Is there a left-wing “War on Science”?
Influential American sceptic Michael Shermer devotes his latest column in Scientific American to arguing exactly this. Bloggers have already sent some considerable heat in Shermer’s direction, particularly because he implies that anti-science attitudes on the political left are somehow equivalent to those on the right in the contemporary USA.
Much of Shermer’s scorn seems to grow out of a distrust of technology within the environmental movement:
Whereas conservatives obsess over the purity and sanctity of sex, the left’s sacred values seem fixated on the environment, leading to an almost religious fervor over the purity and sanctity of air, water and especially food. Try having a conversation with a liberal progressive about GMOs – genetically modified organisms – in which the words “Monsanto” and “profit” are not dropped like syllogistic bombs.
I am not the only one who think he draws too-long a bow. In the USA, the Republican party has turned ignorance into a virtue through its embrace of Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman and the Tea Party. Republican politicians and their commercial and clerical backers, well aware that an educated polity and a strong research establishment threaten their vested interests, seek quite deliberately to trash both the public image once enjoyed by science and the public good it delivers.
The threat from the left seems to me far less well-coordinated and less substantial. Anti-vaccination activism remains fringe and far from confined to the left. Not all environmentalist lefties see a global conspiracy behind every GMO. And scepticism about profit motives plus a respect for evidence about the consequences of genetic modification are not necessarily a rejection of science.
Shermer, of all people, understands that political ordination doesn’t always fall on a strict left-right axis. He is possibly the world’s most prominent sceptic, an outspoken atheist who has written important books on evolution, but he is also a devoted libertarian and, until recently, a life-long gun owner. He is unusually consistent in his commitment to evidence and a sceptical view, although when he waxes positive about libertarianism I wonder if I detect a slight glow of devotion. Not a common combination of traits, and impossible to peg on a strict left-right continuum.
And yet despite some unease, I find myself in broad agreement with Shermer’s piece. Particularly it’s more modest but informative sub-heading: “How politics distorts science on both ends of the spectrum”.
Shermer’s criticism of the anti-science left is strongest when he pins the “cognitive creationists”: those who “accept the theory of evolution for the human body but not the brain”. Cognitive creationists (I prefer the label “Cultural Creationists”) come almost exclusively from the political left, and their agenda is the complete rejection of a role for biology in human affairs.
Anybody who writes about evolution and the human condition understands just how easy it is to incense both the left and right at once. I imagine if you come back to this page in a day or two, you’ll see direct evidence (although most readers of The Conversation seem to be polite and open to reasoned argument).
The threats to our only science of life – evolution by natural selection – come equally from the religious creationist right and the cultural creationist left. It is an irony in which I find some delight.
The religious right refuse to contemplate a universe that isn’t under the control of an omniscient deity. Much less a world in which everything oozes out of the bottom-up struggle among individuals. In which meaning consists in the strategies genes use to make yet more individuals and genes. I bear some grudging respect, however, for the consistency of the true believer, unwilling or unable to see that a world without supernatural top-down order goes on turning all the same.
I find it much harder to respect those who embrace reason and evidence, but then reject science when it comes to understanding the origins of the human psyche. Stephen Jay Gould, one of my earliest intellectual heroes, remains one of evolution’s most beloved advocates. But he also acted as the rhetorical bulldozer for the Marxist group Science for the People when they sought to kill the infant science of sociobiology.
So afraid were Gould and his accomplices like Dick Lewontin, Leon Kamin and Stephen Rose that a biological understanding of behaviour and culture would bring deterministic succour to dark reactionary forces that they sought to neuter the one idea on which their own careers depended: Darwinian evolution.
They very nearly succeed too. Human sociobiology retreated, had a good hard look at itself, and emerged stronger and more interesting for the experience (rebranded as human ethology, evolutionary psychology and human behavioural ecology). But many prominent evolutionists still obediently stay behind the line Gould and Lewontin drew in the sand back in 1979 in the most pompously overblown paper in the history of biology (The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme).
More is the pity, because evolution is building new and interesting bridges with all branches of the social sciences, most notably psychology and economics, and it would help to have the most talented evolutionists on board.
Long before Darwin sketched out his process of natural selection, rationalists and empiricists scrapped over whether traits and ideas are innate or gained through experience of the world. Too often the idea of innate tendencies has been used to substantiate the status quo. And too often the cause of social justice has been carried by those who see the power of experience and learning.
