Online Educational Journals

Airports can be protected with security - but for some reason people think this impossible for schools? School Safety (worse now - this is an old study!) * Between 1994 and 1999, there were 220 school associated violent events resulting in 253 deaths - - 74.5% of these involved firearms. Handguns caused almost 60% of these deaths. (Journal of American Medical Association, December 2001) * In 1998-99 academic year, 3,523 students were expelled for bringing a firearm to school. This is a decrease from the 5,724 students expelled in 1996-97 for bringing a firearm to school. (U.S. Department of Education, October 2000) * Nearly 8% of adolescents in urban junior and senior high schools miss at least one day of school each month because they are afraid to attend. (National Mental Health & Education Center for Children & Families, National Association of School Psychologists 1998) * The National School Boards Association estimates that more than 135,000 guns are brought into U.S. schools each day. (NSBA, 1993) http://www.neahin.org/programs/schoolsafety/gunsafety/statistics.htm

Do conservatives fighting healthcare reform care about the million Americans a year? forced into bankruptcy from medical costs? Do they consider the Americans who did get an education, earned a degree, and did work, but were capsized by medical bills? "Bankruptcies due to medical bills increased by nearly 50 percent in a six-year period, from 46 percent in 2001 to 62 percent in 2007, and most of those who filed for bankruptcy were middle-class, well-educated homeowners, according to a report that will be published in the August issue of The American Journal of Medicine." http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/06/05/bankruptcy.medical.bills/index.html People arguing costs, our system that is ranked lower than most post industrial countries actually costs a ton more already than any other country, with less results. So the cost argument is unfounded. http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE5504Z320090601 Libertarian, did you even read the link? These were educated working people. Their insurance failed them. That's the entire point. These were not "lazy welfare" recipients. Cons: When is the American Journal of Medicine a liberal propaganda machine. They did the study, not CNN. You just can't stomach the truth.

Which of these are actually fictional books by Upton Sinclair? I am a huge Upton Sinclair fan and I want to know which books on this list are fiction. He inspired me for future drama novels. Courtmartialed - 1898 Saved By the Enemy - 1898 The Fighting Squadron - 1898 A Prisoner of Morro - 1898 A Soldier Monk - 1898 A Gauntlet of Fire - 1899 Holding the Fort (story) - 1899 A Soldier's Pledge - 1899 Wolves of the Navy - 1899 Springtime and Harvest - 1901 The Journal of Arthur Stirling - 1903 Off For West Point - 1903 From Port to Port - 1903 On Guard - 1903 A Strange Cruise - 1903 The West Point Rivals - 1903 A West Point Treasure - 1903 A Cadet's Honor - 1903 Cliff, the Naval Cadet - 1903 The Cruise of the Training Ship - 1903 Prince Hagan - 1903 Manassas - 1904 A Captain of Industry - 1906 The Jungle - 1906 The Millennium (four-act drama) - 1907 The Overman - 1907 The Industrial Republic - 1907 The Metropolis - 1908 The Money Changers - 1908 Samuel The Seeker - 1909 Good Health and How We Won It - 1909 The Machine (novel) - 1911 The Cry for Justice - 1915 King Coal - 1917 The Profits of Religion - 1917 Jimmie Higgins - 1919 The Brass Check - 1919 100% - The Story of a Patriot - 1920 The Spy - 1920 They Call Me Carpenter - 1922 The Goose-step: A Study of American Education - 1923 The Millennium (novel form) - 1924 The Goslings - 1924 Singing Jailbirds (play in four acts) - 1924 Mammonart - 1925 Money Writes! - 1927 Oil! - 1927 Boston - 1928 Mountain City - 1930 Mental Radio - 1930 Roman Holiday - 1931 The Wet Parade - 1931 American Outpost - 1932 Upton Sinclair presents William Fox - 1933 The Epic Plan for California - 1934 I, Candidate For Governor: And How I Got Licked - 1935 Co-op: a Novel of Living Together - 1936 No Pasaran!: A Novel of the Battle of Madrid - 1937 The Gnomobile- 1937 The Flivver King - 1937 Damaged Goods novel {based on a Eugène Brieux play); basis for 1937 movie from Grand National Pictures Little Steel - 1938 Our Lady - 1938 Letters to a Millionaire - 1939 World's End - 1940 Between Two Worlds - 1941 Dragon's Teeth - 1942 Wide Is the Gate - 1943 The Presidential Agent - 1944 Dragon Harvest - 1945 A World to Win - 1946 A Presidential Mission - 1947 A Giant's Strength - 1948 Limbo on the Loose - 1948 One Clear Call - 1948 O Shepherd, Speak! - 1949 Another Pamela - 1950 The Enemy Had It Too - 1950 Schenk Stefan! - 1951 A Personal Jesus - 1952 The Return of Lanny Budd - 1953 The Cup of Fury - 1956 What Didymus Did - UK 1954 / It Happened to Didymus - US 1958 My Lifetime in Letters - 1960 Affectionately Eve - 1961 The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair - 1962 written with the help of Maeve Elizabeth Flynn III Be honest with your answers. Don't just name a few. I mean ALL fiction - no nonfiction please.

getting published and putting it on a resume? hello i am going to have my honors thesis published in an undergraduate research journal later this month. i wondered how i can put down this acheivement onto my resume: here's mine currently below: Education Case Western Reserve University- Class of 2008 Candidate B.A. in Spanish with honors- minors in Biology and Chemistry Honors Thesis: “Nada es sencilla: un analisis de cinco peliculas Almodovareñas” “Nothing is simple: an analysis of five Almodóvar films.” Related Experience Department of Pharmacology lab assistant; Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine- (2005-2006); tasks included •Sterilizing dishware and lab equipment •Preparing solutions Cleveland Clinic Foundation volunteer- Sub-acute unit (2004-2007); duties included •Transporting patients to and from physical therapy •Recording patient information for the dietitian •Coordinating activities for the patients and their families Case Western Reserve University Premedical Chapter of the American Medical Student Association- (2004-2006) public relations chair; (2006-2008) co-president and assistant coordinator; (2008-present) adviser LGBT Health Action Committee of the American Medical Student Association- (2007-present) associate coordinator for health and education Special Recognitions and Awards Case Western Reserve University Merit Scholarship recipient Cleveland Scholarship Program Huntington Award recipient Ratner, Miller, and Shafran Foundation Scholarship recipient Case Western Reserve University Student Leadership Award Nominee- 2006-07, 2007-08 Case Western Reserve University Deans High Honors recipient- 2007-08 Leadership Health Care Justice Gathering- (2007) I was selected to attend this 5 day AMSA sponsored program at the Gesundheit Institute in West Virginia. Improvement of the healthcare delivery system will be discussed and involvement with innovative ways on how to ensure fair and just treatment for all patients. Student Leadership Institute- (2006) I was selected to attend this day long event at the Region 4 AMSA Conference, held at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Participants chosen worked together to develop projects to enhance universal healthcare and talked about ways to improve the healthcare systems across the world. Sigma Delta Pi member- (2006-2008) This is a national collegiate Hispanic honor society for Spanish majors who have equal to or higher than a 3.5 GPA within related courses. Cleveland Scholarship Mentorship Program- (2006) served on a committee to start this program for incoming freshman that have received a scholarship from the Cleveland Scholarship Program. SAGES Advisory Board- (2004-06) vice president Carlton Complex Council- (2004-05) social coordinator for Michelson House Other Employment Call Center at Case Western Reserve University- student supervisor (2006-present) Tutor for Education Student Support department at Case Western Reserve University- (2003-2004) McDonald’s Restaurant- crew trainer (1999-2005)

