-
America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution
July 16, 2010 | 649 comments
-
Reflection on Brains and Barack
March 31, 2010 | 149 comments
-
CIA’s Vulnerability Is Congenital
January 11, 2010 | 54 comments
-
Obama’s Foreign Policy Problems, Personified
November 7, 2009 | 6 comments
-
From Citizens to “Stakeholders”: The New American Constitution
September 8, 2009 | 50 comments
Feature
Scientific Pretense vs. Democracy
Arrogance and intolerance in the name of superior expertise are antithetical to popular governance and the requirements of honest argument. But that hasn’t stopped them from becoming a central feature of our political life.
(Page 2 of 3)
AMERICA GOT ITS FIRST straight dose of scientific governance in the 1950s. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case of Brown v. Board of Education—whether schools segregated by race fulfilled the 14th Amendment’s requirement for “equal protection of the laws” to all citizens—not by reference to any legal or political principle on which the general population might pronounce themselves (one such principle was available in Justice John Marshall Harlan’s dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, the case that Brown overturned), but rather by reference to a “study” by sociologist Kenneth Clark concluding that “separate is inherently unequal.” This was a finding supposedly of fact, not of law. Whereas ordinary citizens were supposedly competent to agree or disagree with the legal and moral principles on either side of these cases, the Court decided Brown on a basis that could be contested only by sociologists as well credentialed and funded as Mr. Clark. Debates within the Court and in society at large subsequently have been focused not so much on what is lawful as on contending studies about the effects of competing policies.
The scientization of American political life was just beginning. Between the 1950s and 2000 social policy slipped away from voter control because the courts and the “independent agencies” took them over. Beginning in the 1970s, courts and agencies began to take control of economic life through the pretense of scientific environmental management.
In Massachusetts v. EPA (2007), the Court agreed with what it called predominant scientific opinion that human emissions of carbon dioxide cause “global warming” and hence ordered it to regulate those emissions—essentially America’s economy. The American people’s elected representatives had not passed and were not about to pass any law concerning “global warming.” No matter.
It should be superfluous to point out that “scientific” briefs submitted to courts, as well as the innumerable contacts between expert “independent” agencies and the interest groups in the fields they regulate, are anything but impartial, bloodless, disinterested, apolitical. But in fact the power of scientific pretense rests largely on the thin veil it casts over clashes of interest and political identity. Let us look further.
In his 1960 Godkin lectures at Harvard, C. P. Snow, who had been Britain’s civil service commissioner, told Americans that “In any advanced industrial society…the cardinal choices have to be made by a handful of men: in secret and, at least in legal form, by men who cannot have firsthand knowledge of what these choices depend upon or what their results may be.” In short, public figures must be figureheads for scientists who are formally responsible to them but whose minds are beyond common understanding and scrutiny. Snow concluded that society’s greatest need was for change, and that scientists were “socially imaginative minds.” While scientists should not administer, he said, they should be part of the Establishment, along with administrators. He illustrated this point by contrasting the clash in Britain between two scientists, Sir Henry Tizard, innovative, progressive, and very much a member of the administrative- scientific Establishment, and F. A. Lindemann, a scientist close to Winston Churchill but outside the Establishment. According to Snow, Lindemann polluted science and administration with politics, while Tizard’s contrary scientific and administrative opinions were supra-political. Tizard’s membership in the Establishment made them that. But in the same year, President Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell to the American people after eight years in the White House and a lifetime in the U.S. Army argued that government’s embrace of science would corrupt itself and science. Whereas Snow had taken pains to identify science with public policy and to call true scientists only those who got along with colleagues and especially with administrators, Eisenhower pointed to these things as subversive. His oft-cited warning about the dangers of a “military-industrial complex” was part of the address’s larger point: the danger that big government poses to citizenship:
…a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.
