No really!!! And I suppose South America, Australia and Mexico are cold.
Figure 7m-4: Average annual temperatures for the Earth's surface (1982-94).
Ireland is such a great place. Why did you leave it to come to the land of eejits?
Posted on 04/19/2006 3:57:51 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
A new article in PLoS Biology (April 18, 2006) discusses the state of scientific literacy in the United States, with especial attention to the survey research of Jon D. Miller, who directs the Center for Biomedical Communications at Northwestern University Medical School.
To measure public acceptance of the concept of evolution, Miller has been asking adults if "human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals" since 1985. He and his colleagues purposefully avoid using the now politically charged word "evolution" in order to determine whether people accept the basics of evolutionary theory. Over the past 20 years, the proportion of Americans who reject this concept has declined (from 48% to 39%), as has the proportion who accept it (45% to 40%). Confusion, on the other hand, has increased considerably, with those expressing uncertainty increasing from 7% in 1985 to 21% in 2005.In international surveys, the article reports, "[n]o other country has so many people who are absolutely committed to rejecting the concept of evolution," quoting Miller as saying, "We are truly out on a limb by ourselves."
The "partisan takeover" of the title refers to the embrace of antievolutionism by what the article describes as "the right-wing fundamentalist faction of the Republican Party," noting, "In the 1990s, the state Republican platforms in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, Oregon, Missouri, and Texas all included demands for teaching creation science." NCSE is currently aware of eight state Republican parties that have antievolutionism embedded in their official platforms or policies: those of Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas. Four of them -- those of Alaska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas -- call for teaching forms of creationism in addition to evolution; the remaining three call only for referring the decision whether to teach such "alternatives" to local school districts.
A sidebar to the article, entitled "Evolution under Attack," discusses the role of NCSE and its executive director Eugenie C. Scott in defending the teaching of evolution. Scott explained the current spate of antievolution activity as due in part to the rise of state science standards: "for the first time in many states, school districts are faced with the prospect of needing to teach evolution. ... If you don't want evolution to be taught, you need to attack the standards." Commenting on the decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover [Kitzmiller et al. v Dover Area School District et al.], Scott told PLoS Biology, "Intelligent design may be dead as a legal strategy but that does not mean it is dead as a popular social movement," urging and educators to continue to resist to the onslaught of the antievolution movement. "It's got legs," she quipped. "It will evolve."
"No, that is false. He never was able to obtain a license to practice as a psychiatrist. He repeatedly projected himself as one, but never got licensed."
That's a lie. He had a license, but didn't renew it when he retired. This all came out in court. He is not even remotely close to going to jail.
This table contrasts some of the characteristics of science and pseudoscience
| Science | Pseudoscience |
| Their findings are expressed primarily through scientific journals that are peer-reviewed and maintain rigorous standards for honesty and accuracy. | The literature is aimed at the general public. There is no review, no standards, no pre-publication verification, no demand for accuracy and precision. |
| Reproducible results are demanded; experiments must be precisely described so that they can be duplicated exactly or improved upon. | Results cannot be reproduced or verified. Studies, if any, are always so vaguely described that one can't figure out what was done or how it was done. |
| Failures are searched for and studied closely, because incorrect theories can often make correct predictions by accident, but no correct theory will make incorrect predictions. | Failures are ignored, excused, hidden, lied about, discounted, explained away, rationalized, forgotten, avoided at all costs. |
| As time goes on, more and more is learned about the physical processes under study. | No physical phenomena or processes are ever found or studied. No progress is made; nothing concrete is learned. |
| Convinces by appeal to the evidence, by arguments based upon logical and/or mathematical reasoning, by making the best case the data permit. When new evidence contradicts old ideas, they are abandoned. | Convinces by appeal to faith and belief. Pseudoscience has a strong quasi-religious element: it tries to convert, not to convince. You are to believe in spite of the facts, not because of them. The original idea is never abandoned, whatever the evidence. |
| Does not advocate or market unproven practices or products. | Generally earns some or all of his living by selling questionable products (such as books, courses, and dietary supplements) and/or pseudoscientific services (such as horoscopes, character readings, spirit messages, and predictions). |
One more aspect to this linguistic analogy might be noted -- the attempt to "intelligently design" language (such as Esperanto) has been a spectacular failure.
Good grief...now I am a liar...well, believe what you want, this place charged 30K up front...I dont care one way or the other what you think, because I know the truth of the matter...I control no debate..simply reporting what I know to be the truth...a benefit was held for this man, 30K was collected for his treatment at this place, and he went there as soon as he received the funds...
This man went to this clinic, stayed there for a few weeks, had some sort of treatments, and then returned home...and died a few months later...
You may not like that, but those are exactly the facts of what happened...your believing this or not, has no effect on the truth of the matter...I know the truth, of the matter, and you dont...
You are the one who is quite transparent...
