|
|
Home | Switchboard | Unix Administration | Red Hat | TCP/IP Networks | Neoliberalism | Toxic Managers |
| (slightly skeptical) Educational society promoting "Back to basics" movement against IT overcomplexity and bastardization of classic Unix | |||||||
| Home | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 1999 |
For the list of top articles see Recommended Links section
|
|
Switchboard | ||||
| Latest | |||||
| Past week | |||||
| Past month | |||||
 |
 |
 |
naked capitalism
A fellow senior sciences professor at Overton's own LSU, also noted that Overton "does not appear to be an unbiased source of information" and found it laughable that the head of NOAA's chemical hazard assessment team is purporting to provide public comments as an "independent scientist."
"I think that Dr. Overton comes across as being an industry shill," the professor offered bluntly. "He has never said anything that was not in favor of what the industry was saying and continued to minimize the effects from day one about how bad this spill and its effects would be."
readerOfTeaLeaves:
Additionally, as professor emeritus, Overton confirmed to Raw Story that he officially retired from LSU and no longer receives a salary from the university; all his income tied to his university association since May 2009 has come through grants and contracts, and mostly through his work for NOAA. The latest NOAA funding for his work was a $1.3 million five-year grant.
Prof. Overton fools himself if he believes that his LSU connections have nothing to do with his ability to obtain funding. Just because he no longer receives an LSU salary does not in any way imply that he no longer benefits from the association. His self-serving excuse does no credit to him.
dan:
So what's new?
How many financial reports extolling the safety of derivatives or the financial health of whole countries have been written by paid shills from the universities in the U.S.?
Go see the movie "Inside Job" if you get a chance, read Yves or Nomi Prins books. This country is in the hands of traitors and thieves, and the above is just one more in a long line of transgressions that we are letting them get away with.
|
|
|
John MasheyI agree with others that this is dense and long, but I think it is well worth reading, even if you skip parts of chapters.
I would especially suggest study of:
Chapter 13: Daubert: the Most Influential Supreme Court Ruling You've Never Heard Of
Chapter 14: The Institutionalization of Uncertainty
[The Data Access Act (Shelby) and the Data Quality Act]Because:
a) The behaviors of some corporations, PR agencies, product defense organizations can get somewhat redundant. Hill & Knowlton created the tactics 50+ years ago and they've been widely employed.b) But the legal issues in these two Chapters represent relatively recent…
|
|
|
You do know, of course, that the same George C. Marshall Institute (GMI) was a key player in recruiting McKitrick, and then McIntyre. They helped pay for trips to Washington, sponsored talks, coached them, introduced them to Singer, Baliunas, Soon, Michaels ... and James Inhofe. They publicized them. They made them GMI "experts." in 2004. example.
So, if you thought "Merchants" was interesting for the history, see the following, which focuses more on the later years, especially the well-orchestrated attack on the hockey stick and Michael Mann, which started as soon as the IPCC TAR came out.
All this was actually part of strategy organized in 1998 by the American Petroleum Institute, with GMI, CEI, Fred Singer, etc. Follow the funding trails, etc, etc.
|
|
|
Buried deep in the anus of the Bible Belt, in a little place called Petersburg, Kentucky, is one of the world's most extraordinary tourist attractions: the Creation Museum, a kind of natural-history museum for people who believe the Earth is 6,000 years old. When you visit this impressively massive monument to fundamentalist Christian thought, you get a mind-blowing glimpse into the modern conservative worldview. One exhibit depicts a half-naked Adam and Eve sitting in the bush, cheerfully keeping house next to dinosaurs - which, according to creationist myth, not only lived alongside humans but were peaceful vegetarians until Adam partook of the forbidden fruit. It's hard to imagine a more telling demonstration of this particular demographic's unmatched ability to believe just about anything.
Even more disturbing is an exhibit designed to show how the world has changed since the Scopes trial eradicated religion from popular culture. Visitors to the museum enter a darkened urban scene full of graffiti and garbage, and through a series of windows view video scenes of families in a state of collapse. A teenager, rolling a giant doobie as his God-fearing little brother looks on in horror, surfs porn on the Web instead of reading the Bible. ("A Wide World of Women!" the older brother chuckles.) A girl stares at her home pregnancy test and says into the telephone, "My parents are not going to know!" As you go farther into the exhibit, you find a wooden door, into which an eerie inscription has been carved: "The World's Not Safe Anymore."
Staff members tell me Rand Paul recently visited the museum after-hours. This means nothing in itself, of course, but it serves as an interesting metaphor to explain Paul's success in Kentucky. The Tea Party is many things at once, but one way or another, it almost always comes back to a campaign against that unsafe urban hellscape of godless liberalism we call our modern world. Paul's platform is ultimately about turning back the clock, returning America to the moment of her constitutional creation, when the federal bureaucracy was nonexistent and men were free to roam the Midwestern plains strip-mining coal and erecting office buildings without wheelchair access. Some people pick on Paul for his humorously extreme back-to-Hobbesian-nature platform (a Louisville teachers' union worker named Bill Allison follows Paul around in a "NeanderPaul" cave-man costume shouting things like "Abolish all laws!" and "BP just made mistakes!"), but it's clear when you talk to Paul supporters that what they dig most is his implicit promise to turn back time, an idea that in Kentucky has some fairly obvious implications.
|
|
|
August 30, 2010 Wired September 2010
'You have to decide who you trust before you decide what to believe.'
Photo: Donald MilneFor a while there, things didn't look too good for British writer Simon Singh. The best-selling author of the science histories Big Bang and Fermat's Enigma knew he was heading into controversial territory when he switched tracks to cowrite a book investigating alternative medicine, Trick or Treatment? What Singh didn't count on, however, was that writing a seemingly innocuous article for London's The Guardian newspaper about especially outrageous chiropractic claims-one of the subjects he researched for the book-would end up threatening his career. The British Chiropractic Association sued Singh, hoping to use Britain's draconian libel laws to force him to withdraw his statements and issue an apology. Losing the case would have cost Singh both his reputation and a substantial amount of his personal wealth. Such is the state of science, where sometimes even stating simple truths (like the fact that there's no reliable evidence chiropractic can alleviate asthma in children) can bring the wrath of the antiscience crowd. What the British chiropractors didn't count on, however, was Singh himself. Having earned a PhD from Cambridge for his work at the Swiss particle physics lab CERN, he wasn't about to back down from a scientific gunfight. Singh spent more than two years and well over $200,000 of his own money battling the case in court, and this past April he finally prevailed. In the process, he became a hero to those challenging the pseudoscience surrounding everything from global warming to vaccines to evolution. It's not necessarily a role he sought for himself, but it's one he has embraced-he's currently touring the world, talking about his case, libel reform, and how important it is to make sure scientists can speak truthfully and openly. Wired spoke with Singh about his case and the struggle against the forces of irrationality.