Do you believe in Myths? 1. Myth: One in four women in college has been the victim of rape or attempted rape. Fact: This mother of all factoids is based on a fallacious feminist study commissioned by Ms. magazine. The researcher, Mary Koss, hand-picked by hard-line feminist Gloria Steinem, acknowledges that 73 percent of the young women she counted as rape victims were not aware they had been raped. Forty-three percent of them were dating their “attacker” again. Rape is a uniquely horrible crime. That is why we need sober and responsible research. Women will not be helped by hyperbole and hysteria. Truth is no enemy of compassion, and falsehood is no friend. (Nara Schoenberg and Sam Roe, “The Making of an Epidemic,” Toledo Blade, October 10, 1993; and Neil Gilbert, “Examining the Facts: Advocacy Research Overstates the Incidence of Data and Acquaintance Rape,” Current Controversies in Family Violence eds. Richard Gelles and Donileen Loseke, Newbury Park, CA.: Sage Publications, 1993, pp.120-132; and Campus Crime and Security, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 1997. *According to this study, campus police reported 1,310 forcible sex offenses on U.S. campuses in one year. That works out to an average of fewer than one rape per campus.) 2. Myth: Women earn 75 cents for every dollar a man earns. Fact: The 75 cent figure is terribly misleading. This statistic is a snapshot of all current full-time workers. It does not consider relevant factors like length of time in the workplace, education, occupation, and number of hours worked per week. (The experience gap is particularly large between older men and women in the workplace.) When economists do the proper controls, the so-called gender wage gap narrows to the point of vanishing. (Essential reading: Women’s Figures: An Illustrated Guide to the Economic Progress of Women in America, by Diana Furchtgott-Roth and Christine Stolba, published by the Independent Women’s Forum and the American Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C. 2000.) 3. Myth: 30 percent of emergency room visits by women each year are the result of injuries from domestic violence. Fact: This incendiary statistic is promoted by gender feminists whose primary goal seems to be to impugn men. Two responsible government studies report that the nationwide figure is closer to one percent. While these studies may have missed some cases of domestic violence, the 30% figure is a wild exaggeration. (National Center for Health Statistics, National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey: 1992 Emergency Department Summary , Hyattsville, Maryland, March 1997; and U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Violence-Related Injuries Treated in Hospital Emergency Departments: Washington, D.C., August 1997.) 4. Myth: The phrase “rule of thumb” originated in a man’s right to beat his wife provided the stick was no wider than his thumb. Fact: This is an urban legend that is still taken seriously by activist law professors and harassment workshoppers. The Oxford English Dictionary has more than twenty citations for phrase “rule of thumb” (the earliest from 1692), but not a single mention of beatings, sticks, or husbands and wives. (For a definitive debunking of the hoax see Henry Ansgar Kelly, “Rule of Thumb and the Folklaw of the Husband’s Stick,” The Journal of Legal Education, September 1994.) 5. Myth: Women have been shortchanged in medical research. Fact: The National Institutes of Health and drug companies routinely include women in clinical trials that test for effectiveness of medications. By 1979, over 90% of all NIH-funded trials included women. Beginning in 1985, when the NIH’s National Cancer Center began keeping track of specific cancer funding, it has annually spent more money on breast cancer than any other type of cancer. Currently, women represent over 60% of all subjects in NIH-funded clinical trails. (Essential reading: Cathy Young and Sally Satel, “The Myth of Gender Bias in Medicine,” Washington, D.C.: The Women’s Freedom Network, 1997.) 6. Myth: Women’s Studies Departments empowered women and gave them a voice in the academy. Fact: Women’s Studies empowered a small group of like-minded careerists. They have created an old-girl network that is far more elitist, narrow and closed than any of the old-boy networks they rail against. Vast numbers of moderate or dissident women scholars have been marginalized, excluded and silenced. (Essential reading: everything by Camille Paglia; Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge–Professing Feminism: Cautionary Tales from the Strange World of Women’s Studies; and Christina Hoff Sommers–Who Stole Feminism? How Women have Betrayed Women) EDIT: Marx - That's why I posted it, I had more than 10, but ran out of space. Interesting silence from some.

Why did Caesar Chavez, icon of the U.S. Latino civil rights movement, staunchly oppose illegal immigration? "Deception in the classroom: the real Cesar Chavez." San Diego Business Journal http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-5565671/Deception-in-the-classroom-the.html Did you know that Cesar Chavez was not a supporter of illegal immigration? Did you also know that history shows Cesar Chavez, whose name has become synonymous with La Raza and other radical elements of the reconquista movement, was in fact effectively a Minuteman? Our schools teach that Cesar Chavez spent a good portion of his life advocating for the rights of farmworkers throughout California and the United States. But what they fail to mention is that Cesar Chavez was a vocal opponent of illegal immigration. Think about it--he was trying to raise the benefits for farmworkers in the United States. Simultaneously, there was a massive influx of virtual slave labor streaming across the southern border of the United States, thus undermining everything he fought to achieve. When farmworkers would strike as a method for achieving their goals, employers would simply recruit "strikebreakers" from south of the border, illegal immigrants, by flooding the market with cheap labor, would lower the prevailing wage and thereby drain Cesar Chavez of his ability to advocate on behalf of the organized farm labor movement. Evidence of this abounds in the historical record, such as in his testimony before Congress in 1979 when he blamed the federal government for failing to secure the border. Chavez testified that "for over 30 years, the Immigration and Naturalization Service has looked the other way and assisted in the strikebreaking." In fact, 10 years earlier, Cesar Chavez protested illegal immigration at the Mexican border, reportedly accompanied by Sen. Walter Mondale and Ralph Abernathy, head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. It has also been reported that Chavez's brother, Manuel, along with members of the United Farm Workers, patrolled the Arizona-Mexico border in a manner similar to that of our Minutemen of today. He believed that illegal immigration would directly impact the prosperity of U.S. farmworkers. He was right. Yet, his vision of the effects of illegal immigration didn't even scratch the surface of the dramatic social and economic impact it would have on America. The massive influx of illegal immigrants into the United States has cost the American taxpayer billions of dollars in services to them and their children through health care and education. It has also been said that illegal immigrants make up well over 20 percent of those in federal penitentiaries --another major expenditure that we the people can scarcely afford. I challenge our educators to recognize this reality and develop lesson plans that don't sugarcoat history, but rather slay the sacred cows of political correctness by telling the truth about Cesar Chavez and the dangers of unbridled illegal immigration. Let's see them teach that in a classroom! Sen. Bill Morrow represents California's 38th District, which includes much of North County and portions of Orange County.

