I like to keep up with how the White House suppresses science. Well, "like" is the wrong word, but I feel duty bound. But how does one keep up when the hits keep on coming?
Why, the A to Z Guide to Political Science Suppression is just what you want.
Take your blood pressure medicine first.
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Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
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February 5th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
I appreciate the concern. But it seems to me disingenuous, or at least a bit naive, to support (nay, to beg for) public funding of sciences while feigning surprise (or indignation) that the science resulting from that funding reflects a degree of public opinion. Taxpayer money doesn’t magically appear in the coffers of scientists. People elect folks to represent them. Those representatives tax them to fund efforts, like science, meant to transcend the individual and promote the common good. But every taxpayer dime they spend involves the injection of a certain amount of control meant to increase the acceptability of those efforts to the people that elect them. Publicly funded science is by definition imperfect science by virtue of the public’s participation in the collection and presentation of results and in the decisions regarding which efforts to fund in the first place. One might argue that all “funded” science is imperfect science because it is inevitably controlled by the opinion of the folks providing the funding. So where are the 10,000 scientists complaining about IBM spending the bulk of its science dollars on tech-related efforts meant to please a majority of its shareholders? Feh.
February 5th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
I have no idea what the above poster’s point is.
Seems to me that government interference and suppression of scientific results is a disgrace.
This country is known throughout the world for its scientific accomplishments. Do we really want to ruin its reputation?
February 5th, 2007 at 10:53 pm
ewb’s post is actually way off topic. I agree with Christian Burnham here. The Bush administration’s tampering with science, bending it to their own ideology is shameful. It smacks of the political ideology vs. science in the old Soviet Union.
February 6th, 2007 at 12:01 am
It’s all aggravating…but the school voucher story really got my dander up. These people have no shame. And still the apologists will make excuses…
February 6th, 2007 at 2:43 am
No idea what the point is? Way off topic? An apologist? Huh?!
The author writes a number of posts, this being the latest, suggesting that government suppresses science and alluding to this only being a problem with the executive branch of the federal government under (I assume) this administration. My point, which I thought was pretty plainly written, was that this is hogwash and that the author and the 10,000 scientists of the site he linked are disingenuous and/or naïve partisans (more so by ther also being advocates for more public funding of science), because any science that relies on public funds to be produced or disseminated is subject to suppression or coercion or manipulation. That’s the undeniable nature of relying on elected officials (any branch, all parties, federal, state, or local) to take money from the public to give to you. Now, however, the suppression, coercion, manipulation, or whatever is coming from elected officials who hold positions contrary to yours, and they are perhaps more effective at it than others in the past, so it’s suddenly a problem. I repeat: feh.
If you want to solve this non-problem, how about funding your own science? Oh yeah, that won’t help, because any group sufficiently large to fund respectable science will itself be influenced by its members. Okay, how about educating the public and getting out the vote, as advocated by the author’s linked site and others like it? Not likely, because your position, which asks folks to hand over their money to the government to distribute to scientists without their participation, is a non-starter with the general taxpaying public.
My point is that it is a cheap oversimplification to sit around jabbing this administration for doing its elected job better than those who came before (and to suggest that every administration hasn’t done this same thing is insane). But I guess if this is too difficult a concept to grasp, too off topic, or makes me an apologists, I’ll just go back to lurking and waiting for the posts with the pretty pictures.
February 6th, 2007 at 3:27 am
ewb:
Firstly- why the accusatory tone- the finger wagging and the aggression? Does every conversation have to a slanging match?
I think I understand something of what you’re saying- but I don’t think your points are very well thought out.
You seem to be saying that we should accept that if the government pays for our science then the government also has a right to distort, manipulate and lie about the conclusions.
Seems a bit cynical to me. I think you’ll find that most tax-payers want and expect the research done with their money to be open, honest and free of political arm-twisting. What’s the point of spending all this money on researching global warming (for instance) if the honest conclusions are going to be manipulated out of existence? I think most left-wing and right-wing people could agree that political influence should not be allowed to sway reporting of science.
And yes- everything short of a 1000 page thesis with 100 pages of bibliographic footnotes is going to be a simplification to some degree. However, the fundamentals of this topic seems quite easy to grasp for most people- Scientists should be free to tell the public the truth to the best of their knowledge without governmental interference.
February 6th, 2007 at 3:28 am
Decoding ewb’s rant(s), he’s not that far of in that rich private citizens would have as much influence as any government.
I’d rather look at pretty pictures myself than touch on the politics.
That said, I’ll need a lot of patience to get through that site.
February 6th, 2007 at 3:44 am
Science is science and should be reported as science. It is up to politicians based on the mandate they have from the electorate, to act upon or ignore the science as the case may be, they should not be engaged in changing the science into something that it is not. That is not their ‘elected job’, it is dishonest.
February 6th, 2007 at 3:47 am
Science is science and should be reported as science. It is up to politicians based on the mandate they have from the electorate, to act upon or ignore the science as the case may be, they should not be engaged in changing the science into something that it is not. That is not their ‘elected job’, it is dishonest.
The problem with the current administration (and probably past administrations too) is that they are afraid that if the results of ceratin scientific research were widely known then they would come under pressure to take action (on climate change, reproductive health etc).
February 6th, 2007 at 3:54 am
And dare I suggest that any government who could spin the current situation in Iraq as being anything except an abysmal catastrophe is well on the road to proving that black is white and up is down.
February 6th, 2007 at 4:05 am
Maybe a bit more understanding of this Nobel laureates work http://www.gmu.edu/jbc/faculty_bios/buchananbio.html & http://www.econlib.org/library/Buchanan/buchCContents.html might help a few people here grasp what has been happening to science ever since it made its Faustian pact with politicians for research money.
This Bush administration is no different in intent than any other in the past “use whatever lever you can to attain and maintain power”; the only difference is that they didn’t know that they are so scientifically illiterate that they weren’t able to be clever about the manipulation they were trying to do and have been found out at every turn. Which is ironic (at least to me) given Rumsfeld’s recent classic “unknown unknowns” speech.
February 6th, 2007 at 5:48 am
The referenced site would have more credibility with me if it cited examples of science being twisted before 2001. I have no illusions that twisting results may have happened more during this administration, but it is by no means the first to do so.
