It's good to piss off the right people

There are anti-science crazies on the left? Anybody in particular?

This idiot is AGAINST public health measures, because they don't work ? (!)

Has he never heard of John Snow, and the Broad Street pump, with reference to a London Cholera outbreak.
This lead to proper drinking water, and decent sewerage in London - which everyone else then copied.
See; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Snow_%28physician%29

There are anti-science crazies on the left? Anybody in particular?

Omygod don't get me started!!!!!!

There is a very large and significant anti-science component on the left. The entire field called "Critical Medical Anthropology" (which is pretty much the current mainstream in Medical Anthropology at this time) is explicitly and implicitly, and actively and obnoxiously anti science. That is only one example.

There are very good reasons to question and criticize science and scientific approaches. It is simply not true that science is entirely self correcting in certain ways. Science tends to be self correcting in terms of methodology in terms of fact, and in terms of validity of theoretical constructs. But it is not self correcting when it comes to socio-cultural biases. In fact, it the opposite of self-correcting. (Inherently... scientists can certainly be aware of biases and make corrections. But the scientific process does not do this inherently.)

Isn't it a commonly held principle of organizing science that science should go where the evidence and data lead? This does not guarantee against bias. Isn't it also the case that science will also go where the funding allows, or where questions are raised? Funding and questions do not develop systematically or in some unbiased way.

The result of this is that there are huge areas where science should have gone but did not. The two most classic and well known cases are gender bias and "race" bias in medical research.

As a person who works in Africa and studies human evolution in Africa, I can go on an on about the European bias, and the closely linked Anti-African bias in archaeological and human evolutionary research. It's huge.

So, fields like Medical Anthropology have risen to address these biases, and it is a good thing ... in theory.

Yes, "in theory" I say! (In that other meaning of the word theory ... the popular meaning that so annoys us evolutionary biologists!)

There is some good and important medical anthropology out there. But within that field, and other areas of the humanities and "social sciences" (the non-science areas of the social sciences) there is a very strongly anti-science reactionary element.

How about this for a theory: The World Trade Center towers were not destroyed by crazy Al Quaida operatives who hijacked airplanes. There are two alternative theories, both from the left. One (and if you go over to my blog you'll see one of these laid out as a comment to one of my posts!) is all about Cheney and Big Oil and so on conspiring to make this look like an Arab Plot to Destroy the West, and so on. That theory is not explicitly anti-science.

But the other theory is this one, and it is very explicitly anti science: This theory asserts that the World Trade Center collapsed and burned under the weight of the rotting-to-the-core Capitalistic System. The collapse of the world trade center was a physical outcome of a socio-political phenomenon. The airplanes were merely sucked into the fray. The causality is all backwards.

I am not making this up. This is from the Deconstructionist School. You will find Deconstructionists at rallies and demonstratios for Pro Choice, Anti War. Deconstructionist support the minimum raise hike and accessible health care. Deconstructionist are all liberals, if anything, left of the Democratic Party.

And they loathe scientists and produce anti- and non-science "theories" and to some degree may actually believe in them.

I'll give you one name: LaTour. You can work your way out from there if you care to bother!

Has he never heard of

Not only that, he has also never bothered to imagine that the USA might not be the only country in the world with a GDP above that of Eritrea.

As a person who works in Africa and studies human evolution in Africa, I can go on an on about the European bias, and the closely linked Anti-African bias in archaeological and human evolutionary research. It's huge.

Could you fill in my ignorance a little?

There are anti-science crazies on the left? Anybody in particular?

The Animal Liberation Front and various "animal rights" crazies like PETA, to start off with. Bozos like these claim that animal research isn't needed, that we can get all the information we need from cell culture and computer models (a load of steaming, stinking bullshit that only people ignorant of the complexities of organ system biology would spout), that animal research misleads (which it does sometimes, but only if scientists don't take its limitations into account). They also conveniently ignore all the discoveries that animal research made possible, you know, little things like transplantation, insulin, pretty much any major surgical procedure (which are almost always tried out on animals first), how the immune system works, vaccination since 1900 or so, and a variety of drugs and hormones.

Equating Deconstructionists with anti-science crazies is very sloppy arguing. You can just as easily make the argument that Deconstruction is an implementation of the scientific method by way of examining potential bias in data.

But yeah, there are anti-science crazies on the left. I am confronted with their existence from time to time in my day job. Zero-point energy fans are an example. EMF-o-phobes are another. The situation is complicated somewhat by the existence of people who deride good, if contested science -- such as advocacy of the precautionary principle with respect to GMOs -- as "anti-science."