And yet it doesn’t have to be like that. Peter Singer penned a delightful little volume called “A Darwinian Left”. Despite a long-held suspicion of biological arguments, some academic feminists are beginning to see the value in evolution as we understand it in the 21st Century.
And while evolutionary psychology often catches headlines when it fuels old stereotypes about sex differences, at least as much work in this rather varied and dynamic field adds nuance to our understanding of gender and individual variation.
Anybody who thinks openly about the subject for several consecutive seconds can see that the nature-nurture dichotomy isn’t a two-horse race. It’s a single steed, rather dead to science, but still flogged unrelentingly by an under-inspired media. That’s why we can continue to expect plenty of stories containing phrases like “It’s All in Our Genes”, “Darwin was Wrong”, “Environment, not genes, makes us who we are”.
Science doesn’t belong to one political position or another. Science, or at least the image of science (visualise the lab-coat clad investigators of the fictional Ponds Institute) can be subverted to serve any commercial or ideological position in the short term. Shermer is correct that neither left nor right are immune from such distortions. But the self-correcting nature of science will eventually expose such subversion.
A respect for science balanced against a habit of questioning both the scientific results and the idea of scientific authority are essential ingredients in a healthy and productive society. The way I read the opposition to science, people are willing to abandon science when it deviates from their intuitions, ideologic reflexes or commercial interests.
It takes great strength of character not to reject science when it tells us something we don’t want to hear, and instead to work through what to do with the science. But that is when science’s great advantage over other ways of viewing the world becomes most apparent.
Dale Bloom
Analyst
"Science doesn’t belong to one political position or another. "
Ha ha.
I enjoyed that.
Michel Syna Rahme
logged in via email @hotmail.com
Dale and Kim, hope you don't mind me asking you a question, are you both Analysts for the same group?
Geoffrey Edwards
logged in via email @gmail.com
"the most pompously overblown paper in the history of biology"
A characterisation which seems a convenient way of avoiding the fact that it brings up some quite valid criticisms.
I quite enjoyed it myself.
Patrick Stokes
Lecturer in Philosophy at Deakin University
Great article. I do think it side-steps around the most egregious error in Shermer's piece though: in earlier writing he's expressly rejected the fact/value distinction, and so here ends up running together science denialism (e.g. the rejection of evolution, vaccine denial etc.) with moral objections to nuclear power, embryonic stem cell research etc. Like a disturbing number of prominent scientists lately, he seems to think moral facts can be naturalised, but does so in a way that just pushes the question of what makes things normative back a step. Krauss' exchange with Baggini in the Guardian a while ago is another prime example of this.
Massimo Pigliucci has a great reply to Shermer's rejection of the is/ought distinction here: http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/michael-shermer-on-morality.html
Dale Bloom
Analyst
Yes, I think the author is attempting to place people into boxes.
I personally don’t accept whaling, which apparently is being carried out for scientific research, but this doesn’t mean I reject science per se.
I also don’t accept experiments being carried out on animals, which doesn’t mean that I reject experiments being carried out.
I also reject nearly everything in social science, which is now just an extension of the bigotry, male hate and advocacy research of feminism, but this doesn’t mean I would like to see a cut in funding for all of science.
About 50% of the scientists in the world are involved in arms manufacture or employed by the military, but this doesn’t mean that I would like to see all scientists sacked and told to get a more constructive job.
So there are shades of grey.
Kim Darcy
Analyst
I must admit that if the middle of an otherwise intelligent debate about ideological positions, especially among academics and scholars, I shrivel the moment brings up the "American Christian Right' and the fricking anti-vaccers, YAWN!
Dale Bloom
Analyst
Well once again, not all Christians can be placed into the same box, and incidentally, it appears Christians could now be the most heavily persecuted religious group in the world.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/08/us-religion-christianity-persecution-idUSBRE9070TB20130108
There may be some scientists who might think that they are God’s gift to humanity, but scientists also invented the atomic bomb, (and just about every other types of bomb), they have been directly involved in creating atmospheric pollution by developing fossil fuel burning power stations and cars, and they have also been heavily involved in resource depletion and large scale environmental destruction.
So they are not beyond the ability to make various “errors of judgement”, so to speak.
