Reading the various daily science news websites I check out each morning, I was hit by the coincidental announcement of several cases where the scientific community is fighting back against “bad science” (the misuse of data to promote a specific – usually conservative or corporate – agenda), against stonewalling, and against the apathetic (or antagonistic) attitude of “business as usual.” It’s good news when we see the “good guys” taking a stand since scientists are usually reluctant to get involved in the political fray, so I thought I’d share the information with you all, below the fold.
The International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health has put out a special issue, available in its entirety on line, on the subject of corporate corruption of science:
Although occupational and environmental diseases are often viewed as isolated and unique failures of science, the government, or industry to protect the best interest of the public, they are in fact an outcome of a pervasive system of corporate priority setting, decision making, and influence. This system produces disease because political, economic, regulatory and ideological norms prioritize values of wealth and profit over human health and environmental well-being. Science is a key part of this system; there is a substantial tradition of manipulation of evidence, data, and analysis, ultimately designed to maintain favorable conditions for industry at both material and ideological levels. This issue offers examples of how corporations influence science, shows the effects that influence has on environmental and occupational health, and provides evidence of a systemic problem.
Specific papers in the issue include such juicy titles as:
Maximizing Profit, Endangering Health
Industry Funding on Health Nonprofits
Epidemiology Abuse: Auto Makers vs Asbestos Liability
Ethyl-leaded Gas, Public Health Disaster
Keeping a Toxic Product on the Market
Promotion of Sewage Sludge “Recycling”
Corporate Influence in Debate over GM Crops
There are more; if the intersection of environmental and health issues is of interest to you, this is worth checking out. It’s rare for a professional technical journal to take on an issue like this head on.
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I was shocked, shocked this morning to see that the Wall Street Journal, of all places, was willing to admit that their anti-global heating coverage may have been incorrect. While the WSJ is usually not available free online, they do sometimes make stories available to the public, and luckily today’s was one that I wanted to read: Global-Warming Skeptics Under Fire – Two New Papers Question Results Used to Challenge Influential Climate Study. This is the latest round in the “hockey-stick graph” controversy, in which Representative Joe Barton (R-TX) used McCarthyite tactics against Dr, Michael Mann, the Penn State climatologist who produced the hockey-stick graph (reproduced in the story). While Congress has yet to evaluate the reams of data they required the researcher to produce, two independent groups have done so, and while they find glitches in the data, the general findings of the climate scientists are upheld:
A dispute erupted earlier this year when oil and minerals consultant Stephen McIntyre and economist Ross McKitrick, both Canadians, published a scientific study detailing possible mathematical errors in the hockey-stick result…
Now, two independent research reports say the Canadians’ critique may have limited significance. The studies, appearing this month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, find that while there is a statistical snafu in the hockey-stick math, it may not strongly affect the graph’s accuracy.
One study, from researchers at the GKSS Research Center in Geesthacht, Germany, confirmed “a glitch” in Dr. Mann’s work but “found this glitch to be of very minor significance” when applied to some computer-generated models of climate history, according to a statement released by lead author Hans von Storch.
The other study, by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution fellow Peter Huybers, argued the Canadians had overstated the effect of the problem. “The truth is somewhere in between, but closer to Dr. Mann,” Dr. Huybers said…
Some scientists believe the dispute has more political weight than scientific significance. That’s because, they say, other studies of past temperatures also indicate they are higher now, on average, than at any time in past 1,000 years, and perhaps far longer. “A number of studies all come to the same conclusion,” Dr. Mann said.
Before we get too excited and welcome the WSJ to the reality-based community, however, we should note that the original challenge to the science of the climate crisis appeared on page A-1, while this report appeared on page B-3. Some things, unfortunately, don’t appear ready to change…
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The Times-Picayune is reporting today that the panel of engineers assembled to investigate why the New Orleans levees failed is meeting with stonewalling by the Army Corps, after initial promises of cooperation. The panel is hot, and has taken their anger public:
A team of engineering experts rushing to complete a preliminary report on the reasons behind levee failures that flooded much of the New Orleans area after Hurricane Katrina said it has been hampered by the Army Corps of Engineers’ failure to provide documents and access to local corps employees…
The article provides information on a number of potential causes being investigated, and indicates that in making temporary and emergency repairs some of the same mistakes are being repeated. A connection is drawn between the levee failures and the mindset at NASA that led to the shuttle disaster: fragmented responsibility, piecemeal identification and correction of problems, and overuse of contractors with insufficient oversight. The story is well worth a read, and probably a diary of its own, if someone is so moved.
And of course, while the Corps says it’s making all information necessary available to the investigators, we have to take their word for it, because as we’ve come to expect, the one-size-fits-all answer whenever there’s a need to stonewall the public was invoked:
…[the Corps representative] said a number of the documents may not be available to the public because of “homeland security concerns.”
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For my final item today, Reuters reports on a number of experts calling again for the preservation of biodiversity and habitat as a means of preventing the spread of diseases to humans:
“Biodiversity not only stores the promise of new medical treatments and cures, it buffers humans from organisms and agents that cause disease,” scientists from the Diversitas international group said in a statement.
“Preventing emerging diseases through biodiversity conservation is far more cost effective than developing vaccines to combat them later,” it said ahead of a November 9-10 conference of 700 biodiversity experts in Oaxaca, Mexico.
A similar call for marine habitat preservation to preserve both biodiversity and fisheries was also reported by Reuters today:
SYDNEY, Australia — International scientists are mapping out a plan for a network of marine parks to save the world’s oceans from fish stock depletion and growing pollution.
Achim Steiner, director-general of the World Conservation Union (IUCN), said a conservation plan for the unregulated high seas — part of a U.N.-backed plan — would be produced by 2008, for adoption by world governments by 2012.
“We’ve had a good century of developing terrestrial protected areas, national parks on land,” Steiner told Reuters late on Monday at the world’s first conference on marine protected areas.
“But in the face of big challenges such as habitat loss, pollution of coastal zones, and species loss, and the high seas collapse of fish stocks, the whole marine realm is becoming rapidly more important,” Steiner said by telephone from Geelong, a southern Australian city where 700 scientists from 70 countries gathered for the conference.
An IUCN report released on Tuesday said that up to half of the world’s coral reefs might be lost in the next 40 years unless urgent measures were taken to protect them against climate change and other threats.
Your Turn
Feel free to add links to any stories of scientific, medical, or energy/environmental interest that you think the community should see in the comments. After all, the distraction provided by reading the scientific literature is medically proven to reduce the symptoms of PISS (pre-indictment stress syndrome) by 93%…