Anti-vaccination crazies tend to skew left, too, though I'm sure there's a goodly amount of the right-wing "water fluoridation is MIND CONTROL!" type associated with anti-vax as well.

Equating Deconstructionists with anti-science crazies is very sloppy arguing. You can just as easily make the argument that Deconstruction is an implementation of the scientific method by way of examining potential bias in data.

Isn't that about the same as postmodernism -- the loudly proclaimed truth that there is no truth except the one that there is no truth? That all "stories" are equally true? That, obviously, is anti-science -- it is the simple denial that there is such a thing as reality.

I'd say some of the Wooists out there in Homeopathy and land are decidedly left of center. Think Hippie spiritual herby healing.

Does anyone else think that "Fumento" sounds like a really smelly type of cheese?

Here in the UK it is somewhat complicated, at first. For example, one of the papers pushing anti-measles jabs was teh DAily Mail, a well known "We're all going to the dogs and the immigrants are taking over our country" type of paper. Their readers are unlikely to be described as "left wing", yet you will find the paper allowing astrology and any kind of medical woo you can possibly imagine.
There are indeed anti-science lefties, a lot of the more outlandish greens could be described as lefties, but it seems to me that the right wing weirdos get more insidious coverage, because they are ostensibly promoting a product, which is after all normal and to be encouraged, rather than a philosophy.
(Yes, I know that both and all sides have philosophies to push, it just seems to me that what we might call leftie-woos are more open about their philosophy, but righty-woos are less so)
Feel free to disagree.

In my own mental categorization scheme, I wouldn't label most of the examples brought up here, as explicitly anti-science, in the same sense that Creationism and ID are. I would put most of them in bins labelled "crackpot", "ignorant", "effin loony" and the like (not to say that C and ID aren't also in one or more of these).

Regarding Deconstruction, which may well have it's legitimate practitioners, I don't know what to make of stuff like this, but my internal referencing automatically cross-indexed it under "possible practical joke" and "WTF?". Which may say more about me than about the article...

It waxes and wanes. Back in the eighties and nineties, when the pomos were loudly mocking the very idea of objectivity, when science was just another socially constructed Western narrative, when 'ethnomathematics' was claiming the same of math, and a feminist scholar was claiming in all seriousness that physics was neglecting the field of fluid dynamics because of the patriarchy's fear of menstruation (that's how deconstructionists look for 'bias', y'all) , the left looked pretty anti-science. Now, clearly, the right-wing kooks are looking a bit more threatening.

But let's not forget that the defense at Dover enlisted a pomo - Steve Fuller - to use the standard pomo cant to claim that orthodox science was a privileged narrative and that we needed to make room for the alternative narrative of ID. And in fact, the IDers have adopted the language of the left in many respects, and claiming they're seeking 'tolerance for alternative ideas'.

There are some unholy alliances being made between the kooks on both sides.

The wackier forms of natural living and alternative medicine attract strongly both from the hippie left and from the religious right. In my experience, though, back-to-the-land hippies move to the right.

It is interesting that Richard Dawkins, one of the great public defenders of scientific progress, is ambivalent about animal research.

http://www.studentbmj.com/issues/06/09/people/337.php
"My position on animal research is quite ambiguous, subject to further research on animal suffering."

Dawkins also supports the Great Ape Project, which would ban biomedical research on great apes.

http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/dawkins01.htm
"I have argued that the discontinuous gap between humans and 'apes' that we erect in our minds is regrettable. ... Ethical principles that are based upon accidental caprice should not be respected as if cast in stone."

I differ with Dawkins on these matters.

Isn't that about the same as postmodernism -- the loudly proclaimed truth that there is no truth except the one that there is no truth? That all "stories" are equally true?

That's the comic book stereotype of postmodernism, to which, sadly, some postmodernists hew.

I highly recommend checking out this review (PDF, sorry) of Sokal and Bricmont for evidence that a podstmodern viewpoint is not inherently incompatible with a scientific viewpoint.

Private agencies were far better prepared to deal with Katrina than public agencies. Rich Canadians go to America for medical procedures because of the poor service and waiting lines in Canada.

And we all know how wonderful the USSR's medical care was for its citizens. (barf)

The Medicare and Medicaid systems in America are rife with fraud, far more than the private health financing systems.

Public emergency and disaster reponse agencies have proven quite clearly that they are unable to respond to emergencies and disasters.

And John Snows and the like do not require public agencies to exist and do research on public health and solve problems. The best medical research, and the best implementation of said breakthroughs, have overwhelmingly been private-based.

There is a reason that the best medical systems in the world are relatively privatized, while their far less stellar counterparts are public.

I see this crap every day. I work in the health insurance industry.

