Science Left Behind: Feel-Good Fallacies and the Rise of the Anti-Scientific LeftHe also runs RealClearScience.COM where he recently published a text
Outbreak of Political Correctness in Science MediaHe starts with some numbers indicating that 80-95 percent of science journalists are leftists and then he mentions some consequences of this particular pandemics.
A SciAm blogger was fired because he or she "dared" to defend a non-left-wing book on genetics as well as a non-feminist physicist Richard Feynman. But there are also other examples.
Science was attacked for a picture of transgendered prostitutes but that's still not what made me laugh.
Thanks to Berezow, I learned about a hilarious article in the Time Magazine
The Myth of the Diseased Immigrantby Jeffrey Kluger. What a whackadoodle! The article is full of crazy assertions that immigrants can't pose a problem – when it comes to germs and other things. A quote that may really improve your day:
But as numerous sources, most notably The Texas Observer and the New Republic, have reported, the immigrants have more to fear from us than we do from them. The fact is, children from Guatemala, where health care is fully subsidized...LOL. Immigrants have more to fear from Americans than Americans from immigrants. And the immigrants must surely have a better care than the U.S. as well "because it is fully subsidized". Cool. If a poor country has a communist healthcare system, it must be really superior!
What happened to the main hospital in Guatemala, the role model for all the American hospitals from Kluger's (and Obama's?) viewpoint? Click at the picture.
Kluger may cherry-pick the vaccination rate against measles but it's still true that the overall risk of major infectious diseases is high in Guatemala (according to the CIA World Factbook).
Maybe they also have a better space agency and a better Silicon Valley in Guatemala than in the U.S. and the people only arrive to the U.S. because they bought a lousy U.S. GPS navigation system instead of the great Guatemalan one, and they got lost at the airport as a consequence of that.
The degree of unrestricted nonsense that some people find OK to type in a text editor just in order to make their dirty and pathological 19th century ideology of leftism look better is just staggering.
In the real world, migrants generally move from one place to another because they expect a better life in the destination and this expectation is very likely to be aligned with the reality. They're inevitably bringing some piece of their former life's misery to the new place which is why the natives at the destinations often find the immigrants to be a concern. Kluger may use the word "xenophobe" for everyone who understands the world at this elementary level but if he really doesn't, he is an incurable lunatic.
Thanks to Joseph Sykora
Off topic: Has you seen this Lubo? Any thoughts? http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2014/jul/28/new-correction-to-speed-of-light-could-explain-sn1987-neutrino-burst
ReplyDeleteDear Sam, it's an article about still exactly the same thing as the blog post below, isn't it?
ReplyDeletehttp://motls.blogspot.com/2014/06/fransons-breakthrough-concerning-speed.html?m=1
Indeed it is. Apologies, I must have missed that post of yours. I've been rather absorbed with thesis writing of late. **Bangs head against screen**
ReplyDeleteGood luck with the thesis. Is it secret what is the topic?
ReplyDeleteThis describes the main remit of my PhD. (I much prefer my other work on direct DM detectors.) Fairly typically, despite the fact that I did all the work, I don't get mentioned in the article because I'm not a Professor ;-) http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/muon-detector-reduce-carbon-emissions-1.380076
ReplyDeleteI should add - the remit of my thesis should not imply any personal opinions on climate hysteria ;-)
ReplyDeleteThat's pretty and if they omit you for those reasons, it's outrageous!
ReplyDeleteWhy don't they experiment it with the Ebola virus in the US ? They could import Guineans and Sierra Leonans and see what happens.
ReplyDeleteOne must not confuse a collection of empirical data (fascist historic White Protestant European oppressive paternalism) with its interpretation (LGBT socialist compassion). Reality arises from intent not effect.
ReplyDeletehttp://dailycaller.com/2013/11/26/prof-corrects-minority-students-capitalization-is-accused-of-racism/
"all knowledge is subjective and based on one's position in society"
Off Topic; Global Cooling and Climate Forecasting methods.
ReplyDeleteLobos You might be interested in reading my post at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2014/07/climate-forecasting-methods-and-cooling.html
Feel free to comment or quote from it on TRF
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/08/01/unaccompanied-illegal-immigrant-kids-exposed-federal-agents-to-lice-scabies/
ReplyDeleteI found the following in a review of that book on Amazon:
ReplyDelete"I was with the authors all the way when they called out the right on some of their poorly supported positions. Then they brought up the issue of them being wrong on global warming. I have done a lot of reading on this and personally feel that the theory of man made climate change is a hoax perpetrated by con men like Al Gore who are making millions on the speech and book tours and his investments in his government backed green energy enterprises. Upon reading the author's apparent contrary position my first reaction was ' Hey, maybe these guys aren't that smart. Maybe they have an agenda either political or financial' "
How can they get the most significant example of there meme wrong? Very strange.
Good question - I have no idea. Frankly, as I know Hank Campbell and his pretty much equally extreme left-wing composition of the blogs he manages on his server, I am more surprised that he agreed to have written a book with that title and subtitle at all.
ReplyDeleteGiven the environment where he lives on the Internet, his support for the global warming belief system doesn't surprise me at all.
Funny that it's exactly today, Bill. I didn't know about that news when I was posting this blog entry.
ReplyDeleteWe are importing it. Haven't you seen?
ReplyDeleteIt costs about $10,000 for a Guatemalan family to send one child illegally to the US. They have to give up the child and pay the $10,000, which is a fortune for the poor families trying to maker a better life for the child. It does not take much thought to see that things in Guatemala must be dreadful for thousands of Guatemala families to willingly make such a horrendous sacrifice. Of course it is a risky trip as well and the families know this.
ReplyDeleteThe very fact that this has become a lucrative business for those arranging the transportation is convincing proof that life in Guatemala is awful and getting worse.
Nonetheless, they are children and, as civilized people, we must attend their needs. To do otherwise would be barbaric.
OTish but still about 'science' and the meeja and a particular presenter:
ReplyDeleteA couple of comments on an article about al beeb amused me (BBC is run by 'media studies twerps', Sir Jonathan Miller says):
Impromptu:
"Hear hear.
NB I know gravity is amazingggggg. I don't need to look at Brian bleeding Cox grinning at me from a clifftop in South America."
Falwall in reply to Impromptu:
"But it's worthwhile sending him on the slim chance that he might fall off."