Wired: The British Chiropractic Association wanted you to apologize for your Guardian article. Why didn't you? What would that have meant?
Simon Singh: It would have meant that whenever somebody typed "Simon Singh" into a Web search, it would say, "science journalist found guilty of libel." People could dismiss anything I'd ever written about alternative medicine. But more important, it would have implied that there is some validity to these claims that chiropractic can help with things like asthma and colic. And that would have an impact on parents and their children. Faced with that, I couldn't apologize. If you've written something that you believe is true, and if you can afford to defend it, then you've got to defend it.
Wired: Do you think that this is part of a broader trend? Is science under assault?
Simon Singh: What shocks me is people who have no expertise championing a view that runs counter to the mainstream scientific consensus. For example, we have a consensus amongst the best medical researchers in the world-the leading authorities and the World Health Organization-that vaccines are a good thing, and that MMR, the triple vaccine, is a really good thing. And yet there are people who are quite willing to challenge that consensus-film stars, celebrities, columnists-all of whom rely solely on the tiny little bit of science that seems to back up their view.
Wired: Yet the celebrities sometimes seem to be winning.
Simon Singh: Part of the problem is that if anybody has a gut reaction about an issue, they can go online and have it backed up. That said, they can also find support for their ideas in the mainstream media-because when the mainstream media gives a so-called balanced view, it's often misleading. The media thinks that because one side says climate change is real and dangerous, the other view is that it's not real and not dangerous. That doesn't reflect the fact that something like 98 percent of climate scientists agree that global warming is real and dangerous. And this happens with everything from genetically modified foods to evolution. But, at the end of the day, all that this misinformation does is slow progress-it doesn't stop it. Antiscientific and pseudoscientific attitudes will get corrected; it's just a question of how painful that process is going to be.
Wired: Should scientists do more to get real science out there?
Simon Singh: Scientists aren't necessarily good communicators, because they aren't trained to be good communicators. A researcher could be doing really important work on global warming, and then somebody writes a column in a national newspaper that completely undermines what they're saying. But the scientist doesn't think the column is important-it's just some nincompoop writing a column-so they don't take that writer to task in the way they should. It's a case of saying, "How do we make a difference?" We certainly don't make a difference by just moaning over coffee the next day.
Wired: What about nonscientists? How are we supposed to know what's true?
Simon Singh: Don't come up with a view, find everybody who agrees with it, and then say, "Look at this, I must be right." Start off by saying, "Who do I trust?" On global warming, for example, I happen to trust climate experts, world academies of science, Nobel laureates, and certain science journalists. You have to decide who you trust before you decide what to believe.
Wired: Why is it so hard to convince people, even when the science is so clear?
Simon Singh: Science has nothing to do with common sense. I believe it was Einstein who said that common sense is a set of prejudices we form by the age of 18. Inject somebody with some viruses and that's going to keep you from getting sick? That's not common sense. We evolved from single-cell organisms? That's not common sense. By driving my car I'm going to cook Earth? None of this is common sense. The commonsense view is what we're fighting against. So somehow you've got to move people away from that with these quite complicated scientific arguments based on even more complicated research. That's why it's such an uphill battle. People start off with a belief and a prejudice-we all do. And the job of science is to set that aside to get to the truth.
Articles editor Robert Capps ([email protected]) wrote about the advantages of "good enough" technology in issue 17.09.
|
|
|
The Guardian
You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact they still possess some quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything. And even the more moderate chiropractors have ideas above their station. The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments.
I can confidently label these treatments as bogus because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world's first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.
But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic.
In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors.
More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures.
Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection.
Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: "Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck."
This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Professor Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher.
Bearing all of this in mind, I will leave you with one message for Chiropractic Awareness Week - if spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.
· Simon Singh is the co-author of Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial
www.simonsingh.netThis article appeared in the Guardian on Saturday April 19 2008 on p26 of the Comment & debate section. It was last updated at 00:06 on April 19 2008.
|
|
|
Cognitive Dissonance:
It makes me laugh/cry to see that it took them 25 years to come to the conclusion that lease accounting was being abused.
Bruce, the biggest failing we as honest and caring humans have is that we don't (wish to) have the capacity of the psychopathic personality. In other words, because we don't want to be a thief (well maybe not a large one) we don't think like a thief. And while we "know" there are thieves out there, we still approach the world on a daily basis assuming the thieves are only 2 or 3 % of the population.
And you would be correct to think so. OK, maybe 5%. But where we really go off the tracks is in assuming the regulators are at least trying to do their job. This is where we are raped and pillaged.
There is no reason for the regulators to be as incompetent and incapable as they consistently are unless it's intended to be this way. It's that simple. And there are hundreds of ways for the powers that be to place roadblock after roadblock in front of the regulators while still making it look like they aren't doing so. Why do you think the recent finreg bill was over 2,000 pages long?
The entire concept of regulators is that they are there simply to keep the honest people coming back to the dice table and the thieves coming to the same table to take advantage of the honest people. The regulators are there to keep selected competition out of "the game" as well as to look the other way when "da playas" are at the table. No more, no less.
Thus if the regulators are just now "discovering" something 25 years later, it's clear that "da playas" have a new game in town and they need to fleece the last of the honest money one more time and then make sure their enemies......er....irritating mosquitoes are caught and locked up for playing a game that's being retired soon for the next best thing.
Pardon my cynical slip for showing.
Mitchman
CD, in this case, the regulators are actually following the rules to the letter. Most lease accounting in the US is based on FASB 13 which, I believe dates back to the late 1950's or early 1960's. Everyone is going by the book in this case and although there have been some attempts at changing the rules, they have been half-hearted, partially because everyone has felt that the rules of the game have been working so well for everyone involved.
