When people politicize science...

...nothing good happens.

I predicted it. I said that spending three billion dollars on embryonic stem cell research by way of a voter initiative was beyond retarded; if embryonic stem cell research was any damn good, private investors would be putting money in.

I also said that it would suck the oxygen out of the room by misallocating research funds and personnel.

Well, I told you so.

Bioethics: Five years after a budget-busting $3 billion was allocated to embryonic stem cell research, there have been no cures, no therapies and little progress. So supporters are embracing research they once opposed.

California's Proposition 71 was intended to create a $3 billion West Coast counterpart to the National Institutes of Health, empowered to go where the NIH could not — either because of federal policy or funding restraints on biomedical research centered on human embryonic stem cells.

Supporters of the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, passed in 2004, held out hopes of imminent medical miracles that were being held up only by President Bush's policy of not allowing federal funding of embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) beyond existing stem cell lines and which involved the destruction of embryos created for that purpose.

Five years later, ESCR has failed to deliver and backers of Prop 71 are admitting failure. The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the state agency created to, as some have put it, restore science to its rightful place, is diverting funds from ESCR to research that has produced actual therapies and treatments: adult stem cell research. It not only has treated real people with real results; it also does not come with the moral baggage ESCR does.

To us, this is a classic bait-and-switch, an attempt to snatch success from the jaws of failure and take credit for discoveries and advances achieved by research Prop. 71 supporters once cavalierly dismissed. We have noted how over the years that when funding was needed, the phrase "embryonic stem cells" was used. When actual progress was discussed, the word "embryonic" was dropped because ESCR never got out of the lab.

Prop 71 had a 10-year mandate and by 2008, as miracle cures looked increasingly unlikely, a director was hired for the agency with a track record of bringing discoveries from the lab to the clinic. "If we went 10 years and had no clinical treatments, it would be a failure," says the institute's director, Alan Trounson, a stem cell pioneer from Australia. "We need to demonstrate that we are starting a whole new medical revolution."

The institute is attempting to do that by funding adult stem cell research. Nearly $230 million was handed out this past October to 14 research teams. Notably, only four of those projects involve embryonic stem cells.

Among the recipients, the Los Angeles Times reports, is a group from UCLA and Children's Hospital in Los Angeles that hopes to cure patients with sickle cell disease by genetically modifying their own blood-forming stem cells to produce healthy red blood cells. Researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center will use their grant to research injecting heart-attack patients with concentrated amounts of their own cardiac stem cells that naturally repair heart tissue.

Dr. Bernadine Healy, director of the National Institutes of Health under Bush 41, wrote in her U.S. News & World Report column recently that "embryonic stem cells, once thought to hold the cure for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and diabetes, are obsolete."

Even worse, they can be dangerous. They are difficult to control, to coax into the specific type of tissue desired. Unlike adult stem cells taken from a patient's own body, ES cells require the heavy use of immunosuppressive drugs. Their use can lead to a form of tumor called a teratoma.

Real promise is held in what are called induced pluripotent stem cells. In 2006, researchers led by Dr. Shinya Yamanaka of Japan's Kyoto University were first able to "reprogram" human skin cells to behave like embryonic stem cells. They can do everything stem cells from destroyed embryos can do.

The National Institutes of Health has said that this type of stem cell offers the prospect of having a renewable source of replacement cells and tissues to treat diseases like Parkinson's and Alzhei-mer's, spinal cord injury, stroke, burns, heart disease, diabetes, osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, to name a few.

It is ESCR researchers who have politicized science and stood in the way of real progress. We are pleased to see California researchers beginning to put science in its rightful place.

Yeah, this is a repeat of something I did two years ago, but with an election coming up you can never remind California voters that they are morons enough times.

Paradigm Shifts and Big Bang Deniers.

This is a statement from various scientists seeking to have a re-allocation of resources into an investigation of the validity of the presuppositions of the Big Bang theory, rather than spending all money on research that assumes that theory. According the statement sponsors, all is not serene in science-land:

The big bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed-- inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples. Without them, there would be a fatal contradiction between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory. In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would, at the least, raise serious questions about the validity of the underlying theory.

But the big bang theory can't survive without these fudge factors. Without the hypothetical inflation field, the big bang does not predict the smooth, isotropic cosmic background radiation that is observed, because there would be no way for parts of the universe that are now more than a few degrees away in the sky to come to the same temperature and thus emit the same amount of microwave radiation.

