We heard about the military-industrial complex. In his farewell address, President Eisenhower also said this:
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
H/T Transterrestrial.
on Nov 27th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
All of these Climategate matters brings to mind the notion of “cabalic” acid. The seminal fluid that springs from inbred thinking of like mined people. Highly corrosive to the scientific method and its value to society.
on Nov 27th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Uh, er, Carol, the G.W. Bush Administration pretty much eliminated any possibility that the scientific elite would hold any sway. We had eight years of anti-science.
Your worries are unfounded.
on Nov 27th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Amazing Mark. Your consistency in being wrong is never to be equaled!
Are you saying that there was no funding of science for those eight years, or are you simply regurgitating your Leftist mandated talking points about stem cell research? Which did not prevent private funding, only public money.
on Nov 27th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
The history of science is quite clear on this subject. “Big Science,” as the historians refer to it, was a product of the Second World War in the United States and other Western democracies. The Soviet Union, of course, was a slightly different case, since science was mostly centrally planned like everything else in a communist state.
Prior to the Second World War, nearly all science in the US was conducted in small, somewhat isolated groups, which were mostly found in the universities and the corporations. Little or no government funds flowed into those groups.
However, with the advent of the Second World War, the scientific community was mobilized, so to speak, for the war effort, the Manhattan Project being perhaps the best and biggest example. That was the sort of Big Science that was Eisenhower’s direct experience, and that was likely on his mind in his speech quoted here.
Unfortunately, US science was never fully demobilized after the War, and therefore never fully regained its independence. Instead, it was highjacked for the Atoms for Peace project, the Space Race, the lunar missions, and the Cold War generally.
In a nutshell, Big Government created Big Science.* All the unpredictable and usually negative consequences that naturally follow from political involvement are evident in today’s large-scale scientific endeavors. Climatology is only the latest discipline to suffer.
___________________________________
* There is also a technological imperative associated with Big Science that requires Big Money, i.e., certain scientific undertakings require the development of new technology before the science can move forward, and the technology is fantastically expensive and risky. Only governments, usually, have the ability to raise such funds and lose them.
on Nov 28th, 2009 at 6:56 am
Steve - with very few exceptions, throughout my wrking life I have found lawyers to be among the smartest people I have known. This is especially true of those who had to pass the bar exam in order to practice. What’s up with you?
How the Bush administration has systematically distorted science to weaken regulations and serve political ends. Among the areas in whcih they either lied abut,suppressed or distorted science are air pollutin rules, drinking water, carcinogens in our water and food, toxic metals in the environment, chemicals that workers have to ingenst while working, consumer safety testing, and, of course, atomspheric deterioration. Since you don’t read, and get yur informatino from talk radio, you will never be exposed to any of this information. So all I can say is trust me. Har har.
The stem cell things was a deep bow and curtsey to the right wing Christians.
on Nov 28th, 2009 at 7:00 am
Steve - with very few exceptions, throughout my working life I have found lawyers to be among the smartest people I have known. This is especially true of those who had to pass the bar exam in order to practice. What’s up with you?
Here’s a few of the many ways in which the Bush administration systematically distorted science to weaken regulations and serve political ends. Among the areas in which they either lied about,suppressed or distorted science are air pollution rules, drinking water, carcinogens in our water and food, toxic metals in the environment, chemicals that workers have to ingest while working, consumer safety testing, and, of course, atomspeheric deterioration. Since you don’t read, and get your information from talk radio, you will never be exposed to any of this information. So all I can say is trust me. Har har.
The stem cell things was a deep bow and curtsey to the right wing Christians.
Sorry to repost - the “o” is sticking on my computer and I am hunched over it anyway, as I am in the middle of doing TG dishes. But even so disadvantaged, Steve, you are a piece of cake to deal with.
on Nov 28th, 2009 at 9:38 am
And you continue to make stuff up, regurgitate your Leftist talking points. You are like the college sophmore, who with four semesters of Sociology behind him, feels liberated from the orthodoxy of your parent’s (which you never really understood) and without the benefit of the real world experience, you feel yourself clever (which you are not).
You make up stuff, ignore information that contradicts your ideas, and proclaim your self open-minded, when the reality is that you are so cloistered in your made up world, you cannot comprehend how wrong you are.
And this from someone who is closer to my age than a true college sophmore. I don’t hate you or fear you. I pity you.
on Nov 28th, 2009 at 9:48 am
Steve- you simply don’t have the power to inflict any suffering on me. You don’t have an intellectual platform from which to cast your barbs, and are left to hurling mudballs.
You could learn a think or two from your friend Budge - if you want to inflict pointed barbs at other people, you need to say things that are true. Saying taht I am sophomoric or that I live in a “made up” world, or that I make up facts or that I lack real world experience - none of that is true. You might as well yell that I have a tiny pecker - it’s about as meaningful.
You say but one thing of value here - that I have a closed mind. As Nader reminds us, when we label ourselves, we close our minds. I have labeled myself a “European-style socialist”, lacking a better way to put it, and in so doing to block out alternative ways to create systems that produce the most possible good for the most possible people.
Steve - you simply don’t present cogent analyses of anything going on. Your platform is that you are right and I am stupid.