Sorry, but postmodernism was started as a joke for high brows, then got taken up by both people that thought it made sense and those that where totally fracking nuts. I have read a lot of stuff from this class of people. If its possible to successfully restate something in a way that says the exact same things as the people being attacked for a bias, while making it seem like they are contradicting those people, a postmodernist will figure out how to do it. I.e., at the end of the day they tend to say the same thing as the people they are analysing, deconstructing, or what ever, just in a way that *makes it seem* to anyone just glancing over the paper that they are saying something profound instead. Its damn funny, but hardly useful.

CHRIS: Equating Deconstructionists with anti-science crazies is very sloppy arguing. You can just as easily make the argument that Deconstruction is an implementation of the scientific method by way of examining potential bias in data.

Chris. The only way I'm being a little sloppy is by using the term "deconstrutionist" in a way other than, for instance, critical medical anthropologists wish it to be used in reference to themselves. I'm using it as a derogatory term derived from it's historical use.

A more accurate term would be "science studies." I considered using that but chose not to for various reasons. Believe me, I'm not being sloppy.

The problem here is similar to the problem that has been discussed with respect to fundamentalism and "mainstream" or perhaps "moderate" religion. Deconstructionism as a method is said by most modern post modernists (who don't call themselves that any more, typically) to be a passee approach.

There is a fair amount of literature associated with what one could call deconstructionism that is respectable. And you are right. Foucault was in a way a scientist. And brilliant. But I'm not talking about him. I'm talking about 5 out of 8 (or more) scholars in these fields that I encounter on a day to day basis. I encounter more reactionary anti science activism in that arena than I do from creationists.

There's a fair bit of anti-science in the Green movement. Which is a shame - I'd probably join the Greens if they didn't have OMG YOU SCIENTISTS WILL MAKE US ALL EAT CLONED HITLERS tendencies.

Anti-vaccination crazies tend to skew left, too, though I'm sure there's a goodly amount of the right-wing "water fluoridation is MIND CONTROL!" type associated with anti-vax as well.

You are correct. Anti-vaxers tend to skew left, but there are plenty of right wing antivaxers too. It is truly the pseudoscience that is bipartisan. On the left, you have the hippy dippy types who think that injecting babies with nasty things to stimulate an immune reaction is "unnatural" and who distrust the big pharma. On the right, you have the right wingers who have an extreme distrust of the government,, consider mandates to vaccinate as an infringement on their liberties, and believe that the CDC and NIH are out to COVER UP THE TRUTH about vaccines.

Speaking of "cloned Hitlers": Some political associations of 'green' weirdness. (This is not meant to suggest that the green movement is inherently linked to National Socialism; rather, there are many strands of green thought - some of which are quite noxious.)

Nazism, holism, alternative medicine
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/313/7070/1494/a

scroll down for a Nazi anti-vivisection (on animals) illustration
http://www.armyths.org/

'green' neo-Nazism
http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/germany/sp001630/janet.html

Of course, the anti-science leftists are pretty much marginalized politically (at least in the USA), while the anti-scientist rightists controlled Congress until last week (and still own the White House).

When a future Democratic president starts naming animal-liberation-front folks to FDA review panels, etc., then the anti-scientist leftists will then be able to claim parity with the crazies on the right. But at this time, there's no equivalence between the two groups in terms of political power.

Ironically, regarding the left-right thing and alternative medicine, it's a little known fact that the Nazis were heavily into naturopathy, herbalism, and numerous other forms of woo, which they labeled under the category of volkish medicine. Indeed, Nazi Germany was the first nation to regulate and promote naturopathy. This was partially a reaction to the perception that medicine before Hitler was "controlled by Jews" (it wasn't, although Jews were certainly represented at a disproportionately high percentage in medical and scientific fields than their population), necessitating a "German" medicine to displace it, and partially because of the whole "blood and soil" back to nature theme running through Nazi-ism, which in fact was a chord running through German life that long predated the Nazis.

This topic is treated at length in Robert Proctor's Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis. It's fascinating reading.

I've been meaning to do a series of posts on medicine under the Nazis....

Berube's review of Fashionable Nonsense underwhelmed me. To pick an example largely at random:

Nor do I believe that a universally objective account of truth is even necessary for social change: any theory that speaks of relative probabilities, contingencies, and likely outcomes, I think, will suffice for the job, and depending on what the job is (establishing universal health care, opposing mandatory clitoridectomy), the argumentative and moral strategies will differ from case to case.