What Does Illegal Immigration Cost? When George W. Bush visited the U.S. Border Patrol’s Yuma Station Headquarters in Arizona Monday — for the second time in a year — his message on illegal immigration sounded a bit tougher than in the past. “Illegal immigration is a serious problem — you know it better than anybody,” he told a group of border agents. “It puts pressure on the public schools and the hospitals, not only here in our border states, but states around the country. It drains the state and local budgets…Incarceration of criminals who are here illegally strains the Arizona budget. But there’s a lot of other ways it strains the local and state budgets. It brings crime to our communities.” The president touted his get-tough-on-the-border policies, enacted under pressure from the then-Republican Congress, and singled out Operation Jump Start, under which National Guard troops assist border agents. But he also stressed the need for “comprehensive” reform, and when he did his message sounded like the George W. Bush of old. “Past efforts at reform failed to address the underlying economic reasons behind illegal immigration,” the president said. “People are coming here to put food on the table, and they’re doing jobs Americans are not doing.” With those words, the president was revisiting the great question in the debate over illegal immigration: Is the presence of illegal immigrants, mostly from Mexico, a boon to the U.S. economy, or a drag? It’s a question that has long divided Bush supporters; the Wall Street Journal editorial page tells us that a lenient immigration policy is absolutely vital for American prosperity, while enforcement-first advocates tell us a strict policy is the only thing that will ensure continued economic health. Both have plenty of statistics to cite to make their case. But now a scholar at the Heritage Foundation, Robert Rector, has found a new and revealing way to get at the answer. Rector has just published a study, “The Fiscal Cost of Low-Skill Households to the U.S. Taxpayer,” that is ostensibly not about immigration at all. He takes the most detailed look yet at the economics of the 17.7 million American households made up of people without a high-school degree. With numbers from the Census Bureau, the Congressional Research Service, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and other government agencies, Rector found what they make, what they spend, and how much they receive in government services. The reason Rector chose to look at low-skilled workers is that it is estimated that nearly two-thirds of illegal immigrants fall into that category. (By way of comparison, slightly less than ten percent of native-born Americans are in that group.) By focusing on those workers, Rector was able to make use of information on them that is more detailed and precise than information on immigrants as a whole. And any conclusions he reached would be applicable to a large majority of illegal immigrants who are already in this country as well as those who would come here under various immigration reform proposals. Rector began by calculating the dollar value of the benefits those low-skill workers receive from the government. There are direct benefits, like Medicare and Social Security, and means-tested benefits, like food, housing and medical benefits specifically for low-income people. Then there is public education, along with population-based services like police and fire protection, parks, and roads. (Those services benefit everyone, and their cost usually increases as the population increases.) After that, there is interest on the public debts, a burden spread throughout all income groups, and the cost of what Rector calls “pure public goods” — national defense, scientific research, and a few other areas — which benefit everyone but do not necessarily rise in cost as the population rises. Rector found that in 2004, the most recent year for which figures are available, low-skill households received an average of $32,138 per household — the great majority in the form of means-tested aid and direct benefits. (Rector excluded from that figure the cost of public goods and interest; with those included, he says, each low-skill household receives an average of $43,084.) Against that, Rector found that low-skill households paid an average of $9,689 in taxes. (The biggest chunk of that was the Social Security tax — $2,509 — followed by state and local taxes, consumption taxes, property taxes, and federal income taxes, but Rector counted everything, including highway levies and lottery purchases.) In the final calculation, he found, the average low-skill household received $22,449 more in benefits than it paid in taxes — the $32,138 in benefits, excluding public goods, minus the $9,689 in taxes. Taking that $22,449, and multiplying it by the 17.7 million low-skill households, Rector found that the total deficit for such households was $397 billion in 2004. “Over the next ten years the total cost of low-skill households to the taxpayer (immediate benefits minus taxes paid) is likely to be at least $3.9 trillion,” Rector writes. “This number would go up significantly if changes in immigration policy lead to substantial increases in the number of low-skill immigrants entering the country and receiving services.” From a purely money perspective, it’s a powerful argument. At a cost of $22,449 per household per year — well, multiply that by an adult lifespan of 50 years and you have an average lifetime cost to the taxpayer of $1.1 million per unskilled worker. Increase that population with a wave of unskilled immigrants, and you’re talking a lot of money. There’s probably room for argument on Rector’s exact numbers. Jeffrey Passell, a senior research associate at the Pew Hispanic Center, questions whether some of Rector’s cost estimates might be too high. For example, the arrival of new illegal immigrations will likely not raise the cost of defending the country, he says, so perhaps future immigrants will not be quite as expensive as Rector claims. (Rector tried to address that issue by excluding the cost of pure public goods in the $22,449 figure.) Still, Passell does not question the basic premise of Rector’s report. “One of the purposes of our government is to provide support for people on the low end,” says Passell. “Of course there is a bit more spending on households on the lower end than on the high end, and of course the low-income households don’t pay as much as the high-income households. That’s not surprising.” The bigger argument over Rector’s approach is whether illegal immigrants bring economic benefits that outweigh their undisputed costs. Tamar Jacoby, an advocate of comprehensive reform who is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, points to a study done recently of immigrants in North Carolina which estimated that in the past ten years Hispanic immigrants had cost the state $61 million in benefits while being responsible for more than $9 billion in economic growth. “Yes, the individual might cost more in services,” says Jacoby, “but they are growing the pie so significantly that that cost pales in comparison.” Not so, says Rector. “The problem is, the growth to the pie that they make, they eat,” he explains. The economic growth reflected in the numbers, he says, is what the immigrant workers are making. “To the extent that they make the pie grow any bit more than what they take out of the pie in wages, it is very subtle, and it would be a tiny fraction of the gross domestic product growth,” Rector says. And that means something for the immigration debate, and for George W. Bush’s proposals. “Every one of these [reform] bills envisions bringing in millions and millions of additional low-skill immigrants with the right to access welfare and become citizens,” says Rector. “Within ten years, you would have four million of these individuals, each of whom can bring family. You’d be looking at a cost of $80 billion per year.” Perhaps Congress and the president will decide to do that. But if Robert Rector is correct, no one should underestimate the cost.

National Suicide by Self Execution? http://townhall.com/columnists/RobertKnight/2010/03/17/national_suicide_by_self_execution Robert Knight Wednesday, March 17, 2010 Assisted suicide is still illegal in most of the United States. But Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barack Obama are doing their impression of the helpful Dr. Kevorkian, egging on the House to approve a “self-executing” rule that would kill the nation’s health care system by suffocating it under the big hand of government. Aptly named the “Slaughter Rule” after House Rules Committee Chairman Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., the idea is for House Members to vote on a batch of “fixes” to the Senate bill--not the original bill itself--and tie the two bills together. Then the House--without an actual vote--would “deem as passed” the Senate bill. Dreamin’ Deemer House Speaker Pelosi, who actually said, “We have to pass this bill so that you can find out what’s in it,” insists this is a fair way to enact a measure that the vast majority of Americans find hazardous to our health. The bill has 2,733 pages of individual and employer mandates, trillions in new spending, new taxes, new agencies and taxpayer funding of abortion. It can’t be fixed, and won’t be. It is socialism with a stethoscope around our necks, pulled tight. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says that people could care less about this nasty “self-executing” trick: “Do you think any American is going to make a distinction? I don’t think any American, real American, out there is going to make a distinction between the two.” Apparently, only a third of the nation comprises “real Americans.” The rest of us are scared stiff by this impending government takeover of one-sixth of the economy that would change forever the relationship between citizens and the state. The only thing standing between the scoundrels who hatched this travesty and final passage are the American people. They need once again to make it clear—now—that this won’t fly. Waiting until November doesn’t cut it. No major program has ever been overturned, even after promises were made. Think about the Department of Education, which now resembles a giant Chia Pet doused with tons of Miracle-Gro. Some folks are not waiting until November. New Jersey’s tea parties are mounting a recall effort against Sen. Robert Menendez, a big-spending Democrat who voted for the unconstitutional health care bill and other tax-heavy measures. A New Jersey appeals court on March 16 approved the petition process, although gatherers must wait another 35 days to see if Menendez, the secretary of state or the state elections board appeals the decision. Then the recallers have 320 days to submit 1.3 million signatures to put Menendez on a ballot. If they do it soon enough, the senator, who is up for re-election in 2012, could find himself facing voters in November. The judges did not rule on the constitutionality of recall itself, which a previous New Jersey secretary of state had said was illegal even though it is in the state constitution. They said they would decide that if and when enough signatures are submitted. Fine. Let them dare rule 1.3 million New Jerseyeans out of order someday. New Jersey is one of nine states that have broad recall language and which could put a total of 12 U.S. senators on the ballot in November if recall campaigns are successful. The other states are Colorado , Louisiana , Michigan , Montana , North Dakota , Oregon , Washington and Wisconsin . More information can be found at the American Civil Rights Union ’s Website at recallcongressnow.org. From the White House to Capitol Hill, Democrats seem hell-bent on self-execution on the way to doing the same to our nation. And they are still dissembling like the boy wiping away crumbs after being caught red-handed at the cookie jar. As The Wall Street Journal observes: “Mrs. Pelosi and the White House are resorting to these abuses because their bill is so unpopular that a majority of their own party doesn’t want to vote for it.” Members will try to claim that they didn’t actually vote for it when they face citizens in their districts, but that kind of hocus-pocus is not going to work. When the dust settles in November, the “self-executing” rule may be the epitaph of many political careers of Democrats who facilitated this mess. But, God willing, it won’t be an epitaph for this free nation of ours. Robert Knight is Senior Writer for Coral Ridge Ministries and a Senior Fellow for the American Civil Rights Union . His latest book, Radical Rulers: The White House Elites Who Are Pushing America Toward Socialism, is available at www.radicalrulers.com. More of Obama's/Pelosi's transparency? If they believe this is "so necessary" to be in a health"care" Bill, how soon will Obama and Pelosi commit "self execution"? Comments? raymond, What you have to understand is, when you consider people like Pelosi and the city she comes from, San Francisco, they are not going to recall her. Especially when you consider she has already made such comments like, "who actually said, “We have to pass this bill so that you can find out what’s in it." Which is also quoted in the article.