The prospect against which Eisenhower warned has become our time’s reality. One accedes to the rank of expert by achieving success in getting grants, primarily from the government. Anyone who has worked in a university knows that getting government grants is the surefire way to prestige and power. And on what basis do the government’s grantors make the grants that constitute the scientific credentials? Science itself? But the grantors are not scientists, and they would not be immune to human temptations even if they were. Personal friendship, which C. P. Snow touted, is not nearly as problematic as intellectual kinship, professional and political partisanship. In sum, as Eisenhower warned, politicians are tempted to cast issues of public policy in terms of science in order to foreclose debate, to bring to the side of their interests expert witnesses whose expertise they manufactured and placed beyond challenge.
Power by Pretense
TESTIFYING TO A JOINT CONGRESSIONAL committee on March 21, 2007, former vice president Al Gore argued for taxing the use of energy based on the combustion of carbon, and for otherwise forcing Americans to emit much less carbon dioxide. Gore wanted to spend a substantial amount of the money thus raised to fund certain business ventures. (Incidentally or not, he himself had a large stake in those ventures.)
But, he argued, his proposal was not political, and debating it was somehow illegitimate, because he was just following “ science,” according to which, if these things were not done, Planet Earth would overheat and suffocate. He said: “The planet has a fever. If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don’t say, ‘Well, I read a science fiction novel that tells me it’s not a problem.’” But Gore’s advocacy of “solutions” for “global warming” was anything but politically neutral acceptance of expertise. As vice president until 2001, and afterward, he had done much to build a veritable industry of scientists and publicists who had spent some $50 billion, mostly in government money, during the previous decade to turn out and publicize “studies” bolstering his party’s efforts to regulate and tax in specific ways. Moreover, he claimed enough scientific knowledge to belittle his opposition for following “science fiction.” But Gore’s work was political, not scientific. Not surprisingly, some of his opponents in Congress and among scientists thought that Gore and his favorite scientists were doing well-paid science fiction.
Who was right? Gore’s opponents, led by Oklahoma senator James Inhofe, argued that the substance of the two main questions, whether the Earth was being warmed by human activities, and what if anything could and should be done about it, should be debated before the grand jury of American citizens. Gore et al. countered that “the debate is over!” and indeed that nonscientific citizens had no legitimate place in the debate. Yet he and like-minded citizens claimed to know enough to declare that it had ended. They also claimed that scientists who disagreed with them, or who merely questioned the validity of the conclusions produced by countless government science commissions to which Gore and his followers had funneled government money, and which they called “mainstream science,” were “deniers”—illegitimate. Equally out of place, they argued, were calls that they submit to tests of their scientific IQ. Whatever else one may call this line of argument, one may not call it scientific. It belongs to the genus “politics.” But, peculiarly, it is politics that aims to take matters out of the realm of politics, where citizens may decide by persuading one another, and places them in a realm where power is exercised by capturing the commanding heights of the Establishment.
Thus on July 28, 2008, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi explained to journalist David Rogers why she was right in forbidding Congress to vote on proposals by Republicans to open U.S. coastlines to oil drilling. Using fossil fuels, she explained, causes global warming. Forbidding votes that could result in more oil being used was her duty because, she said, “I’m trying to save the planet. I’m trying to save the planet.” No one would vouch for her scientific expertise. But she was surely saving an item in the agenda of her party’s constituencies, which rightly feared defeat in open debates and votes.
In the same way, in September 2008 Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson and chairman of the Federal Reserve Board Ben Bernanke told Congress and the country, backed by many in the banking business, that unless Congress authorized spending $700 billion to purchase the financial assets that the banks and investment houses considered least valuable, the entire financial system would collapse and the American people would lose their savings, jobs, homes, and so on, and that authorizing that money would avert the crisis. But none of those who proposed the expenditure explained why the failure of some large private enterprises and their subsequent sale at public auction would cause any of the abovementioned catastrophes. There was no explanation of how the money would be spent, how the assets to be bought would be valued, or why. The arguments were simply statements by experts in government as well as finance—whose repeated mistakes had brought about the failures that were at the center of contention, and whose personal interests were involved in the plan they proposed. The strength of their arguments lay solely in the position of those making them. They were the ones who were supposed to know. And when, a month later, the same Paulson, backed by the same unanimous experts, told the country that the $700 billion would be spent otherwise, and as they committed some $8 trillion somehow to shore up the rest of the economy, the arguments continued to lie in the position of those making them, combined with the clamor of those who would benefit directly from the government’s outlays. In practice, expertise—or science—has come to be defined by a government job or commission. Truth and error are incidental.
