Is American science losing its integrity under Bush?

Hi george: What you typed seems correct to me, especially the trash accumulating on our forest floors. Why not insist the loggers leave a large or medium size healthy tree in every square 70 feet by 70 feet, and take the small limbs as well as the logs. Our forests would then be like city parks, with little probability of wild fire? Neil

0 Replies

An interesting thought, Neil. The giant trees in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys which settlers found were not there at the time of the "discovery" of the new world. After foreign diseases and wars with other Indians killed off so much of the population, these trees grew up undistrubed.

Bdfore that, however, the aboriginals lived in what is referred to as "sylvan parkland." Because they practiced swidden farming (also loosely known as "slash and burn"), the natives assured that only healthy trees grown to a certain height survived. They burned off the underbrush and planted. When the field was exhausted, they burned another section and started over. When a complete circle of undergrowth had been burned off around the village, the band moved to a new site with available fresh water. Within a few human generations, the undergrowth had reclaimed the forest floor, and was prime for another village settlement. The open forests of sylvan parkland also accounted for the large numbers of bison and elk which were to be found east of the Mississippi before the period of the American revolution. As the Indians disappeared, however, the heavy forest regrew, and the ungulate herds moved on.

0 Replies

Setanta wrote:

Bdfore that, however, the aboriginals lived in what is referred to as "sylvan parkland." Because they practiced swidden farming (also loosely known as "slash and burn"), the natives assured that only healthy trees grown to a certain height survived. They burned off the underbrush and planted. When the field was exhausted, they burned another section and started over. When a complete circle of undergrowth had been burned off around the village, the band moved to a new site with available fresh water. Within a few human generations, the undergrowth had reclaimed the forest floor, and was prime for another village settlement. The open forests of sylvan parkland also accounted for the large numbers of bison and elk which were to be found east of the Mississippi before the period of the American revolution. As the Indians disappeared, however, the heavy forest regrew, and the ungulate herds moved on.

Very interesting history. I love this stuff Smile

0 Replies

Eeeek - sorry folks - I had not seen the updates here for some reason - thought the thread was dead - I will read and reflect...

0 Replies

The UCS only speaks for a few scientists at any particular time. Nobody buys all of

their stuff. Its only a "some of the people, some of the time..." kind of a thing.
Although Bush has taken biology back a century or so and hes got some shills to back his positions. All the presidents have done that.

great links

0 Replies

bookmarking to read

0 Replies

Eek - I meant to come back here, too.

reminding self.

0 Replies

Quote:

The fact that the government can get away with such sophistry reflects badly on the population which votes.

You've got to take this into perspective.

1. It is a fact that Bush was not elected by the majority of people who did vote

2. A significant percentage of minorities were denied the right to vote by republican forces in coalition with Bush

3. Billions of dollars were spent to decieve the voting public about Bush's true motives

4. Most people who vote do not watch the debates or have any knowledge of the candidates beyond hearsay or what they see on the news

5. Bush's relatives in the news industry purposely slandered the news in his favor

I could go on but I don't need to.

In terms of this issue, yes...the Bush administration is certainly hampering scientific progress...on many fronts.

0 Replies

What has that to do with the science issue? I mean, I know you try t otie it in at the end - but really, that is just a political diatribe.

0 Replies

I caught part of a program on Archimedes last night. What struck me was the fact that his teachings were lost for many centuries, now known as the Dark Ages, when religious dogma replaced an interest in science.

I thought of how the same may be happening in the US today. We have an administration that applies its religious agenda to the realm of science. Science can no longer be completely suppressed, but it can be diverted and hindered. Are we entering a new Dark Ages?

0 Replies

georgeob1 wrote:

Some of the dissenters are "independent thinkers", sometimes they are just "nut cases". The "rich and powerful" are, as you say,are often able to foist self-serving and false or harmful ideas on the public mind. However it is worth noting that such things occur throughout the political spectrum.

A rich and powerful public education monopoly, consisting of professional education bureaucrata, teacher's unions, the NEA, and text book publishers has convinced much of the American population that the cure for the ills of our educational system is a sustained monopoly for them and ever larger sums of public money to feed their ineffective system, despite the facts established by less costly and far more effective private, parochial, and charter schools,

Rich and powerful environmental groups have lobbied effectively to prevent the harvesting of wood from our national forests. The result is overgrowth and the accumulation of fuel at ground level and widespread destruction of the forests by wildfires and insect/parasitic infestations.

Many self-proclaimed "scientists" have participated actively in both deceptions, often proclaiming that they were the lonely dissenters, fighting the rich and powerful, when in fact thety were themselves dupes or participants in a conspiracy of the rich and powerful.

Hmmm - but how is a goil to KNOW???

A lot of what they say seems convincing to me - though I am quite happy to declare that I am biased towards thinking the Union folk right.

Nobody has really argued the SCIENCE of it - their claims and so on.

Perhaps nobody here is able to do so?

Anyone know of good science fora where I might investigate further?

0 Replies

D'artagnan wrote:

I caught part of a program on Archimedes last night. What struck me was the fact that his teachings were lost for many centuries, now known as the Dark Ages, when religious dogma replaced an interest in science.

I thought of how the same may be happening in the US today. We have an administration that applies its religious agenda to the realm of science. Science can no longer be completely suppressed, but it can be diverted and hindered. Are we entering a new Dark Ages?

Human affairs and history are more complex than you acknowledge here. The "Dark Ages" weren't really so dark, and the age of Archimedes was filled with war, starvation and strife. Indeed he is said to have died at the hand of a soldier in the fall of Syracuse.

Science is at best an amplifier of human actions. It doesn't make them any better or worse: it just extends their effect. Certainly humanity as a species is thriving at the hand of science, but it would be hard to demonstrate that the individual experience of life has been significantly improved by it.