Sleep habits linked to fat gain in younger adults is this true or fake? i am 14! this wouldn't happen to me if i am only 14 would it? and i am a white person just so you know NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Younger adults who get either little sleep or a lot of it may see a greater expansion in their waistlines over time, a study published Monday suggests. Researchers found that among black and Hispanic adults younger than 40, those who typically slept for five hours or less each night had a greater accumulation of belly fat over the next five years, versus those who averaged six or seven hours. Those who logged eight hours or more in bed each night also showed a bigger fat gain -- but it was less substantial than that seen in "short sleepers." The study, reported in the journal Sleep, does not prove that too little or too much sleep directly leads to excess fat gain. But the findings support and extend those of other studies linking sleep duration -- particularly a lack of sleep -- to weight gain and even to higher risks of diabetes and heart disease. The study adds to past research in part because it focused on black and Hispanic Americans -- two understudied groups who are at increased risk of obesity and its related ills, said lead researcher Dr. Kristen G. Hairston, of Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It also zeroed in on the relationship between sleep and gains in abdominal fat -- both the superficial fat layers just below the skin and the "visceral" fat that surrounds the abdominal organs. Deep abdominal fat is believed to be particularly important in the risks of health conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease, Hairston told Reuters Health. The study included 332 African-American and 775 Hispanic-American men and women ages 18 to 81. At the outset, all reported on their sleep habits, diets, exercise levels and other lifestyle factors. The researchers used CT scans to measure participants' abdominal fat, at the start of the study and again five years later. Among participants younger than 40, the study found, those who said they slept for five hours or less each night gained more belly fat than those who averaged six or seven hours of sleep. On average, short sleepers showed a 32 percent gain in visceral fat, versus a 13 percent gain among those who slept six or seven hours per night, and a 22 percent increase among men and women who got at least eight hours of sleep each night. A similar pattern was seen with superficial abdominal fat. Even when the researchers considered factors like calorie intake, exercise habits, education and smoking, sleep duration itself remained linked to abdominal-fat gain. The findings, according to Hairston, support the belief that sleep habits affect weight, and health in general. "Sleep is an important part of your overall health -- not just in whether you're tired during the day," she said. Individuals vary in their sleep needs, so there is no one set prescription. But "extremes of sleep," such as less than five hours per night, should raise concerns, according to Hairston. "And if you're concerned about your sleep," she said, "discuss it with your healthcare provider, just as you would discuss diet or exercise." As for why sleep duration might affect abdominal-fat gain, there are several theories. There may be indirect effects; people who get too little sleep may be too tired during the day to exercise, while those who spend a lot of time in bed may spend less time being active, relative to people who sleep fewer hours. Research also suggests that sleep loss alters people's levels of appetite-regulating hormones -- which could, in theory, spur them to overeat. Depression, which often affects people's sleep and has been linked to weight gain, could also be a factor, Hairston noted. She and her colleagues had no information on study participants' depression symptoms. PLEASE NO MEAN OR RUDE ANSWERS

Sleep habits linked to fat gain in younger adults is this true or fake? answer this now please?ahh!? i am 14! this wouldn't happen to me if i am only 14 would it? and i am a white person just so you know now i am afraid of this and i cant go to sleep tonight and i have school tomorrow! :( NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Younger adults who get either little sleep or a lot of it may see a greater expansion in their waistlines over time, a study published Monday suggests. Researchers found that among black and Hispanic adults younger than 40, those who typically slept for five hours or less each night had a greater accumulation of belly fat over the next five years, versus those who averaged six or seven hours. Those who logged eight hours or more in bed each night also showed a bigger fat gain -- but it was less substantial than that seen in "short sleepers." The study, reported in the journal Sleep, does not prove that too little or too much sleep directly leads to excess fat gain. But the findings support and extend those of other studies linking sleep duration -- particularly a lack of sleep -- to weight gain and even to higher risks of diabetes and heart disease. The study adds to past research in part because it focused on black and Hispanic Americans -- two understudied groups who are at increased risk of obesity and its related ills, said lead researcher Dr. Kristen G. Hairston, of Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It also zeroed in on the relationship between sleep and gains in abdominal fat -- both the superficial fat layers just below the skin and the "visceral" fat that surrounds the abdominal organs. Deep abdominal fat is believed to be particularly important in the risks of health conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease, Hairston told Reuters Health. The study included 332 African-American and 775 Hispanic-American men and women ages 18 to 81. At the outset, all reported on their sleep habits, diets, exercise levels and other lifestyle factors. The researchers used CT scans to measure participants' abdominal fat, at the start of the study and again five years later. Among participants younger than 40, the study found, those who said they slept for five hours or less each night gained more belly fat than those who averaged six or seven hours of sleep. On average, short sleepers showed a 32 percent gain in visceral fat, versus a 13 percent gain among those who slept six or seven hours per night, and a 22 percent increase among men and women who got at least eight hours of sleep each night. A similar pattern was seen with superficial abdominal fat. Even when the researchers considered factors like calorie intake, exercise habits, education and smoking, sleep duration itself remained linked to abdominal-fat gain. The findings, according to Hairston, support the belief that sleep habits affect weight, and health in general. "Sleep is an important part of your overall health -- not just in whether you're tired during the day," she said. Individuals vary in their sleep needs, so there is no one set prescription. But "extremes of sleep," such as less than five hours per night, should raise concerns, according to Hairston. "And if you're concerned about your sleep," she said, "discuss it with your healthcare provider, just as you would discuss diet or exercise." As for why sleep duration might affect abdominal-fat gain, there are several theories. There may be indirect effects; people who get too little sleep may be too tired during the day to exercise, while those who spend a lot of time in bed may spend less time being active, relative to people who sleep fewer hours. Research also suggests that sleep loss alters people's levels of appetite-regulating hormones -- which could, in theory, spur them to overeat. Depression, which often affects people's sleep and has been linked to weight gain, could also be a factor, Hairston noted. She and her colleagues had no information on study participants' depression symptoms. PLEASE NO MEAN OR RUDE ANSWERS

What do christians think of this article? This article is backed by evidence, but it doesn't matter because you's don't like evidence because it proves your delusions wrong. But i am still interested in sharing this article with you. Several weeks ago, a ground-breaking study on religious belief and social well-being was published in the Journal of Religion & Society. Comparing 18 prosperous democracies from the U.S. to New Zealand, author Gregory S Paul quietly demolished the myth that faith strengthens society. Drawing on a wide range of studies to cross-match faith – measured by belief in God and acceptance of evolution – with homicide and sexual behavior, Paul found that secular societies have lower rates of violence and teenage pregnancy than societies where many people profess belief in God. Top of the class, in both atheism and good behavior, come the Japanese. Over eighty percent accept evolution and fewer than ten percent are certain that God exists. Despite its size – over a hundred million people – Japan is one of the least crime-prone countries in the world. It also has the lowest rates of teenage pregnancy of any developed nation. (Teenage pregnancy has less tragic consequences than violence but it is usually unwanted, and it is frequently associated with deprivation among both mothers and children. In general, it is a Bad Thing.) Next in line are the Norwegians, British, Germans and Dutch. At least sixty percent accept evolution as a fact and fewer than one in three are convinced that there is a deity. There is little teenage pregnancy , although the Brits, with over 40 pregnancies per 1,000 girls a year, do twice as badly as the others. Homicide rates are also low -- around 1-2 victims per 100,000 people a year. At the other end of the scale comes America. Over 50 percent of Americans believe in God, and only 40 percent accept some form of evolution (many believe it had a helping hand from the Deity). The U.S. has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy and homicide rates are at least five times greater than in Europe and ten times higher than in Japan. All this information points to a strong correlation between faith and antisocial behavior -- a correlation so strong that there is good reason to suppose that religious belief does more harm than good. At first glance that is a preposterous suggestion, given that religions preach non-violence and sexual restraint. However, close inspection reveals a different story. Faith tends to weaken rather than strengthen people’s ability to participate in society. That makes it less likely they will respect social customs and laws. All believers learn that God holds them responsible for their actions. So far so good, but for many, belief absolves them of all other responsibilities. Consciously or subconsciously, those who are "born again" or "chosen" have diminished respect for others who do not share their sect or their faith. Convinced that only the Bible offers "truth", they lose their intellectual curiosity and their ability to reason. Their priority becomes not the world they live in but themselves. The more people prioritize themselves rather than those around them, the weaker society becomes and the greater the likelihood of antisocial behavior. Hence gun laws which encourage Americans to see each other not as fellow human beings who deserve protection, but as potential aggressors who deserve to die. And hence a health care system which looks after the wealthy rather than the ill. As for intimacy… Faith encourages ignorance rather than responsible behavior. In other countries, intimacy education includes contraception, reducing the risk of unwanted pregnancies. Such an approach recognizes that young people have the right to make their own choices and helps them make decisions that benefit society as a whole. In America faith-driven abstinence programs deny them that right -- "As a Christian I will only help you if you do what I say". The result is soaring rates of unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. Abstinence programs rest on the same weak intellectual foundation as creationism and intelligent design. Faith discourages unprejudiced analysis. Reasoning is subverted to rationalization that supports rather than questions assumptions. The result is a self-contained system that maintains an internal logic, no matter how absurd to outside observers. The constitutional wall that theoretically separates church and state is irrelevant. Religion has overwhelmed the nation to permeate all public discussion. Look no further than Gary Bauer, a man who in any other western nation would be dismissed as a fanatic and who in America is interviewed deferentially on prime time television. Despite all its fine words, religion has brought in its wake little more than violence, prejudice and sexual disease. True morality is found elsewhere. As UK Guardian columnist George Monbio