Bayesian probability speaks of contingencies and likely outcomes, yet it fits comfortably into the Big Bad Scientific Weltanschauung. (Yes, I learned that word from Calvin and Hobbes.) Berube's whole argument is muddled; he makes a great deal about human beings being "mutable", which is easy enough to say, but the people Sokal and Bricmont treated with the most spite said in essence that all truth is "mutable". The position Berube actually dares to defend is so non-radical you could square it with John Locke, Pericles and Democritus of Abdera.

Amidst some generally valid and mildly thought-provoking comments, Berube complains,

The question of epistemic and ethical relativism, then, follows directly from the question of how theories change. And on this question. Sokal and Bricmont do some waffling of their own. They cite, for instance, a 1996 dispute about Zuni land claims, with regard to which British archeologist Roger Anyon reportedly claimed that the Zuni world view was "just as valid as the archeological viewpoint."

I suspect that the UK edition I read, entitled Intellectual Impostures, was revised to deal with complaints addressed to this section (either by Berube or somebody else). At any rate, Sokal's later work (PDF link) offers much more concrete evidence about the effects postmodernism has "on the ground", including fallout in epistemic and ethical relativism. And, honestly, this is the level which matters, as Greg Laden has pointed out:

But I'm not talking about [Foucault]. I'm talking about 5 out of 8 (or more) scholars in these fields that I encounter on a day to day basis. I encounter more reactionary anti science activism in that arena than I do from creationists.

Aaron, the healthcare system in Canada was not designed to provide the absolute best care to those who could afford it, rather, it was designed to provide adequate care to everybody - for better or for worse. To say that Canada's healthcare system is worse than that of the US because we've got crappy wait times while in the US millions cannot afford healthcare of any sort seems off the mark.

Orac, I look forward to those posts - sounds like a fascinating topic.

Fuel for the fire:

[T]he postcolonial critics of science and modernity ended up rediscovering the case for a uniquely Indian science that was already taken for granted in right-wing circles. . . . The right-wingers' relativistic defense of mysticism as science is not based principally on Kuhn and Feyerabend, but rather on more nationalistic principles, which bear the hallmarks of Johann Herder and Oswald Spengler: namely, the idea that each nation has a "cultural soul" and a "destiny" that leave [their marks] on all intellectual efforts, from music and painting to science. Substitute "paradigm" in place of "culture", and the right-wing was Kuhnian long before Kuhn.

— Meera Nanda

I'm talking about 5 out of 8 (or more) scholars in these fields that I encounter on a day to day basis. I encounter more reactionary anti science activism in that arena than I do from creationists.

Fair enough, Greg.

Fair enough, Greg.

Sorry if I seemed a little pissy...

By the way, love your web site.

Speaking of nationalised vs. privatised healthcare, I just blogged about being a patient in the US and UK.

I found that the standard of "customer service" differed greatly, but that the standard of medical care was much the same. Despite all the waiting and surliness, I thank the spag-monster daily for the NHS: you can leave a job to start your own business without endangering your life; you won't find yourself in thousands of dollars of debt if you break a window and need some stitches; you won't lose your house because your kid needs chemo.

Orac said:

Ironically, regarding the left-right thing and alternative medicine, it's a little known fact that the Nazis were heavily into naturopathy, herbalism, and numerous other forms of woo, which they labeled under the category of volkish medicine.

And, they were also into the great healing powers of the Last Ark of the Covenant, until that pesky Indy got in their way.

:)

PETA does good work. For example, this campaign to stop the barbaric treatment of sheep in Australia.

http://getactive.peta.org/campaign/pink_wool_video?qp_source=pinkpetagen

Not just the UK the WHOLE OF EUROPE (In the EU + Norway + Switerland) has what the US would call "socialist" health-care. Some are a lot better then the Brit. - the German and French systems WORK. They cost like crazy but they work. Ours works most of the time, partially well - it is the bureaucracy that is stifling it. But, you will NEVER be in the position you can be in the USA: Dying on the street, and no-on will even help you, becasue you have no money & no "insurance".

On the other matter - yes the ultra-greens and the PoMo loonies are all Left, and totally anti-science (as we understand science) _ I've managed to intellectually, publicly waste a couple, and enjoyed every moment of it!

Health care policy is an enormously complex issue that involves both empirical facts and political judgements. Statements to the effect that a particular health care system "works" or "doesn't work" are meaninglessly vague. There is no clearly "best" type of system; there are just different kinds of compromise reflecting different values and priorities. The primary determinant of the health status and longevity of a national population does not seem to be the way its health care system is organized, but more basic cultural, social and political factors, like the prevailing patterns of diet and exercise, work and leisure, education and social support, as well as the quality of basic public health measures like immunization rates, sanitation services, and food and water safety.