Put up, jerk face, or shut up.
on Nov 28th, 2009 at 9:52 am
Oh, jeez. Where’s the love.
on Nov 28th, 2009 at 10:23 am
Mark: “Steve- you simply don’t have the power to inflict any suffering on me.”
Mark: “Put up, jerk face [Steve], or shut up.”
Seems to me Steve caused grievous suffering to Mark’s ego for their to be such a reflexive, emotional outburst.
Steve: “…when the reality is that you [Mark] are so cloistered in your made up world, you cannot comprehend how wrong you are.”
What’s amazing is how Wulfgar has expressed the very same observation about Mark over at LiTW.
—————
Now what do we know about the depth of Mark’s argument as it relates to Ike’s warning when all Mark has is “what about Bush?” Typical liberal deflection debate tactic.
on Nov 28th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Craig - you have had a hard-n for me since our run-in at ECW wherein you challenged me to put up a cogent argument about Lancet. When I did, you said “BS” and ran away. You’ve been nipping at me ever since.
You had nuthin’. You still got nuthin’, though you have a little more than Steve, who is an imbecile.
If I am indeed “cloistered in a made-up world”, then put up the “made-up” part of it for analysis. If I cannot comprehend how wrong I am, give it to me straight - what am I wrong about, and why? Let’s talk turkey, it being Thanksgiving and all.
Do you think me so arrogant as to think I understand anything well enough to be right? Of course I don’t! It’s a cognitive process that goes on for years, and assembly line where some things fit and other things don’t. When we reach a certain age, we have gathered enough data to put up a cogent analysis of how things might work. Maybe right, certainly subject to individual intellectual and emotional makeup and counterargument, but not “made up”. That’s juvenile.
My debate with Wulfgar is that Democrats do not present us with meaningful choices. You don’t have the chops for that argument, as it is plain from what you have written that you cannot comprehend that Republicans and Democrats essentially pursue the same agenda. So your opinions about Wulfgar’s opinions about me are exactly and precisely useless.
And finally, jerk-face, my argument about science and the Bushies was not deflection, but rather real-world evidence that Ike’s fears of the scientific-technological establishment, unlike the military-industrial one, had not come true.
Bite me.
on Nov 28th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
“You might as well yell that I have a tiny pecker.”
I always wondered what the “T” in Mark T. meant. Why, it means Tiny!
The psychological similarities between Mark and Wulfgar are quite convincing, besides TMS (Tiny Man Syndrome). The main difference being Wulfgar was the fat kid in school always getting beat up on the playground and is now out to get even by random blog beatings; whereas, Mark just wants someone to beat him up.
Anyway, good smack down with that college sophomore stuff, Steve.
on Nov 28th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Mark: “Steve- you simply don’t have the power to inflict any suffering on me.”
Mark: “And finally, [Craig]jerk-face…Bite me.”
You do appear somewhat chaffed. Deep breaths, in and out.
on Nov 28th, 2009 at 8:21 pm
Hoo-whee, it sure it the fan this time..
‘Back in 2006, when the eminent US statistician Professor Edward Wegman produced an expert report for the US Congress vindicating Steve McIntyre’s demolition of the “hockey stick”, he excoriated the way in which this same “tightly knit group” of academics seemed only too keen to collaborate with each other and to “peer review” each other’s papers in order to dominate the findings of those IPCC reports on which much of the future of the US and world economy may hang. In light of the latest revelations, it now seems even more evident that these men have been failing to uphold those principles which lie at the heart of genuine scientific enquiry and debate. Already one respected US climate scientist, Dr Eduardo Zorita, has called for Dr Mann and Dr Jones to be barred from any further participation in the IPCC…’
http://tinyurl.com/yk3uvgn
on Nov 28th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Mark, you only give more reasons for pity.
on Nov 29th, 2009 at 10:00 am
Carol - you have reduced all of the scientific research into climate deterioration into a few emails, and even failed to contextualize them. Tell me you are better than this.
Craig and Steve: If only you could feel the humor flowing through my veins as I write things for your consumption, you would realize that I am messing with your minds. I don’t care what you think about things, or about me. I merely like poking you with a stick and then watching the results.
I have feelings, I care what people think about me, and have often taken hard shots in the shorts and had my mood destroyed for a while by things posted to me or about me on the unnertubes. But neither of you have that ability. I don’t know why. I just don’t care.
on Nov 29th, 2009 at 10:53 am
Gosh Mark, given your humorless, emotional outbursts it seems you are jabbing yourself. Come on now, breath in and out. OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!
Denial doesn’t make it not so. When told what you wrote at ECW was BS, you had a complete, public meltdown, hissy fit at your ‘Dear Diary’ blog. Obviously you care despite the transparent denials.
on Nov 29th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Mark is not an intellectual.
Nah nah na-nah-nah.
Mark is not an intellectual.
Nah nah na-nah-nah.
Mark is not an intellectual.
Nah nah na-nah-nah.
on Nov 29th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
Yes, I am not an intellectual. Never claimed to be. Claimed not to be, as I don’t have the ability to sit and read the complex thoughts of others as laid out in texts from years ago. ADD or something like that I suppose.
Craig - I don’t recall a “hissy fit”. Perceptions are odd things. I was a little piqued that you thought that simply walking away had some dignity about it, but it didn’t matter. You had no answer. I simply came to understand that you had no chops. So go away.