The confluence of political agendas with the attempt to describe political choices as scientific rather than political, and the attempt to delegitimize opponents as out of step with science, is clear in the 2005 book by journalist Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science. Typically, Mooney disclaims substantive scientific judgment and claims only the capacity and right to discern the “credibility” of rival scientists and their claims. Note well, however, that propositions or persons are credible—that is, worth believing—only to the extent that they are correct substantively. Arguments such as Mooney’s, Paulson’s, Pelosi’s, and Gore’s most certainly aim to convince citizens about certain substantive propositions, but—and this is key—they do so indirectly, by pretending that they find certain propositions credible and others not. Credible are the ones of which they approve, coming from persons the places of which they approve: the government bureaucracies or universities. Judgments of authoritative provenance, they argue, need not refute the opposition’s arguments, or even refer to their substance because science— meaning the Establishment—supposedly has settled the arguments intellectually to its own satisfaction, the only satisfaction that matters. Mooney writes that because “American democracy… relies heavily on scientific technical expertise to function [public officials] need to rely on the best scientific knowledge available and proceed on the basis of that knowledge to find solutions.”
Modern Republicans, he argues, have put themselves “in stark contrast with both scientific information and dispassionate, expert analysis in general.” Caught in the confluence of corporate interests and conservative ideology, primarily religion, Republicans have “skewed science” on every important question of the day, from stem cell research to “global warming, mercury pollution, condom effectiveness, the alleged health risks of abortion, and much else.” They have “cherry picked” facts and, most ominously, even cited scientists to back them up. Mooney worries: “If the American people come to believe they can find a scientist willing to say anything, they will grow increasingly disillusioned with science itself.”
Letter to the Editor View all comments (40) | Leave a comment
More Articles by Angelo M. Codevilla
More Articles From Feature
http://spectator.org/archives/2009/04/14/scientific-pretense-vs-democra
Follow us:
ADVERTISEMENT
Current Issue
- The Demise of Money and Credit
- Wincing at Cumberbatch
- The Vast and the Tiny
SPONSORED LINKS
FLASHBACK TO: 1995
-
Pope Culture
A man of faith in a godless age is hitting Americans where it hurts.
-
Why the GOP Does Not, Like, Totally Suck
Mr. and Mrs. American Spectator Reader, let P.J. O’Rourke talk sense to your kids.
-
Dames at Sea
-
In the Absence of Guns
In Britain, defending your property can get you life.
-
The Metaphysical Martini
-
Counting the Costs of Clintonism
The debacle of this president’s administration is both a cause and a symptom of the decline of American values. Unless Congress impeaches him, that decline will go on unchecked. An eminent jurist surveys the damage and assesses the chances for the recovery of our culture.
-
Chuck McHagel
It won’t take long for conservatives to scratch this presidential wannabe off their 2008 scorecard.
-
The Legacy of Old John and Mother Fresh-Roasted
-
It’s the Best Time of the Year
The American Christmas, like the songs that celebrate it, makes room for everybody under the rainbow. Is that why so many people seem to be hostile to it?
-
The Bush Crack-Up
Was the President done in by the economy, or by the politics of the economy?
Clip of the Day
ADVERTISEMENT
Peter Skurkiss| 4.14.09 @ 7:12AM
Excellent article on how the elites are assuming control of America, certified 'expert' by certified 'expert.'
The take away lesson Prof. Codevilla provides is this: "Human nature rebel especially violently against those who pretend to special knowledge but who then prove inept, whose prescriptions bring misery."
Know this and you now know one of the main reasons why the liberals and leftists are desperate to read the Second Amendment out of the U.S. Constitution by judicial decree.
The Left want the freedom to experiment with Republic and the lives of all therein without any consequences to themselves for failures.
Dave| 4.14.09 @ 9:15AM
Way back in the bad old days of bulletin boards we had a term for people who produced screeds like Mr. Mathews: "flame bait."
But the truth is, when you sit back and relax, polemics like this are quite humorous. Especially when an ignoramus such as Mathews claims the intellectual high ground.
