Philosophy & Ethics

Science and politics are incomplete systems. We live in a linear timestream. Social Experiments as well as self-referential climate science are not science yet. This was affirmed to me personally by a top climatologist studying global warming and oceanography despite his firm conviction that political action must be taken. Science is not consensus. Science is not democratic. Democracy is not scientific. We must have a system of LEARNING in a linear timestream that does not allow controlled experiment. This can only be accomplished at the broadest base possible utilizing a formal structure of…

In his recent article Should We Trust Scientists?, Paolo Ciafaloni wrote: The words I chose in my articles might seem simple, and possibly they are. But I think they reveal something of the impressive predictive power and the inner beauty of the Theory of Relativity. And of the immense deepness of thought of his creator Albert Einstein, who you might happen to have heard of. Which immediately brought to mind this idea of G.K.Chesterton*: « For instance, suppose everybody was instantly fined a small sum for mentioning the name of Einstein. The money would be refunded if he could afterwards…

I met Makana in August 2005, where an old lava flow meets the ocean in a series of ledges and tide pools on Kauai, one of the Hawaiian Islands. He was a “local” of about my age who got his name (Hawaiian for “gift”) from the old volcano that formed the backdrop of our introduction. He wasn’t in college, but had a good job as a caddy at an upscale golf course, where Bill Clinton had tipped one of his buddies well the day before. In the afternoons, he and his friends came to this spot — still called “The Queen’s Bath” decades after the days of Hawaii’s royal rulers — to “talk story” and swap…

Were you buying it when Diederik Stapel of Tilburg University in the Netherlands claimed meat was behind all the aggression we humans have?  Vegetarians were, sure, along with plenty of other anti-science hippies when a supposed study matches their world view and gives them a jolt of dopamine, but most of us just shook our heads. Stapel also did a study claiming scientists discriminated more if their labs were messy.  Really, psychologists can lament they are not taken more seriously but they did little to police their own - until recently.  Marc Hauser was forced to…

The U.S. military has its own judicial system.  If you commit an infraction, you are charged under the Uniform Court of Military Justice. This keeps the military from becoming a political football. The four other professions also have their own internal monitoring system. For example, even if you do not commit a criminal act as an attorney, you can still be disbarred for conduct outside their rules.  At a two-day United Nations conference in Malaysia, one of the ideas floated is a special 'green bench' system to determine environmental cases. If it sounds creepy and open to…

Hypothetically, if someone told you that a hypothetical question can influence your judgments or behavior, would you believe them? A study in Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes says that hypothetical questions can be used to influence people's behaviors and opinions. The problem exists  because people are unaware of the potential for these questions to bias behaviors. Hypothetical questions, which are frequently used in jury selection and political polling, can be used to create a bias or further entrench an existing belief and that intended the purpose of using these…

Laws of Nature and Natural Justice What are the 'laws of nature', the natural laws which underly the thing which we perceive as natural justice? Aristotle discussed natural justice in terms of what 'ought to be'.  His view was that if particular rules of procedure are followed then the outcome of a procedure will be just.  There is a great deal of circularity in this form of argument.  Circular arguments and arguments about what 'ought' to be are not scientific arguments. This article is intended as a topic for scientific discussion.  The suggestion is made that there are…

Powerful lobby groups opposed to genetically modified (GM) food are threatening public acceptance of the technology in Europe, research suggests.  They are also hampering Europe's response to the global challenge of securing food supplies for current and future generations, the researchers claim.  Of course, it instills an anti-science mentality as well, which makes it more difficult to overcome obstacles toward vaccines and pollution changes. Drawing upon a decade of evidence, researchers from the University of Edinburgh and Warwick University say that Europe's regulation of GM…

Edward Calabrese, an environmental toxicologist at University of Massachusetts Amherst,  says he has evidence that oNobel Prize winner Hermann Muller knowingly lied when he claimed in 1946 that there is no safe level of radiation exposure. Muller was awarded the 1946 Nobel Prize in medicine for his discovery that X-rays induce genetic mutations, prestige which helped him call attention to his long-time concern over the dangers of atomic testing. Muller's decision not to mention key scientific evidence against his position has had a far-reaching impact on our approach to regulating…

Should the least-proven medical treatments have fewer guidelines than evidence-based medicine? New proposed Ontario guidelines for how doctors should acknowledge and incorporate alternative therapies in their practices are getting a backlash from professional and regulatory bodies.  The groups argue that the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario’s (CPSO) draft guidelines on Non-Allopathic (Non-Conventional) Therapies in Medical Practice use a lower evidentiary bar for measuring the safety and efficacy of complementary (alternative) medicine therapies and are effectively asking…