Why some misinformed voters supported McBush/Palin even though Obama promised not to tax 95% of us? I am a librarian and I make $46,000 and my husband lost his job and gas is expensive and God knows I do not need any new taxes and I am sure that neither do you. And yesterday I read in a newspaper The Wall Street Journal that Sen. Baucus, the Finance Committee chairman considers new regressive taxes on poor folks like myself. His tax ideas include: to tax health care plans, penalize soda-pop drinking, tax alcohol, tax salty foods, further raise the price of cigarettes, charge for carbon, cut Medicare payments, or even implement a national sales tax. Fortunately I voted for Barack Obama and we won and he promised no new taxes on 95% of Americans an I am sure that he will veto all such plans. Like he fulfilled his promises of new energy economy and education reform and abolition of military tribunals. What I don't really understand is why some misinformed voters supported McBush despite all the wonderful promises that Obama made to us, except for the richest CEOs and bankers 5%.

whats an analysis?? how would i write an analysis bout this how do you start? Date: February 20, 2005 Contact: David Partenheimer Public Affairs Office (202) 336-5706 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PSYCHIATRIC DISORDERS GREATLY UNDERDIAGNOSED IN HOSPITAL EMERGENCY DEPARTMENTS, STUDY FINDS Underdiagnosis Contributing to Needless Emotional Suffering, Especially for Minorities and the Poor -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WASHINGTON — New research offers dramatic evidence of how psychiatric disorders are underdiagnosed in hospital emergency departments, affecting an increasing number of Americans who rely on such facilities for much of their primary health care needs. The research appears in this month’s issue of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association (APA). In their study involving more than 33,000 Caucasian and African American patients from three hospital emergency departments in the Midwest and South, psychologist Seth Kunen, Ph.D., Psy.D., from the Earl K. Long Medical Center and the Louisiana State University Emergency Medicine Residency Program and colleagues confirm earlier reports that a significant psychiatric underdiagnosis is taking place. The researchers observed a psychiatric rate of 5.27% among the emergency department patients, a rate far below the national prevalence rate of 20% to 28%. Comparing national rates of various psychiatric disorders versus the observed emergency department rates, the researchers found the following: mood disorders= 4% (national rate) versus 0.70% (emergency department rate) anxiety= 11-16% versus 1.19% substance use disorders = 7% versus 2.05% tobacco use disorder= 25% versus .23% organic psychosis (psychosis due to brain injury or disease)= diagnostic ratios ranging from 3:1 to 25:1 depending on age group and method of estimation schizophrenia= 1.30% versus 0.32% Both Caucasians and African Americans were underdiagnosed in the emergency departments, but the study found a much larger underdiagnosis for African Americans. The odds of Caucasians having a psychiatric diagnosis were 1.85 times that of African Americans and almost twice as many Caucasians as African Americans received a psychiatric diagnosis as the primary diagnosis. The researchers say there are several possible reasons for this disparity, including Caucasian physicians being more familiar with the mental disorder symptoms of Caucasians, the tendency of African Americans to be less trusting and less willing to disclose emotional problems to people of different racial groups, and physician bias. The authors say it is possible that African Americans simply have fewer psychiatric disorders than Caucasians and that is the reason for the race disparity. “However, because a much greater percentage of African Americans live in poverty than Caucasians and because there are strong correlations among variable such as poverty and illness, it would be more reasonable to expect the rate of psychiatric disorders among African Americans to be as high or higher than the rate among Caucasians,” according to the authors. The authors also note that the observed race disparity may be limited to emergency departments that have a predominantly African American census. To get a better understanding of the underdiagnosis phenomenon, the researchers conducted informal interviews with more than 50 emergency department physicians. The physicians cited lack of psychiatric expertise, a belief that many mental disorders are relatively unimportant threats to health, and the inability to provide continuity of care for their patients as major reasons that may contribute to underdiagnosis. As emergency medicine moves from its historical origin as a trauma specialty to its developing role as a primary care provider for millions of people each year, the researchers say it’s imperative that emergency departments expand their staffs to include mental health professionals such as psychologists because hospital-based physicians may not have the training, interest, or time to deal with mental health issues. “The psychiatric underdiagnosing we have documented is potentially the most damaging for the more vulnerable minorities and the poor who rely on emergency departments for much of their primary health care needs,” say the authors. “This underdiagnosing contributes to needless emotional suffering because many of the more common disorders, such as depression and anxiety, respond well to psychotherapy and pharmacological interventions.” Article: “Race Disparities in Psychiatric Rates in Emergency Departments," Seth Kunen, Earl K. Long Medical Center, Ronda Niederhauser, Regional West Medical Center, Patrick O. Smith, University of Mississippi School of Medicine, Jerry A. Morris, Nevada Mental Health Services, and Brian D. Marx, Louisiana State University; Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Vol. 73, No. 1. Full text of the article is available from the APA Public Affairs Office or at http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/ccp731116.pdf Reporters: Lead author Seth Kunen, Ph.D., Psy.D., can be reached at (225) 358-3942 (LSU Emergency Medicine Residency Program in Baton Rouge) or by Email. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The American Psychological Association (APA), in Washington, DC, is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States and is the world’s largest association of psychologists. APA’s membership includes more than 150,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 53 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance psychology as a science, as a profession and as a means of promoting health, education and human welfare. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © 2006 American Psychological Association Office of Public Affairs 750 First Street, N.E. • Washington, DC • 20002-4242 Phone: 202-336-5700 • TDD/TTY: 202-336-6123 Fax: 202-336-5708 • E-mail PsychNET® | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Security

With his super majority control over all three levels of government, how come Obama cannot get things done.? With Absolute Power, Team Obama Grows Stupid A Commentary By Michael Barone Thursday, February 11, 2010 How could such smart people do so many stupid things? That question, or variations on it, is being asked in Washington and around the country about the Obama administration. The same people who directed the campaign that defeated Hillary Clinton and routed John McCain, a campaign that raised far more money and attracted far more volunteers than any before it, have within a year come up with a legislative program that is crashing in ruins and that, to judge from recent polls, has left the Democratic Party weaker than I have seen it in almost 50 years of closely following politics. The 2008 campaign was an impressive achievement. So, in a negative way, is the 2009 legislative program that has left the Democrats in such woeful shape in 2010. Some in Washington say that the problem is that Barack Obama has chosen to rely on his campaign staff rather than the wise old heads in Washington. But Obama and his team has had the benefit of advice from those wise old heads and from the smartest political strategist the Democratic Party has produced in the past half-century, Bill Clinton. A truly wise Washington analyst, National Journal's Jonathan Rauch, says the problem is one-party government. Presidents lead better, he argues, when they are constrained by the need to get bipartisan support. There's something to that. Obama's three predecessors all had bipartisan initiatives: the 1990 tax package for George Bush 41, NAFTA approval for Clinton, the 2001 education bill and the 2003 Medicare prescription drug benefit for George Bush 43. Obama has had no bipartisan initiatives of his own. The fact that Democrats, from last July until last week, had a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate to go along with Nancy Pelosi's strong majority in the House seems to have tempted Team Obama to go the all-Democratic route on health care, cap-and-trade and fiscal policy. But even strong temptations should sometimes be resisted. I think the problem is more basic and helps to explain why the people who put together a successful campaign have not, so far at least, provided successful governance. Obama campaigned as someone who would rise above partisan divisions. He first attracted national attention in 2004, when our politics was a kind of culture war, by stressing what red state America and blue state America had in common. He campaigned in a similar vein in 2007 and 2008. But when he came to office in 2009, the cultural issues that had occupied so much of the political landscape for a dozen years had been eclipsed in importance by the financial crisis and the deepening recession. So Obama was faced with a fundamental choice. He could either chart a bipartisan course in response to the economic emergency, or he could try to expand government to Western European magnitude as Democratic congressional leaders, elected for years in monopartisan districts, had long wished to do. The former community organizer and Chicago pol chose the latter course. To the surprise of many who watched previous presidents present specific administration policies to Congress, he allowed Democratic leaders to design the stimulus package they rushed into law in six weeks. One-third of the money went to state and local governments -- an obvious payoff to the public employee unions that contributed so much money to Democrats -- and much of it went to permanently increase the baseline spending of discretionary programs, a longtime goal of Democratic congressional leaders. Federal spending was raised from about 20 percent to about 24 percent of gross domestic product, putting the U.S. on a trajectory to double the national debt as a percentage of GDP in less than 10 years. Team Obama overestimated the stimulative effect of the stimulus package and underestimated the strength of the spontaneous tea party movement that flared up in protest of this expansion of government. They underestimated as well the opposition to expanding government control over health care and, through the cap-and-trade bill, to the energy sector. And the disgust over conspicuous vote-buying on health care -- the Louisiana Purchase, the Cornhusker Kickback, the Labor Loophole. Team Obama failed to realize they were no longer running in Chicago or in the Democratic primaries or facing an electorate fed up with Republicans. And, more important, they failed to realize that vastly expanding government goes deeply against the American grain -- and against the basic appeal of their successful campaign. Michael Barone is senior political analyst for The Washington Examiner.