Cognitive Dissonance:
I agree. Let me quote myself from above.
And there are hundreds of ways for the powers that be to place roadblock after roadblock in front of the regulators while still making it look like they aren't doing so. Why do you think the recent finreg bill was over 2,000 pages long?
I agree, in this case everyone's going by the book because the book is written to allow the thieving. Oh sure, there really are rules and regs to keep things from completely getting out of hand. After all, there must be rules. BUT the rules are written to favor the few at the expense of the many. And without being insulting in the least to you my friend, most people can't see this fact because they are immersed in the game.
They know the rules so well and have been around it for so long that it all just makes sense. But pull average Joe in off the street or ask a passing space alien what he (she? it?) thinks about the "system" and they will respond in short order with a common consensus.
Rigged. And the regulators are part of the rigged game.
Mitchman :
I di not take it as an insult my dear friend and especially from such a lofty commentator as yourself. (BTW, happy anniversary!). My point was that the rules were written at a point in time when corporate leverage was not the issue that it is today. Remember that in say, 1959, securitization didn't exist. So taking a lease off the balance sheet didn't seem like such a big problem. I might also point out that under international accounting rules, where the auditor's judgment counts a great deal more than it does here in the US, taking a lease obligation off the balance sheet is much more difficult. Here in the US, under the old FASB 13, it was much easier to "game" the system. Thereby further proving your point.
Cheers.
Cognitive Dissonance:
Thereby further proving your point.
And well as yours. The more I pull back to bring the big picture into focus, the more my stomach turns. I fully understand why so many seek drink, drug or other diversions to kill the pain of the ugly truth. Unfortunately it will only change when people begin to talk about the painful truths they so desperately try to avoid. Part of our conditioning is to avoid talking about our conditioning.
Have a good weekend.
Bartanist
As a culture we tend to distance ourselves from people who speak the truth because we would rather live with a known lie than to invite an uncomfortable conflict and a resolution that might hurt the liar. Odd, no?
I recall a weeklong exec financial education trip to Wharton back in the mid-90s. One of the case studies was of Marriott corporation which at the time had superior earnings based on their degree of leverage. The lesson for us was not that we could have a more profitable company with greater leverage, but that there is greater and unreasonable risk associated with leverage.
I guess the financial engineers figure that one out. Create companies that were too big and too connected to the power structure to be allowed to fail and have the saps, errr I mean people, absorb the risk. Problem solved! Superior earnings and no risk.
Cognitive Dissonance
As a culture we tend to distance ourselves from people who speak the truth because we would rather live with a known lie than to invite an uncomfortable conflict and a resolution that might hurt the liar. Odd, no?
Precisely. And also why I selected Cognitive Dissonance as my ID. Because the funny thing about denial is that while we may be (sub)consciously pushing away the pain and dissonance, in the background, our subconscious mind is absorbing everything.
So when the time comes for the student to wake, the teacher will already be present in the form of subconscious knowledge and understanding coming to the surface to be transferred into the conscious awareness. And this often happens (relatively) quicker if there are subliminal reminders of our dissonance present.
Hence my ID.
Odd, no? :>)
Bartanist:
I would say, "In a minority, yes" .... Odd? Not to me. I think there will come a time when people will need people who have not been dead or asleep to help them with the new reality.
AssFire
The mental conflict that occurs when beliefs or assumptions are contradicted by new information. The unease or tension that the conflict arouses in a person is relieved by one of several defensive maneuvers: the person rejects, explains away, or avoids the new information, persuades himself that no conflict really exists, reconciles the differences, or resorts to any other defensive means of preserving stability or order in his conception of the world and of himself. The concept, first introduced in the 1950s, has become a major point of discussion and research.
Man, I should have selected my ID with a bit more thought.
NotApplicable:
I'm amazed at how I can talk to anyone about corruption inside of some institution that they have personal knowledge about, yet they never extrapolate this corruption out to other institutions. Since they have no personal knowledge of them, they simply trust their faith, because they cannot stand to know the alternative, that we are all fucked.
Bartanist :
The vast majority of people have been brainwashed when young and impressionable to believe that should spend their lives striving to be accepted within the power circle... or at least a well compensated slave (although they do not envision it that way at the time).
Without getting into the extremely esoteric, there is nothing finite about the system that we are living within. Rules are only rules for those that believe them to be rules and do not have the power to ignore them. Is this right? IMO, it is neither right or wrong, but only a means to an end. While the people on this board might be discussing the injustice of something, somewhere in the world there are people discussing larger problems about how to manage the entire herd of humans, somewhere else in the world there are people dying from thirst or starvation and in another part of the world people don't give a damn about materialism and are trying to figure it all out to connect their 3 halves.
Sure, I believe in honesty, personal freedom and treating others with respect. I believe in questioning, understanding doing something about it and growing. Do I really need a financial prison (err system) to help me do that? Probably not. Have I got so much invested in my first 50+ years within the system that it is damn hard to find my way out. You betcha. These prison bars are made of velvet and excrete vodka on the rocks (with an olive) and a nice juicy steak cooked to perfection.
John_Coltrane:
So true. As a working research scientist I can tell you that people believe scientists wouldn't alter results to advance their careers and receive more funding and recognition. But this is very naive as this happens all the time. Corruption and misuse of funds is rampant especially at large national laboratories where power is concentrated.
|
|
|
New York Times
Mooney's critique has understandably annoyed some of his colleagues. In a review in The Washington Post, the journalist Keay Davidson faults Mooney for not acknowledging how hard it can be to distinguish good science from bad. Philosophers call this the "demarcation problem." Demarcation can indeed be difficult, especially if all the scientists involved are trying in good faith to get at the truth, and Mooney does occasionally imply that demarcation consists simply of checking scientists' party affiliations. But in many of the cases that he examines, demarcation is easy, because one side has an a priori commitment to something other than the truth - God or money, to put it bluntly.