February 6th, 2007 at 6:08 am
While I can’t say that I have read all of the UCS links, I did pick one, Hurricanes to read into…
http://ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/interference/hurricanes.html
and in the short blurb they had written, in condemnation of NOAA and tangentially Bush, the author mentions twice the tragedy of Katrina with the clear intention of linking what happened there to global warming. The problem is that this is clearly not the case.
Link to Kerry Emanuel’s page(Paper updated 2006)
http://wind.mit.edu/~emanuel/anthro2.htm
He states plainly hurricanes are not increasing and there is no trend. Their intensity is related to Global Warming, and may be cause for stronger storms BUT clearly lays the damaging effects increased development along coastal areas and governmental subsidies of coastal properties making such development much less risky. He doesn’t discount the long term potential for global warming effects on hurricanes but really his whole paper gives me the impression that a whole hell of a lot of research is needed in the field and there aren’t many doing it.
Secondly, Knutson’s work. I read over some of it and I’m no climatologist so I can only understand so little of it… However, in a World Meterological Org conference (late 2006) that he was involved in, they came up with the following consensus statements…
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/~tk/glob_warm_hurr.html
“1. Though there is evidence both for and against the existence of a detectable anthropogenic signal in the tropical cyclone climate record to date, no firm conclusion can be made on this point.
2. No individual tropical cyclone can be directly attributed to climate change.
3. The recent increase in societal impact from tropical cyclones has been largely caused by rising concentrations of population and infrastructure in coastal regions.
4. Tropical cyclone wind-speed monitoring has changed dramatically over the last few decades leading to difficulties in determining accurate trends.
5. There is an observed multi-decadal variability of tropical cyclones in some regions whose causes, whether natural, anthropogenic or a combination, are currently being debated. This variability makes detecting any long-term trends in tropical cyclone activity difficult.
6. It is likely that some increase in tropical cyclone peak wind-speed and rainfall will occur if the climate continues to warm. Model studies and theory project a 3-5% increase in wind-speed per degree Celsius increase of tropical sea surface temperatures.
7. There is an inconsistency between the small changes in wind-speed projected by theory and modeling versus large changes reported by some observational studies.
8. Although recent climate model simulations project a decrease or no change in global tropical cyclone numbers in a warmer climate there is low confidence in this projection. In addition, it is unknown how tropical cyclone tracks or areas of impact will change in the future.
9. Large regional variations exist in methods used to monitor tropical cyclones. Also, most regions have no measurements by instrumented aircraft. These significant limitations will continue to make detection of trends difficult.
10. If the projected rise in sea level due to global warming occurs, then the vulnerability to tropical cyclone storm surge flooding would increase.”
For the most part there isn’t a lot of solid ‘Global Warming IS causing this” in these statements…
There are hints and if-this/then-this and even Knutson’s own page doesn’t discount Landsea’s arguments that current methods for measuring hurricane measurements are not accurate enough to measure whether hurricanes across the globe are increasing in intensity.
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/~tk/glob_warm_hurr.html
and from that page….
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/landseaetal-science06.pdf
So when reporters were shunted to speeak with Landsea was this so bad?
A last point on the UCS piece, the appeal to tragedy by using Hurricane Katrina does not help their point that the Bush administration is squelching debate on this subject. It looks like partisanship to me. Outside of the comments of a few individuals, they have no DIRECT evidence that the Bush administration did any such squelching.
Would that not require evidence, an eyewitness, documents? Would this not make this a woowoo theory?
I am willing to entertain such direct evidence as appearently are several Inspector generals…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/01/AR2006110103269.html
Has anything come of this yet? The article mentions the early part of 2007?
My last comment is that from my short time in govt buracracy, everyone doesn’t get to speak, and an agency will not want ONE person speaking with ONE reporter to get a soundbite for the media because it will invariably be “Joe Johnston of XYZ agency said killer tomatoes are a potential threat….” and then the headlines will read “AGENCY XYZ SAYS KILLER TOMATOES ARE ON THE LOOSE!”
sheesh this was long…good thing work is kinda quiet…
February 6th, 2007 at 6:34 am
It reminds me how in court, the prosecution and the defense will often both have their scientific experts on the stand. Obviously each side will only call on experts who agree or support their case.
It is frustrating because science is supposed to be the search for truth. The scientist interrogates nature. That is a noble pursuit. Experiments are supposed to be unbiased. You can have two different scientists, with two different views, and though their bias may alter which experiments they choose, or how much meaning they put on the results, (after all, they are human) But! if those two scientists do the same exact experiment they should get the same results. And after rinsing and repeating, over and over again. The truth will gradually come into focus (Ideally). On the otherhand politics are never unbiased, and I don’t even want to look under the rock of the legal system. But Science has an appeal because it is respected as authority. It just would seem natural for politicians to come and eat at the buffet of Science, taking which claims support their agenda, and neatly disregarding those that would have an adverse effect.
Well Dangit! Science is not a Buffet!
I do strongly suspect a bias on the part of the authors of the A to Z guide though. Their timeline starts in 2001, thus only covering the current administration. There is data lacking from previous administrations. Being the nature of politics, I would suspect that suppression of scientific data has occured in the past as well, and only after thoroughly investigating those, could the different administrations be quantatively and objectively compared.
And yes, Ideally, abusing science and wielding it as a weapon wouldn’t happen at all or be tolerated. I see where ewb would get his cynacism from–This kind of junk probably happens more than any of us realize and the scientists pointing out this flaw here and now probably have their own reasons for doing so. Burnham and Chip are also correct that the suppression of scientific facts for personal or political gain, assuming the A to Z website is factual in its representation, is appalling.
February 6th, 2007 at 6:36 am
I know, I should have said “there are data lacking”. Data… Datum. old habbits die hard.
February 6th, 2007 at 6:55 am
ewb, politicians telling scientists what they want studied is one thing. That’s where they select what they pay for. When they get the results, telling the public that payed for those results something else is the issue. If the results are X, don’t tell the public the results are Y. That’s not what the public is paying the politicians for.
Make policy decisions using the results or ignoring them, sure. But not lying about what the results are.
February 6th, 2007 at 6:57 am
Perhaps ewb would care to provide evidence that “…to suggest that every administration hasn’t done this same thing is insane.” That’s quite a charge. Where is the evidence?
