Girls (and others)
There's a lot of information in the media today and recent years about the "science" of Climate Change. It's very interesting to me that for several years it was "Global
Warming". But after a few very cold winters, the "powers that be" decided that catch phrase didn't raise much money in the winter months and certainly didn't arouse the attention of the Hollywood activists.
I'd like you to at least consider this article below and to think about
the idea that sometimes (oftentimes) science is not really proven, nor
scientific. But it is, in fact, the idea that the "scientists" are most vigorously being the proponents of at that point in history.
Today . . scientists get most of their funding from grants and agencies that are not scientific-neutral but who have an agenda of their own. Scientists who espouse the most popular-at-the-moment-theories tend to get the best
funding. And the contrarians tend to be left to work on their own.
I've always told you that the ability to write history is determined
by the victors in battle, and those who rule.
Someday, as Eisenhower announced when liberating the
concentration camps, history may say . . .and science will
prove . . . that the Holocaust never even happened.
In a sense, science can be written as well from a prescribed
view point by the victors.
It's only been 100 years, since "scientific" thought and
fund raising was aiming at Eugenics, which is simply "population and gene
cleansing" as begun in the early days by Margaret Sanger, Theodore Roosevelt, et al, and then carried to
it's zenith by Adolph Hitler. As part of the "science" of Eugenics, you
girls would not even be here, because your mother would have been
sterilized because of her "imperfection". If your mom had happened to slip
through
the "cleansing" then Coleton and Cade might not have been here,
because Bill might not have been here, because of Bob's "imperfections". And all would have been done in the name of science.
Science is something that can be proven by experimenting and ALWAYS getting the same result. Carbon dating, big bang theory, climate
change and the X Files are all just . . . . theories. Change the
funding and you change the theories.
Question everything. Don't believe a word the rulers or scientists or
philosophers tell you just because they are in prominent positions. Use your mind to
examine and determine "is this truth" . . . or is it Mulder and Scully just out
there trying to find the truth somewhere?
“Why
Politicized Science is Dangerous”
Appendix
I to State of Fear
(2004)
Imagine that there is a
new scientific theory that warns of an impending crisis, and
points to a way out. This theory quickly draws
support from leading scientists, politicians, and
celebrities around the world. Research is funded by distinguished
philanthropies, and carried out at prestigious universities.
The crisis is reported frequently in the media. The science is
taught in college and high school classrooms.
I don’t mean global
warming. I’m talking about another theory, which rose to
prominence a century ago. Its supporters included
Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Winston
Churchill. It was approved by Supreme Court justices Oliver
Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis, who ruled in its
favor. The famous names who supported it included
Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone; activist
Margaret Sanger; botanist Luther Burbank; Leland Stanford,
founder of Stanford University; the novelist H.G. Wells;
the playwright George Bernard Shaw; and hundreds of
others. Nobel Prize winners gave support. Research was
backed by the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations. The Cold
Springs Harbor Institute was built to carry out this
research, but important work was also done at Harvard, Yale,
Princeton, Stanford, and Johns Hopkins. Legislation to
address the crisis was passed in
states from New York to
California.
These efforts had the
support of the National Academy of Sciences, the American
Medical Association, and the National Research Council.
It was said that if Jesus were alive, he would have
supported this effort. All in all, the research,
legislation, and molding of public opinion surrounding the
theory went on for almost half a
century. Those who opposed
the theory were shouted down and called
reactionary, blind to reality, or just plain ignorant. But in
hindsight, what is surprising is that so few people objected.
Today, we know that this
famous theory that gained so much support was actually
pseudoscience. The crisis it claimed was nonexistent.
And the actions taken in the name of this theory were
morally and criminally wrong. Ultimately, they led to the deaths of
millions of people. The theory was eugenics,
and its history is so dreadful— and, to those who were
caught up in it, so embarrassing— that it is now rarely
discussed. But it is a story that should be well known to
every citizen, so that its horrors are not repeated. The theory of eugenics
postulated a crisis of the gene pool leading to the
deterioration of the human race. The best human beings were not
breeding as rapidly as the inferior ones—the foreigners,
immigrants, Jews, degenerates,the unfit, and the “feeble
minded.” Francis Galton, a respected British scientist, first
speculated about this area, but his ideas were taken far
beyond anything he intended. They were adopted by
science-minded Americans, as well as those who had no interest
in science but who were worried about the immigration of
inferior races early in the twentieth century—“dangerous human
pests” who represented “the rising tide of
imbeciles” and who were polluting the best of the human race.