Conservative complaints about federally financed "junk science" may ultimately prove self-fulfilling. Government scientists - and those who receive federal funds - may toe the party line to avoid being punished like the whistleblower Andy Eller (who was rehired last June after he sued for wrongful termination). Increasingly, competent scientists will avoid public service, degrading the quality of advice to policy makers and the public still further. Together, these trends threaten "not just our public health and the environment," Mooney warns, "but the very integrity of American democracy, which relies heavily on scientific and technical expertise to function." If this assessment sounds one-sided, so is the reality that it describes
|
|
|
NEARLY FORTY YEARS AGO, in 1966, two talented young political thinkers published an extraordinary book, one that reads, in retrospect, as a profound warning to the Republican Party that went tragically unheeded.
The authors had been roommates at Harvard University, and had participated in the Ripon Society, an upstart group of Republican liberals. They had worked together on Advance, dubbed "the unofficial Republican magazine," which slammed the party from within for catering to segregationists, John Birchers, and other extremists. Following their graduation, both young men moved into the world of journalism and got the chance to further advance their "progressive" Republican campaign in a book for the eminent publisher Alfred A. Knopf. In their spirited 1966 polemic The Party That Lost Its Head, they held nothing back. The book devastatingly critiqued Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential candidacy-the modern conservative movement's primal scene-and dismissed the GOP's embrace of rising star Ronald Reagan as the party's hope to "usurp reality with the fading world of the class-B movie."
Read today, some of the most prophetic passages of The Party That Lost Its Head are those that denounce Goldwater's conservative backers for their rampant and even paranoid distrust of the nation's intellectuals. The book labels the Goldwater campaign a "brute assault on the entire intellectual world" and blames this development on a woefully wrongheaded political tactic: "In recent years the Republicans as a party have been alienating intellectuals deliberately, as a matter of taste and strategy."
The authors charge that Goldwater's campaign had no intellectual heft behind it whatsoever, save the backing of one think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, which they denounce as "an organization heavily financed by extreme rightists." Continuing in the same vein, they slam William F. Buckley, Jr., for his attacks on leading universities and describe the advent of right-wing anti-intellectualism as "crippling" to the Republican Party. The book further deplores conservatives' paranoid distrust of the "liberal" media and the "Eastern Establishment," and worries that without the backing of intellectuals and scholars, the GOP will prove unable to develop "workable programs, distinct from those of the Democrats and responsive to national problems." If the party wants to win back the "national consensus," the authors argue, it must first win back the nation's intellectuals.
Clearly, The Party That Lost Its Head failed in its goal of prompting a broad Republican realignment. The GOP went in precisely the opposite direction from the one these young authors prescribed-which is why the anti-intellectual disposition they so aptly diagnosed in 1966 still persists among many modern conservatives, helping to fuel the current crisis over the politicization of science and expertise. In fact, the chief difference between the Goldwater conservatives and those of today can often seem more cosmetic than real. A massive number of think tanks have now joined the American Enterprise Institute on the right, but in many cases these outlets still provide only a thin veneer of intellectual respectability to ideas that mainstream scholarship rejects.
Certainly, the proliferation of think tanks has not had as a corollary that conservatives now take scientific expertise more seriously. On the contrary, the Right has a strong track record of deliberately attempting to undermine scientific work that might threaten the economic interests of private industry. Perhaps more alarmingly still, similar tactics have also been brought to bear by the Right in the service of a religiously conservative cultural and moral agenda.
The next three chapters demonstrate how cultural conservatives have disregarded, distorted, and abused science on the issues of evolution, embryonic stem cell research, the relation of abortion to health risks for women, and sex education. In the process, we will encounter more ideologically driven think tanks, more questionable science, and more conservative politicians willing to embrace it.
The story begins, however, with a narrative that cuts to the heart of the modern Right's war on science. You see, despite the poignant accuracy of their critique, the authors of The Party That Lost Its Head-Bruce K. Chapman and George Gilder-have since bitten their tongues and morphed from liberal Republicans into staunch conservatives. In fact, you could say that they have become everything they once criticized. Once opponents of right-wing anti-intellectualism, they are now prominent supporters of conservative attacks on the theory of evolution, not just a bedrock of modern science but one of the greatest intellectual achievements of human history. With this transformation, the modern Right's war on intellectuals-including scientists and those possessing expertise in other areas-is truly complete.
|
|
|
Economist's View
Why did climate change legislation fail?:
Who Cooked the Planet?, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: Never say that the gods lack a sense of humor. I bet they're still chuckling on Olympus over the decision to make the first half of 2010 - the year in which all hope of action to limit climate change died - the hottest such stretch on record. ...So why didn't climate-change legislation get through the Senate? Let's talk first about what didn't cause the failure, because there have been many attempts to blame the wrong people.First of all, we didn't fail to act because of legitimate doubts about the science. Every piece of valid evidence ... points to a continuing, and quite possibly accelerating, rise in global temperatures.Nor is this evidence tainted by scientific misbehavior. You've probably heard about the accusations leveled against climate researchers -... "Climategate," and so on. What you may not have heard, because it has received much less publicity, is that every one of these supposed scandals was eventually unmasked as a fraud concocted by opponents of climate action...Did reasonable concerns about the economic impact of climate legislation block action? No. ... All serious estimates suggest that we could phase in limits on greenhouse gas emissions with at most a small impact on the economy's growth rate.So it wasn't the science, the scientists, or the economics that killed action on climate change. What was it?The answer is, the usual suspects: greed and cowardice.If you want to understand opposition to climate action, follow the money. The economy as a whole wouldn't be significantly hurt if we put a price on carbon, but certain industries - above all, the coal and oil industries - would. And those industries have mounted a huge disinformation campaign to protect their bottom lines.Look at the scientists who question the consensus on climate change; look at the organizations pushing fake scandals; look at the think tanks claiming that any effort to limit emissions would cripple the economy. Again and again, you'll find that they're on the receiving end of a pipeline of funding that starts with big energy companies, like Exxon Mobil, which has spent tens of millions of dollars promoting climate-change denial, or Koch Industries, which has been sponsoring anti-environmental organizations for two decades.Or look at the politicians who have been most vociferously opposed to climate action. Where do they get much of their campaign money? You already know the answer.By itself, however, greed wouldn't have triumphed. It needed the aid of cowardice - above all, the cowardice of politicians who know how big a threat global warming poses, who supported action in the past, but who deserted their posts at the crucial moment.There are a number of such climate cowards, but let me single out one in particular: Senator John McCain.There was a time when Mr. McCain was considered a friend of the environment. Back in 2003 he burnished his maverick image by co-sponsoring legislation that would have created a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emissions. He reaffirmed support for such a system during his presidential campaign, and things might look very different now if he had continued to back climate action once his opponent was in the White House. But he didn't - and it's hard to see his switch as anything other than the act of a man willing to sacrifice his principles, and humanity's future, for the sake of a few years added to his political career.Alas, Mr. McCain wasn't alone; and there will be no climate bill. Greed, aided by cowardice, has triumphed. And the whole world will pay the price.
|
|
|
BBC News
The head of the American Association of Professors has accused BP of trying to "buy" the best scientists and academics to help its defence against litigation after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
"This is really one huge corporation trying to buy faculty silence in a comprehensive way," said Cary Nelson.