MissPrism, you are unlikely to "find yourself in thousands of dollars of debt if you break a window and need some stitches" in the United States. If you are indigent and without insurance, you would most likely be treated for free at a local hospital, or you could receive free treatment at any of the thousands of clinics that participate in the federal government's programs that provide free primary care services for the poor. And if you live in Britain, you may indeed lose your house if you decide to pursue a cancer treatment for which you are not approved by the NHS. The whole issue is much, much more complicated than your post suggests.

Every other western nation has universal health care for much less cost per capita and vastly less beauracratic waste of funds. It is criminal for the American government not to immediately rectify it.

consider mandates to vaccinate as an infringement on their liberties

Well, of course they are. It's just that most people consider the infringement to be well worth it.

From G Tingey's comment way up there: Has he never heard of John Snow, and the Broad Street pump, with reference to a London Cholera outbreak.

BBC7 has a lovely radio miniseries called Medical Detectives, and the first ep is about that Broad Street pump outbreak. The entire series is excellent. You can go to "listen again" at the BBC7 site. Today all 4 episodes are still available (I just listened to them).

stogoe,

Every other western nation has universal health care for much less cost per capita and vastly less beauracratic waste of funds.

Every other western nation has its own problems with its health care system, problems like rationing and underfunding. A serious international comparison would examine the strengths and flaws of each system.

An excellent case in point is Michael Fumento, a rather deranged lawyer by training

Where can I train to be a deranged lawyer? It sounds like fun.

Well, I know better than to read any blog that links to Instaputzdit and LGSnotballs....

bit of a tangent, but I couldn't resist...

"...It is criminal for the American government not to immediately rectify it."

The American government IS a criminal enterprise, and hence will never rectify it, and will do its utmost to dismantle such "safety net" systems worldwide, wherever it can, whenever it can, by any and all means necessary. Like George Carlin acidly remarks, "this government was bought and paid for a LOOONG time ago."

...Those European systems are being shredded, too, slowly but surely...more rapidly in the former East, but also in Germany under Merkel (even the ex-PDS "Left Party" did some worker-unfriendly benefits trimming in Berlin), and there are still some British New Labour, who, like the Clintonistas they pattern themselves after, are very keen on "Market-based solutions". New Labour, Old Tory...not enough difference to count for sh*t.

The political Right has taken old PoMo and gotten more mileage out of it than the Left ever could; Bush is THE Postmodern president par excellence, surpassing even Ronald Reagan. Thomas Frank argues this very convincingly in his books prior to _WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS_, which also shares that thesis.

I used to be a trendy-Lefty PoMo liberal humanist.
Then I dumped it and went back to old-fashioned Marxism.

I would be a Green, except that I think my pro-right-to-keep-and-bear-arms views would seem to be in conflict with their tenet of nonviolence, though it need not be so. There was a story in the Houston Chronicle awhile back about a man who was legally carrying a concealed weapon. He was walking by an apartment complex and was jumped and physically assaulted. He let himself get beat up and did not resist, nor pull out his weapon. But when the man's tormentor then walked away a short distance from the victim (lying bruised and battered on the ground) and pulled his own gun, making clear his intentions, the legal concealed-carry holder THEN drew his legally owned & concealed firearm and shot and killed in self-defense. Nonviolent practice + self defense as a last resort. Not incompatible, as this story demonstrated, I think--but I wonder if really active, devoted Greens would recognize that nuance.

I'm more worried about anti-science of the Right, not the least because they have much deeper pockets ($$$).

just my $0.02

Can anyone defend the US health care system? Anyone?

My dear Mr. Myers--

One thing at a time there, chief...

When it comes to kooks and those who've claimed to be working in the vein of science YET have webbed feet, you of all people should be able to sniff out the Who's Who list. You're science methodology is that of the witch killers in Monty Python & the Holy Grail..

I'll grant you that much.

I'm so pleased to be here on Left Wing Ideology/Superstition Blogs, known to some by the Net name of Science Blogs. Always entertaining.

For his Mr. Fumento has rarely been shown wrong in any of the myths he pops like pus packets over and over the last two decades, from the hype over AIDS getting to everyone, all the way to the ho-hum realization that Adult Stems Cells (yes Virginia, there really IS such an entity!) treat over 80 diseases whereas the ones liberals fawn over for more federal spending--the embryonic versions--are turning out to be duds . Chris Mooney can sneer all he likes about the "conservative" attack on science, but so far on the main topics at hand, Fumento has bested Loony Mooney over at Atlantic Monthly's pitch for government intervention in ..well....everything. Want more vested interest in real science and not quackery? You might ask your pals (or Mooney) how the HUMAN trials on the embryonic version is getting on. My condolences on having such acquaintances, but maybe they'll back you up with some pats on the back, at least.