February 6th, 2007 at 8:08 am
From St. on the chart:
“The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) agreed to a politician’s request that it insert a pro-abstinence speaker on a panel discussion at the 2006 National STD Prevention Conference in Jacksonville, Fla. The CDC changed the panel’s title from “Are Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs a Threat to Public Health?” to “Public Health Strategies of Abstinence Programs for Youth.*” The changes were made in response to a complaint by Representative Mark Souder (R-IN), a proponent of abstinence-only education”
[ ... ]
“The CDC removed two speakers from the panel: William Smith and Maryjo Oster. Smith was scheduled to have discussed a congressional report that criticized the scientific basis for abstinence-only programs,³ while Oster was to talk on ties between abstinence-only programs and rising STD rates. Instead, the CDC added abstinence-only advocates Eric Walsh and Patricia Sulak to the rostrum. Walsh is a family physician and instructor at Loma Linda University. Sulak is founder of an abstinence-only program called Worth the Wait, noted for its “negative messages about condoms and stereotypical statements about girls and boys.”
*Ye cannae change the laws of physics^W^nature, George…
This is surely likely to endanger public health? As such, isn’t it yet another reason to impeach Bush?
–
February 6th, 2007 at 8:50 am
Global warming is a natural occurrence, Socialist environmentalist whackos have co-opted this natural occurence to further their own agenda.
An agenda which includes the end of private property rights and capitalism.
February 6th, 2007 at 9:05 am
To come clean, I voted for President Bush in both prior elections although I have been unhappy with several areas of his performance in many areas, including the war in Iraq.
However, how is Bush to be impeached for the complaints of a representative of the house?
Also I can’t find any mention of the program in the official conference link.
http://www.cdc.gov/stdconference/2006/agenda23march.pdf
but I do find it in the online reports…(not even at the real conference but something online you could sign into?) It’s not clear how these were accessed.
http://cdc.confex.com/cdc/std2006/techprogram/S7569.HTM
It looks like it was one hour over the 4 day conference ..
I looked at the first guys power point presentation, it took 2 minutes, nothing sounded like Abstinence Uber Alles to me in it.
http://cdc.confex.com/cdc/std2006/techprogram/P12235.HTM
Anyone else look at it?
There were 4 all total over the hour and the second one looked to be fairly critical of abstinence programs. I skimmed it but that is my impression. It took a little longer maybe 5 minutes to go through.
I didnt do Sulaks since it was a hefty download. Ill look at it tonight perhaps.
Overall, this seems a much ado about nothing. One hour over a 4 day conference and the pro-abstinence folks had to share the stage (online) with folks whose data was showing abstinence only programs were still having sex just later by a few months.
You’d think all those scientists and public health folks would have torn them a new one?
February 6th, 2007 at 9:12 am
THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION IS MANIPULATING SCIENCE FOR REASONS OF BASELESS PROPAGANDA????
color me shocked.
Thanks for the link, Dr. BA!
Kisses to you, from bo’fus.
February 6th, 2007 at 9:24 am
“In 1993, Princeton University physicist William Happer was fired from the Department of Energy because he disagreed with Vice President Al Gore’s views on stratospheric ozone depletion. In 1994, President Bill Clinton rejected the finding from the Embryo Research Panel of the National Institutes of Health which declared that the intentional creation of human embryos for genetic research was ethical. Clinton simply banned any federal funding for such research.”
Quoting Ronald Bailey from a separate post by Jonathan Adler regarding his review of “The Republican War on Science” by Chris Moone (interesting comment thread, too):
http://volokh.com/posts/1169766556.shtml
The tactics of science distortion are many and varied, subtle and obvious, and practiced by all – politicians, academics, corporations, and scientists. I am not being pessimistic or cynical, but rather realistic, when I suggest that this distortion is a natural byproduct of the pressures inherent in the ideologically driven distribution of limited resources (i.e., other people’s money). Failing to acknowledge this condition might be understandable. Failing to acknowledge it while also picking out a particular executive branch administration for admonishment and being a member of (or advocate for) a group largely subsisting on the public dole is disingenuous.
February 6th, 2007 at 9:49 am
It cracks me up when people accuse me of being partisan or unfair when I post things like this. Let’s be clear here:
1) Right now, the White House is suppressing science. This has been going on since Bush took office. This is a fact.
2) The Congress went along with this and even encouraged it over the past six years. Again, this is fact.
3) Other Administrations have done this. Particular congressmen and Senators have done this. Both Republicans and Democrats have done this. Repubs have been doing it far, far more than Dems, because they have outnumbered Dems but also because of partisan politics. Again, fact.
4) However, I did not have a blog back when Clinton was President and could not comment on it then. I don’t see any reason to now; my interest is not to build up a false sense of being "fair" by attacking both sides. Right now, Bush is an antiscience promoter (I should say "preacher") and is the most powerful source of this on the country, so he is the one taking the brunt of my blog. If people don’t like this, they can a) stop reading this blog, b) continue to read it but don’t read ones filed under the category of politics, and/or c) go out and make your voice heard (including voting).
I’m afraid I can’t be any more clear than this. If you want a comfortable but false sense of balance then go watch the mainstream news, which can’t find facts if handed to them on video. I prefer science, which is based on facing uncomfortable truths.
February 6th, 2007 at 9:58 am
I looked on that site and saw nothing about that appointee (whoever he was) ordering a NASA web site person to make the website support Inteligent Design.
What happened there, I vaguely remember it is the same guy who had to resign after they discovered he had lied on his CV
February 6th, 2007 at 11:36 am
Phil said, “Take your blood pressure medicine first”
WHAT?! How did you know I was on blood pressure medicine!!! Norvasc and Diovan.
Phil is PSYCHIC!!!!!
February 6th, 2007 at 11:52 am
“If people don’t like this, they can a) stop reading this blog, b) continue to read it but don’t read ones filed under the category of politics, and/or c) go out and make your voice heard (including voting).”
I’m not sure how to reconcile (a) and (b), which are conversation killers, with (c), at least as it relates to making ones “voice heard” here where you enabled comments, I assumed, as a way to promote discussion.
“I prefer science, which is based on facing uncomfortable truths.”