Kim Darcy
Analyst
Dale, it shows how muddled these kids have become when they think that 'Christian' = 'right-wing'. And yet all the Democrat oligarchs for as long as I've been alive have been Christian kooks, freaks, fruads, or all three. But the real irony is that some of the most reactionary, homophobic, Christian bigots make up much of the Democrat's base. Sometimes they might self-identify as 'African-American baptists', at others 'the black church', but among the Democrats white oligarchs they just whisper "it's a black thing"? ;)
Dale Bloom
Analyst
For a while there various academics were labelling something as being “male” if they didn’t like it.
That may have been a passing fad, but it could become a habit amongst academics of labelling something “Christian” if they don’t like it.
This habit may also spread outside of the academic world, leading to the situation of heavy persecution of Christians, the majority of whom work and pay their taxes.
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
My sentiments exactly.
I believe that a regulatory body along the lines of the Australian Medical Association might be a good model for the whole science to try and keep all scientists in line and wrest some of the political and economic control, around development of technologies into consumable products, away from large scientifically illiterate corporations and governments.
Dale Bloom
Analyst
I’m not too certain whether that would work either.
I can remember reading an account of the likely affects of a new type of bomb developed by one of our military allies, which would indiscriminately affect people over a very wide area, and cause them to explode due to a sudden decrease in atmospheric pressure.
Apparently various scientific experiments were conducted with this type of bomb, before a report was written by some involved in medical science.
That type of bomb has yet to be banned as far as I can ascertain.
I really don’t know the answer regards how to improve the ethics and morality of scientists throughout the world.
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
Outside the medical sphere, with its ethics committees, medical boards and professional associations, it seems to be a bit of a wild west with the focus on personal scientific prestige and career improvement and not enough on personal and societal responsibilities.
Yuri Pannikin
Director
You may mean thermobaric weapons - Big Blu, fuel-air bombs, FAE. If so, already been widely used.
A derivative used on the Bali Sari nightclub I believe.
Dale Bloom
Analyst
Yes, it is a worry that scientists can even contemplate developing such a device, and then go on to develop it.
There could be a change in the wording.
Instead of “People willingly abandon science contradicting their ideologic or commercial reflexes”,there could be, “Scientist can abandon any form of morality or ethics that contradicts their ideological or commercial reflexes.”
Kim Darcy
Analyst
Rob, thanks for raising this issue. It is one I have been banging on about for well over a decade now. But it is refreshing to see an Australian academic natural scientist weigh into the debate. Ironically, we just spent the long weekend thrashing out the exact same issue, except from the perspective of a left-wing Social Sciences academic. I think you'll be a bit spooked when you say how many of the examples you use in your article, were also raised in Clive's.
https://theconversation.edu.au/climate-change-signals-the-end-of-the-social-sciences-11722
Kim Darcy
Analyst
Rob, there is simply no question that the American left - especially its Social Science academic wings - are notoriously hostile to the natural/physical sciences and have been for decades. In fact in the US, it took actual left-wing natural science academics to point out just what incredible damage American social science and humanities academics were doing to the left-wing project.
The first big guns to call out the anti-science academic left did so nearly 20 years ago now. In 1994, Biologist…
Read moreYuri Pannikin
Director
Great post, Kim.
As a person naturally inclined to the Left, and to the 'hard' environmental and biological sciences in particular, it pains me to see the nonsense and anti-science propagated and disseminated by this new 'Cult of Left', which is every bit as irrational and self-delusional as the worst of the economic and religious right.
Julie Roccisano
Counsellor
Thank you Rob for another interesting article.
This article actually gets me thinking again about how many of us humans tend to 'cherry-pick' so that we don't have to go through the sometimes unpleasant experience of questioning our beliefs. My thinking about this has lead me to the conclusion that reality (or as close as we can get with the evidence we have) is actually far easier to deal with than some cognitively constructed idea about how things are. When we can accept reality then we actually have a chance of changing what we can or accepting what we can't change.
Though, that said, I am not in a position of sufficient power to want to convince others of a particular way of thinking so they then act in a way that benefits me! Perhaps if I took up politics I would be less critical of scientific papers that concluded what I wanted them too ;)
Dania Ng
Retired factory worker
If anyone is interested in some intelligent discussion on scientism, there is a new book out - ' The Magician's Twin: C.S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism' (John G. West Ed.). See youtube clip on associated doco here: http://www.youtube.com/user/cslewisweb?feature=watch, interview with Dr West here: http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/exposing_scientism
Baron Pike
logged in via Facebook
If it takes a lefty to put perspective on your right wing so called scientific simple minded dogma (random accidents supplied life with intelligence, etc.) then hurray for them. And they're still out there and growing.