Perhaps you could enlighten us how your own methodology. It is, after all, rather questionable.

First, you began one of your recent scribbling about something about blueberries--a ridiculous urban legend the NEA likes to use to diss homeschoolers and private schools alike as not following the "rules" of market economics properly. Or misapplying them. Or something like that, depending on which Education Weekly print you read and which version of this urban legend you believe. The point apparently being that public schools cannot be run like the humble blueberry factory which can "cast aside" the "bad" berries and keep the juicy ones. Where'd you see this crap? I'm surprised the NEA still circulates this jibber jabber when lately they've slowed down their attacks on homeschoolers on the academic front and now generally stick to the whole "socialization" myth apparently under the impression that homeschoolers are locked in closets and fed cold oatmeal or that somehow Junior High is just a swell place to be, stratified as it is horizontally among idiot peers with all the adjacent and proximate absurd pressures to raise conformity as superior to individualist thought. Oh well....

The Blueberry Tale is as transparently phony as a three dollar bill. It even stains like one. Even IF someone had some "epiphany" about berries or melons or whatnot. And it is laughable that a liberal would posit on things like market economics vs. government economics when they claim to hate both and obviously know so little about the first. Public schools in point of fact (getting beyond the legend) have a responsibility they are not meeting. It is really that simple. And they cast aside or expel students at a rate 10 times higher than Catholic and other parochial schools (and certainly homeschoolers for there part have no choice but to raise and teach whatever mother nature provided). And no, not all bad berries are thrown out. The market (wow--amazing!) makes room for that by turning the "bad" berries into flavorings. Nifty, huh?

By every measure, contra you blurt, homeschoolers have not "gutted" any laws on certification or standards and have exceeded the expectations of every school district they register with in all disciplines, and they have merely fought to have social workers obey ...for one example....the Fourth Amendment and not, say, march in unannounced (as has happened, though illegal) into a homeschool or threaten people who homeschool due to some snoop of a neighbor or other busybody who notices kids in the yard at noon or dirty dishes upon a visit (this has also happened). Oh, the horror of dirty dishes. Sounds like the kids are in danger to me!

Certification is mostly myth in its own right. Do your vigorous research standards not show that to you? That is available "out there" also. Dozens of studies. Just as no objective data exists showing that certification of teachers or a "crack down" on certain curricula in science has meant better scores in the public schools, so too no such data exist to suggesting this would help homeschoolers either. The public schools are solidly in the Darwinian camp anyhow, so your claim that this tiny sliver of about 2% of all kids will horridly affect science and industry is puzzling in its own right. Not to mention the fact that people have different interests anyhow. Those who like guitar and piano and art and English lit and politics will prosper in those fields, and those from both the public domain and homeschooling community who like biology will prosper regardless of their background in whatever.

To put a finer point on this, not everything on planet earth revolves around test tubes of goo and hypotheticals about how salamanders got lungs.

NOT to seem ugly, but I'd rather learn to play the fiddle like Charlie Daniels than putter around with gill slits and fish tails (or tales, for that matter) myself.
Homeschoolers will not falter or fail us due to one topic area when in fact in most every area measured (including science) they exceed all marks made by most of their public school peers. This is not theory, conjecture, or guesswork. This is fact. IF this is "gutting" standards" and raising "hothouses" of ignorant clod kickers, let's bring out the fish knife and apply it in some other places.

The public schools are in dire need of Lord Discipline more than Father Darwin in any case. Learning cannot take place in chaos, nor should ideological imperatives supplant the parental rights vested to us by the Constitution. Which, like most everything else you posited on, you failed to do adequate research before opening your trap.

Another issue. Avoid pontification on law just because of your ideological predilections if you down have the facts. Your absurdist contentions demonstrate a complete failure to understand not only our legal rights and responsibilities, but also the framework of law within which homeschoolers have rights: the Constitution. We, as Americans, have the right to believe what we wish. To demand that the laws be changed because you disagree with the beliefs of an individual is sheer sophistry and and attempt to punish those with whom you disagree with threats of "bringing down the law" on them. The law should always be for our protection and the furtherance of justice, not to silence one's critics.

