In 1989, the communist dictatorship oddly named Union of Soviet Socialist Republics reached the extent of a third giant hole in the Arctic Circle, Kola Superdeep Borehole SG-3, where they'd been drilling for 19 years. It clocked in at nearly 8 miles deep.
A decade ago, the media perception was that the only "advocacy" research (science-y sounding stuff out to achieve a cultural goal) was small groups getting a little bit of money to deny things like global warming. In reality, the public knew better, and that scientization of politics had been going on ever since government started to take over science funding.
I have often argued that the pro-life movement has a disconnect about actual life when it comes to science. I don't mean about the health issues of abortion or birth control, I mean about saving babies using science. They seem to think science should only help after a baby is born, exactly the opposite of the argument they make about the beginning of life during abortion debates.
Dr. Gilles-Eric Seralini, the go-to researcher for Big Organic marketing groups and the partisan media enablers (SourceWatch, US Right To Know, Mother Jones) they fund, finally wrote something accurate in a paper - "it was not designed as a scientific experiment", even though the Deniers For Hire on his side claim it was just that.
"The X-Files" resumes tonight and if, like me, you might give it a try, here are 5 good episodes to watch in advance. I was able to sort through a lot of shows thanks to a blizzard in New York City, which kept me inside and was not accompanied by losing electricity. My non-loss is your gain.
Progressives shriek "false equivalence!" every time the numerous anti-science positions of people on their side of the aisle are mentioned, but that is a reactionary defense mechanism - a large part of their world view and identities are tied up in the belief that they are on the side of science while people on the right are not so they can be forgiven for panicking a little as the mounting evidence and examples continue to pile up.But to people in the middle, the recent fetish with attaching special labels to genetically modified food seems a lot like clever abortion 'awareness' laws couched in language to do lots of other things; namely, a way to do with subtle legislative finagling what they cannot do overtly.
Decades ago there was a cultural debate about who could best handle recycling, the private sector or government. Though environmental groups today are commonly associated with more government regulations and bureaucracy, decades ago groups like PIRG (Public Interest Research Group) instead lobbied for expansion of efforts like a 'bottle bill' where a refundable fee paid by the user encouraged recycling. Everyone knows the container is the expensive part of a soda.
http://www.cirm.ca.gov/StemCellBasics_Questionshttp://sdrmi.org/wordpre… California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) was established by California voters in 2004 to defy US President George W. Bush who, we were told, 'banned' human embryonic stem stem cell research.(1) Voters were willing to do it with $3 billion of borrowed money, that is how important science was to California, because stem cell research was going to both make us immortal and cure Alzheimer's, if only Republicans would get out of the way.
2 percent of America has celiac disease but over 20 percent of Americans say they are concerned about buying gluten-free foods - and marketing departments are happy to charge 230 percent more to make them feel better.
Across the spectrum, the price gap between "healthy" and less healthy foods has grown since 1992. Organic food is, unsurprisingly, the store of choice for wealthy elites, and prices have grown far more than they have for regular supermarket fare, where margins remain razor thin.
In the United Kingdom's National Health Service, 50 percent of health care workers do not get flu vaccines. Obviously they are not anti-vaccine, they work in health care, so what explains their behavior? It isn't as simple as science denial.In the United States, vaccine denial is easier to predict: Go to a political map of California or Oregon and find the counties that voted overwhelmingly for President Obama and you are going to find an anti-vaccine hotbed. Still, though that tells us where it does not tell us why and we need to know why in order to know how to solve the problem. It isn't as simplistic as 'Democrats are anti-science', though it is reasonable that it's been framed that way.
The European Union, chided by scientists for wacky science like declaring that cell phones cause cancer, water does not alleviate thirst and you can go to jail if you don't predict an earthquake, is starting to inch back toward science.By loosening the noose they have had around agriculture. Ironically, this is right after environmentalists got Dr. Anne Glover, the first Chief Scientific Adviser to the President of the European Commission, fired over her advocacy of science-based agriculture.
In the early days of food labeling and regulations, it was just about mandating honesty. If you go to buy mayonnaise, you shouldn’t have to wonder if it is mayonnaise, the government reasoned, so they passed a law in 1938 requiring honesty about ingredients. The charlatans went out of the business and the free market that remained embraced “better” ingredients as a marketing distinction. It worked well.
Campbell Soup Co., which makes a variety of foods including the namesake soups and Prego pasta sauce, has declared their intention to put labels on their foods noting they are “partially produced with genetic engineering.”Some are lamenting this will be a slippery slope to process labels being used as warnings, and undermining confidence in modern agriculture, while anti-science groups are hailing it as a victory. US Right To Know, an outreach group funded by organic food corporations and aided by the partisan attack site SourceWatch, is certainly declaring this a big win for their clients.