The eugenicists and the
immigrationists joined forces to put a stop to this. The
plan was to identify individuals who were feeble-minded—Jews
were agreed to be largely feebleminded, but so were many
foreigners, as well as blacks— and stop them from
breeding by isolation in institutions or by sterilization.
As Margaret Sanger said,
“Fostering the good-for-nothing at the expense of the good
is an extreme cruelty … there is no greater curse
to posterity than that of bequeathing them an increasing
population of imbeciles.” She spoke of the burden of
caring for “this dead weight of human waste.”
Such views were widely
shared. H. G. Wells spoke against “ill-trained
swarms of inferior citizens.” Theodore Roosevelt said that
“Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind.”
Luther Burbank: “Stop permitting criminals and
weaklings to reproduce.” George Bernard Shaw said that
only eugenics could save mankind. There was overt racism in
this movement, exemplified by texts such as The
Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy, by
American author Lothrop Stoddard. But, at
the time, racism was
considered an unremarkable aspect of the effort to attain a
marvelous goal—the improvement of humankind in the future.
It was this avant-garde notion that attracted the most liberal
and progressive minds of a generation. California was one of
twenty-nine American states to pass laws allowing
sterilization, but it proved the most forward-looking and
enthusiastic—more sterilizations were carried out in California
than anywhere else in America. Eugenics research was
funded by the Carnegie Foundation, and later by the
Rockefeller Foundation. The latter
was so enthusiastic that
even after the center of the eugenics
effort moved to Germany,
and involved the gassing of individuals from mental
institutions, the Rockefeller Foundation continued to finance
German researchers at a very high level. (The
foundation was quiet about it, but they were still funding research
in 1939, only months before the onset of World War II.)
Since the 1920s, American
eugenicists had been jealous because the Germans had
taken leadership of the movement away from them. The
Germans were admirably progressive. They set up ordinary-looking
houses where “mental defectives” were
brought and interviewed one at a time, before being led
into a back room, which was, in fact, a gas chamber. There, they
were gassed with carbon monoxide, and their bodies disposed
of in a crematorium located on the property.
Eventually, this program
was expanded into a vast network of concentration camps
located near railroad lines, enabling the efficient
transport and killing of ten million undesirables.
After World War II, nobody
was a eugenicist, and nobody had ever been a
eugenicist. Biographers of the celebrated and the powerful did not
dwell on the attractions of this philosophy to their
subjects, and sometimes did not mention it at all.
Eugenics ceased to be a subject for college classrooms, although some
argue that its ideas continue to have currency in disguised
form.
But in retrospect, three
points stand out. First, despite the construction of Cold
Springs Harbor Laboratory, despite the efforts at
universities and the pleadings of lawyers, there was no scientific
basis for eugenics. In fact, nobody at that time knew what a gene
really was. The movement was able to proceed because it
employed vague terms never rigorously defined.
“Feeble-mindedness” could mean anything from poverty and
illiteracy to epilepsy. Similarly, there was no clear definition of
“degenerate” or “unfit.”
Second, the eugenics
movement was really a social program masquerading as a
scientific one. What drove it was concern about immigration
and racism and undesirable people moving into one’s
neighborhood or country. Once again, vague terminology
helped conceal what was really going on.