The guy who chimed in about homeschooling not being a right but a mere "privilege" also, like you, has narrowed his opinion to such a fine point that he has missed the facts altogether. I'll let you search out the other stats on teacher certification and your myth of standards' gutting, since they are readily available elsewhere, but here is the law on homeschooling. Homeschooling is simply one educational option available to all parents under the U.S. Constitution. In two Supreme Court cases, Pierce v. Society of Sisters and Wisconsin v. Yoder, the right of parents to direct the upbringing AND education of their children is confirmed as a constitutional right afforded all Americans. Further, in Troxel v. Granville, the Supreme Court went so far as to say that the rights of parents are fundamental right, i.e., that they are as firmly rooted in the Constitution as any expressly stated right, such as the right to freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, etc. Homeschooling is one avenue that parents (as the ultimate decision-makers and protected as such by the Constitution) may choose for their children's education. Public school is another, private school is yet another.

The "state's interest" in the matter, defined in Wisconsin v. Yoder, is limited to ensuring that all citizens are literate and self-sufficient. States may therefore enact laws to ensure that these two goals are met. HSLDA does NOT dispute that a state has the power to regulate homeschooling through legislation. However, they feel that such regulation should be limited to ensuring these two goals, literacy and self-sufficiency, and go no further so as to infringe on the right of parents to raise and educate their own children. Beyond this, homeschooling "evolves", you might say, to meet the requirements of life and learning and industry, etc.

Thus the correct way to view state's homeschooling laws (the safe legal way for all of us) is that parents exercise their fundamental rights in tandem with the "state's interests" in education.

Crack those books next time. And stop pretending that this is "merely" about good science when it is painfully obvious from your posts and all this silly blog the imperative here is ideological requirements you'd like to place on those who believe differently, which BTW is illegal. The religious and other viewpoints that differ from "mainstream" are part of another worldview, not just dicta per se, so therefore they are part of a belief system some feel is central to understanding the world and religion or whatnot.

As to your other severe lack of insight and misunderstanding and failures at good research (Mr. Michael Fumento, the mere "lawyer" who nonetheless seems to figure out the boo-boos of trolls like Tim Lambert over at Deltoid and Mad Mike), this is your chance to either put up or shut up about the latest horror that never came to be (as Fumento said it would NOT), Avian Flu, and have some chicken for dinner.

Fuss and Feathers,

W.T.

Dawkins also supports the Great Ape Project, which would ban biomedical research on great apes.

Then he's a kook too.

Saying that one hominid is just like another is like saying that hot boiling water is "just" like a cold mountain spring.

Have someone pour it on your neck to see the difference.

But that's Dawkins' demon to slay. He seems to have so many.
Predictably, his kind of thinking lends to his kinds of equivications.

No surprises here.

WT

You're science methodology is that of the witch killers in Monty Python & the Holy Grail..

Your grammar is that of — no, no, bad snark! Down!

The religious and other viewpoints that differ from "mainstream" are part of another worldview, not just dicta per se, so therefore they are part of a belief system some feel is central to understanding the world and religion or whatnot.

Then he's a kook too.

Those two sentences look so nice together.

Yes, indeed. And yet they were not placed together. Hmmm.
Context is everything. Reminds me of an interview I had with a popular blogger one time who laughed over and over at the frustration of coming to Superstition blogs, warning me that most of the little trolls here would take two disparate passages and patchthem together like chicken wire to make some point, which of course ends up as utterly pointless.

STILL: One can believe passionately about something, and despite the passion, be a kook. Dawkins fits the bill nicely, speaking of nice. He has no justification of what he thinks when he strays from science into the realm of ethics other than it makes him warm and fuzzy inside, which elsewhere he derides as mere "notions" and "illusions" along with everything else he thinks can't be quantified so therefore it is "unreal", etc.

Thus, his contradiction is Dawkins way of going through church doors.

Thanks for the input, such as it was..

One can believe passionately about something, and despite the passion, be a kook.

How true. For example, people who, against all evidence, think that the world is 6,000 years old; or that Global Warming is an environmentalist conspiracy; or that a morally bankrupt, hate-purveying liar is His Kinda Gal. Takes all kinds, dunnit?

Well Mr. Rob, Coulter hate is par for the course, and so by your example no doubt you've merely crossed beams in your mind's eye with her. I assure you, the Left is far more full of venom and bile against most of her choice targets, which lately is fairly much all of humanity beyond their enclaves. As she's usually correct about the ugly things and nasty asides that the Left holds for all people who don't share their views, it seems the real animus is that she dosen't hold punches. Oh--and she also points out you are obsessive compulsive liars and don't cover your statements and tracks very well, now that the Net is kicking and a new domain beyond the NY Times has opened up.
Kicking the fool out of the W.Post and NY Times is now a full time hobby to some. And fun, too. No doubt that irritates liberal ponderances in the media and in school and in the Chatter Class's cocktail enounters, where they are used to getting their way about 100% of the time.