So please, Mr. Mathews, keep up the good work. It is becoming so depressing watching powerless while you and your liberal buddies are destroying the country I love that I need a good laugh now and then to relieve the pressure.
Michael L. Hauschild| 4.14.09 @ 9:59AM
Now before some disjointed site pest accuses me of “conservative, Christian, fundamentalism” please take into consideration the fact that I have spent much of my latter academic career monitoring lysimeters (thousands of hours), learning the mathematics and instrument packages needed to document water vapor, CO2, and temperature fluxes, and traveling all over the world monitoring benchmark species. A meaningless but absolutely factual statement would be that I have forgotten more about historical and contemporary climatology in the last five minutes than the sum total of knowledge spewed by the last one hundred posters.
From the lofty twin pinnacle of working within academia and numerous election campaigns let me pass on to you some insight; the beltway and the ivory tower are identical in both form and function. Both exist in a self-preservation environment, fueled by funding and the most devious word in the English language “grant.” Whether it is an earmark or academic funding, a verb or a noun, the powers that be “award” those who dangle from the attached strings.
The scientific community is sequestered in this “global warming” rush to judgment, not based on the principles of causation, but the preservation and empowerment of standing and status.
Most of my colleagues were uncomfortably aware of the lack of validity being promoted in the climatological assessment of “global warming.” Re-election, tenure, and funding, however, are synonyms common to cadre and legislature. My favorite quote, given to me as I embarked as a “candidate” (how pathetic that term), “Do something with global warming or we won’t be able to fund it.”
My skepticism placed me in the “potentially outspoken embarrassment” category so I actually ended up contributing by doing experimentation to create an early detection capability for potential bio-terrorist pathogens.
Bottom line? The truth will set you free, but it will take several millenniums for confirmation, and till then you will have to follow the money.
El Rey| 4.14.09 @ 10:17AM
To the editors of American Spectator:
Take a lesson from Gresham's law -- "Bad money drives out good."
When you do not edit or control your web site and you allow the likes of this "David Mathews" come in and stink up the place with her ignorance and even irrational hate, you drive many of the 'good' away.
IMHO, TAS had a much higher quality when it posted responses to article the next day.
Bob| 4.14.09 @ 11:00AM
Michael -- I think you make some relevant points. However, there is a difference between scientific fact and hypotheses. For example, a few centuries ago you'd be called a heretic for believing the world was round. You might also get excommunicated for believing the world was more than 6000 or so years old.
Then there is global warming. If you are truly objective, you'd say that the data is not totally conclusive. Certainly, you could make a relatively strong argument that, over the longer period of time, we are in a cycle of global warming. However, the evidence of man's contribution to that or whether this is an historical cycle that will reverse is rather weak.
That said, we need to take each scientific argument and ask how strong the supporting data is. How can you disagree with that? It isn't that we shouldn't base our opinions on science, it is that we should make our best efforts to look at the data objectively and separate strong data from weak data.
This has an overhang in the way we analyze economic data. Rather than look at conclusive data, people would rather use political beliefs to determine things like the effectiveness of tax cuts. You can't look at the data and come to the conclusion, for example, that tax cuts increase federal revenues. Not looking at the data is extremely dangerous as that point of view will lead us down the wrong path.
El Rey -- so you believe in censorship? That is one of the reasons the Republican party is hurting right now.
Marc Jeric| 4.14.09 @ 12:00PM
Well, I am a scientists- what with a PhD degree from UCLA. But the science in the hands of government is a different matter - does anyone remember the "science" of Dialectical Materialism where the history stops while the avantgarde of Communist Party leads us all into the world of equality and riches? Or the science of "Mein Kampf" under the leadership of the superior race? And now we have the "science" of anthropogenic global warming hoax; try to get a government grant for a study disputing that scam by the far left.
Bob| 4.14.09 @ 12:32PM
Marc, I'd try to go back to UCLA and get a refund for that PhD. It seems they didn't teach you the difference between science and philosophy and you continue to conflate the two. Clearly, there are instances where the overwhelming abundance of real data would prove a point. And clearly, there are instances where supporting data is weak. When you have an abundance of data supporting a premise and then decide that the conclusion is wrong because your religious beliefs are not consistent with the results, that is a matter of a severe lack of intelligence. I can just see you in grad school telling a professor that gravity is just a belief -- it doesn't really exist.