Some good ones right there in Australia.
Jack Arnold
Director
An unusual contribution Rob, perhaps a little over my scientific head. It may be a little old fashioned, but I remember that science as the art of counting & measuring, doing experiments & testing theories, basing comment on hard data rather than untried opinion.
Then quietly in the bushes arose this behemoth of scientism, the culture of criticism of Science without doing supporting experimentation. Reminds me of Murphy's Law for Solicitors; "Those who can make a fortune, those who can't, join a Law Faculty to ensure that legal standards never rise". (Apologies to Oscar Wild ... and Murphy).
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
First of all I am saying the following as a former sciencist and a life long 'lover' of all things science.
But to some extent the anti-science 'league' has a point.
All our environmental problems have been brought to us by science and scientists. Everything from global warming to DDT which would not have been possible without the development of chemical engineering and the internal combustion engine.
So the fear that non-scientists have GMOs is probably not entirely unfounded.
Just…
Read moreGreg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
Such organisations should have the power to halt certain lines of research if the organisation democratically decides that that research is being abused by companies or that the environmental risks out weigh the industrial benefits.
E.G. What if research on DDT was oversighted by both chemcial engineers AND ecologists / biologists. Perhaps the DDT disaster might have been averted.
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
I nice example of a scientist recognizing his responsibility for a discovery he contributed to was the Manhattan Project scientist who gave the technology to the Russian, despite the fact he would be charged with treachery/espionage, to ensure that the Americans never used the A bomb as an offensive weapon against the USSR.
But what is need is a more powerful scientific organisation rather than haphazardly relying on individual scientists to do the right thing or not.
Baron Pike
logged in via Facebook
Spoken like the irresponsible idiot that did the actual deed. The person who helped bring on the cold war and almost a nuclear hell during the Cuban missile crisis. America helped reconstructed both Europe and Japan after the war and then moved out. Russia moved in and deconstructed As much of Europe as it could.
Baron Pike
logged in via Facebook
Censor the unpleasant discoveries, is that it?
Baron Pike
logged in via Facebook
Hey, I bet you'd have stopped the use of penicillin during WW2.
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
Assured mutual destruction stopped both the USSR and the USA short of pushing the buttons.
I shudder to think what might have happened in place of the cold war if an exclusively nuclear armed USA came under the control of an adminstration such as that of George.W.Bush.
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
No Baron, not censor discoveries, just regulate them by spreading half the political power, with respect industrial policy, to the scientific community.
As they say, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
And that has certainly been the case with discoveries like DDT thus far. Perhaps if the political/economic power of big business was shared with the scientific community then the DDT disaster would never have happened and DDT, as an insecticide, would have been vetoed by an equally powerful scientific…
Read moreGreg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
I wouldn't have stopped anything Byron.
I would have deferred to the experts in the hypothetical AMA like organisation to decide whether or not penicillin posed a net benefit or a net threat to humanity and planet earth.
Perhaps such an organisation would have vetoed the widespread and unecessary use of penicllin in animal feed and over prescribing which has lead to the situation where penicillin is now almost useless due to widespread resistance to it!
Baron Pike
logged in via Facebook
You made my point. You seem to think that some committee of scientists can predict the future probabilities well enough to make it somehow safer than otherwise. Unfortunately there are those who can make the future serve their own ends much more efficiently and destructively if and when they wish to. Stalin was one of course.
Baron Pike
logged in via Facebook
There would have been no cold war if we'd been exclusively armed, so if that's how you would answer these questions, you're mind is closed.
And there likely would have been no George W or H W Bush to concern us. The fact is you have no idea what would have occurred, good or bad. You're a second guesser after the fact who thinks he'd be a good one to prognosticate. You're not.
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
As opposed to some private citizens like you and business people who focus of short term profits or convenience and have ZERO capability or inclination to consider the long term consequences of any particular technology.
I would sooner put my faith in the said type of scientific organization rather than put my faith in YOUR judgement of matters scientific!
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
You are of course assuming that the USA is an entirely benevolent and responsible nation.
I disagree with you Baron. On more than one occasion in recent history, the USA has proven itself to be a pack of trigger happy and greedy dickheads!