Without some kind of dark matter, unlike any that we have observed on Earth despite 20 years of experiments, big-bang theory makes contradictory predictions for the density of matter in the universe. Inflation requires a density 20 times larger than that implied by big bang nucleosynthesis, the theory's explanation of the origin of the light elements. And without dark energy, the theory predicts that the universe is only about 8 billion years old, which is billions of years younger than the age of many stars in our galaxy.

What is more, the big bang theory can boast of no quantitative predictions that have subsequently been validated by observation. The successes claimed by the theory's supporters consist of its ability to retrospectively fit observations with a steadily increasing array of adjustable parameters, just as the old Earth-centered cosmology of Ptolemy needed layer upon layer of epicycles.

Yet the big bang is not the only framework available for understanding the history of the universe. Plasma cosmology and the steady-state model both hypothesize an evolving universe without beginning or end. These and other alternative approaches can also explain the basic phenomena of the cosmos, including the abundances of light elements, the generation of large-scale structure, the cosmic background radiation, and how the redshift of far-away galaxies increases with distance. They have even predicted new phenomena that were subsequently observed, something the big bang has failed to do.

Interesting.

Global Warming.

The more people know about science the less they believe in Global Warming:

“The conventional explanation for controversy over climate change emphasizes impediments to public understanding: Limited popular knowledge of science, the inability of ordinary citizens to assess technical information, and the resulting widespread use of unreliable cognitive heuristics to assess risk. A large survey of U.S. adults (N = 1540) found little support for this account. On the whole, the most scientifically literate and numerate subjects were slightly less likely, not more, to see climate change as a serious threat than the least scientifically literate and numerate ones.”

Here is the precis of the study. 

The precis also observes:

 More importantly, greater scientific literacy and numeracy were associated with greater cultural polarization: Respondents predisposed by their values to dismiss climate change evidence became more dismissive, and those predisposed by their values to credit such evidence more concerned, as science literacy and numeracy increased. We suggest that this evidence reflects a conflict between two levels of rationality: The individual level, which is characterized by citizens’ effective use of their knowledge and reasoning capacities to form risk perceptions that express their cultural commitments; and the collective level, which is characterized by citizens’ failure to converge on the best available scientific evidence on how to promote their common welfare. Dispelling this, “tragedy of the risk-perception commons,” we argue, should be understood as the central aim of the science of science communication.

So, basically, there are only a few educated believers in Global Warming, but those few are complete zealots about it.

The Republican "Agenda" against Science.

Second round with Anthroslug.

My points were:


1. There is a history of what might be called “Democrat anti-science” in the example of William Proxmire.

2. Although we may disagree with Proxmire, as an elected representative, he had a public duty to represent the public vis a vis what he considered to be fraud, corruption and waste.

3. The link you provided to support your claim that Inhofe was terrorizing scientists only allowed the inference that Inhofe was properly calling for investigation and prosecution of FOIA violations and/or fraud.

4. There is nothing about such a call – specifically the call that FOIA violations should be investigated and prosecuted - that should offend a reasonable scientist other than the natural tribal tendency to “circle the wagons.”

5. The term “scientist” used in the study reflected people in employment settings that in general were dependent on government money for their livelihood.

6. The “liberalism” of “scientists” was better explained by the dynamics of human psychology and the entrenchment of liberalism in academia than by some “anti-science” attitude among Republicans.

My summary of Anthroslug's response was:

1. You assert that I have accused you of being an ideologue “circling the wagon against fair criticism.”

2. I disagree with your thesis that the reason there are more Democrat scientists than Republican scientists is due to the ideological opposition of Republicans to science in the areas of climate, geology, biology and archeology.

3. In some fashion, you believe that I have called or implied that you are an “ideological liberal,” which you find humorous because some other person thinks that you are a conservative.

4. You think that I am doing to you what you think I am accusing you of doing, i.e., pulling one sentence out of context from your article, misreading that sentence and disregarding everything else as the product of ideological bias.

5. You think that I am acting like creationists and homeopathists, who do the same thing.

6. You think that my argument arises from the satisfaction I take in discounting someone who I write off on ideological grounds.

7. You claim that Republicans have been more successful in pushing “an agenda” which is “hostile to a good deal of science.”

8. You think that I have conflated Academia with science.

9. You assert that the preponderance of Democrats in science doesn’t prove “sinister indoctrination” than the preponderance of Republicans in business proves indoctrination.

