j_b

well, for closet libertarians like JayB anyone to the left of milton freedman is a dangerous commie so don't be surprised by the manicheist rhetoric. the fig-leaf claim is freedom for the individual, yet in fact it's 'economism' which translates into everything being subject to the "law" of supply and demand, including that which has no intrinsic economic purpose.

Oh, but that would be just "anedoctal evidence". I'm well aware of your rhetorical modus operandi. Get lost. your failure to substantiate your argument with facts is again duly noted.

there is a difference between censoring and countering an argument (even if it means cutting someone off), no?

so, how many do you know of who do that? or is it just another strawman argument?

it isn't possible. if there is any kind of political bias among scientists, it is small and on average. such bias cannot explain that there are essentially no serious publications arguing against the consensus about climate change, evolution, etc ... we are then very far from the picture painted by rightwing hysterics about a leftwing conspiracy that would prevent studies/publications favorable to conservative politics in these domains. the answer is much simpler: if there are no such studies, it's because they'd be scientifically poor and they wouldn't be published.

sorry, my bad. i did not realize you just wanted to say that "bias exist" .... then, so what? Can you support this hypothesis taking into consideration the political leanings of educational institutions? we do know that higher education types, on average, lean slightly to the left, although it remains to be seen that it is indeed the case among physical/life scientists. i'd say it's probably true as well but certainly not anywhere near the extent found in the 'softer' sciences. in any case, this political preference (on average) would in no way allow or permit the suppression of good science in order to advance a political point of view. in fact, in my experience, most scientifics are blind to politics when they talk shop.

this is what you get for sloppy thinking. if you pay attention my "lame snipes" are not contentless but address specifically how your argument isn't really relevant to the point you are trying to make. no, i claimed that systematic political bias among scientists to the point where other scientific points of view are suppressed from peer-reviewed publications (since this is your underlying pretense), is not found in modern science. your example is not one of political bias (for the most part) and the minority point of view could still publish i believe. no, what i find laughable is your interpreting a cable show to infer systematic political bias in science. the documentary may have been a good one for all i know. so, in your world you assert and others do the substantiating?

the leap of logic arise when you recognize that individuals are biased and then conclude that there exists a systematic political bias among scientists. if anything political preferences among scientists should more or less reflect the overall population. there are systematic 'biases' in science but they arise from the history of scientific ideas, which is a good thing.

"In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. For example, the National Academy of Sciences report, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, begins: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise" [p. 1 in (5)]. The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and answers yes: "The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue" [p. 3 in (5)]. Others agree. The American Meteorological Society (6), the American Geophysical Union (7), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling (8). The drafting of such reports and statements involves many opportunities for comment, criticism, and revision, and it is not likely that they would diverge greatly from the opinions of the societies' members. Nevertheless, they might downplay legitimate dissenting opinions. That hypothesis was tested by analyzing 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords "climate change" (9). The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position." http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

so, your interpretation of a program on cable about migrations to America is the evidence you provide to support your claim of a systematic political bias w.r.t evolution or climate change?

funny how the "evidence is out there", yet you can't name it ...

I love watching the pseudo-scientists squirm when their orthodoxy is challenged. I doubt very highly that you know much about the "scientific process". Let me tell you out of personal experience how bias enters into the scientific "process". In a former position, we paid an outside agency to perform certain screening measurements for phenotypes "of interest" on lines of mutagenized mice. The lines of animals, and all their screening measurements were made available to staff at the site - a necessity for data entry. There was a vested interest in finding lines of animals exhibiting the phenotypes of interest, and prove the results were reproducible, inheritable, and penetrable. We noticed many false positives in lines where an initial erroneous measure, or simple outlier led over-eager lab staff to "find" more of the same. A classic example of self-fulfilling prophesy. If you believe that in the real world, measurements are taken in a vacuum in pure, completely controlled studies with no possibility of bias, data-massaging, or other corrupting factor entering the collection, analysis, or interpretation of the data, then you are the one living in "la-la" land. classic. from anecdotal evidence to the indictment of an entire field. laughable. this certainly would not pass review.

the issue isn't individual bias which i don't think anyone is claiming doesn't exist, but the leap of logic which consist in claiming that since 'bias' exists, there is an institutional political bias with regard to issues like climate change, evolution, environment, etc ...

i only know about the reality of the scientific process which is very different from that portrayed in right wing lalaland. as for funding, i edited my comment to differentiate between different levels of the funding process. do you have evidence supporting your contention that politics determines what is published in independent (non-industry funded) peer-reviewed journals?

should i be surprised? nothing stands in the way of politics, right? is this the evidence? you understand what evidence means, right? what i protest is your weak attempts at smearing whichever reporter isn't embedded. i won't even bother discussing your obvious double standard according to which reporters are supposed to report only the propaganda that suits your politics (and now a little "shock and awe" for the world to see)

which line dimwitt? where is your evidence?????? don't you have any shame smearing individuals who risk their lives to report the news while all you have is conjecture?

cut the crap PP. you have speculations, that's all. when you have evidence, we can talk again. http://www.ap.org/pages/about/whatsnew/wn_040505b.html

you people obviously don't know anything about the scientific process if you think that political bias determines what gets published and what gets funded (without which science cannot take place). the great irony in all of this is the silence by the ususal pundits about industry funded science and its lack of independence versus the hoopla about independent science that does not sustain the right wing talking points. pathetic. edit: what gets funded at the program level (at the federal level is obviously another matter)

The daily butchery in iraq has already been relegated to page 19 (way after round-the-clock-schiavo-pope-mjackson "coverage") but nooooo, the wingnuts, still, are not satisfied: they need to smear the very few reporters left who are dedicated enough to do their jobs (instead of having the press run government produced 'news'). How far will the witch-hunting go?

why don't you tell us something we don't already know about you. get help.

“The AP's crime? In so many words, they are guilty of showing the conflict in Iraq the way that it is, and not the way that the conservative blogosphere wishes that it were. The right wants those pictures of rose petals and liberation parades that Dick Cheney promised them three years ago, and now they're mad they didn't get them. If reality bites, don't blame them.” [...] “Easy and safe and free -- free to sit at a computer and try to smear the courageous Americans -- and Iraqis -- who are getting shot at while they bring our cherished First Amendment back home.” http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000873117

wow, it is a rather sad commentary on nurture that when 1350 scientists announce in a report "60% of global ecosystems supporting human life are seriously compromised by human activities and future development is in doubt", some individuals want to suspend democracy and threaten violence in order to sustain their "economic freedom" at all and any cost, while others keep repeating "undeveloped nations and their birth rate are the cause of the problem" in spite of all available evidence to the contrary (note the undertone of racism) of course, none of this will prevent them from continuing to shout "communist" at anyone who questions the sacrosanct all productivist model of development that is largely responsible for this sad state of affair ...

upon further reflection, if you are referring to my ability to feel compassion for those trying to eek out a desperate living out of slash and burn versus my total lack of empathy for joe investor making another buck out of another acre of former rainforest to raise cattle, i guess you are right i do feel there is a difference.

where does this come from? no, it would not be ok but the poor we claim to want to save would at least see something for the degradation of their ecosystems especially if they did not grow cash crops. anyway, i do not necessarily feel we have any great moral authority to tell brazilians to preserve the forests we failed to preserve in the northern hemisphere, although it'd be great if they did because it is in their own interest as well as ours.

80% of on-going deforestation in the amazon (much of it illegal) is to raise beef and soy in huge holdings that are the property of multinational corps and the uber rich. Most all of the stuff produced is exported to europe and north america.