Posted on 08/15/2007 1:32:23 PM PDT by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
Liberals themselves have resisted scientific research that doesn't suit their own beliefs. Bjorn Lomberg, the Swedish scientist and renowned global warming skeptic, is treated slightly better than a heretic in Calvin's Geneva. The European left rejects scientific advice on genetically modified crops, demonizing them as "Frankenfoods." Before bringing up genetic or social science research that reflects negatively on the capabilities or performance of racial minorities, women or other human groupings favored by the left, you would do well to remember "The Bell Curve." And for decades, an avalanche of data detailing the failures of "scientific" socialism did little to shake the true believers in its superiority as an economic system.
When liberals accuse conservatives of opposing science, what they often mean is that conservatives simply disagree with their policy preferences, especially in the matter of bioethics. President Bush's refusal to commit federal funds for embryonic stem-cell research was not "anti-science," but rather a move that put exceedingly modest limits on science. Does anyone other than madmen believe that science should be free to operate with no moral limits imposed by society? If scientific curiosity is its own justification, then prepare to pay your respects to Dr. Mengele.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
How DARE he!
/sarc
It’s pretty easy to tell that leftists don’t respect science because they’re always accusing conservatives of that. The truth is always exactly the opposite of what the leftists are saying.
They say there are certain kinds of issues which make smart people sound stupid and, in particular, which conservatives who don’t think hard enough about them can easily end up on the wrong side of. Balkans policy is one such, the theory of evolution is another.
Global warming, like evolution, is a driven by belief and ideology rather than grounded in science.
"When European immigrant groups in the United States scored below the national average on mental tests, they scored lowest on the abstract parts of those tests. So did white mountaineer children in the United States tested back in the early 1930s... Strangely, Herrnstein and Murray refer to "folklore" that "Jews and other immigrant groups were thought to be below average in intelligence." It was neither folklore nor anything as subjective as thoughts. It was based on hard data, as hard as any data in The Bell Curve. These groups repeatedly tested below average on the mental tests of the World War I era, both in the army and in civilian life. For Jews, it is clear that later tests showed radically different results--during an era when there was very little intermarriage to change the genetic makeup of American Jews."
--Thomas Sowell
I'm not usually one to go around quoting people to make my arguments for me, but if Thomas Sowell is taking swipes at it, and it is a reasonable concern he brings up, I think that says something signficant.
This book is made of fail, and conservatives ought to have nothing to do with it, IMHO.
Galileo also refused to accept Kepler's elliptical orbits of the planets, considering the circle the "perfect" shape for planetary orbits.What irony! The very man who is held up as a crusader for important truths, couldn't accept other important truths when he was confronted by them.
From what I’ve seen, neither liberals nor conservatives as a group have the faintest idea of what science is. Both cherry-pick their favorite bit and pieces of evidence to support whatever conclusion they support. Conservatives are usually undone by irrationality when it comes to evolutionary theory as are liberals when it comes to smoking and climatology.
“Conservatives are usually undone by irrationality when it comes to evolutionary theory”
I am a scientist, albeit a retired one, and I don’t think it irrational to question Darwinism or its derivatives. It’s not science, just somebody’s idea of a good guess.
Surely, as a retired scientist, you know the distinction between a scientific theory and a "good guess," don't you?
The liberals practice projection, denial, redefinition, and destruction. If you want to know what they’re up to, listen to what they’re accusing you of, listen to the behavior they most strongly deny or object to, note the redefinition of the terms, and watch which laws, traditions, organizations and, ultimately, lives they are destroying.
thanks, bfl
This assumes that intelligence can be quantified by a single number. Can we really make that assumption?
I’m not sure what you mean.
I’m not arguing (yet, lol :) ), but I’m not sure what you’re driving at in your reply. The authors of the Bell Curve use the IQ as the basis for many of their statistical arguments. However, the meaning of IQ scores as a quantitiative measure of human intelligence is unclear at best. Two people with the same IQ score can have vastly different mental processes and be skilled in different areas of intellectual endevor.
I’m not yet convinced that IQ points are concrete measures of mental power analogous to, say, volts of electric potential or joules of energy, and if they aren’t, then statistical arguments based upon them don’t rise to the level of scientific evidence for anything.
Once again, proving the old adage that "he who laughs the last, thinks the slowest"?
“Surely, as a retired scientist, you know the distinction between a scientific theory and a “good guess,” don’t you?”
Yes I do — and, that’s my point exactly.
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