10. You claim that the allegations against CRU may not show that there was criminal wrongdoing, but you acknowledge that there was a finding that the scientists were not as “forthcoming or open as they should ethically have been,” which bothers you because scientists should be held to high standards.

11. You assert that I “failed to mention” that Inhofe’s grandstanding call for prosecution was “one more damn thing” in Inhofe’s attempt to “discredit science” and “bully scientists” based not on the validity of data or arguments but on pure politics.

12. You ignored Proxmire.

My response to those points:

1. I didn’t accuse you of being an ideologue. I didn’t say that “you” were “circling the wagons” against “fair criticism.”

If you go back to my comment, you will see that I spent a paragraph pointing out that your source didn’t support the contention that Inhofe was engaged in some “broad vendetta” against science. In other words, I clicked through your post and read your supporting material and I went further and read the material that your supporting material was relying on. What I found was a Senate Report where I learned that the McCarthyite tactics included a statement that the authors of the report were investigating to determine if there were any FOIA violations.

Color me unconvinced by the data supported your contention that “it is telling that the Republican Party went from an organization that once respected science and scientists to one where prominent members in elected office can publicly call for the use of criminal prosecution in an attempt to bully scientists into silence.” I don’t see that in your supporting data. What I saw was a public official doing his job of, inter alia, overseeing the enforcement of the law.

Since I can’t fathom why anyone would be opposed to seeing the law enforced, I asked why you wouldn’t want FOIA law enforced and wrote “Why would you think otherwise, except for a "circle the wagons" mindset?”

I would think that one thing a scientist should be in favor of is the dissemination of scientific knowledge. One of the most inexplicable things I have seen in the CRU controversy was the failure of CRU to provide its back-up data for years. Fortunately, some scientific publications finally enforced the basic rule of sharing data. But why any scientist would think that withholding data from other scientists may be excused is beyond me. (Parenthetically, the Guardian article is misleading; a sin of the CRU was not complying with requests for data from other scientists, which turned into FOIA requests from other scientists, not from “ideologues” trying to “scare” scientists. So, it would seem that CRU was doing what you have accused me of doing.)

Two points:

A. Perhaps it is the case that Inhofe is engaged in a vendetta against science, but your source doesn’t make the case.

B. I didn’t say what you accused me of saying. My point was more precise, and was targeted on what you wrote.

2. I do disagree with your thesis. I explained why I did. What I haven’t seen is any explanation that tells me why I’m wrong.

Yes, I understand that you think that there is an “agenda,” but seriously outside of certain limited areas do you really think that in 99.999% of “science,” there is such an ideological separation. Do you really think that in the science that most scientists are doing – outside of life issues or race issues or “global warming” – that politics is implicated in the slightest?

If you do, I’d like to see the data that supports your view, because as we both ought to know, most science is science within an established paradigm.

On the other hand, wars are fought over money, and we know that rewards, such as money, are positive reinforcement for behavior.

Let’s take your examples. You cite archeology, but liberal democrats have stymied research in that area, See the Kennewick Man controversy. Likewise, investigation into social behavior, intelligence, genetics, etc. on the basis of racial, gender or ethnic differences is severely punished by liberals. Larry Summers wasn’t fired by conservatives after raising the issue of gender and the hard sciences for example. Likewise, the cost of true political correctness may include the recent recession since no one was particularly encouraged to investigate the social behaviors of minorities in repaying mortgages.

Those things count as “science,” don’t they? In light of those examples, why can’t we say that scientists are frightened by the anti-science ideology of Democrats? The answer doesn’t seem to lie in the fact of “censorship” but on whether there is a prior acceptance by scientists of the ideology in question. So, something precedes ideology. What is it?

3. All I know about your “ideology” is what I read here. I think that you have a tribal loyalty to scientists, which is why you tell stories about how people have some kind of prejudice to archeologists, which is weird because everyone loves archeologists.

4. When you write something, often times your argument stands or falls on the particular, discrete claims that you make. I selected the one that I did because you made a blanket claim about Republicans having a vendetta against science. I checked your source and explained why I found it wanting. Your response, ironically, was to accuse me of ideological blindness, notwithstanding the fact that I did not accuse you of ideological blindness.

5. Speaking of which, accusing me of being “like” a creationist smacks of “well poisoning.” The syllogism might go – Creationist arguments are stupid, this argument is like a Creationist argument, therefore this argument is stupid. Well, if you accept the premises, that might work.