It is not science that is the problem, it is people like you confusing science with philosophy. It is also the extremists who believe that there is no middle ground in science -- that something is either right or wrong. There is much in science where we must answer that question with, "We don't know" because the data is not overwhelmingly strong. That's why we do scientific research.
You should know better...
Ellis Wyatt| 4.14.09 @ 2:24PM
The money quote: Mooney worries: “If the American people come to believe they can find a scientist willing to say anything, they will grow increasingly disillusioned with science itself.”
This is precisley why more nd more people are seeing "global warming" as a joke and a scam and Al Gore a cartoon. dismissing legitamite debate the alarmists have damaged their cause. Paul Chesser's article on the main page today is a perfect example of "science" not wishing to debate even the most basic questions that are unanswered in regards to climate policy. if you have not read it yet I think you should.
Mike Harding| 4.14.09 @ 2:57PM
Dave Mathews wrote:
Angelo M. Codevilla demonstrates conclusively that conservatives are opponents of science, scientifically illiterate and fundamentalists more inclined to believe in racial segregation and religious fairy tales rather than scientific reality.
Thank God that conservatives have become a politically irrelevant extremist minority!
Response:
Mr. Mathews should find out what the difference between 'ad hominem' and 'ad velorum' is. He unwittingly demonstrates the author's very point.
JJ| 4.14.09 @ 3:05PM
So you really believe mr. mathews that science has proven, beyond ALL doubt, life to be meaningless. ergo, if I blow your meaningless head off, it ain't no big deal. What an intriguing proposition.
Vietnam Vet in Communist MA| 4.14.09 @ 3:26PM
IGNORE THIS "PROGRAM WRITER" DAVE MATTHEWS. THE SOONER YOU IGNORE HIM THE SOONER HE WILL GO AWAY. HE SHOULD BE BLOCKED FROM COMMENTING
NIck| 4.14.09 @ 4:58PM
Bob,
You should really stick to your "economics" smoke and mirrors, and refrain from posting on subjects like science. Did you read Mr. Codevilla's article? He was writting about you Bob. Someone who cherry picks "data" to fit your preconceived notions and ideology and then says to everybody else "this is settled" or "what are your credentials?"
Hence your repetition of the old canards of heresy and excommunication for scientists like Galileo (who didn't get the math right, by the way). You should ask for a refund from wherever you got your under-grad degree. Try educating yourself. Or try stating a specific case of excommunication rather than tired old cliches. Your knowledge of Christian history stinks.
Mr. Jeric was spot on. The communists and nazis both claimed they had "science" to back up their assertions. The fact is "science" has been corrupted for about 200 years now. And when have you EVER said "we don't know" to any question, Bob?
Alan Brooks| 4.14.09 @ 5:04PM
brave new world starts here ->
you are here->
Bob| 4.14.09 @ 5:16PM
Nick, and you're saying that religion has not been corrupted for an even longer period of time? "Science" has not been corrupted. However, your knowledge of true science does not seem to exist. There is a difference between claims and proof.
With regard to "we don't know", I've said it a number of times on this board regarding global warming. My position is that the data does not strongly support either side and thus spending a bunch of money on it makes little sense. But then again, comprehension does not seem like a particular strength of you and your ilk.
Nick| 4.14.09 @ 6:27PM
Bob,
Your post just proves Mr. Codevilla's point. You are the one who knows "true science". And because I disagree with you and throw facts in your face, I'm dismissed as someone who's "knowledge of true science does not seem to exist." But you provide no refutation or rebuttal, like the good little propagandist and demagogue you are.
"...thus spending a bunch of money on it makes little sense." That is the other side, Bob. All we say is that there is no proof, that it is a scam. It is the Climate Science Deniers that manipulate the data and assert "the sky is falling". But it sounds to me like you want to believe in AGW but haven't found the evidence yet.
