Posted on 05/04/2009 6:53:07 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Consensus Science: The Rise of a Scientific Elite
by Randy J. Guliuzza, P.E., M.D.*
In battle, one clever military tactic is to focus enemy troops' attention on a spectacular frontal assault so they will overlook a deadly side attack. This approach works in other arenas, as well.
On March 9, President Barack Obama ordered that federal tax money be used to promote medical research through harvesting the stem cells of, and thus destroying, human embryos. There has been much discussion about the medical ethics of this order and the government's increased power to destroy human life for "scientific" progress,[1] but in reality these debates, while important, drew attention away from a serious analysis of the words of the president's speech.[2] His order was actually a directive for "restoring scientific integrity," and stem cells served as the needed pretext.
The full speech provides evidence that Mr. Obama's words were carefully selected to exploit the accelerating drift of the scientific community's upper echelons from determining "scientific validity" based on rigorous observation and experiment, to basing it on consensus authority. Thus, preserving "scientific integrity" would not mean keeping the scientific process from going awry, but keeping scientific outcomes in line with policy.
How? By empowering an atheist scientific elite who will decree--without debate and by consensus opinion only--the scientific validity of all bioethical issues, not just the killing of embryos for research...
(Excerpt) Read more at icr.org ...
Ping!
Thanks for the ping!
“...restoring scientific integrity..”
Ayn, you magnificent bastard...I read your book! Almost to the end.
“Dr. Robert Stadler, a physics professor who is a creator of the “State Science Institute,” intended to release science from the demands of its capitalist sponsors - delivering it instead into the control of bureaucrats and politics.”
There are plenty who’ll jump on the Lysenkoism bandwagon, and they ain’t all atheists.
But what does a person do in other areas where credible experts are on both sides of a question? Flip a coin?
Unfortunately, that's how life is, uncertain at times, so we make the best choices we can under the circumstances.
In this case however, life is fairly certain, once an embryo stage is reached the majority of the time a viable human is born. And Zero is not going to make any good choice under most circumstances, but I expected such.
No doubt you’re right.
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