BP faces more than 300 lawsuits so far.
In a statement, BP says it has hired more than a dozen national and local scientists "with expertise in the resources of the Gulf of Mexico".
The BBC has obtained a copy of a contract offered to scientists by BP. It says that scientists cannot publish the research they do for BP or speak about the data for at least three years, or until the government gives the final approval to the company's restoration plan for the whole of the Gulf.
It also states scientists may perform research for other agencies as long as it does not conflict with the work they are doing for BP.
And it adds that scientists must take instructions from lawyers offering the contracts and other in-house counsel at BP.
Bob Shipp, the head of marine sciences at the University of South Alabama, was one of the scientists approached by BP's lawyers.
They didn't just want him, they wanted his whole department.
"They contacted me and said we would like to have your department interact to develop the best restoration plan possible after this oil spill," he said.
"We laid the ground rules - that any research we did, we would have to take total control of the data, transparency and the freedom to make those data available to other scientists and subject to peer review. They left and we never heard back from them."
What Mr Nelson is concerned about is BP's control over scientific research.
"Our ability to evaluate the disaster and write public policy and make decisions about it as a country can be impacted by the silence of the research scientists who are looking at conditions," he said.
"It's hugely destructive. I mean at some level, this is really BP versus the people of the United States."
In its statement, BP says it "does not place restrictions on academics speaking about scientific data".
'Powerful economic interests'
But New Orleans environmental lawyer Joel Waltzer looked over the contract and said BP's statement did not match up.
Continue reading the main story"Start Quote
End Quote Professor Irv Mendelssohn Louisiana State UniversityGood scientists, they're going to be giving their opinions based on the facts and they are not going to bias their opinions"
"They're the ones who control the process. They're depriving the public of the data and the transparency that we all deserve."
But some scientists who have been approached by lawyers acting on behalf of BP are willing to sign up.
Irv Mendelssohn is a professor in the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences at Louisiana State University.
"What I'm doing wouldn't be any different than if I was consulting with one of the natural resource trustees. I am giving my objective opinion about recovery."
Some scientists approached by BP lawyers have been offered as much as $250 an hour.
Prof Mendelssohn says he would negotiate his normal consulting fee, which is between $150 and $300 an hour. But he says that is not why he is doing it.
"Good scientists, they're going to be giving their opinions based on the facts and they are not going to bias their opinions. What's most important is credibility."
But Cary Nelson is concerned about the relationship between corporations and academia.
"There is a problem for a faculty member who becomes closely associated with a corporation with such powerful financial interests.
"My advice would be: think twice before you sign a contract with a corporation that has such powerful economic interests at stake."
|
|
|
The sheer hubris of many in the economics profession never ceases to amaze me. Take for instance a recent paper by Kartik Athreya of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond[1] entitled "Economics is Hard. Don't let Bloggers Tell You Otherwise". In a move that is eerily reminiscent of the controversial talking Barbie of the early 1990s who fatefully uttered "Math class is tough"[2], Athreya's short paper essentially lays out a quite staggering claim :- that economics should be left to those with a PhD in the subject!Athreya describes himself as "a worker bee chipping away with known tools". He goes on to say "writers who have not taken a year of PhD coursework in a decent economics department…cannot meaningfully advance the discussion on economic policy"[3]. You've got to love the 'decent' in that sentence – it wreaks of intellectual snobbishness of the highest order.
In fact, Athreya's ire isn't limited to what she sees as uninformed debate, he seems to object to anyone who attempts to make the policy issues of the day clear even if they have a PhD. He pejoratively describes both Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong as "Patron saints of the Macroeconomic Policy is Easy" movement.
He argues that we won't expect particularly informed discussion on the causes, consequences and treatments for cancer from non-Oncology specialists, so why we would we expect non-specialists to offer any useful debate on economics.
However, the analogy is false. Modern medicine is based on scientific principles and follows an evidence based approach. Even then some estimate that the majority of published findings in medical journals are false[4]!
Economics starts from a far worse place. It isn't a science, and often seems more interested in twisting the facts to fit a theory rather than the other way around. In fact, as Nassim Taleb has pointed out, economics is more akin to medieval medicine than its current practice, "Medicine used to kill more patients than it saved – just as financial economics endangers the system by creating, not reducing, risk.[5]"
The idea that what we need is more 'worker bees' gaining their PhD's from conducting 'angels on a pin head' like work based on minor alterations to previous research makes me want to cry. Where were the warnings from the orthodox economics establishment ahead of the global financial crisis? Oh, that's right there weren't any.
Indeed many of those who warned of the problems ahead did so because they weren't constrained by the kind of training that an economics PhD suffers. I did my own training in economics a long time ago now, it included a fair amount of equation bending but I was incredibly fortunate that it included generalist topics such as Marxian and post-Keynesian economics, subjects that are oddly absent from the vast majority of syllabi.
In many ways economics as it exists today is largely a victim of learned helplessness - a phenomenon was first documented by Martin Seligman in the 1960s. He was working with dogs (dog lovers look away now) and studying conditioning when he came across something interesting. Seligman was subjecting pairs of dogs to nondamaging but painful electric shocks. However, in each pair of dogs one animal could put an end to the shock by simply pressing the side panels of its container with its head. The other dog was unable to turn off the shock. The electricity was synchronized, starting at the same point for both dogs, and obviously ending when the dog with the control turned off the power.
This gave the each of the pairs of dogs a very different experience. One experienced the pain as controllable, while the other did not. The dogs which had no control soon began to cower and whine (signs of doggy depression) even after the sessions had stopped. The dogs which could control the shocks showed no signs of this behaviour.