Thanks...replied to him, before I saw your post, but I did remain polite...see my post #1244...
Well read my post and you'll also see I was fortifying my position and said nothing about what you mention above. Blather noted, but it is my commitment to independent thought and free will that allows me to consider that a person can decide how to treat their own bodies when faced with death. That includes the choice to reject "life-saving" treatment.
Excellent summary, though I find most junk science appeals more to people's desires to find "easy cures" than to their religious convictions.
Also, omitted from the "earns a living by" list was the "study" that results in sales of biomed stocks and sales of "safe" chemical pesticides, etc.
Oh that one...he can bait me all his wants, he does not have enough to get me to act like he does...who wants to stoop to that very low level anyway?
No really!!! And I suppose South America, Australia and Mexico are cold.
Figure 7m-4: Average annual temperatures for the Earth's surface (1982-94).
Ireland is such a great place. Why did you leave it to come to the land of eejits?
So it is certain death without treatment in all cases? My, you are omniscient.
Well, I don't think he(?) intended to promote intelligent design, but if that is his purpose, more power to him.
Nope. The first image I posted shows the wattage absorbed by the atmosphere globally. The latest image I posted shows the average global surface temperature.
I dont think that anywhere in medicine, anything is 100% either way, tho I think there are probably some exceptions...a severely lacerated spleen, unless surgically repaired, will cause the patient to bleed to death...someone who has gone through all the preliminary chemo and radiation, prior to receiving a bone marrow transplant, and then suddenly decides not to receive the new marrow, will die...a burst appendix, causing peritonitis to spread through the body, will cause someone to die...
But for so many cases, docs always give statistics, percentages which indicate ones chances at survival, or cure...and often, those statistics are the gauge that people use to decide whether or not they want a particular treatment...whether the treatment itself is worth the chance at a cure...this much would be obvious...
Most doctors I have known, have shied away from making a 100% claim, always holding out the possibility, that even tho in their minds they might believe something is 100% one way or the other, they concede that perhaps there is a chance, tho quite minutely small, that someone will beat the odds...anecdotal cases of this are always heard of, where someone miraculously recovers from something that was thought to be impossible...
It makes no difference to me at all, if someone refuses to accept a type of medical treatment...its their body, its their decision...no one has a right to interfere in that...
I never said, I would advocate forcing medical treatment on someone elses child....I just cringe, when I think of a child, who dies because of lack of medical treatment...
BTTT
So do I, but I think that number(voluntarily refusing treatment) is extremely small. Smaller than the number of those that die due to a failed treatment or prevention in my opinion and not counting those in which the treatment was ineffective and caused prolonged suffering.
I have no idea, nor any guess, how many children might die, whether from refused treatment, or failed treament, or prevention, or any other cause...I dont believe that there is really any way of knowing this...we can probably all come to our own conclusions, with the same accuracy, of what the real statistics would show...
I said I was against abortion and my question to the person was never addreeds btw.
In any event these threads are way to negative.
W.
TH: I still have a dog-eared copy on my shelf from undergrad days; great read, very stimulating, and probably dead wrong -- but hey, that's rational enquiry for you.
I think the Whorf-Sapir idea is interesting but wrong, personally. I was totally turned on by some of the citations from Indian languages, like "he's cleaning the rifle with a ramrod" coming out something like "he is causing a reciprocal motion of a dry spot in a long hollow thing, using his hand".
I've read a bunch of Amerind linguistics since, but I've never really gotten my head around polysynthesis. The Languages of Native North America (Cambridge Language Surveys) by Marianne Mithun gives the best description of it that I've seen. I highly recommend it if you're at all interested in such things. She dismisses Greenberg's Amerindian hypothesis, but I'm convinced it's right. See this example *t'ina *t'ana *t'una (meaning "son", "child", "daughter", found throughout the Americas) or any of Merritt Ruhlen's books.
The whole concept of 'a language' is a bit fuzzy, like the concept of 'species;' difficult to make a hard distinction between dialects (sub-species) because of the variations within a population of speakers, or to draw an absolute boundary between them.
There is an exact parallel with ring species, called "dialect chains". There are some in Eskimo regions, in Bantu Africa, and until a few hundred years ago, between Italy and France. I find it fascinating to be able to go from Italian, by small steps, always maintaining communication, and wind up with French.
Another parallel, which I pointed out on a thread a week or so ago, is that linguists can make very educated guesses as to what PIE's sounds, parts of speech, grammar and vocabulary were like, just like the biologists who figured out an ancestral hormone and receptor.
I tried reading Chomsky when I was in college, and it bored me stiff. Rather like pseudo science, there were a lot of assumptions and damn little empirical research (and most of that in English).
When I discovered Greenberg, on the other hand, I was floored. I predict that twenty years from now, Chomsky will be a footnote, and Greenberg will be considered a combination of Linnaeus and Darwin.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.