Dano| 4.14.09 @ 7:09PM
We needn't ban little Davie Mathews. Rather, let him post the following:
David Mathews| 4.14.09 @ 9:26AM
Hello Dave,
blah blah blah ...
So you lost. Get over it!
(over and over and over)
/that's all he ever says anyways...
Alan Brooks| 4.14.09 @ 7:18PM
Bob,
you mean well, but don't understand what sort of a dystopia we're building NOW.
Pingback| 4.14.09 @ 8:13PM
Grant Writing Classes The American Spectator : Scientific Pretense vs. Democracy « links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Paul Crowley| 4.14.09 @ 11:54PM
The Paradigm Shift
I believe this to be the most chilling aspect regarding all of the squabbles in the name of “science” today.
Acceptance of the Paradigm Shift, I believe, facilitates a more highly centralized guidance, or influence, of the direction by which scientific investigation and technological development will proceed.
I believe that the politicization of “science” in the past 15 years or so, the constant, and the emergence of bickering over “science,” steadily increasing, and a ‘dumbing down’ effect of perfectly intelligent young Americans, are among the bad consequences.
Kuhn’s thesis of what he named a “Paradigm Shift,” from his essay, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” grew out of his doctoral dissertation in history (about 1959, as I recall).
It gained little acceptance from American scientists and engineers of his, and older, age group, but has now been taught to a full generation of young native Americans as being descriptive of the manner by which scientific investigation proceeds. At this
point-in-time, then The Paradigm Shift has displaced the Scientific Method taught to their predecessors. Probably every native-American, at least 35 years old and younger, has been taught this in school. All young native American scientists and engineers, and
all educated in American universities, since the higher education reforms of 1987-91 will probably be thoroughly comfortable with it. It was popularized via work and information media to the majority of those now 36-70 years old.
This constitutes a major discontinuity in how previous generations of Americans understood the way in which scientific investigation proceeds from how it is viewed today.
Kuhn’s essay was first published in 1962. The second edition, enlarged, was republished in 1970. The theme of the Paradigm Shift was popularized, in the mid 1980s, and began to be taught in History departments at the university level of public colleges, at least 1987-91.
The period of about 1987-92 was the time that major curriculum and standards restructuring took place in American universities and that the last of the older generation of American scientists and engineers, and science and engineering professors, were retiring in large numbers (the so-called “Greatest Generation” age group).
Until then, Kuhn’s assertion that what he dubbed the “Paradigm Shift” was a closer approximation to the actual method by which scientific investigation proceeds than that described by the Scientific Method (a discovery he asserted, was “To my complete
surprise”), had never received wide acceptance. To the contrary, it had received a distinctly cool reception, and rejection, from the majority of scientists and engineers in this age group.
I understand why it works, and why good results continue to be produced, but I don’t like it. In practice, the Scientific Method, is a far sounder description of how scientific investigation proceeds, at workaday level, including within the so-called “Paradigm Shift,”explanation that denies that this is so.
Good data, and sound results, continue to be produced in like manner to those of (now extinct) phrenology in the early -to-mid 19th century, German science in Germany in the latter half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and Soviet science, in Russia in the second half of the 20th century.
Acceptance of the Paradigm Shift, I believe, facilitates a more highly centralized guidance, or influence, of the direction by which scientific investigation and technological development will proceed.
Paul Crowley| 4.15.09 @ 12:15AM
=>“true science".
[This is not directed to any particular comment here, but only a general observation].
Always remember the cultural subversive’s observation that:
“People like to think that it’s their idea.”
And, Always Watch the Addition of Adjectives.
‘Nine times out of ten’ whenever an adjective has been added to (what until then has been) a commonly understood term, in something being popularly propagandized, then a Same-Name-Different-Meaning redefinition of some kind is probably taking place.
“True science”
“Authentic Love.”
“Genuine Freedom.”
“Real Liberty.”
“Elective Democracy.”
Whatever. . . .
It’s a common-as-dirt technique for instruction especially via the technique “Vitriol & Instruction,” where environment is factored in).
Within a just a few years of propagandizing via the Mass-communications Media then millions of us peons Are Taught to speak this way and use these miserable terms, and the (usually) more miserable redefinition’s of ideas and concepts that they facilitate.