In the second phase of the experiments dogs were placed in box with a low wall separating the container into two. One side (the side on which the dog started) was electrified. To avoid the pain the dog simply had to jump the low wall. The dogs which had controlled the shocks in the first round quickly learned to jump the wall. However, the around two-thirds of the dogs who had no control in the first round, simply laid down and suffered the pain, they had learned to become helpless.
Modern day economics is much like these poor animals. Many economists have learnt to become helpless. They would rather lay down and whimper and whine about how unfair the world is, and mutter that everything would be alright if only people behaved like their models, than seek to look outside the narrow confines of their obsession with rationality and mathematics to see if others might just have some useful insight.
The age of the specialist (people who learn more and more about less and less, until they know absolutely everything about nothing) has proved to have some fundamental flaws. Three cheers for the generalists!
[1] http://www.scribd.com/doc/33655771/Economics-is-Hard
[2] For more on the weird and wonderful versions of Barbie that have graced the shelves over the years see http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/parenting/11-bad-barbie-ideas-1312923/?pg=8
[3] Atherya does have the sense to point out "Taken literally, I am almost certainly wrong."
[4] John Ioannidis (2005) Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. PLoS Med 2(8): e124. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
[5] Taleb (2007) The pseudo science hurting markets, Financial Times, 23 October 2007
|
|
|
Bloggers (and Jon Stewart) need help:The Impact of the Irrelevant on Decision-Making, by Robert H. Frank, Commentary, NY Times: Textbook economic models assume that people are well informed about all the options they're considering. It's an absurd claim... Even so, when people confront opportunities to improve their position, they're generally quick to seize them. ... So most economists are content with a slightly weaker assumption: that people respond in approximately rational ways to the information available to them.
But behavioral research now challenges even that more limited claim. For example, even patently false or irrelevant information often affects choices in significant ways. ...
Lafayette :
PRETTY SILLY
{So most economists are content with a slightly weaker assumption: that people respond in approximately rational ways to the information available to them. }
No, not even this is adequate. More so, it does not justify the use of Disposable Income, aka Consumer Demand. (If you don't know why this is important, than maybe you are in the wrong blog?)
People's decision making can be tweaked around the irrational - and easily so. Impulse buying is one such tweaking that marketing experts employ with amazing usefulness. When you arrive at the check-out of a supermarket, why is there an array of sweets available for your delight. Or the latest "People" journal? Why aren't these products in their proper section? (Two reasons actually, the first of which is that they are "impulse purchases" and secondly they could otherwise likely go unnoticed.)
Thus, impulse and not rational propel you to purchase them - and this is just the simplest of examples.
Conspicuous Consumption has the same motivation that propels one to buy a Beemer or lunch at the most expensive restaurant in town. One MUST be seen only in the right places. Are these impulses rational?
Some would say yes, particularly if they lived in Hollywood, where they are conforming to a lifestyle that is all appearance and little substance. But what is their economic utility as consumption? That is considerably more difficult to substantiate.
(Far more so than, say, a Public Option for decent national Health Care insurance.)
Thus arises the pitfall of economic rationalization as regards our motivations that propel Demand. It ennobles mankind to assume that individual decisions were based uniquely upon logic and rationale. But, alas, those are not the only attributes underlying human decision making. There are others far more base that also propel us to demonstrate some pretty silly consumer behaviour.
|
|
|
May 29, 2010 | naked capitalism
A disconcerting tendency that may also impair adaptability (and this seems to be particularly pronounced in the US) is the tendency to engage in black and white thinking. If (in someone's mind) the only alternative to one view is its polar opposite, that makes it hard to adjust one's perspective.
Ars technica presents a more specific example of this phenomenon, of how people defend their mental models in the face of confounding evidence. A study from the Journal of Applied Social Psychology looked into some of the mechanisms that individuals use to reject scientific information that is at odds with their views. Admittedly, this is a small scale study, so one has to be cautious in generalizing from it. But it does seem consistent with some of the strategies I routinely seem in comments.
From ars technica:
It's hardly a secret that large segments of the population choose not to accept scientific data because it conflicts with their predefined beliefs: economic, political, religious, or otherwise. But many studies have indicated that these same people aren't happy with viewing themselves as anti-science, which can create a state of cognitive dissonance. That has left psychologists pondering the methods that these people use to rationalize the conflict.
A study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology takes a look at one of these methods, which the authors term "scientific impotence"-the decision that science can't actually address the issue at hand properly. It finds evidence that not only supports the scientific impotence model, but suggests that it could be contagious. Once a subject has decided that a given topic is off limits to science, they tend to start applying the same logic to other issues…
Munro polled a set of college students about their feelings about homosexuality, and then exposed them to a series of generic scientific abstracts that presented evidence that it was or wasn't a mental illness (a control group read the same abstracts with nonsense terms in place of sexual identities). By chance, these either challenged or confirmed the students' preconceptions. The subjects were then given the chance to state whether they accepted the information in the abstracts and, if not, why not.
Regardless of whether the information presented confirmed or contradicted the students' existing beliefs, all of them came away from the reading with their beliefs strengthened. As expected, a number of the subjects that had their beliefs challenged chose to indicate that the subject was beyond the ability of science to properly examine. This group then showed a weak tendency to extend that same logic to other areas, like scientific data on astrology and herbal remedies.
A second group went through the same initial abstract-reading process, but were then given an issue to research (the effectiveness of the death penalty as a deterrent to violent crime), and offered various sources of information on the issue. The group that chose to discount scientific information on the human behavior issue were more likely than their peers to evaluate nonscientific material when it came to making a decision about the death penalty.
Yves here. I'm not certain whether the authors are being tongue in cheek in this section:
….it might explain why doubts about mainstream science seem to travel in packs. For example, the Discovery Institute, famed for hosting a petition that questions our understanding of evolution, has recently taken up climate change as an additional issue (they don't believe the scientific community on that topic, either). The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine is best known for hosting a petition that questions the scientific consensus on climate change, but the people who run it also promote creationism and question the link between HIV and AIDS.
Yves again. It is worth considering whether some of this "science can't evaluate this area" meme exists is at least in part because it is being marketed. Perhaps I lead a cloistered life, but when I was younger, say 20 years ago, I can't recall encountering this line of argument.