She learned long ago that being nice pays no dividends like, say, a bond yield or a stock. Why would it?

Take a liberal to dinner and he might cut you with the knife just for kicks and then blame you for the affront for the provocation. Also, when it comes to the high-sounding liberal murmer about corruption in politics or morals(another area they know little about and don't have any consistent thoughts on the matter anyhow), they take the cake. So if you invite one to dinner personally, not only keep your eye on the knife but count the silverware.

As to the other, I have never seen the 6000-year figure in Scripture among many of the other mythologies that people like to pull or assume about, say, Flat Earth cosmology (also not true of early Christians according to historians and certianly not found in canonical Scripture), I DO see much metaphorical launguage and what can be called "phenomena language", that is to say explanation on the way things appear. As to Global Warming and other Laodecian hellfires that pols use to hobgoblin us into fear every so often in order to expand the Federal bloat, the question is not whether the planet is once again lapsing into yet another warm period (it probably is) but whether the cause is truly anthopogentic, since after all most of the putative warming in the last century occured before 1938 and thus long before human activity got into full gear with fossil fuels. The most reasonable assumption is that with the warming one would see moderation of temperatures (which has not happened) instead of the cold snaps that now even got the Deep South record lows this winter that have not come around for 40 years. Instead, the stock explanation now is that life's chills can now be exlained by....well.....global warming. That's kind of like saying that if a company is about to knuckle under due to corruption and fraud and the stock is taking a tumble due to investor worries that would be the best time to plunk down thousands of bucks in that particular stock.
That's not just anectdotal silliness, sir.

Don't know about Greenhouse Conspiracy, just troublemaking without merit; the same people--against all availavble "evidence"--who tell us blizzards and record cold snaps and the snow that hit Miami in the 1970's long after the Industrial Revolution got us more carbon extracted from the Earth are due to Global Warming, NOW tell us hurricanes are on the rise due to the Carbon Lobby(Yes, Virginia, there really is danger in politics and science and poly wonks collide) as evidenced by Katrina. Of course, 2006 turned out to be less than a "breeze" to decipher along these lines, unfortunately. Then too even those organizations that believed in anthropogenic Greenhouse also reminded the public that no corresponding increase in typhoons occured(the pacific version of hurricanes) occured during Katrina's banner year. One would expect this also.

That is going against "all evidence." There are other, more serious threats to commonweal, speaking of morals, than the rapturous pleasure of seeing Washington DC or New York underwater (what would I give to live to see that day, though it won't happen) or having never to bring the plants inside in January, due to Global Warming.

--WT

AndyS,

Can anyone defend the US health care system? Anyone?

Defend it from what?

The most reasonable assumption is that with the warming one would see moderation of temperatures...

Well, if your model is a goldfish bowl, sure. Climate is a bit more complicated than that.

Take a liberal to dinner and he might cut you with the knife just for kicks and then blame you for the affront for the provocation.

You free next Wednesday?

Anyone who thinks there are no leftist anti-science types has never experienced the special sort of hell that is a 4S (Society for the Social Studies of Science) annual meeting.

"my peers here raise the ire of the anti-science crazies on both the right and the left."

Un-scientific idiocy is politically blind.

Gerard Harbison: There's another guy involved in the antievolution stuff who sports the language of the pomos, John Angus Campbell. In fact, when he was a guest in a course I took once, it never came up that he was a Discovery Institute type guy. I told him (in short form) that if he wanted to work seriously on his "Why Was Darwin Believed?" subject he couldn't do it alone as a rhetorician. Now I know that his tack is probably to make it look like Darwin was believed because he wrote well and used techniques of classical rhetoric, the people of his day, etc. and not because of evidence or the like. JAC, in other words, commits the classic pomo error but deliberately. (Latour, I think does as well, but only to grab attention, I think. This is a hypothesis.)

Blake Stacey: Of course. Think Heidegger, the antiscience Nazi par excellence. And pomos still draw upon him.

Has he never heard of

Not only that, he has also never bothered to imagine that the USA might not be the only country in the world with a GDP above that of Eritrea.

As a person who works in Africa and studies human evolution in Africa, I can go on an on about the European bias, and the closely linked Anti-African bias in archaeological and human evolutionary research. It's huge.

Could you fill in my ignorance a little?

Equating Deconstructionists with anti-science crazies is very sloppy arguing. You can just as easily make the argument that Deconstruction is an implementation of the scientific method by way of examining potential bias in data.

Isn't that about the same as postmodernism -- the loudly proclaimed truth that there is no truth except the one that there is no truth? That all "stories" are equally true? That, obviously, is anti-science -- it is the simple denial that there is such a thing as reality.