Third, and most
distressing, the scientific establishment in both the United States
and Germany did not mount any sustained protest. Quite
the contrary. In Germany scientists quickly fell into line
with the program. Modern German researchers have gone back
to review Nazi documents from the 1930s. They expected
to find directives telling scientists what research should be
done. But none were necessary. In the words of Ute Deichman,
“Scientists, including those who were not members of
the [Nazi] party, helped to get funding for their work
through their modified behavior and direct cooperation with
the state.” Deichman speaks of the “active role of scientists
themselves in regard to Nazi race policy … where [research]
was aimed at confirming the racial doctrine … no
external pressure can be documented.” German scientists adjusted
their research interests to the new policies. And
those few who did not adjust disappeared. second example of
politicized science is quite different in character, but it
exemplifies the hazards of government
ideology controlling the
work of science, and of uncritical media promoting false
concepts. Trofim Denisovich Lysenko was a self-promoting
peasant who, it was said, “solved the problem of
fertilizing the fields without fertilizers and minerals.” In 1928 he
claimed to have invented a procedure called
vernalization, by which seeds were moistened and chilled to enhance the
later growth of crops.
Lysenko’s methods never
faced a rigorous test, but his claim that his treated
seeds passed on their characteristics to the next generation
represented a revival of Lamarckian ideas at a time when the
rest of the world was embracing Mendelian genetics. Josef
Stalin was drawn to Lamarckian ideas, which implied a
future unbounded by hereditary constraints he also wanted improved
agricultural production. Lysenko promised both, and
became the darling of a Soviet media that was on the
lookout for stories about clever
peasants who had developed
revolutionary procedures. Lysenko was portrayed as a
genius, and he milked his celebrity for all it was
worth. He was especially skillful at denouncing his opponents.
He used questionnaires from farmers to prove that
vernalization increased crop yields, and thus avoided any
direct tests. Carried on a wave of state-sponsored
enthusiasm, his rise was rapid. By 1937, he was a member of the
Supreme Soviet.
By then, Lysenko and his
theories dominated Russian biology. The result was
famines that killed millions, and purges that sent hundreds
of dissenting Soviet scientists to the gulags or the firing
squads. Lysenko was aggressive in attacking genetics, which
was finally banned as “bourgeois pseudoscience” in 1948.
There was never any basis for Lysenko’s ideas, yet he
controlled Soviet research for thirty years. Lysenkoism ended in
the 1960s, but Russian biology still has not entirely
recovered from that era.
Now we are engaged in a great
new theory, that once again has drawn the
support of politicians, scientists, and celebrities around the
world. Once again, the theory is promoted by major
foundations. Once again, the research is carried out at prestigious
universities. Once again, legislation is passed and social
programs are urged in its name. Once again, critics are
few and harshly dealt with.
Once again, the measures
being urged have little basis in fact or science. Once
again, groups with other agendas are hiding behind a movement
that appears high-minded. Once again, claims of moral
superiority are used to justify extreme actions. Once again, the
fact that some people are hurt is shrugged off
because an abstract cause is said to be greater than any human
consequences. Once again, vague terms like sustainability
and generational justice—terms that have no agreed
definition—are employed in the service
of a new crisis.
I am not arguing that
global warming is the same as eugenics. But the
similarities are not superficial. And I do claim that open and frank
discussion of the data, and of the issues, is being
suppressed. Leading scientific journals have taken strong editorial
positions on the side of global warming, which, I argue,
they have no business doing. Under the circumstances, any
scientist who has doubts understands clearly that they will be
wise to mute their expression.
One proof of this
suppression is the fact that so many of the outspoken critics
of global warming are retired professors.
These individuals are no
longer seeking grants, and no longer have to face
colleagues whose grant applications and career advancement may
be jeopardized by their criticisms. In science, the old men
are usually wrong. But in politics, the old men are wise,
counsel caution, and in the end are often right.
The past history of human
belief is a cautionary tale.
We have killed thousands
of our fellow human beings because we believed they had
signed a contract with the devil, and had become witches. We
still kill more than a thousand people each year for
witchcraft. In my view, there is only one hope for humankind to
emerge from what Carl Sagan called “the demon-haunted
world” of our past. That hope is science.
But as Alston Chase put
it, “when the search for truth is confused with political
advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest
for power.” That is the danger we now
face. And that is why the intermixing of science and
politics is a bad combination, with a bad history. We
must remember the history, and be certain that what we
present to the world as knowledge is disinterested and honest.
From: Michael Crichton. State of Fear.
New York: HarperCollins, 2004, pp. 575-580.
