Bruised science: Researchers in U.S. increasingly feel embattled,

[atommom]

distrusted

They don't need microscopes to find it. Everywhere they look, America's scientists see evidence of a widening public assault on, and distrust of, their work. Skeptics fire away on many fronts...

Each controversy differs from the other — from proposals to criminalize an aspect of embryonic stem-cell research in Missouri and Kansas, to efforts to teach “intelligent design” alongside evolution. Yet all are converging now, obscuring the lines that separate science — once seen as a bastion of the unbiased — from politics and opinion.

“Scientists feel they're under attack. And they are,” said Austin Dacey, director of research and education for the Center for Inquiry at State University of New York, in Buffalo.

The tensions carry real-world implications. A recent survey published in the journal Science showed scientists feeling pressured by political and cultural forces to sidestep sensitive areas.

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/11062006.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

[cdb]

1. This is just like the NYT article concerning the end of an era...

The end of the Age of enlightenment. Yes, let's go back to the Dark Ages where superstition and religion trump actual knowledge...ignorant pre-medieval beliefs concerning speciation, the universe.

Shall we take bets on when the christian fundies start calling for burning heretics?

[Coastie for Truth]

2. We have lost our biotech pre-eminence

(thanks to Bushco limits on stem cell research, and the intelligent designers, and the creationists) - as the best and brightest either leave - or return home - to pursue research, and as Ashcroft-Ridge (now Gonzales-Chertoff) stop the new grad students at the borders.

We are losing (or may have already lost) our IT pre-eminence.

We lost our traditional "gear head" mechanical engineer and machinery oriented electrical engineering pre-eminence.

Bush's political assault on bio-science, meteorology, and even geology that doesn't follow the political line has hurt us.

The politicization of the NIH and NAS has hurt materially.

Return to the age of McKinley.

[Zenlitened]

3. "... obscuring the lines that separate science..."

That is precisely the fundamentalists' agenda.

Thay have no interest in improving science. They are all about SMEARING it, throwing up doubts, muddying the discission, undermining confidence.

And they're succeeding.

R.I.P, America. :(

[DELUSIONAL]

4. This is in part because some scientists are whores for the gov

or corporations.

This has happened either by design or as a fall out of the scientists who work for the gov and forget that they have a higher calling.

1. Scientists who know certain drugs are bad -- but who can't or won't alert the public.

2. Scientists who knew that cigarette smoking is/was addictive -- but since they were paid by the Tobacco corporations -- they hid or suppressed the information.

3. Global Warming -- the fax scientist who are political hacks and support bushies claim the Global Warming doesn't exist.

4. tendency of Scientists to write and speak in Sci-English.

5. Deliberate Scientific illiteracy of the vast majority of the American population. Most people don't know what "scientific methodology" means.

6. Failure of various scientific bodies to police their own -- Scientist who fail to follow the "scientific code of ethics" should be sanctioned by fellow scientists -- and even have their PhDs and titles revoked.

Very often Scientists refuse to speak up because they fear they will become unemployable by the same government that they are criticizing.

And then as has been mentioned -- Christians Fundamentalism has invaded many of the sciences. And when science is taken over by mythology -- then science is the loser.