In an oddly anti symmetric way religion is said to have improved the experience of life of countless individuals, while at the same time it has demonstrably been used to inflict harm on massses of others.

0 Replies

" Certainly humanity as a species is thriving at the hand of science, but it would be hard to demonstrate that the individual experience of life has been significantly improved by it."

I call you - and raise sewerage systems, alone.

0 Replies

Lol - or would you call that engineering???

Ok - smallpox vaccine alone.

0 Replies

Aha!!!!! - more on the matter of the thread - this time from the New Scientist:

(Full story here: http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/uselection/article.jsp?id=ns99996478 )

Should governments play politics with science?
Never have objective science and the business of politics been so much at odds

"At its birth two centuries ago, this republic was governed by men who had a deeper understanding of science than most of their successors. The Founding Fathers were children of the Enlightenment, of the Age of Reason.

Today we are governed by people who do not believe in evolution. They have few qualms about distorting scientific knowledge when it does not conform to their political agenda. They speak as if they are entitled not only to their own opinions but also to their own facts."

So said Kurt Gottfried, chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, in the opening passage of a damning report released in July on the politicisation of science in 21st-century America. Put bluntly, Gottfried's charge, and that of the UCS, is that President Bush does not understand science.

He has little interest in the subject, and his administration has grossly manipulated the process by which objective science informs policy. As a result, the US has made the wrong decisions over issues such as climate change, energy, reproductive health and the environment.

It is a provocative and often repeated charge, one whose implications go beyond America's borders. The US stance on global warming and energy use inevitably affects the world. But of the countries that are members of the OECD, the US spends 44% of the total funding allocated to research and development, and hosts 37% of the scientists, making any issue with American science an issue for world science. So does the charge stick?

"This administration has a clear record of interfering in the scientific process," says Democratic congressman Henry Waxman, who has been a standard-bearer for scientists critical of Bush. ?There is a repeated pattern of distorting science to support a narrow political or ideological agenda.?

In August 2003, Waxman issued a report detailing instances of alleged misuse of science by the administration. This was followed by two similar reports in February and July from the UCS. These were accompanied by a letter critical of the administration that has now been signed by over 5000 scientists, including 48 Nobel laureates and 127 members of the National Academy of Sciences..............

0 Replies

And - somewhat related:

(Full NS article here http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/uselection/article.jsp?id=ns99996484 )

"America: Closed for new scientific business?

Once America welcomed scientific talent wherever it came from and we all benefited. Now visitors are greeted with suspicion

All roads used to lead to Rome. Nowadays, for science at least, they tend to converge on the US. Whether it is Mars exploration or decoding the human genome, American dollars and intellectual resources often take the lead in global innovation, and have attracted the best scientists from around the world.

Now that the US wants to harness science and engineering to defend itself from terrorist threats, that tradition of collaboration should be serving it well. So it is ironic that the authorities have responded to fears of terrorism by pulling the welcome mat out from under foreign scientific talent.

As well as slowing down the research side of the administration's war on terror, this policy is threatening to push the US to the sidelines of science. And this at a time when its dominance is already under threat.

Murmurs of an American brain drain could be heard before the twin towers fell. Whether it was the ethical quagmire impeding research into cloning and stem cells, the rise of biomedical centres in Singapore and Europe, or the shift of software development to Bangalore in India, competition for a place in the top tiers of science and technology was getting stiffer.

But despite these challenges, American science was holding its own, partly because it did not rely exclusively on American scientists. For decades, the contribution of foreigners has been enormous - and growing steadily.

A survey in 2000 by the National Science Foundation, for example, found that 38% of PhD holders in the US were born abroad. And that did not count students who studied in the US before returning home to become productive research partners with USlabs. Without this steady stream of intellectual imports, it is hard to imagine how US science can maintain its momentum.

The US has not completely shut its doors to researchers abroad. But in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the government has imposed security changes that make it harder for scientists to enter. "It has poured molasses in the gears of the scientific enterprise internationally," says Steven Aftergood, who monitors how such changes affect the flow of scientific information for the Federation of American Scientists.

The most visible of these measures has been visa regulations that require time-consuming security checks for many foreign scientists, especially those from China, India, Russia and the Middle East. The desire to tighten the country's borders is no surprise. Many of the 9/11 hijackers entered the country with invalid visas. But American researchers say visa regulations for their foreign colleagues range from the reasonable to the comical.

A striking example comes from the September 2002 meeting in Washington DC of the National Academies Committee on US-Russian Cooperation on Nuclear Non-Proliferation, which included discussions about how to keep nuclear material out of terrorist hands............"

0 Replies

dont get all stressed deb. When someone states that they doubt whether human life has been improved by science, I see someone who isnt very familiar with its findings.

Georgeb-The textbook "monopoly" of which you speak is a pawn of the present ideaaological leanings of the several states. I may only remind you that calif and texass buy their books in one swoop , and the buyers , rule. SCience is still under siege whenever the fundamentalists periodically rule.

Bush's own science advisors are "fellow travelers ' of his mindset . consequently I have een watching Eugenie SCotts website to see whether we havent begun a minor reversal in (primarily) the life sciences

0 Replies

Link, Farmerman????

Sounds interesting!

0 Replies

ok, the site is primarily a clearing house for the teaching of evolution , but it often gets afield by looking into governmental edicts in education . The site is
HTTP://WWW.NCSEWEB.ORG

0 Replies

dlowan wrote:

Lol - or would you call that engineering???

Ok - smallpox vaccine alone.

Good points on both counts. Perhaps I should have said science hasn't made the experience of life any better for those who live relatively well.

0 Replies

Is American science losing its integrity under Bush?

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know