The attached link reports that representatives ".for 10,000 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientists are asking Congress to stop the Bush administration from closing the agency’s network of technical research libraries..."

Basically, the proposed library budget for fiscal year 2007 is being gutted by the Bush administration by ~80%. Already the EPA has begun shuttering these libraries.

As has been noted before, this is just one phase of the George W. administrations attack on American science. Without access to libraries, all serious scientific research ends.

I can see now why Rumsfeld was so cavalier about the looting of the Iraqi National Antiquities Museum and the burning of the National Library in 2003 during our invasion -- even though the Department of Defense had been warned in advance that this would likely happen, unless the U.S. invasion force took steps to prevent it.

Who cares about some old pottery and books? Certainly not these neoBarbarians!

In the age of the NASCAR dads ruling the country, it should be no surprise that the inteligensia is reviled.  I mean, they're just a bunch of nerds and geeks anyway, right?  What good do they do for the common man?  "A guy works his ass off and these guys get all this attention when they probably can't even change a tire...oughta just get rid of 'em all!"

Right?

There's a great line from the original Tim Burton "Batman", in which Jack Nicholson as the Joker says on encountering Batman for the first time: "Where does he get those wonderful toys?"

If George W. is successful with his purges of scientists and engineers and attacks on universities, where is going to get those 'wonderful toys' (i.e., state-of-the-art weapons) to dominate the rest of the world?

If George W. is successful with his purges of scientists and engineers and attacks on universities, where is going to get those 'wonderful toys' (i.e., state-of-the-art weapons) to dominate the rest of the world?"

From the Israeli's of course

Yes, it's always the Jews.

First, Hitler kicked the Jewish physicists out of Germany and Europe (if they weren't killed in the camps), and then they turn around and work on radar and the A-bomb to help defeat both Germany and Japan.

There was an exchange between Al Swearingen and Wu on HBO's Deadwood, in which Al was trying to figure out whether the new tall Chinese guy in town was working for George Hearst. Wu, in charge of the pig concession that disposes of inconvenient human corpses, barely understands English, and is having trouble on one point.

Al says: "I need to find out how much juice he has".

Wu says: " Jews, Jews??"

Al has a devil of a time making his point, saying "Juice, not Jews".

Hmm! I suppose it's funnier if you see it on the screen - also probably if you're Jewish.

Don't badmouth NASCAR.  So they jimmy up the rules every week, it's all in the good cause of avoiding boredom.  

More seriously, I think science is often pimped out to politics, perhaps unconsciously.   That's what has to be avoided, or at least minimized.  OTOH, you have the problem of research needing to justify itself, usually financially; and so the research dollars go where people will pay - pills, ordnance, etc.

A jewish couple sits in a Peking restaurant.They waive at the waiter and as he approaches they whisper in his ear:  Do you know if there are here chinese jews? Oh no he says, only grape juice, orange juice,tomato juice but no chinese juice!

-- Modified on 7/1/2006 5:04:37 PM

Our poster-boy for the new Fourth Reich has a socially disabled wife who was a librarian.

I wonder how far off public book burnings and subsequent jailing/lynching of heretics is?

Budgets dictate the types of science that are done, but in the non-defense (i.e., non-classified) basic and applied areas, there are strong self-correcting mechanisms which prevent fraud and abuse.

The principal self-correcting measure is the peer-review literature. One of the most criticized funding mechanisms for drug research focusses on pharmaceutical (i.e., big pharma) support. It is true that the large pharmaceutical houses fund a lot of drug research, and this may either consciously (or subconsciously) influence the clinical results on a given drug. It is even possible to get FDA approval for a therapy like Vioxx, in which there have been some shady things done in the clinical trials. Here, it seems pretty clear that Merck knew about cardiac 'events' for those on Vioxx therapy, yet chose to have these results suppressed.

Here's where the self-correcting mechanism comes into play. Street physicians prescribe Vioxx and start seeing all kinds of heart problems. These docs stop prescribing the pills, and then write up their negative findings as anecdotal results for "Lancet" or "New England Journal of Medicine" or  a 100 other journals. Pretty soon a critical mass is achieved, and a bum therapy is taken off the market. Law suits and grand jury indictments ensue, and large judgements against Merck may serve as a warning to other drug manufacturers not to repeat Merck's mistakes.  

So, the self-correcting mechanism for science does eventually work, even though there may have been considerable damage to those taking Vioxx.

Of course, the "self-correcting" mechanisms in science function properly, as long as the science journals themselves are freely available in libraries. Close them down, as appears to be happening to the EPA library network, and you've destroyed human knowledge as surely as the burning of the Library at Alexandria.

This is largely why science can't be pimped out to justify creationism (aka intelligent design), or the absence of global warming, no matter how much money is on the table. Yes, you can buy a few 'scientists' to disseminate misinformation, but their "work" hasn't been published in peer-review journals, and can't survive the level of scrutiny necessary to gain acceptance by the scientific community.

-- Modified on 7/2/2006 6:54:47 PM

-- Modified on 7/2/2006 6:56:40 PM

and that's the reason checks & balances are needed in any institution.

I agree - if the self-correcting mechanisms worked as they're suppose to, then Merck would have pulled Vioxx before it was ever marketed. This is very saddening, since Merck (under P. Roy Vagelos, now gone) was always viewed as one of the better, more ethical big pharmas.

There is also a concern about scientists who are U.S. government employees (i.e., GS workers). I'm thinking of the George W. administration's attempts to muzzle scientists like James Hansen on global warming, and CDC scientists who argue that abstinence alone will not halt STD transmission.

Fortunately, science is robust enough globally to take up the slack, even in the unlikely event that the George W. administration disrupted the entire operation of U.S. science. There has been a noted drop-off in U.S. scientists publishing in the best journals, with Asian and European researchers coming on strong.

-- Modified on 7/3/2006 11:59:52 AM

and it's not so much drugs aimed at organic issues that concern me, as drugs aimed at psychological "issues".   Toward that end, psychs tell people who feel sad they are "sick" and need a pill, instead of telling them that they need to deal with the issue that makes them sad; and we think boys who look out the window more than we'd like have a "sickness" - never asking if the teacher is in fact such a crashing bore, that she needs meds herself.

And then you have mothers who need to be told that they are sick, not behaving poorly, so that their feelings aren't hurt; and these crazies are allowed to vote.  

I've been told that if your clinically depressed mother thinks you don't have enough friends, that is prima facie proof of Asperger's syndrome, and GET THIS - even if it wasn't true, you have to say it anyway to get the insurance company to pay.

THAT is a serious national issue - professionals blowing smoke for insurance payoffs, even if it involves sending patients on wild goose chases.

The dogged insistence by the Bush administration on a $2 million cut in an overall EPA budget of nearly $8 billion is particularly curious..

if the libraries are that important, they have 7.8 BILLION!!!!! to fund them from

EPA is a porkladen pig that needs a trim.

For once I agree with you, BK.

It is crap that, in a budget of ~$8 billion, that EPA cannot cannot find $2 million to fund their libraries.

But then, is it the Clinton administration that's now running EPA? No, last time I checked, EPA was firmly controlled by the George W. administration. Which means that it's not "EPA" that made the decision not to fund their library network, it's George W., Cheney et al. What could the reason for the GOP to stop EPA library funding? I don't know...maybe restriction of information that could endanger their political agendas.

Hmm! Looks like we don't agree, once again.

Quelle surprise!

-- Modified on 7/8/2006 10:41:05 AM

for scientists, they're not very smart

or maybe it;'s just abbout keeping Union Jobs,....

that would be a first, huh?