Okay, so face this: Funded science is inherently flawed. Picking on the “most powerful antiscience preacher” du jour might make one feel better, but does nothing to advance the debate or address the real issues, which I assumed was your goal. In two years the preacher will be gone, the problem will remain, and the air will have been let out of your untenable position. To simply pick this up again with the next administration, particularly if that administration is Republican, will elicit bewildered yawns from the masses. Failure to pick it up again with the next administration, particularly if that administration is Democratic, will leave the masses incorrectly thinking the problem is solved (it really *was* Bush’s fault!) or that you are all partisan hacks with your hands in the till.
Me thinks it would be better to recognize and acknowledge the flaws inherent in the system and concentrate on real reforms that might actually improve things, like better oversight, better separation of monies and results, improved dissemination of and public access to raw results. But what do I know, I’m a taxpayer, not a scientist.
Anyhow, I get your hint. Back to silently looking at the pretty pictures of Mars.
February 6th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
As a skeptic who spends a lot of time looking, I have observed an assault on science that is indeed heavily one sided and more intense than in past years going back to at least the Reagan years.
The evidence I see suggests part of the influence is the Christian Evangelical movement and their increasing influence within the Republican Party. Since the Reagan years, there have been a number of well financed Evangelical groups working to influence legislation concerning abortion and other areas of government which they believe have not reflected their beliefs. Campaigning for abstinence only themes in everything from HIV prevention to school sex ed curricula, promoting federal judge appointments from the bottom up that they hope will eventually lead to the appointment of Supreme Court Justices who will overturn Roe v Wade, and pushing to have Intelligent Design taught in school science classes are the focus of these groups.
Added to that, the Bush administration and the recent Republican controlled Congress have placed an unprecedented number of unqualified people who have Evangelical beliefs or particular political ties in positions of authority over any number of areas of government.
For example:
We all know how qualified “Heck of a job, Brownie” was. Did you know he awarded a large no bid FEMA contract to his college roommate predecessor just after being appointed head of FEMA? After Katrina more contract awards went in the same direction.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0926-08.htm
The two main people responsible for drafting the Medicare Drug Bill went to work for the companies that benefited from the bill as soon as it was passed.
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/354/22/2314
Serious conflicts of interest on the part of the bill’s primary authors were common. The chairman of the Commerce Committee, Representative Billy Tauzin (R-La.), coauthored the bill while negotiating a $2-million-per-year job as a lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the drug industry’s trade organization. The top Republican aide on a subcommittee involved in writing the legislation also left his position soon afterward to lobby for PhRMA. Thomas Scully, the administration’s top Medicare official, deliberately understated the program’s projected cost by $134 billion, and when the chief actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) objected, Scully reportedly threatened to fire him if he shared his true estimate with Congress. Soon after the legislation passed, Scully resumed his career as a health care–industry lobbyist.
“Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/16/AR2006091600193_pf.html
With all the no-bid contracts awarded other FOBs (Friends of Bush) in Iraq and you have your real story of why Iraq is in the mess it is in today.
Bush appointed Philip Cooney as Chief of Staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ)
http://oversight.house.gov/Documents/20070130113813-92288.pdf
Immediately prior to taking the position of CEQ Chief of Staff, Cooney had been employed as a lawyer-lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute (API), the primary trade association for corporations associated with the petroleum industry. He was the climate team leader at API, leading the oil industry’s fight against limits on greenhouse gas emissions. CEI also had a close relationship with the oil industry, having reportedly received $2 million in funding between 1998 and 2005 from ExxonMobil.
This was the guy who ended up in charge of vetting ALL government science reports involving climate research.
-
It isn’t that this type of corruption never happened before. And it may be unfair to blame Republicans. They might have just taken corruption to a new level because of the momentum of the system, or the corruption might just be more noticeable.
-
The combination of the Evangelical agenda, its current influence on government and so many ‘unqualified for their position’ political appointees has hit science particularly hard. In order to suppress opposition to policies, the administration has included suppressing scientific research which contradicts policy goals.
Unfortunately the damage is far more reaching than suppressing research. In those cases, the evidence will eventually rear its inconvenient head. The damage which will be much more difficult to repair is that of the public’s confidence in the scientific process.
You even see it reflected among skeptics who repeat the claim, “scientific evidence can be found to support both sides”, and, “there will always be political pressure influencing scientific research.” If skeptics and scientists lack confidence in the process you can imagine how confident the general public is.
In addition to fighting the distortion of scientific research, Science support groups must work to separate out the scientific process from the distortion process. Instead of repeating and thus reinforcing the false claim science can be found to support both sides of an issue, be it global warming or trial evidence, we must instead use our voice to educate the public about the ways research results are distorted to falsely support conclusions. At the same time we need to be making statements that reinforce the reliability of the scientific process.
Clarify what is meant when “proved” is not the conclusion. Overwhelming evidence and majority consensus are terms that can counter “predatory attacks on the uncertainty of science”, to use terminology from Dr Rick Piltz, former head of the GAO. Expose those scientists who knowingly make false statements about what the evidence supports and teach people how to verify what the evidence actually does support when divergent claims are made.
These are just a few examples. The issue of confidence in the scientific process is of utmost importance. How we describe science can either reinforce the reliability or the unreliability of the scientific process.
February 6th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
I wonder when I stopped being surprised by this stuff.
By the way, Phil, who knew you and Joe Rogan would be so much fun to listen to.
February 6th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
EWB, your stated reasoning is a flawless analysis of the situation as it exists and has existed. I, too, have watched as scientific studies/results have been censored or edited over the last thirty years (and I’ve read about censoring/editing occuring for hundreds of years before that). I would like an environment in which such manipulation was NOT necessary; however, I recognise that though Scientists often provide excellent data, their own expertise may not include being able to
1. Apply it (that’s why we have Inventors),
2. Use it (that’s why we have Adminstrators),
3. Balance it against other interests (that’s why we have Citizens/Voters and Politicians),
4. Anticipate danger and protect us [from non-Scientist others who don't care what arises from it] (that’s why we have Soldiers and Generals),
5. Transmit it to future generations (that’s why we have Educators)
Recognizing that unadulterated scientific data is valuable, nay, VITAL, is however, not the same as saying that all scientific data is good data or properly correlated data. (In a nod to Mr. Burnham, I must note the ludicrously egregious sampling techniques in the BMA medical journal “The Lancet” which purported to show, first, 100,000 dead Iraqis 18 months after the invasion…and then 655,000 dead Iraqis 39 months after the invasion. It was laughably bad statistical surveying purporting to show Iraq now as more of a hellhole than under Saddam and his murder kleptocracy without factoring in that 80% of the fighting is confined to 3 of the county’s 18 provinces. As a result, these numbers are over 3-6 times greater than United Nations or IraqBodyCount figures, neither one Bush-friendly. Yet somehow these studies got into “The Lancet”(!?!?!), as prestigious a medical journal as the “Journal Of The American Medical Association”. Well, even Ph.d.’s/M.D.’s can become “stuck on stupid” when they want data to support their beliefs.)