help with a summary? Last Rites for Indian Dead by Suzan Shown Harjo What if museums, universities, and government agencies could put your dead relatives on display or keep them in boxes to be cut up and otherwise studied? What if you believed that the spirits of the dead could not rest until their human remains were placed in a sacred area? The ordinary American would say there ought to be a law—and there is, for ordinary Americans. The problem for American Indians is that there are too many laws of the kind that make us the archeological property of the United States and too few of the kind that protect us from such insults. Some of my own Cheyenne relatives’ skulls are in the Smithsonian Institution today, along with those of at least 4,500 other Indian people who were violated in the 1800s by the U.S. Army for an “Indian Crania Study.” It wasn’t enough that these unarmed Cheyenne people were mowed down by the cavalry at the infamous Sand Creek massacre; many were decapitated and their heads shipped to Washington as freight. (The Army Medical Museum’s collection is now in the Smithsonian.) Some had been exhumed° only hours after being buried. Imagine their grieving families’ reaction on finding their loved ones disinterred° and headless. Some targets of the Army’s study were killed in noncombat situations and beheaded immediately. The officer’s account of the decapitation of the Apache chief Mangas Coloradas in 1863 shows the pseudoscientific nature of the exercise. “I weighed the brain and measured the skull,” the good doctor wrote, “and found that while the skull was smaller, the brain was larger than that of Daniel Webster.” These journal accounts exist in excruciating detail, yet missing are any records of overall comparisons, conclusions, or final reports of the Army study. Since it is unlike the Army not to leave a paper trail, one must wonder about the motive for its collection. The total Indian body count in the Smithsonian collection is more than 19,000, and it is not the largest in the country. It is not inconceivable that the 1.5 million of us living today are outnumbered by our dead stored in museums, educational institutions, federal agencies, state historical societies, and private collections. The Indian people are further dehumanized by being exhibited alongside the mastodons and dinosaurs and other extinct creatures. Where we have buried our dead in peace, more often than not the sites have been desecrated. For more than two hundred years, relic-hunting has been a popular pursuit. Lately, the market in Indian artifacts has brought this abhorrent activity to a fever pitch in some areas. And when scavengers come upon Indian burial sites, everything found becomes fair game, including sacred burial offerings, teeth, and skeletal remains.One unusually well-publicized example of Indian grave desecration occurred two years ago in a western Kentucky field known as Slack Farm, the site of an Indian village five centuries ago. Ten men—one with a business card stating “Have Shovel, Will Travel”—paid the landowner $10,000 to lease digging rights between planting seasons. They dug extensively on the forty-acre farm, rummaging through an estimated 650 graves, collecting burial goods, tools, and ceremonial items. Skeletons were strewn about like litter. What motivates people to do something like this? Financial gain is the first answer. Indian relic-collecting has become a multimillion-dollar industry. The price tag on a bead necklace can easily top $1,000; rare pieces fetch tens of thousands. And it is not just collectors of the macabre° who pay for skeletal remains. Scientists say that these deceased Indians are needed for research that someday could benefit the health and welfare of living Indians. But just how many dead Indians must they examine? Nineteen thousand? There is doubt as to whether permanent curation of our dead really benefits Indians. Dr. Emery A. Johnson, former assistant Surgeon General, recently observed, “I am not aware of any current medical diagnostic or treatment procedure that has been derived from research on such skeletal remains. Nor am I aware of any during the thirty-four years that I have been involved in American Indian . . . health care.” Indian remains are still being collected for racial biological studies. While the intentions may be honorable, the ethics of using human remains this way without the full consent of relatives must be questioned. Some relief for Indian people has come on the state level. Almost half of the states, including California, have passed laws protecting Indian burial sites and restricting the sale of Indian bones, burial offerings, and other sacred items. Rep. Charles E. Bennett (D-Fla.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) have introduced bills that are a good start in invoking the federal government’s protection. However, no legislation has attacked the problem headon by imposing stiff penalties at the marketplace, or by changing laws that make dead Indians the nation’s property. Some universities—notably Stanford, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Seattle—have returned, or agreed to return, Indian human remains; it is fitting that institutions of higher education should lead the way.Congress is now deciding what to do with the government’s extensive collection of Indian human remains and associated funerary objects. The secretary of the Smithsonian, Robert McC. Adams, has been valiantly° attempting to apply modern ethics to yesterday’s excesses. This week, he announced that the Smithsonian would conduct an inventory and return all Indian skeletal remains that could be identified with specific tribes or living kin. But there remains a reluctance generally among collectors of Indian remains to take action of a scope that would have a quantitative impact and a healing quality. If they will not act on their own—and it is highly unlikely that they will—then Congress must act. The country must recognize that the bodies of dead American Indian people are not artifacts to be bought and sold as collector’s items. It is not appropriate to store tens of thousands of our ancestors for possible future research. They are our family. They deserve to be returned to their sacred burial grounds and given a chance to rest. The plunder of our people’s graves has gone on too long. Let us rebury our dead and remove this shameful past from America’s future. 0 comments: Post a Comment Newer Post Older Post Home Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) __________________________________________ Recently Dugg Stories The Covers Project The Covers Project began as a simple idea to help listeners discover new music by showcasing covers of famous songs. Users can search for their favorite artists and listen to different renditions of their songs online. 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Do you belong to the "new Church of Global Warming"? "Aliens Cause Global Warming" A lecture by Michael Crichton California Institute of Technology Pasadena, CA January 17, 2003 My topic today sounds humorous but unfortunately I am serious. I am going to argue that extraterrestrials lie behind global warming. Or to speak more precisely, I will argue that a belief in extraterrestrials has paved the way, in a progression of steps, to a belief in global warming. Charting this progression of belief will be my task today. Let me say at once that I have no desire to discourage anyone from believing in either extraterrestrials or global warming. That would be quite impossible to do. Rather, I want to discuss the history of several widely-publicized beliefs and to point to what I consider an emerging crisis in the whole enterprise of science-namely the increasingly uneasy relationship between hard science and public policy. I have a special interest in this because of my own upbringing. I was born in the midst of World War II, and passed my formative years at the height of the Cold War. In school drills, I dutifully crawled under my desk in preparation for a nuclear attack. It was a time of widespread fear and uncertainty, but even as a child I believed that science represented the best and greatest hope for mankind. Even to a child, the contrast was clear between the world of politics-a world of hate and danger, of irrational beliefs and fears, of mass manipulation and disgraceful blots on human history. In contrast, science held different values-international in scope, forging friendships and working relationships across national boundaries and political systems, encouraging a dispassionate habit of thought, and ultimately leading to fresh knowledge and technology that would benefit all mankind. The world might not be avery good place, but science would make it better. And it did. In my lifetime, science has largely fulfilled its promise. Science has been the great intellectual adventure of our age, and a great hope for our troubled and restless world. But I did not expect science merely to extend lifespan, feed the hungry, cure disease, and shrink the world with jets and cell phones. I also expected science to banish the evils of human thought---prejudice and superstition, irrational beliefs and false fears. I expected science to be, in Carl Sagan's memorable phrase, "a candle in a demon haunted world." And here, I am not so pleased with the impact of science. Rather than serving as a cleansing force, science has in some instances been seduced by the more ancient lures of politics and publicity. Some of the demons that haunt our world in recent years are invented by scientists. The world has not benefited from permitting these demons to escape free. But let's look at how it came to pass. Cast your minds back to 1960. John F. Kennedy is president, commercial jet airplanes are just appearing, the biggest university mainframes have 12K of memory. And in Green Bank, West Virginia at the new National Radio Astronomy Observatory, a young astrophysicist named Frank Drake runs a two week project called Ozma, to search for extraterrestrial signals. A signal is received, to great excitement. It turns out to be false, but the excitement remains. In 1960, Drake organizes the first SETI conference, and came up with the now-famous Drake equation: N=N*fp ne fl fi fc fL Where N is the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy; fp is the fraction with planets; ne is the number of planets per star capable of supporting life; fl is the fraction of planets where life evolves; fi is the fraction where intelligent life evolves; and fc is the fraction that communicates; and fL is the fraction of the planet's life during which the communicating civilizations live. This serious-looking equation gave SETI an serious footing as a legitimate intellectual inquiry. The problem, of course, is that none of the terms can be known, and most cannot even be estimated. The only way to work the equation is to fill in with guesses. And guesses-just so we're clear-are