The book Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance gives a detailed account of how the tobacco industry first tried to keep research about smoking-related cancers out of the public eye, and when that started to fail, to attack the science ("Doubt is our product"). One of its late-stage techniques was to promote the idea that the topic wasn't settled when a tally of the then-available research would say otherwise. Given that knowledge is often the product of political and cultural battles, promoting higher-order anti-science ideas ("science has very considerable limits, there are a lot of areas outside its ken") gives those who would seek to reshape mass opinion more freedom of action.
Selected Comments
attempter:
JimS :For instance, early in the days of euro wobbliness, some readers in Europe would go a bit off the deep end at the suggestion that the Eurozone has serious structural weaknesses and that the austerity regimes required of the deficit countries looked unattainable (and even if they could be met, success would be a Pyrrhic victory). It wasn't so much that these readers found weaknesses or shortcomings in the post; it's that its conclusion was clearly deeply offensive to them.
Yes, it's true that many people find the proposition morally deeply repulsive that the non-rich, already beleaguered by job destruction and the shredding of the safety net, should be crushed by "austerity" in order that the banks can be bailed out and the rich can continue evading taxes, such that even if there were reason to believe this course of action would bring broad prosperity 20 years from now they'd still reject the idea.
Of course neoliberalism has been dominant for c. 40 years now, and that broad "prosperity" remains just as much a vapor on the horizon today as it ever was, except to the extent that a debt ponzi scheme could temporarily prop up a version of it.
The fact is that we know by now, empirically, that neoliberalism's version of the "sacrifice today so we'll have utopia tomorrow" lie is the exact same Big Lie as when any other ideology or regime told it. We know for a fact that prosperity will never "trickle down", and that it was never intended to trickle down.
So by now anyone who rejects the predatory prescriptions of the kleptocracy is acting based on the overwhelming evidence, therefore "scientifically" for purposes of this discussion, while anyone who still retains faith in trickle down is truly mired in a cult fundamentalist mindset.
So much for the proposition that broad-based prosperity can be attained by continuing down the neoliberal path. As for whether exponential debt can be forever zombified under any circumstances, let alone whether reality-based growth could ever again be attained, it's the physics of energy which says No, while the cornucopianism of debt and energy is always reduced in the end to the religious proposition, "technology will save us; technology will always find a way".
So there too, whatever emotions may go into the skeptical mindset, science is not on the side of the pollyannas.
Technology did not in fact find much of a way (by modern standards) prior to the fossil fuel age, and a scientifically sober mindset would start with the theory that it will not be able to sustain anything like this level of energy consumption and massive, top-heavy, high-impact centralization post-Peak Oil.
And then there's every other resource limitation. There's the stark unreality of the very concept of exponential growth. Really, it's hard to imagine a less scientific mindset than that which believes there's a way to "grow" out of this already absurdly unsustainable predicament.
I think there is a difference between being anti-science with a small "s" and being anti-Science with a capital "S". Few would argue that 2+2=4, but theoretical physicists seem to be evenly divided on string theory. Paradoxically the bigger the picture is, the more binary the beliefs. This is not due to disagreement with the data points but with the underlying principles. Consider the following familiar exchange:
Student: "I've run the regression analysis, and here is my model."
Professor: "Very good, but are you sure you've identified all the variables that might be significant?"
People don't question individual mechanisms; it's whether or not the right mechanisms are being accounted for. In that sense the datum is irrelevant.
What do skeptics and good scientists have in common? They both question if all the significant variables have been found.
As for denial, well, people are fundamentally irrational–that is to say we are only rational to a certain point–but on top of that we're less educated. A friend of mine observes that he learned debate in school, but not logic from which to debate. It seems to me that education is more formulaic these days, sacrificing critical thinking (even though all text books have those grey-background "critical thinking" boxes).
For the record, as a Christian I do not find God and evolution to be mutually exclusive; nor God and quantum physics for that matter. Can God bake a potato so hot that He can't eat it? Is Schrödinger's cat dead or alive?
Kevin de Bruxelles:
While I can agree with the main thrust of the argument; to label as science the on-and-off-again twenty year Anglo-Saxon campaign to kill the Euro is quixotic at best even if recently this campaign has been leaving some dark blue marks across the eurozone's face. The fact is economics is nothing more than religion. And sure, like most religions it certainly contains some nuggets of wisdom. But to pretend that economics and the recent attacks on the euro has anything approaching objectivity is quickly proven wrong by the fact that similar data points in the US or UK are handled differently. For example where are the outcries of the break-up of the dollarzone since California and other US states are imposing austerity programs? Should the mid-western states that have growing ghost towns break off a hillbilly dollar? When the euro goes up it is a sign of disaster, when the euro goes down it is also a sign of disaster. When European trade increases it is called "beggar thy neighbour"; but when the eurozone by its very nature does not allow "beggar thy neighbour" between its members it is called an suboptimal currency area.
According to Robert Nozick, one cannot have knowledge of something if one does not accept that the opposite could also be true. For the eurozone critics it would go like this:
1.Statement Y: The eurozone is doomed to failure
2.Person X believes Y (the eurozone is doomed to failure)
3.If Y were false (the eurozone were not doomed to failure), Person X would accept the eurozone is viable if it were so.
4.If statement Y is true, Person Y would believe it.
Nozick uses the example of a father who "knows" his son is innocent of a crime. After the trial the father cannot really say he "knew" his son was innocent since if the kid had been found guilty he would still have believed him innocent. The same is true of some eurozone critics; they have "known" the eurozone would fail and they will keep on knowing it until the day it eventually happens, one way or the other. They can never accept that the eurozone could survive because this would blunt the force of their attacks. But this doesn't mean that their critiques are false. For example some critics quite correctly point out that the European financial architecture is flawed. But the second anyone moves towards correcting any flaws, these critics will immediately scream about eurozone fascism. The point is that the many of the attacks are only meant to help bring the eurozone down. Other onslaughts against the euro are by the mouthpieces of Anglo-Saxon elites who are more concerned that European style social democracy never again raise its head in the US. They were scared by the recent health care debate where America's unjust and inefficient health care system was openly compared to the more advanced and fair European systems. Anyone who knows how well the rich in America are cared for can understand why they don't want to share any of their advantages with any other social class. The next time any American compares their social benefits to Europe they will be slapped down by the fact that the Euro has obviously collapsed all the way back to the midpoint of its historic value range.