Now there’s the rub: Even if someone has an advanced degree, is capable of doing complex analysis, is articulate, and is generally referred to as a scientist, it doesn’t mean he MUST be right; if it did, Samuel Langley and his Aerodrome would have been first in manned powered flight, not some “uneducated” bicycle mechanics from Dayton named Wright. Scientists are human and subject to all the mistakes of humanity. Where the difference exists is that scientists are much LESS LIKELY to make mistakes in their areas of scientific (and related) expertise than other members of humanity would make in those same areas…but they’re still not perfect (and counseling us on our imperfections and vanity is why we have Clergy).
Now accurate, collated, and unadulterated data, gathered by reputable (and humble) scientists is valuable: Such data provides the underpinning for almost ALL the decisions made by other segments of humanity. And when that data is twisted by the people to whom it is entrusted, only more fault-prone (not necessarily wrong, just more-likely-to-be-wrong) decisions will result.
I absolutely agree that this is a fault inherent in the system of government-funded science but it may be the nature of such a beast…and us humans.
We can better deal with this problem by recognizing it and not always looking to government-funded science because it has faults. So does industry-funded science, private university-funded science, etc. Now though these are almost all the sponsors commonly available, please recognize that they DON’T all have the same biases or agendas and, by sharing/reaching outside our own bailywicks, the data truth will come out…
…and then it will get clobbered by some other scientists with their own biases!
So perhaps then EBW’s practical suggestion is the best within this less-than-perfect world:
1. Seperate the monies so that no aspect of science is under a tsar [czar],
2. Disseminate the results faster, and
3. Allow better access to raw data (making allowances for security, when necessary.
To this I would add a fourth point: We should be aware of our biases and keep our egos under control. Arrogant scientists discredit science when they make mistakes…and arrogance limits our cognizance and drastically increases the chances of mistakes creeping into the data.
-Humbly yours, Jay Crawford
February 6th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
ewb says: Me thinks it would be better to recognize and acknowledge the flaws inherent in the system and concentrate on real reforms that might actually improve things, like better oversight, better separation of monies and results, improved dissemination of and public access to raw results.
You mean, better than dismissing it as typical political manuevers and therefore out of reach of the average citizen?
Better than trying to label it “partisan” and relegate it to the “more whining from unhappy liberals” bin?
Yes, I agree. So, how many people do you think the BA reaches with his blog?
Sorry to be sarcastic. Enjoy the pretty pictures, and hope no one decides they aren’t “faith-based” enough to be funded anymore.
February 6th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
Jay:
You’ve constructed a classic straw-man argument- of the ‘arrogant scientist’. Scientists more than anyone admit (nay invite) the possibility that they may be wrong. We’re not overlords handing out diktats to the proles. (Yes and now I’m exaggerating your argument- but allow me some poetic license.)
Scientists get it wrong at times- but the scientific process is self correcting in the long run.
It’s true that the vast majority of climate scientists may be completely wrong about global warming etc., but I want to hear the best arguments that scientists have- including their self-estimation of how confident they are in their predictions.
It does nobody any favors if governments spin- twist or manipulate the science. And we should be outraged that this is going on.
——————————————————————————————-
And yes- anyone who can’t see that Iraq is a disaster has simply lost the ability to tell fact from spin -warped fiction.
Thousands of American lives (and untold tens of thousands of Iraqi lives) could have been saved if the US government hadn’t suppressed and then outright lied about the best available information presented to them about the likely threat posed by pre-war Iraq.
Just ask Scooter Libby.
February 7th, 2007 at 1:02 am
Well spoken, Mr. Burnham! (Well except for the nonsequiter about Scooter Libby)
] official now using the expert researcher’s information is also well-intentioned. Which of these two is more LIKELY to know most of the bureaucracies which must act upon the research? Which of these two is more likely to know many of those affected by the research (maybe even through being lobbied by them)? Which of these two is more likely to know (or rather, presume to know!) how much of the research can survive intact in the legislative process? And who decides how to balance this expert researcher’s data against conflicting data from other expert researchers? Regretably, it’s very probably the official…because THAT’s his job.
However, you may have misjudged the point of my first paragraph. All true scientists DO entertain the possiblity that they may be wrong; merely identifying areas in which a scientist is LIKELY to be less knowledgeable than some other given person is not the same as labeling Scientists as egomaniacal elites. Indeed, I’ve never met an egomaniacal scientist even amongst the 4 Nobel lauretes I’ve been privileged to meet.
Truly though, almost every expert researcher in a subject forms strong opinions about his work and how it should be used; he then is invariably resistant to someone else using it in a different way. When, almost inevitably, someone, perhaps a government official with a different specialty (and probably less knowledge and a different focus), takes control of the expert researcher’s work, that same researcher may well not understand why some of his results are compromised or even thrown out.
Now, let us postulate that this expert researcher is well-intentioned and, likewise, let’s assume that the [heathen
(Bonus question: Which of these two is more likely to be [probably justifiably] outraged and, after the 30th occassion, hoping some reporter will understand enough to give him a microphone and a chance to make his true results known? Our sincere expert researcher, obviously.)
Who’s right, then? Well, maybe the government official in a certain practical way, even if he’s censored and edited (which is manipulation of) the data. But we may never know if he’s truly changed the data unless there is more decentralized control (no Soviet-style science czars!), more information dissemination, and more access to raw data. Just like EBW said.
Unfortunately, the ideal of a scientist’s attitudes toward research does not always correlate to his personal life.
You’ll notice in my last paragraph I said “We should be aware of our biases and keep our egos under control”. If my argument was a straw man fallacy then my straw man is all of humanity, including myself…and even you, whom I don’t know and thusly would never wish to personally insult.
