Comments on: Republican War on Science, paperback edition

By: TheBlackCat

TheBlackCat — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 02:49:58 +0000

[blockquote]Iâ€™ve yet to hear of anyone blowing up a building over GM food.[/blockquote]

Yeah, they burn fields instead.

[blockquote]Actually I think the same is true of animal testing. As far as I can tell, almost all politicians recognise the need for it, and itâ€™s just the group of extremists that have thursday protests outside the science area that make any real noise about it.[/blockquote]

Yes, the problem is the a significant numbers of the extremists are violent. No necessarily even close to a majority, but enough to be a serious risk to those involved in improving our health.

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 01:05:41 +0000

I’ve yet to hear of anyone blowing up a building over GM food. Anyway, it seems to me that the controversy over that has passed to some extent.

Actually I think the same is true of animal testing. As far as I can tell, almost all politicians recognise the need for it, and it’s just the group of extremists that have thursday protests outside the science area that make any real noise about it.

The UK has some of the world’s strictest laws for dealing with animal rights, so I don’t think there is likely to be much more movement on that front.

By: TheBlackCat

TheBlackCat — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 00:04:54 +0000

[blockquote author="PK"]The biggest political science debate right now is whether animal testing is necessary (they are building a lab here in Oxford, which makes the university a target for terrorists).[/blockquote]

The issue of genetically modified food is just as bad there.

By: Troy

Troy — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 22:50:42 +0000

That Big Daddy bible tract is a laugh riot. I did a report on an evolutionary topic in college and the creationists actually place little propoganda tracts randomly in the pages of some of the journals (the obviously named ones with evolution in the title. It seems creationist propganda like that could be effective if a person didn’t know any better, the same way it is possible to lead a horse through a busy street by putting blinders on it. Another thing about the Big Daddy bible tract is that it doesn’t represent the situation at all. I’ve had professors basically apologize for teaching evolution, and this is for students most likely getting biology or medicine based minors and majors. I’ve never seen a professor fly off the handle like that, they might express a bit of shock or dismay in the proportion of students that won’t accept evolution, ultimately though they’ll say to such students you don’t have to believe it but you do have to understand it.
As for the Republicans, hopefully when Bush goes (and it wouldn’t hurt to have divided government) maybe things will beging to reform. If a New York or California Republican is elected president the religious right might find they have no where else to go (hopefully to form a 3rd party so they can once again bathe in their own irrelevance).

By: Darth Robo

Darth Robo — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 16:08:49 +0000

“And no-one takes creationism seriously.”

Probably not, but here in the UK, it seems that Tony Blair would have no problem with having more faith based schools, because their grades in general are good, so look good for statistics. Problem is, more faith based schools would mean more oportunities for creationism to be taught (Peter Vardy’s school in Newcastle for example) and we have no law of seperation of church and state here. See:

http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/03/brits_to_teach.html#comment-86077

Also I would worry that more faith schools would encourage more seperation of these faiths from each other.

Anyway, politics aside, I think Chris Mooney’s description of “Intelligent Design” is dead on.

By: Helena Constantine

Helena Constantine — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 15:32:24 +0000

Have you ever seen Big Daddy from Chic?

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0055/0055_01.asp

It’s one of my favorite examples of creationist babbling.

The best part is where the prof. is asked what keeps the opposite charges on electrons and protrons from tearing atoms apart and is reduced to tears becuase he doens’t know the answer. It turns out that Jesus is cosntatnly performing trillons of miracles from instant to instant to hold them together. (the talk about gluons you will find at the link is a new edition–in my older printed copy he just doesn’t know)

By: PK

PK — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 08:51:35 +0000

So how do our politicians in the UK handle science?

Not too badly. They pretty much all acknowledge global warming. The conservative leader David Cameron goes around by bike, no doubt more to impress the voters than out of conviction, but still. However, in the end it is all about the economic status quo versus environmental protection.

Politicians here also have a much better attitude towards stem cell research. And no-one takes creationism seriously. The biggest political science debate right now is whether animal testing is necessary (they are building a lab here in Oxford, which makes the university a target for terrorists).