
Best
Lubos
Lubos,
As usual you completely miss the point. Science was doing just fine until politics entered the fray. For example there was an overwhelming recommendation to approve the morning after pill by scientists. The Bush adminstration, pandering to the religious right, overruled the scientists and imposed their own moral judgement in lieu of making a scientific decision.
Ditto for abstinence programs. The evidence is overwhelming that they do not work. But rather than provide condoms and sex education, the Bush regime refused international aid for anything other than abstinence in 3rd world countries.
It seems that you tend to decide whether something is scientific or political on whether you agree or disagree with the position. It is completely disingenuous.
For example your “kyotometer” is just a plain political lie. Since the U. S. hasn’t signed Kyoto, it obviously costs us nothing 🙂
Regards,
Elliot
Dear Elliot,
let me explain you what’s wrong with every sentence in your text except for the sentence “Regards, Elliot”.
You write: “As usual you completely miss the point.”
The reason why this sentence of yours is wrong is explained by the collective content of my response below.
You write: “Science was doing just fine until politics entered the fray.”
There has never been a period in which science existed and politics did not.
You write: “For example there was an overwhelming recommendation to approve the morning after pill by scientists.”
An “overwhelming recommendation by scientists” on a political issue is just a recommendation of some particular citizens. If there are political, moral, or religious reasons for the society to identify a particular act as immoral or illegal, the opinion of one particular profession is irrelevant. The nearly unified voice of this particular profession just reflects the fact that their political diversity is comparable to the political diversity of the Pyongyang Parliament.
You write: “The Bush adminstration, pandering to the religious right, overruled the scientists and imposed their own moral judgement in lieu of making a scientific decision.”
This is how such decisions are made in a democratic country. In a totalitarian country, things could work exactly along the lines you propose: an elite group would decide that a decision is the only decision supported by the scientific Marxist dialectic philosophy, and this group would impose this opinion on the rests of the society. Sorry to disappoint you but the U.S. don’t work along these lines. However, you may be happy to learn that the system that you advocate has been working in the Soviet Union. Among other things, it killed more people than Adolf Hitler.
You say: “Ditto for abstinence programs. The evidence is overwhelming that they do not work.”
What you’re saying contradicts available research papers. For example, look at this paper:
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Family/BG1533.cfm
It says, among other things: “Abstinence education programs for youth have been proven to be effective in reducing early sexual activity. Abstinence programs also can provide the foundation for personal responsibility and enduring marital commitment.”
You write: “But rather than provide condoms and sex education, the Bush regime refused international aid for anything other than abstinence in 3rd world countries.”
This is again a political decision determined by moral values of every responsible person.
You write: “It seems that you tend to decide whether something is scientific or political on whether you agree or disagree with the position. It is completely disingenuous.”
Every question of the type “what should we or the government do” is a political question. It is not disingenuous; instead, it is a basic defining feature of science that you’re apparently unable to understand. Science can never determine the moral values, despite the fact that 99% of left-wing scientists apparently think that it can.
You write: “For example your “kyotometer” is just a plain political lie. Since the U.S. hasn’t signed Kyoto, it obviously costs us nothing :)”
The counter is the global counter, and if you could turn on your brain for 20 seconds, you could reach this conclusion, too.
You write: “Regards, Elliot”
As I mentioned, this sentence of yours is OK.
Best wishes
Lubos
Lubos said:
I certainly agree that science does not provide answers to such political questions. Scientists provide empirical facts, and it’s up to people to factor those facts in with political, moral, etc. considerations that science can’t address.
What can’t be tolerated is when the science is compromised – when political appointees are allowed to decide how research is done and what the conclusions will be. The Union of Concerned Scientists and the House Government Reform Committee have compiled lists of such incidents (I’ve linked to the lists).
There are valid reasons for being e.g. pro-life, but don’t tell me you’re pro-life because abortion causes cancer. That’s what I call politicization of science.
Dear Anonymous,
concerning the abortion-cancer link, I just don’t know whether you’re right or not. I’ve never measured it myself, and there are contradictory answers around. See e.g.
http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com/
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2001-02-28-abortion-link.htm
Why are you exactly so sure that this link does not exist? Left-wingers are normally inventing hundreds of hard-to-believe links between health and other things, but when a principle that they consider holy – namely the right to kill children before they’re born – is at stake, suddenly it is clear that there can’t be any health risks. I just don’t believe that the data is evaluated honestly.
In the UCS list you offer, I am unfamiliar with one half of the cases while I studied the other half and found the position of UCS undefendable (examples include global warming and “endangered” wolves). What do you think is my expectation about the first half? The other document is too long to read.
All the best
Lubos
Lubos,
As someone so succintly put in in another thread. You make my case better than I could 🙂 If you are going to cite the Heritage Foundation as scientific evidence, please spare us. You may as well get a scientific analysis on birth control from the Vatican.
Cheers,
Elliot