That sentence was followed by a broad cautionary statement that “Arrogant scientists discredit science when they make mistakes…” which is obviously true in practice (one need only look at the foolish statistics published in The Lancet). Furthermore, I’m certainly not referring to all scientists; that is why I previously (and awkwardly!) chose to capitalize “Scientists” when referring to a whole class of people. That clarified, I’m sure you’ll agree that there’s no straw man fallacy in that statement.
(I suspect that you would even join me in repudiating bad statistical analysis!)
As for my last complete sentence, we human beings all have our own vanities and these vanities, when combined with expertise, often make people (even scientists) far more arrogant than our scientific research would ever be. When that happens, we lose much of our awareness of people and events around us because, while we’re assuming our correctness (because of our superior research/expertise/education/etc.), we no longer welcome correction as our vanity becomes invested in our own correctness.
This has been a cautionary critique of how science is often (understandably, not necessarily rightly) compromised by Government, sometimes be compromised by our human vanity, and that this should be corrected by making the original analysis and raw data available. If you can agree with its points, I sincerely hope you will withdraw the accusation of a straw man fallacy.
———————————————————————————————
And Now For Something Completely Different…
I fear that your blanket statement about Iraq being a disaster may be too broad.
I know people in the fight and many more who are not in the 3 central provinces in which the vast majority of the fighting is taking place. They know the Iraqis because they meet them almost every day. They know that these people don’t fear their government the way they feared capricious Saddam. They know that these people foresee a brighter future…and, defying violence in the past, vote in greater numbers than we do. (I say “in the past” because the Iraqis in 15 of Iraq’s 18 provinces now rarely see major violence, in part because even most Sunni elders have turned against the insurgents.) The people I know say that electricity is on reliably 12 hours a day (before the war it was on perhaps 6 hours). The people I know tell me that food and medicines unavailable under Saddam (because of the sanctions needed to keep him from having WMDs) are now available. The people I know (especially those who are Iraqi) say that Iraq now has a chance to become a republic with a future, not the private garden of the “Tikriti Mafia” (their words). And in the central provinces around Bagdad, it’s tough but our most of our soldiers want to stay because they think they (and the increasingly effective Iraqi Army) can reduce or kill the insurgents until the Iraqi police become effective as a first line of offense to keep the insurgents from having anywhere to hide. Then we won’t be needed. Failing this, our troops’ lives (about 3,000) and the lives of all the Iraqis (about 16,000) who are fighting to make their country safe will have been lost in vain…and a people who had no hope under Saddam will have no hope anymore.
You know, I could tell you that I’ve been familiar with Iraq and its history in college and over the past 26 years, that I disregard opinion news and only search for statements of fact, and that my connections in the Army come from friends I met before I was disqualified from service 24 years ago because of legal blindness in my left eye. But the fact is I’m not so vain as to think my opinion should matter.
But Mr. Burnham, surely you won’t dismiss the opinions of soldiers and civillians, Americans and Iraqis, who say that Iraq may be a “disaster”, but it’s now, in THEIR view, at least better than it was under Saddam…and it has a chance no one would ever have predicted were he and his murderous family still in power, alive and killing? Surely, they can tell fact from spin-warped fiction?
-Sincerely, Jay Crawford
February 7th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
Those of you who joined the list of scientists at defendscience.org and those who get Sky and Telescope may have seen the following editorial on a “failure to communicate” science.
http://media.skytonight.com/documents/200703008008.pdf
It’s nice to see a number of people taking notice of the words we are using to speak to the public. So I use this opportunity to repeat what I said in more detail above, how we describe science can either reinforce the reliability or the unreliability of the scientific process.
February 7th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
Jay, thank you very much for the ‘big picture’ look at the situation in Iraq. I was unaware that the situation was that stable, being focused on the almost weekly death toll; but you are correct that the vast majority of our troops are not fighting.
However it does not change the fact that Bush grossly misrepresented the facts in order to get his invasion; and I have this gut feeling that american bodybags carry more weight than smiling iraqis.
February 7th, 2007 at 11:30 pm
Gerrsun & Jay Crawford – what are you doing, posting facts that don’t make Bush look evil? Don’t you realize, GWB is the nexis of evil in our time, and of all time?
To be frank, the UCS site had me interested, until I read about the hurricanes. The site states that it’s already proven that global warming is tied to stronger & more of the storms (yet the site conveniently avoids expanding on that proof), and cites Katrina a few times for feeling.
The page goes on to attack the administration because the NOAA has avoided supporting this “proven” fact … but riddle me this: if global warming is going on, and if it’s getting progressively worse, and if there are going to be more and more storms … well, what exactly happened in 2006?
I mean, did GWB go and turn off the “Accelerate Climate Change” button for that year, just to give the machinery a breather?
———-
And who keeps bringing up Iraq? If Bush is an idiot in science, does dragging Iraq into it really make a difference? Or, is that to compensate for weaknesses in the former argument?
I, too, have friends in the sandbox, and their stories are nothing like CNN. They’re nothing like Fox News. They’re nothing like *any* of the usual media sources. Which’s telling.
———-
I’ll leave with this tangent: in the same way that publicly-funded science is flawed, because it’s dependent on the public, and therefore subject to its whims (and by proxy, subject to being manipulated by public actors – i.e. every politician out there); in the same way as this, mainstream media journalism is similarly flawed. The news we see on mass media is dependent on ratings, which means it depends on making people happy with what they see … so, it tells them what the expect to hear. Nobody expects to hear that sunspots & solar activity are related to hurricane trends, so the news avoids this. Nobody expects to hear good news out of Iraq, so the news avoids this (that, plus the media slogan “if it bleeds, it leads”).
Science (which seeks to find the truth) dependent on public funding is a flawed system.
Journalism (which seeks to spread the truth) dependent on ratings is a flawed system.
February 7th, 2007 at 11:36 pm
James,
Thank you but I’m only conveying what my friends and acquaintances in Iraq have said to me.
Skeptigirl,
I’m a pro-science (obviously!) Evangelical Christian so please allow me to say…”You go, [Skepti]girl!”
Ignorance of science is deplorable and couching it in religious terms is even more so. Many (some foolish) religious leaders and teachers falsely posit an opposing dicotomy between science and religion. They don’t conceptuallize that science is the process of thinking about the things we can observe and test…while religion is the process of thinking about the things that are too “big” to test.