No the battle of the Euro cannot be studied by science any more than the Eastern Front in WW2 could be. The way it has to be studied is as a power struggle.
And as a media campaign the only comparison in recent memory was the wall of noise heard before the invasion of Iraq. The only remaining question is which Anglo-Saxon economist will get to play Colin Powell and make the requisite speech before the UN giving Europe an ultimatum to dismantle the eurozone? And yes some euro-symps lash out and get angry by these insistent attacks on the euro. And this is understandable since arguably the eurozone's recent troubles started when European banks started barebacking loads of infected American subprime paper from their Wall Street beaus. In more vulgar terms the US has given Europe the financial equivalent of a sexually transmitted disease and now as the eurozone's sores and scabs become more apparent the Anglo-Saxon press is shouting with glee about what a skanky debt-ho Europe is! And as a result of the growing Anglo-Saxon infection Europe's financial immune system is weakening and has to undergo some pretty drastic procedures, the shaming and ridicule has risen to a fever pitch.
But while outrage is understandable, people in Europe really need to put their energy into counterattacks and building defences while always understanding that the most natural thing in the world is for the powerful Anglo-Saxons to attack the less powerful Europeans. Thucydides described it well in the Melian Dialogue. The more powerful Athenians decided they were going to invade the island of Melos. They sent a delegation there to convince the local leaders to surrender. One of the arguments they used was:
For ourselves, we shall not trouble you with specious pretences- either of how we have a right to our empire because we overthrew the Mede, or are now attacking you because of wrong that you have done us- and make a long speech which would not be believed; and in return we hope that you, instead of thinking to influence us by saying that you did not join the Lacedaemonians, although their colonists, or that you have done us no wrong, will aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.
In the end the Melians declined to surrender and they were subsequently overrun by the Athenians, who killed all the men, and raped some and enslaved all of the women and children.
So Europe has to decide whether it will stand up and fight for the Euro or weakly submit to the Anglo-Saxon attacks. European energy should not go into being outraged by the attacks on the eurozone since this reeks of naivety. Better that the hard decisions be taken. Since WW2 Europe has played the undisciplined child to the US' parental role. Since Europe is still more or less living under the US' roof is it wrong for the US to call the shots like abandoning the Euro? Is Europe ready to finally grow up, become fully independent move out and the US's comfortable and protective house? It will be questions like this, not science, that will decide if the eurozone survives or not.
For example what would be the best European counterattack to the Anglo-Saxon onslaught? Exporting deflation? Perhaps. Which of the main global economic blocks is balanced and stable enough to come through a good bout of deflation? The US – never. China – hardly. Japan – perhaps. Europe – probably.
|
|
|
Feb 17, 2010 | Economist's View
Thomas Friedman calls for scientists to go on the offensive against climate change deniers and skeptics:
Global Weirding Is Here, by Thomas Friedman, Commentary, NYTimes: Of the festivals of nonsense that periodically overtake American politics, surely the silliest is the argument that because Washington is having a particularly snowy winter it proves that climate change is a hoax and, therefore, we need not bother with all this girly-man stuff like renewable energy, solar panels and carbon taxes. Just drill, baby, drill.When you see lawmakers like Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina tweeting that "it is going to keep snowing until Al Gore cries 'uncle,' " or news that the grandchildren of Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma are building an igloo next to the Capitol with a big sign that says "Al Gore's New Home," you really wonder if we can have a serious discussion about the climate-energy issue anymore.The climate-science community is not blameless. It knew it was up against formidable forces... Therefore, climate experts can't leave themselves vulnerable by citing non-peer-reviewed research or failing to respond to legitimate questions, some of which happened with both the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.Selected comments
bakho:
Until the media starts shining a light on the wealthy special interests behind the disinformation campaign, the public will continue to be confused. It is always more difficult for people to relearn than it is to teach for the first time. The huge amount of money spent on disinformation is a problem that climate change experts cannot overcome on their own.
anne:
While the politically motivated bashers of scientists in general and climate scientists especially have been continually at work distorting the findings of scientists and undermining a sense of confidence in the way we approach the findings of scientists, there has been a remarkable political reticience to teach about the nature of what scientists have been finding and to openly support scientists.
President Obama has in no way meaningfully supported the finding of climatologists, and the result will be meaningful climate change legislation which could already have been shaped and passed will be almost impossible to shape and pass this year.
Peter:
Thomas "we have six months to act in Iraq" (in continuous time!) Friedman thinks the American public can comprehend a scientific argument, e.g., one that depends on the correct understanding of statistical significance. Now that's a LOL.
Google matched content |
Society
Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers : Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy
Quotes
War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotes : Somerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose Bierce : Bernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes
Bulletin:
Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law
History:
Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds : Larry Wall : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOS : Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development : Scripting Languages : Perl history : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history
Classic books:
The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month : How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite
Most popular humor pages:
Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor
The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D
Copyright © 1996-2021 by Softpanorama Society. www.softpanorama.org was initially created as a service to the (now defunct) UN Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP) without any remuneration. This document is an industrial compilation designed and created exclusively for educational use and is distributed under the Softpanorama Content License. Original materials copyright belong to respective owners. Quotes are made for educational purposes only in compliance with the fair use doctrine.
FAIR USE NOTICE This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to advance understanding of computer science, IT technology, economic, scientific, and social issues. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided by section 107 of the US Copyright Law according to which such material can be distributed without profit exclusively for research and educational purposes.
This is a Spartan WHYFF (We Help You For Free) site written by people for whom English is not a native language. Grammar and spelling errors should be expected. The site contain some broken links as it develops like a living tree...
|
|
You can use PayPal to to buy a cup of coffee for authors of this site |
Disclaimer:
The statements, views and opinions presented on this web page are those of the author (or referenced source) and are not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily reflect, the opinions of the Softpanorama society. We do not warrant the correctness of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose. The site uses AdSense so you need to be aware of Google privacy policy. You you do not want to be tracked by Google please disable Javascript for this site. This site is perfectly usable without Javascript.
Last modified: August, 01, 2020