[Mass-communications Media (“mainstream” and otherwise: Print, broadcast, closed-circuit, satellite, Education, Entertainment, Work, . . .)]
Ray| 4.15.09 @ 12:31PM
""Science" has not been corrupted."
It hasn't? So, you're telling us that the science of genetics, for example, wasn't corrupted into the pseudo-science of Eugenics, and that this never occurred right here in America back in the 30's? Wow, who knew?
Are you also telling us that science wasn't corrupted in government programs like the study of syphilis, the study of mind control, the study of radioactivity, and the study of bio warfare, once again, right here in America over the last 70 years? Wow! Who knew?
Well, I think it's obvious that it's really YOU who didn't know.
Paul Crowley| 4.15.09 @ 6:36PM
=>" ‘ ‘Science’ has not been corrupted.’
It hasn't? So, you're telling us that the science of genetics, for example, wasn't corrupted into the pseudo-science of Eugenics, and that this never occurred right here in America back in the 30's? Wow, who knew?
Are you also telling us that science wasn't corrupted in government programs like the study of syphilis, the study of mind control, the study of radioactivity, and the study of bio warfare, once again, right here in America over the last 70 years? Wow! Who knew?
Well, I think it's obvious that it's really YOU who didn't know.” [Ray|]
Hi Ray:
Very good.
I would also add the so-called Tuskagee Experiment (never secret, its results were published in medical journals over the course of course of time that it was conducted), publicized in 1971, in the midst of the ongoing public chaos of the Vietnam war issue, and used to implement “Right To Know” legislation during the crises of 1978-81. The fundamental question was never asked: Is it ever right to experiment on a human being?). ‘We’re all guinea pigs now.’
Then the advent of the new definition of “brain dead” (first introduced in the medical journals in 1988, as I recall), concurrent to the spread of ‘hospices’ in our re-formed medical system, during the crises, 1988-93.
Actually, I could add a good bit more, but that’s enough to add to your examples.
The scientific data, individual “health” (medical & psychological) records, of the “American Experiment of 1969-2005,” and those before it, will be "digitalized,” transcribed, over the next five years. To be used for the good of mankind, only, no doubt.
concerned| 4.15.09 @ 8:52PM
"There is nothing new or scientific about rulers pretending to execute the will of a god or of an oracle."
Old as religion would be my guess.
concerned| 4.15.09 @ 9:06PM
Paul, Ray
Fatman & Little Boy are great examples too.
Paul Crowly| 4.16.09 @ 12:10PM
=>"Fatman & Little Boy are great examples too." [concerned|]
Hi concerned:
Ray mentioned the "study of radioactivity."
I took that to include the later atomic & then the thermonuclear weapons projects, including such as the atomic bomb tests that used American troops in Nevada and the atomic and thermonuclear tests using native islanders in the Marianas UN Trust Territory
(now republic). Maybe I read in too much.
The Japanese seemed to have led the way on bbiological weapons development (pre and during WWII). Since the Soviets occupied Manchuria, and America occupied Japan, the two got most of the foundation work, and then ran with it. The Japanese were the first to discover the jet stream during the war. They studied the direction of the currents by
floating balloons with explosives our way. I don’t know how close they were with their biological weapons development (it was all kept secret), but I’m glad they seem to have not been quite ready to use them effectively. They used human beings in their experiments.
Europe led the way in science in the 19th century.
Americans were clever about applying European science (the old “American Know How;” at least mostly for purposes that could benefit human beings).
Development of steel production processes, Anglo and French, (1859 on) was largely driven by military applications, and made modern steel warships and the first massive weapons, used in WWI possible.
The Brits have had a psychotic pre-occupation with Population Control, beginning with behavior modification, since the 18th century, over a century before the term "social sciences" was coined, and gave birth to the Birth Control element, by the end of the century. I’d argue that the Brits did more to form and advance eugenics than probably any other government, including “naturalist” expeditions (The
Royal Navy’s Beagle expedition with Darwin aboard is an example).