God created an orderly universe and human beings with brains capable of syllogistic reasoning; this would have been unneccessary if He hadn’t intended for us to fill those brains with logical thoughts to understand the order of that universe. What’s often forgotten is that any religion’s application to life is a matter of interpreting its precepts; often religous people forget that it is in the act of interpretation that human beings can make mistakes…and it is the failure to acknowledge this fallibility (often because of our pride) that leads to even more mistakes (and please remember that both Satan’s and man’s original sin was pride!). On that very basis it should be syllogistically obvious that, IF we accept what we can accurately test and fully observe is true and we believe the Bible to be true, AND IF our interpretation of the Bible contradicts our observations and tests, THEN logically OUR interpretation of the Bible must be false. The Creator Of The Universe has no reason to lie to those who seek Him; therefore correct interpretation of His Message will, logically, NEVER contradict our accurate tests and full observations.
That said, please consider one thing: Most often mainstream religion deals with absolute concepts of right and wrong; on many of these you yourself would probably agree. This would be especially likely if the reasoning behind these concepts was logically explained to you by a rational member of that religion. It is often the concern about right/wrong and the future implications of some current action that causes some truly reasonable religious people to take a stand that may seem anti-science/anti-reason. Now that’s not to say that all (or even a majority) of these stands are truly reasonable: some people just fear change (I still own a Sega Genesis and my nephews’ X-Box 360 terrifies me:-) ). For instance, I believe that (evangelical Christian) Texas Governor Perry’s decision to implement mandatory HPV innoculations is correct on moral grounds and (evangelical Christian) opposition to it (which I think is mostly reflexive) is incorrect on moral grounds. However, on many other issues (late term abortion where there’s no danger to the life of the mother and/or euthanasia of not-immediately-terminal patients, for example) you might agree because because of the long-term implications of actions which seem to treat human life as a disposable commodity. Therefore, may I humbly suggest that you may want to distinguish between unreasoning evangelical Christians and reasoning evangelical Christians?
Nonetheless, understanding logic and science is often the cure to a host of society’s ills…and pointing out to people when actions are illogical, anti-science, or both is something too few people are doing. Bravo to you for your efforts!!!
-Sincerely, Jay Crawford
February 7th, 2007 at 11:42 pm
Aw heck, Trogdor! Guess I’m at it again. Thanks for reminding me, dude.
Keep the carbon footprint small, man.
-Peace out, Jay Crawford
February 8th, 2007 at 2:12 am
I’m not quite sure how the A to Z of science suppression led to this exchange:
Trogdor Says:
Gerrsun & Jay Crawford – what are you doing, posting facts that don’t make Bush look evil? Don’t you realize, GWB is the nexis of evil in our time, and of all time?
http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site.aspx/bawnews/deathtoll208
Jay Crawford Says:
James,
Thank you but I’m only conveying what my friends and acquaintances in Iraq have said to me.
But since it has I’ll add:
Death Toll of U.S. Troops in Iraq Spiked Over Last Four Months – and Expected to Rise; Date: Wednesday, February 07, 2007…Not since the bloody battle for Fallujah in 2004 has the death toll spiked so high.
“Friends and acquaintances” may have their view. People on the ground are closer than I am, for sure. But I recall my own parents who were in Iran just before the Shaw fled the country telling me there was a tank on the corner and some smoke across town but really it was no big deal. They came home for Christmas without a clue and never went back. A year later they actually got most of their belongings, but when they left, they took nothing one would take who had been worried about not returning.
My view of science and Bush and the Iraq war has nothing to do with ‘evil’. Evil is a fantasy. My view has to do with ignorance. Just think if the Bush admin. had actually looked to the scientific experts on culture, on the potential aftermath of the Iraq invasion, on winning hearts and minds. For that matter think if they had looked at the actual evidence instead of concentrating so hard on manipulating that evidence in order to manipulate American public opinion. What if Bush et al invested as much in research of the policies they wanted so bad to create as they invested in the science of marketing an image and as they the science of persuasion?
A different world we’d most certainly have.
While I appreciate your comments Jay, I won’t deny I equate pro-science Evangelical with the ‘wedge strategy’. That is the strategy where Evangelicals fantasize that the scientific evidence actually supports Biblical myths. It’s a matter of distorting science, typically by cherry picking details and stretching Biblical interpretations just enough to reconcile scientific evidence and the literal Bible in a way that maintains the cognitive dissonance at a manageable level.
The degree with which ones stretches science vs the degree which one stretches the Bible determines whether one is considered in the skeptical science crowd or the Bible believers crowd.
I am in the happy atheist science crowd myself. No cognitive dissonance required.
February 8th, 2007 at 2:18 am
errata:
last sentence, 5th paragraph from the bottom:
and as they [invested in] the science
The link near the top should be after Jay says, not before.
February 8th, 2007 at 5:05 am
It wasn’t my goal to defend Bush or his policies, I wanted to look at a few of the UCS links and see if what they said was factual.
He may be slightly evil, 99.44% evil, misunderstood, ignorant, or a saint among us but then I’m no saint so I can’t say.
The UCS’ web links of the few that I read were written with a sort of righteous indignation that didn’t seem to match what I was reading on their own links.
But of the ones I looked at, one seeemd to be appealing to tragedy as an argument while presenting the issue as a factual threat when it does not appear to be the settled matter and the other seemed overblown given the size of the incident.
If I misunderstood the links I posted, I am willing to listen to counter-arguments since I am no expert on hurricanes OR abstinence-only programs.
February 9th, 2007 at 12:42 am
Skeptigirl,
. There are intellectuals (who study potential meanings) and pragmatists (who put Christ’s love into action). There are literates (who know when the Bible is written poetically, especially in the Old Testament) and literalists (who can’t always distinguish between what we learn and what God intended for us to learn). There are the cognizant (aware of others) and the cognitive (aware only of their own interests). Perhaps you only encountered the latter.
I agree that many people “cherry pick” details from other people’s arguments to support their own arguments. Respectfully though, this fault is shared by the religious and irreligious, those who assert God’s existence and those who deny that same existence. What I (and others far greater, such as Francis Collins) strive to do is to remain intellectually honest by NOT looking to buttress our arguments with some isolated examples of the Universe’s complexity cited as “evidence” of a Creator’s existence. Consistently rational human beings cannot believe in a “God of the Gaps (in our understanding)”. Rather, they must assume that what is not understood now may very well be understood in the future. Indeed, the only limit to our understanding is the limit imposed by scale: We shall never understand the totality of the Universe at any given moment because we are constrained by the Universe not having enough material within it to build all the sensors and computers needed to study itself in real time.