6. I wouldn’t post a comment if I was writing something off.

7. In light of my observations in 2, I’m not seeing it.

8. I didn’t conflate academia and “science.” What I said was that “scientists” qualify as “scientists” by passing through academia, which we see is preponderantly liberal and democrat. I, therefore, argued that peer pressure is a better explanation than an “anti-science agenda.”

9. I never spoke about “sinister indoctrination.” However, I do believe that indoctrination necessarily takes place whenever anyone joins a profession, in that they are not just learning facts, but attitudes and values. Science is no different, as has been shown by Thomas Kuhn and other historians of science. If values are being indoctrinated, then it isn’t surprising that a political ideology – particularly one that says that spending public money for things that would not otherwise get private funding - can get smuggled for the ride.

And, yes, I do think that indoctrination into “Republican values” happens in “business.” Such values might include a desire for lower taxes, self-reliance, personal initiative, and “business” would be those businesses who do not have a “rent seeking” relationship with the government. Likewise, I think that the military is preponderantly Republican because of the historic support of Republicans for spending public money on national defense.

Same idea, different results.

10. The standard for criminal liability is high. I don’t know that American law or FOIA applied to the CRU. CRU’s documented conduct in withholding data, claiming that primary data was destroyed, providing only adjusted data, etc. tears at the heart of proper science. If CRU was guilty of criminal violations, they should have been prosecuted, for, among other reasons, the purpose of restoring public confidence in science. If they were not guilty, handwaiving about “stolen” e-mails misses the point. We should not have needed a leak of data to find this out.

11. I “didn’t mention” Inhofe’s history of “bullying science” because I don’t know of any such thing. I still don’t. I know that Inhofe is skeptical of AGW claims and the idea that there is a consensus, but at least he has the merit of actually believing that AGW is nonsense on the merits and is willing to deal with arguments about the science. The liberals who arranged to have Larry Summers fired and to pour concrete on the Kennewick Man site were not so honest. Their concern wasn’t that the science was nonsense and that we would be formulating expensive public policy on bad science, they were afraid that the science might upset their ideology and they have been successful in tarring those who might want to pursue such science as racist or sexist.

Leftwing regulation of science exists and is apparently socially acceptable, unlike rightwing regulation of science, which hits all the news shows when it happens. You might be interested in this article.

Last point – you’ve raised the “creation question” in Presidential debates. I’m not sure what your point is. The fact that someone – a journalist – asks a question doesn’t prove that the person who was asked the question has an anti-science agenda. In fact, 7 of the 10 candidates said they did believe in evolution.

What would the Democrat field have said? We don’t know because the point of that question is to embarrass Republican candidates who have to vouch for either their scientific bona fides or their tribal allegiance to their particular church. Mike Huckabee made a fair point about how silly that question was in the context of a presidential “debate.”

Those Anti-Science Republicans.

Anthroslug writes:

Hell, it is telling that the Republican Party went from an organization that once respected science and scientists to one where prominent members in elected office can publicly call for the use of criminal prosecution in an attempt to bully scientists into silence.

My Response:

Remember Democrat William Proxmire?

Proxmire was infamous among scientists - and readers of Analog magazine - in the '70s for his "Golden Fleece Award," which was often an exercise in exposing his own ignorance of the state of scientific issues.

But to be fair, Proxmire was a government representative and if money was being spent foolishly, he had a duty to call out such expenditures as foolish.

On the other hand, your link to Inhofe is really unsupportable. The link doesn't demonstrate that Inhofe was engaging in some broad vendetta against science. In fact, Inhofe showed more restraint that Proxmire because he is addressing a particular issue in the contest of particular suspected legal violations. The CRU and other climate researchers appear to have had a policy of violating the Freedom of Information Act. They aren't excused from complying with the FOIA - which as a scientist you should fully support. If they violated the FOIA - or committed fraud while using public money - then they should be prosecuted.

Why would you think otherwise, except for a "circle the wagons" mindset?

On which point,one thing that these scientists are is heavily indoctrinated. Look at the poll data and you can see that the highest number of Dems are in Academia, the lowest in Industry, and that a sizeable percentage declare themselves independent. That means that scientists are formed by people who are Democrat and largely liberal and supported by public money. It is also consistent with a truism of political science that most communities are effectively "one party." Even in the Old South, One-party Democrat states had Republican enclaves that were effectively all Republican. It's a truism of human nature that we like to be popular and part of the in-crowd and that only a minority is willing to accept the social ostracism of belonging to a minority.