However, it’s not fair to blame them for everything. Truth to tell, I was somewhat surprised to find what great copiers they were. Plenty else was contributed by plenty of Europeans funded, one way or another, by European governments, as well. The Germans certainly picked up eugenics.
There were American “fellow travelers” in the eugenics camp by the turn of the century, usually anglophiles (President McKinley, a real ‘beaut’ in other ways too, is an example).
They probably led up until the first world war, then the various “joint” enterprises between the wars. Politically, the upper-crust New England WASP-Rockefeller Liberal branch of the Republican Party ‘picked up the ball,’ so to speak, and carried it up until it shifted to the Democratic Party, between 1964-72, and onward.
Actually, for examples of applications of science with less than impressive credentials, then the Dutch were great naturalists as far back as the 17th century, much of it driven by cultivation of their slave-powered plantations in their colonies. early Anglo, Dutch and French science probably drove slavery more than any other factor (with their propagandists shifting the blame to Spain while doing so).
The first modern “economics” was French, 18th century, land, rather than currency, based. All a major part of what’s dubbed the Enlightenment. Te Brits then gave us the gold standard. Modern botanical gardens and zoological gardens, all have their origins in the colonial plantations.
Sugar is probably one of the most bitter substances, humanly speaking, in history.
Sorry, I get ‘yappy.’
Paul Crowley| 4.16.09 @ 1:34PM
“. . . a self-preservation environment, fueled by funding and the most devious word in the English language ‘grant.’ ” [Michael L. Hauschild| 4.14.09 @ 9:59AM]
Hi Michael:
Very good.
Although, I’d say the Grant and the environment are more means, than cause.
One could substitute "paycheck," or "bonus," for "grant," and describe the situation outside acadamia.
Or in a different system, chits, whatever. . .
I’ve pointed this out in other strings:
Scientific research and technology advance in the direction in which one directs his resources colloquially: “where the money is spent”) (“one” in this instance can be on a national or international scale).
That’s not an original observation.
But, I do add, because its too important, I believe, that where one directs his resources is DETERMINED by his system of ethics. From what I see, your observation is an example. The Grants applied within a fundamentally amoral ethical system (“whatever is expedient” To Get It Done).
Facilitated by the fallen human nature of the peon ‘worker bees’ (especially if formed in an amoral ethic themselves): Influenced by any one, or combination, of the groups of temptations that fall under 6 of the 7 Deadly Sins (Anger, Avarice, Envy, Pride, Gluttony Pride or Sloth), and so fear isn’t surprising as a result (“a self-preservation environment,” as you say).
Or, for some, maybe temptation to the better nature, genuinely believing the work to be for the good of others (at least in the beginning).
My thoughts on the replacement of the Scientific Method by the Paradigm Shift [Paul Crowley| 4.14.09 @ 11:54PM], falls into the “means” category, rather than the cause also. I don’t like it, because the adoption of the Paradigm Shift, I think, especially with in such an environment, provides for easier central direction while facilitating the anonymity of the authority setting the directon (but it wouldn’t prevent it).
If it’s a sham, then the ethics of who or whatever is directing the effort are clearly amoral as well.
Then it’s the “To Get It Done,” the goal that remains unanswered by the mere observation of the means of the Grant, the environment, and the stated problem now “The Paradigm,” all are chasing, rather than the hypothesis to be studied), that drives the effort.
In short, it begs the question, why?
The direction can be seen, the means to drive it, the grants and environment, but who set the direction and why?
Or, now, who set the “Paradigm,” and why?
“Disjointed Site Pest”
I probably qualify by now as a “disjointed site pest,” at least to some, but I won’t accuse you of “conservative, Christian, fundamentalism” (whatever exactly that actually means, and whether or not it’s something to actually be ashamed of if you were).
Alan Brooks| 4.16.09 @ 9:49PM
Paul Crowley,
actually, Authentic Love does exist distinct from inauthentic love.
Authentic Love is the love you get from your current wife.
inauthentic love is the love you got from your ex-wife.
Hydraulic Tools | 2.1.10 @ 7:20AM
Fivestar Tools,Manufacture hand and hydraulic tools,such as crimping tool,cable cutter,pipe bender,gear puller and hand pumps.