It is on that basis that we identify the central characteristic of a possible Creator: It must be greator than Its creation. In other words, God must be transcendent of the Universe to be the Creator of said Universe.
Heavy, man!
Or not. Kinda depends on your intellectual perspective. Truly, because we can’t test it.
While I see order in the Universe that I believe indicates an extant Creator, I can’t definitively prove this Creator’s existence because all my arguments must be built up inductively…and inductive reasoning always leads to more possible answers until its “tower of logic” becomes so much sophistry and collapses into uncertainty. Only deductive reasoning ever leads to just one possible answer and certainty.
Similarly, the atheist cannot definitively disprove a Creator’s existence because he can’t show that anything in the Universe is in violation of what a Creator intends it to be. To do that would require total comprehension of a being that, by its very nature, is even more incomprehensible in its totality than the Universe itself. And comprehending the total Universe, as we’ve already seen, can’t be done.
Philosophically, the latter is called “proving a negative” and it’s impossible.
So what underlies the huge gulf of misunderstanding between two unprovable propositions? Why the difference?
The difference lies is in a difference of opinion. Sounds simple, but opinion results from the subjective perceptions of each of us. (Side note: The vast majority of religious believers acknowledge human free will, and therefore acknowledge differences in the experiences of our lives. They may be more understanding of your reasons for your OWN beliefs than you might expect!) What this pracically means is that I’m not you and so I can’t know why you proceed from a perspective of skepticism. Maybe your broad brushstrokes against evangelical Christians are because some irrational Christians tried to persuade you that the Bible says something it doesn’t really say…or at least they failed to properly explain the logic behind their ideas. Or maybe they were just wrong. I can’t say because I’m not them or you.
But neither are you me, so it’s going to be pretty hard for you to make any accurate assumptions about me…or people like me. To do so would require a lot of inductive logic and even more suppositions.
Yet (based on your writing) allow me to make a few little inductive suppositions about you:
1. You’re knowlegeable and have great analytical ability due to a high order of fluid intelligence.
2. You seek truth and can acknowledge the same quality in others.
3. You hate ignorance, superstition, and casual blindness to facts…perhaps even as much as I DO.
And one more:
4. You don’t encounter many strangers who are willing to acknowledge (or maybe even appreciate and encourage!) your perspective EVEN when they may have some major difference of opinion from your own.
My point, you see, was that difference of opinion on proof/disproof of a Creator is where the majority of the rest of differences start. Yet despite those differences, we may have more in common than you normally think. I write this to try to point out the intellectual disservice (especially to yourself) of painting all “evangelicals” with the same paint brush used to paint Torqemada and Elmer Gantry.
Evangelical Christians are not some neanderthalic throwback to prehistory (well, not most of us anyway
My key point about science and religion remains the same as in my previous post’s fifth sentence: “…science is the process of thinking about things we can observe and test…while religion is the process of thinking about things that are too big to test.” To which I might add: “…and just because something hasn’t yet been tested, doesn’t reflect its existence or its non-existence.”
Of course there’s only one definitive test for my Creator and I’ll conduct it probably sometime in the next 50 years…though it may be hard to get my results published!
No cognative dissonance is required here either…because I’m aware of my limitations.
-Encouragement to you, from Jay Crawford
February 10th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
Jay, not to be too contradictory, because your post is fairly even-handed, but there are some logical arguments that use believers’ definitions of God and show they are self-contradictory. As you say, God can’t be disproven, mostly because the claim is not stated falsifiably – any attempt to falsify the claim can be dismissed by reinterpreting the claim. There’s no solid ground. And logically you can’t prove a negative, but you can disprove a positive if you can filter the search finely enough. The problem with the God claim is the inherent coarseness of the filter compared to the possible places for Him to hide.
February 11th, 2007 at 11:56 am
Irishman,
I certainly agree with you about definitions of God often being contradictory. I would dare say that there are as many variations on the theme of a higher being as there are people. I often find that many people who, by rote, assert His total omnipotence, in fact subtly limit His ascribed power to a level which THEY can comprehend. It’s the old “God made Man in His image…and then Man returned the favor!” problem. As human beings we find the idea of a Universe-transcending being truly incomprehensible; therefore we must try to accept or deny Him on the levels which we can comprehend or, at least, the levels which our vanities (whether we are scientists or theologians) allow us to pretend we can comprehend.
But what we believe will not affect the existence (or not) of such a Being…only our personal relationships with Him and, be extension, all life in His Universe, with all of its wonderful processes which (I hope) we all strive to comprehend more each day. Onward Science, Truth, and (let’s not forget!) decency!!!
(I think I must have just sounded like Superman paraphrasing Lenin!)
Adding a bit to my last post: I’m just just aware of my own limitations (and if my own pride, arrogance, or sophistry shows up, I’m grateful for people like you, Skeptigirl, Trogdor, or Christian Burnham being there to slap it down).
-Humble thanks, Jay Crawford
February 16th, 2007 at 7:17 am
Skeptigirl,
One thing more for you to consider: Based on the obvious intelligence of your comments, I have to believe that your parents must have been intelligent people too. While your parents didn’t notice the magnitude or scale of the Iranian Islamist revolution going on around them, their obliviousness was facilitated by their not being in combat units which would have been in contact with the Islamist radicals. If your folks HAD actually been charged with the tasks of combat, I can guarantee that they would have noticed!
My friends and acquaintances in Iraq ALL tell of frustration with journalists who ignore the calm in the majority of the country, the improvements in the lives of ordinary Iraqis, and (most importantly to good people everywhere) the willingness of the vast majority Iraqis to oppose the radicals who are their enemies as much as ours. (Especially since the insurgents attack and kill 20+ times as many Iraqis as they kill Americans, a fact not lost on the pragmatic Iraqi people.)
And, since those friends and acquaintances (American and Iraqi) are in the actual lines of fire, they would definitely know!
-Still with encouragement to you, Jay Crawford
February 16th, 2007 at 7:45 am
Please amend in third to last sentence, “Especially since the insurgents attack and kill 20+ times as many Iraqis as they do Americans, AND RADICALS HAVE MADE 6% OF THE POPULATION REFUGEES, a fact not lost on the pragmatic Iraqi people.”