Baron Pike
logged in via Facebook
I'd put my faith in real scientists (which you are not) to use good sense and good intentions, because any tyrant can ignore the hell out of your silly little group and forge ahead. And no free nation would let you tell its citizens how to shape their futures. You can't tell an inventor what he can't invent, and you're a fool to think you can.
Baron Pike
logged in via Facebook
Of course we're no more benevolent than Australians, and no less. Show me a nation that hasn't been dick-headed here and there. But you're a fool if you really believe we're trigger happy to any fault. Unfortunately we've taken on the obligation of saving the sorry asses of those like you, who'd otherwise hand all secrets over to the Stalins of the world and expect he'd give you a peaceful spot somewhere in Siberia in return.
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
Baron, your whole culture is dominated by trigger happy dickheads who measure the size of their guns, and perhaps the size of their RUVs, rather than the size of their penis.
So it is hardly surprising that your military culture reflects your increasingly dysfunctional society and that half the world hates your collective guts!
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
"Of course we're no more benevolent than Australians"
I would have to agree with you their Baron. Too many of our politicians seem to suffer from American envy/worship and would follow America to hell rather than exercise their intellect and call America out when they are clearly behaving like dickheads on the international stage.
I have more faith than a politically and economically powerful scientific organization, composed of both American and Australian scientists, would do a far better job of exercising wise restraint on both our politicians and business leaders.
Baron Pike
logged in via Facebook
How do you get a politically powerful scientific organization that will go against the politicians that would have to make both it and their so-called feckless country powerful.
Easy talking out of you know where when you presume that if Australia had the power to protect its neighbors, it would actually protect its neighbors.
Baron Pike
logged in via Facebook
Is that a confirmation that you fellers fight with your penises?
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
You can get blue collar workers to form unions and successfully challenge the power of business elites re wages and conditions.
So I can't see any reason why the scientific community could not similarly get together and challenge the political power of governments if they so chose to do so. In fact I would go as far as to say that the scientific community has a responsibility to do this particularly that part of it that is involved in industrial and weapons research etc that have global implications.
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
As a country, you are far more motivated by preserving your oil, and other economic, interests than you are in saving 'sorry asses'.
Most of the world can see through this political spin and that is why much of the world despises your nation.
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
If countries behaving like 'dickheads' was an Olympic sport then America would win all the gold medals!
Patrick Stokes
Lecturer in Philosophy at Deakin University
....aaaaaaand we're back.
Sorry, Clive, I just have to unsubscribe from this. Surprised the mods haven't shut it down already to be honest.
Yuri Pannikin
Director
I too found great disappointment in Gould's support for the Marxist position in the sociobiology debate. Thank goodness for Ed Wilson and others who fought this political determinism.
Good piece as always, Rob.
wilma western
logged in via email @bigpond.com
An awful lot of stereotyping going on here. Do you blame Marie Curie for the Manhattan Project? Who do you blame for the determined recruitment of Nazi rocket propulsion etc scientists at WW2 end? Who would you blame for the release of medicines that have not been properly trialled? Scientists or multi-national companies driven by the profit motive? Slack governments?
I agree however that scientists can get bad press from both"left" and "right " groups if you accept these rather inexact categories. But as an academic debate - over most prople's heads.
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
No Wilma I wouldn't blame Marie Curie for the Manhattan Project. But I would certainly blame Julius Robert Oppenheimer for not considering the wider consequences of his cooperation with the US government.
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
If it wasn't for the 'nuclear spies' that handed over nuclear technology to the Russians then I dread to think what America might have done with their overwhelming destructive power during the 50s and 60s.
Baron Pike
logged in via Facebook
Obviously you have no idea how dumb that statement is.
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
Well I certainly don't have any doubts about how 'dumb' the average American is, of which you are an excellent example!
Yuri Pannikin
Director
Well . . . I'm not American and it's still a very dumb statement.
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
Good for you Yuri - you are entitled to you opinion.
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
I don't see any difference at all to the medical profession regulating the research and activities of its members through ethics committees and boards and exerting political pressure through professional associations etc and the rest of the science community regulating research and activities of its members and exerting political pressure by means of similar but multi disicpliary structures.
Baron Pike
logged in via Facebook
Luckily, there aren't enough otherwise respected dummies out there to waste their time on your looney ideas.
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
Baron you just toddle off back to you're over sized personal arsenal, you're over sized meal and your over sized SUV!
