As some posters have been demonstrating the attack on science has been doing nothing but gaining steam as the Children of the Enlightenment continue their slumber.
Now it’s ready to get branded into law. The breath of GOP malicious ruthless is astounding. The fact that it seems to be taken in stride by the vast majority of citizens is horrifying.
I remember one instructor back in High School warning us happy liberals on our winning streak, watch out, the Right always comes back and plays hard ball. Too bad nearly nobody listened to him.
Amen to that insightful dude.
GOP Effort To Make Environmental Science 'Transparent' Worries Scientists
Heard on All Things Considered - July 20, 2017
http://www.npr.org/2017/07/20/537243392/gop-effort-to-make-environmental-science-transparent-worries-scientists
... The HONEST Act says the EPA can't take a particular action based on scientific research unless that research is "publicly available online in a manner than is sufficient for independent analysis and substantial reproduction of research results."
Trouble is, making all that data widely available in such detail isn't always possible — past studies may not have all this documentation. And it's a huge burden to require that everything from raw data to computer models be made available to outsiders, says Thomas Burke, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who was a science advisor at the EPA.
"To say that every study needs to have the data out there — this is code for 'We are going challenge it — to raise issues of uncertainty and play the delay game' that was so successfully played, unfortunately, with things like tobacco," says Burke.
When industry delays regulation by nitpicking the science, he says, public health suffers. ...
The thought that complex science should be judged by non-experts with an axe to grind (rather than an interest in serious science) is just another ultimately insane GOP plan. That's what happens when a gang gets trapped within their own self-interested Alt-universe, they become Absolutists and go off the rails, taking all the sheople along with them.
How the GOP Could Use Science’s Reform Movement Against It
The principles of openness, transparency, and reproducibility might be weaponized to defund and deny research.
ED YONG APR 5, 2017
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/04/reproducibility-science-open-judoflip/521952/
Republicans’ War on Science Just Got Frighteningly Real
Two terrible bills that Obama would have vetoed are back in play, and they stand a very good chance of becoming law under Trump.
BY EMILY ATKIN
https://newrepublic.com/article/141227/republicans-war-science-just-got-frighteningly-real
As many conservatives see it, environmental science is an enabler of dreaded government regulation.
When enough studies show that there is no safe level of lead in water, then we have to regulate lead pollution.
When scientists agree that mercury pollution can effect developmental health, then we have to regulate mercury.
And when scientists agree that excessive carbon emissions threaten public health and welfare—well, you get the point.
The HONEST Act is essentially a re-brand of Smith’s notorious Secret Science Reform Act, a bill that would have required the
EPA to only use scientific studies for which all data is publicly available and the results are easily reproducible.
Imagine it's going to be uglier than you can imagine.
I am no fan of the GOP (voted for Sanders) but…
It’s not automatically true that science is taking us to an ever better world. As explored in this thread], it may be leading us towards a coming collapse of civilization.
That said, I surely would not credit the GOP with understanding that threat.
I am no fan of the GOP (voted for Sanders) but....
It's not automatically true that science is taking us to an ever better world. As explored in this thread], it may be leading us towards a coming collapse of civilization.
That said, I surely would not credit the GOP with understanding that threat.
Nor that this legislation has anything to do with concerns about science taking us to a better place. Since the these people are trying to muzzle is science that's warning us about all the different way are self-obssessions are destroying our planet - due to avarice - not scientific imperatives.