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
And not forgetting your over rated opinion of your country!
Baron Pike
logged in via Facebook
Sounds a lot like envy, folks, doesn't it?
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
I would have said disgust!
Baron Pike
logged in via Facebook
Even better.
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
See that's one of the major problems with America.
No doubt you honestly believe this statement.
No doubt you collectively believe you are god's gift to the earth and to humanity when in reality your just a modern version of the Roman empire with all its flaws, hypocrisy and arrogance and doomed to pass into history at some point along with every other arrogant civilization that risen and then fallen.
I will concede that america has contributed some gold nuggets to humanity, NASA and space exploration being one prominent one.
But unfortunately you have to wade through one hell of a lot of crap to get to those gold nuggets.
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
Perhaps if you were collectively a little more circumspect about your temporary place in this world you would be some what less reviled by much of it!
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
No body, least of all Australians, respect an egotistical ar$ehole.
Well except for our ar$e kissing politicians perhaps.
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
You know what Baron, I was just thinking that Sir Johannes "Joh" Bjelke-Petersen is not a bad 'model' for what America has sadly become.
Google him Baron, he was QLD premier for a decade or so due to his electoral gerrymander.
Such was his ego and the shock to his system when his demise as premier finally came, that he locked himself in his office and refused to come out!
Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen is what America has become.
And it is what inevitably happens when your various hangers on are too afraid or unwilling to tell you "no" when the answer of "no" is warranted.
Baron Pike
logged in via Facebook
"I was just thinking" tells me I can safely ignore the rest. Thinking s supposed to develop relevance, and so far you can't seem to do either.
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
And your post just illistrates how you and your america have STOPPED thinking about the direction you are collectively headed in!
Baron Pike
logged in via Facebook
You shouldn't join a country that would have you as a citizen, and we wouldn't have you.
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
That's OK Baron because I would want to be associated in any way with your America!
I would be too embarrased by the collective behaviour of my country!
Baron Pike
logged in via Facebook
Your country has you and it shouldn't.
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
I am not the only aussie who thinks americans are collectively idiots pal.
And judging by what some Irish colleagues have said about the same subject, much of Europe also thinks Americans are idiots.
Like the high school classroom idiot, you are so focused on yourselves and your prowess that you just don't realise that your class mates are just patronising you to get rid of you!
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
From what a former Greek colleague told me about the Gulf War, the local Greeks deliberately sent your military forces on a 'scenic route' through narrow streets when they landed in Greece on their way to Iraq.
Your country just aint as widely respected by ordinary folks as you all seem to assume.
Yuri Pannikin
Director
Greg,
Any person with a modicum of intelligence could easily judge who the idiot is in this exchange.
Patrick Stokes
Lecturer in Philosophy at Deakin University
Well this is a really illuminating exchange. I feel so much richer - privileged, even - for watching this titanic intellectual engagement unfold.
Here's a thought: maybe instead of calling each other names we could go back to discussing Clive's article?
Patrick Stokes
Lecturer in Philosophy at Deakin University
(Yuri: that wasn't directed at you, I just replied to the most recent post).
Yuri Pannikin
Director
Yes, understood. My feelings exactly.
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
Well I feel as though I have vented enough Patrick so I might even take your advice.
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
You opinion is noted.
Baron Pike
logged in via Facebook
"Your country just aint as widely respected by ordinary folks as you all seem to assume." Must be because we have to beat them off with sticks at the borders.
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
By the way Yuri, would you care to enunciate why you think it is such a rediculous idea to apply ethics and political lobbying to the whole of science, particularly with areas like weapons research, along similar lines to the manor in which they are applied to the medical field - ethics committees, medical boards and proffessional medical associations etc.
Such mechanisms have in no way stymied medical research but they have succeeded in fostering very high ethical standards in the west, both within the profession and within government polcies concerning medical services.
Greg Boyles
Lanscaper and former medical scientist
"A respect for science balanced against a habit of questioning both the scientific results and the idea of scientific authority are essential ingredients in a healthy and productive society."
All true and admirable and all that.
But outside the medical sciences and medicine this self questioning and self correction is limited to how can it be done better or bigger.
The science community cannot deny that every single large scale environmental and political problem that we are dealing with…
Read moreBaron Pike
logged in via Facebook
" Science is at present largely reactive like our politicians."
Dummmmmmmb.