merely expressions of prejudice. Nor can there be "informed guesses." If you need to state how many planets with life choose to communicate, there is simply no way to make an informed guess. It's simply prejudice. As a result, the Drake equation can have any value from "billions and billions" to zero. An expression that can mean anything means nothing. Speaking precisely, the Drake equation is literally meaningless, and has nothing to do with science. I take the hard view that science involves the creation of testable hypotheses. The Drake equation cannot be tested and therefore SETI is not science. SETI is unquestionably a religion. Faith is defined as the firm belief in something for which there is no proof. The belief that the Koran is the word of God is a matter of faith. The belief that God created the universe in seven days is a matter of faith. The belief that there are other life forms in the universe is a matter of faith. There is not a single shred of evidence for any other life forms, and in forty years of searching, none has been discovered. There is absolutely no evidentiary reason to maintain this belief. SETI is a religion. One way to chart the cooling of enthusiasm is to review popular works on the subject. In 1964, at the height of SETI enthusiasm, Walter Sullivan of the NY Times wrote an exciting book about life in the universe entitled WE ARE NOT ALONE. By 1995, when Paul Davis wrote a book on the same subject, he titled it ARE WE ALONE? ( Since 1981, there have in fact been four books titled ARE WE ALONE.) More recently we have seen the rise of the so-called "Rare Earth" theory which suggests that we may, in fact, be all alone. Again, there is no evidence either way. Back in the sixties, SETI had its critics, although not among astrophysicists and astronomers. The biologists and paleontologists were harshest. George Gaylord Simpson of Harvard sneered that SETI was a "study without a subject," and it remains so to the present day. But scientists in general have been indulgent toward SETI, viewing it either with bemused tolerance, or with indifference. After all, what's the big deal? It's kind of fun. If people want to look, let them. Only a curmudgeon would speak harshly of SETI. It wasn't worth the bother. And of course it is true that untestable theories may have heuristic value. Of course extraterrestrials are a good way to teach science to kids. But that does not relieve us of the obligation to see the Drake equation clearly for what it is-pure speculation in quasi-scientific trappings. The fact that the Drake equation was not greeted with screams of outrage-similar to the screams of outrage that greet each Creationist new claim, for example-meant that now there was a crack in the door, a loosening of the definition of what constituted legitimate scientific procedure. And soon enough, pernicious garbage began to squeeze through the cracks. Now let's jump ahead a decade to the 1970s, and Nuclear Winter. In 1975, the National Academy of Sciences reported on "Long-Term Worldwide Effects of Multiple Nuclear Weapons Detonations" but the report estimated the effect of dust from nuclear blasts to be relatively minor. In 1979, the Office of Technology Assessment issued a report on "The Effects of Nuclear War" and stated that nuclear war could perhaps produce irreversible adverse consequences on the environment. However, because the scientific processes involved were poorly understood, the report stated it was not possible to estimate the probable magnitude of such damage. Three years later, in 1982, the Swedish Academy of Sciences commissioned a report entitled "The Atmosphere after a Nuclear War: Twilight at Noon," which attempted to quantify the effect of smoke from burning forests and cities. The authors speculated that there would be so much smoke that a large cloud over the northern hemisphere would reduce incoming sunlight below the level required for photosynthesis, and that this would last for weeks or even longer. The following year, five scientists including Richard Turco and Carl Sagan published a paper in Science called "Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions." This was the so-called TTAPS report, which attempted to quantify more rigorously the atmospheric effects, with the added credibility to be gained from an actual computer model of climate. At the heart of the TTAPS undertaking was another equation, never specifically expressed, but one that could be paraphrased as follows: Ds = Wn Ws Wh Tf Tb Pt Pr Pe… etc (The amount of tropospheric dust=# warheads x size warheads x warhead detonation height x flammability of targets x Target burn duration x Particles entering the Troposphere x Particle reflectivity x Particle endurance…and so on.) The similarity to the Drake equation is striking. As with the Drake equation, none of the variables can be determined. None at all. The TTAPS study addressed this problem in part by mapping out different wartime scenarios and assigning numbers to some of the variables, but even so, the remaining variables were-and are-simply unknowable. Nobody knows how much smoke will be generated when cities burn, creating particles of what kind, and for how long. No one knows the effect of local weather conditions on the amount of particles that will be injected into the troposphere. No one knows how long the particles will remain in the troposphere. And so on. And remember, this is only four years after the OTA study concluded that the underlying scientific processes were so poorly known that no estimates could be reliably made. Nevertheless, the TTAPS study not only made those estimates, but concluded they were catastrophic. According to Sagan and his coworkers, even a limited 5,000 megaton nuclear exchange would cause a global temperature drop of more than 35 degrees Centigrade, and this change would last for three months. The greatest volcanic eruptions that we know of changed world temperatures somewhere between .5 and 2 degrees Centigrade. Ice ages changed global temperatures by 10 degrees. Here we have an estimated change three times greater than any ice age. One might expect it to be the subject of some dispute. But Sagan and his coworkers were prepared, for nuclear winter was from the outset the subject of a well-orchestrated media campaign. The first announcement of nuclear winter appeared in an article by Sagan in the Sunday supplement, Parade. The very next day, a highly-publicized, high-profile conference on the long-term consequences of nuclear war was held in Washington, chaired by Carl Sagan and Paul Ehrlich, the most famous and media-savvy scientists of their generation. Sagan appeared on the Johnny Carson show 40 times. Ehrlich was on 25 times. Following the conference, there were press conferences, meetings with congressmen, and so on. The formal papers in Science came months later. This is not the way science is done, it is the way products are sold. The real nature of the conference is indicated by these artists' renderings of the the effect of nuclear winter. I cannot help but quote the caption for figure 5: "Shown here is a tranquil scene in the north woods. A beaver has just completed its dam, two black bears forage for food, a swallow-tailed butterfly flutters in the foreground, a loon swims quietly by, and a kingfisher searches for a tasty fish." Hard science if ever there was. At the conference in Washington, during the question period, Ehrlich was reminded that after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, scientists were quoted as saying nothing would grow there for 75 years, but in fact melons were growing the next year. So, he was asked, how accurate were these findings now? Ehrlich answered by saying "I think they are extremely robust. Scientists may have made statements like that, although I cannot imagine what their basis would have been, even with the state of science at that time, but scientists are always making absurd statements, individually, in various places. What we are doing here, however, is presenting a consensus of a very large group of scientists…" I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had. Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period. In addition, let me remind you that the track record of the consensus is nothing to be proud of. Let's review a few cases. In past centuries, the greatest killer of women was fever following childbirth . One woman in six died of this fever. In 1795, Alexander Gordon of Aberdeen suggested that the fevers were infectious processes, and he was able to cure them. The consensus said no. In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed puerperal fever was contagious, and presented compellng evidence. The consensus said no. In 1849, Semmelweiss demonstrated that sanitary techniques virtually eliminated puerperal fever in hospitals under his management. The consensus said he was a Jew, ignored him, and dismissed him from his post. There was in fact no agreement on puerperal fever until the start of the twentieth century. Thus the consensus took one hundred and twenty five years to arrive at the right conclusion despite the efforts of the prominent "skeptics" around the world, skeptics who were demeaned and ignored. And despite the constant ongoing deaths of women. There is no shortage of other examples. In the 1920s in America, tens of thousands of people, mostly poor, were dying of a disease called pellagra. The consensus of scientists said it was infectious, and what was necessary was to find the "pellagra germ." The US government asked a brilliant young investigator, Dr. Joseph Goldberger, to find the cause. Goldberger concluded that diet was the crucial factor. The consensus remained wedded to the germ theory. Goldberger demonstrated that he could induce the disease through diet. He demonstrated that the disease was not infectious by injecting the blood of a pellagra patient into himself, and his assistant. They and other volunteers swabbed their noses with swabs from pellagra patients, and swallowed capsules containing scabs from pellagra rashes in what were called "Goldberger's filth parties." Nobody contracted pellagra. The consensus continued to disagree with him. There was, in addition, a social factor-southern States disliked the idea of poor diet as the cause, because it meant that social reform was required. They continued to deny it until the 1920s. Result-despite a twentieth century epidemic, the consensus took years to see the light. Probably every schoolchild notices that South America and Africa seem to fit together rather snugly, and Alfred Wegener proposed, in 1912, that the continents had in fact drifted apart. The consensus sneered at continental drift for fifty years. The theory was most vigorously denied by the great names of geology-until 1961, when it began to seem as if the sea floors were spreading. The result: it took the consensus fifty years to acknowledge what any schoolchild sees. And shall we go on? The examples can be multiplied endlessly. Jenner and smallpox, Pasteur and germ theory. Saccharine, margarine, repressed memory, fiber and colon cancer, hormone replacement therap6y…the list of consensus errors goes on and on. Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way. But back to our main subject. What I have been suggesting to you is that nuclear winter was a meaningless formula, tricked out with bad science, for policy ends. It was political from the beginning, promoted in a well-orchestrated media campaign that had to be planned weeks or months in advance. Further evidence of the political nature of the whole project can be found in the response to criticism. Although Richard Feynman was characteristically blunt, saying, "I really don't think these guys know what they're talking about," other prominent scientists were noticeably reticent. Freeman Dyson was quoted as saying "It's an absolutely atrocious piece of science but…who wants to be accused of being in favor of nuclear war?" And Victor Weisskopf said, "The science is terrible but---perhaps the psychology is good." The nuclear winter team followed up the publication of such comments with letters to the editors denying that these statements were ever made, though the scientists since then have subsequently confirmed their views. At the time, there was a concerted desire on the part of lots of people to avoid nuclear war. If nuclear winter looked awful, why investigate too closely? Who wanted to disagree? Only people like Edward Teller, the "father of the H bomb." Teller said, "While it is generally recognized that details are still uncertain and deserve much more study, Dr. Sagan nevertheless has taken the position that the whole scenario is so robust that there can be little doubt about its main conclusions." Yet for most people, the fact that nuclear winter was a scenario riddled with uncertainties did not seem to be relevant. I say it is hugely relevant. Once you abandon strict adherence to what science tells us, once you start arranging the truth in a press conference, then anything is possible. In one context, maybe you will get some mobilization against nuclear war. But in another context, you get Lysenkoism. In another, you get Nazi euthanasia. The danger is always there, if you subvert science to political ends. That is why it is so important for the future of science that the line between what science can say with certainty, and what it cannot, be drawn clearly-and defended. What happened to Nuclear Winter? As the media glare faded, its robust scenario appeared less persuasive; John Maddox, editor of Nature, repeatedly criticized its claims; within a year, Stephen Schneider, one of the leading figures in the climate model, began to speak of "nuclear autumn." It just didn't have the same ring. A final media embarrassment came in 1991, when Carl Sagan predicted on Nightline that Kuwaiti oil fires would produce a nuclear winter effect, causing a "year without a summer," and endangering crops around the world. Sagan stressed this outcome was so likely that "it should affect the war plans." None of it happened. What, then, can we say were the lessons of Nuclear Winter? I believe the lesson was that with a catchy name, a strong policy position and an aggressive media campaign, nobody will dare to criticize the science, and in short order, a terminally weak thesis will be established as fact. After that, any criticism becomes beside the point. The war is already over without a shot being fired. That was the lesson, and we had a textbook application soon afterward, with second hand smoke. In 1993, the EPA announced that second-hand smoke was "responsible for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths each year in nonsmoking adults," and that it " impairs the respiratory health of hundreds of thousands of people." In a 1994 pamphlet the EPA said that the eleven studies it based its decision on were not by themselves conclusive, and that they collectively assigned second-hand smoke a risk factor of 1.19. (For reference, a risk factor below 3.0 is too small for action by the EPA. or for publication in the New England Journal of Medicine, for example.) Furthermore, since there was no statistical association at the 95% confidence limits, the EPA lowered the limit to 90%. They then classified second hand smoke as a Group A Carcinogen. This was openly fraudulent science, but it formed the basis for bans on smoking in restaurants, offices, and airports. California banned public smoking in 1995. Soon, no claim was too extreme. By 1998, the Christian Science Monitor was saying that "Second-hand smoke is the nation's third-leading preventable cause of death." The American Cancer Society announced that 53,000 people died each year of second-hand smoke. The evidence for this claim is nonexistent. In 1998, a Federal judge held that the EPA had acted improperly, had "committed to a conclusion before research had begun", and had "disregarded information and made findings on selective information." The reaction of Carol Browner, head of the EPA was: "We stand by our science….there's wide agreement. The American people certainly recognize that exposure to second hand smoke brings…a whole host of health problems." Again, note how the claim of consensus trumps science. In this case, it isn't even a consensus of scientists that Browner evokes! It's the consensus of the American people. Meanwhile, ever-larger studies failed to confirm any association. A large, seven-country WHO study in 1998 found no association. Nor have well-controlled subsequent studies, to my knowledge. Yet we now read, for example, that second hand smoke is a cause of breast cancer. At this point you can say pretty much anything you want about second-hand smoke. As with nuclear winter, bad science is used to promote what most people would consider good policy. I certainly think it is. I don't want people smoking around me. So who will speak out against banning second-hand smoke? Nobody, and if you do, you'll be branded a shill of RJ Reynolds. A big tobacco flunky. But the truth is that we now have a social policy supported by the grossest of superstitions. And we've given the EPA a bad lesson in how to behave in the future. We've told them that cheating is the way to succeed. As the twentieth century drew to a close, the connection between hard scientific fact and public policy became increasingly elastic. In part this was possible because of the complacency of the scientific profession; in part because of the lack of good science education among the public; in part, because of the rise of specialized advocacy groups which have been enormously effective in getting publicity and shaping policy; and in great part because of the decline of the media as an independent assessor of fact. The deterioration of the American media is dire loss for our country. When distinguished institutions like the New York Times can no longer differentiate between factual content and editorial opinion, but rather mix both freely on their front page, then who will hold anyone to a higher standard? And so, in this elastic anything-goes world where science-or non-science-is the hand maiden of questionable public policy, we arrive at last at global warming. It is not my purpose here to rehash the details of this most magnificent of the demons haunting the world. I would just remind you of the now-familiar pattern by which these things are established. Evidentiary uncertainties are glossed over in the unseemly rush for an overarching policy, and for grants to support the policy by delivering findings that are desired by the patron. Next, the isolation of those scientists who won't get with the program, and the characterization of those scientists as outsiders and "skeptics" in quotation marks-suspect individuals with suspect motives, industry flunkies, reactionaries, or simply anti-environmental nutcases. In short order, debate ends, even though prominent scientists are uncomfortable about how things are being done. When did "skeptic" become a dirty word in science? When did a skeptic require quotation marks around it? To an outsider, the most significant innovation in the global warming controversy is the overt reliance that is being placed on models. Back in the days of nuclear winter, computer models were invoked to add weight to a conclusion: "These results are derived with the help of a computer model." But now large-scale computer models are seen as generating data in themselves. No longer are models judged by how well they reproduce data from the real world-increasingly, models provide the data. As if they were themselves a reality. And indeed they are, when we are projecting forward. There can be no observational data about the year 2100. There are only model runs. This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well. Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right. Because only if you spend a lot of time looking at a computer screen can you arrive at the complex point where the global warming debate now stands. Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead. Now we're asked to believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future? And make financial investments based on that prediction? Has everybody lost their minds? Stepping back, I have to say the arrogance of the modelmakers is breathtaking. There have been, in every century, scientists who say they know it all. Since climate may be a chaotic system-no one is sure-these predictions are inherently doubtful, to be polite. But more to the point, even if the models get the science spot-on, they can never get the sociology. To predict anything about the world a hundred years from now is simply absurd. Look: If I was selling stock in a company that I told you would be profitable in 2100, would you buy it? Or would you think the idea was so crazy that it must be a scam? Let's think back to people in 1900 in, say, New York. If they worried about people in 2000, what would they worry about? Probably: Where would people get enough horses? And what would they do about all the horseshit? Horse pollution was bad in 1900, think how much worse it would be a century later, with so many more people riding horses? But of course, within a few years, nobody rode horses except for sport. And in 2000, France was getting 80% its power from an energy source that was unknown in 1900. Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Japan were getting more than 30% from this source, unknown in 1900. Remember, people in 1900 didn't know what an atom was. They didn't know its structure. They also didn't know what a radio was, or an airport, or a movie, or a television, or a computer, or a cell phone, or a jet, an antibiotic, a rocket, a satellite, an MRI, ICU, IUD, IBM, IRA, ERA, EEG, EPA, IRS, DOD, PCP, HTML, internet. interferon, instant replay, remote sensing, remote control, speed dialing, gene therapy, gene splicing, genes, spot welding, heat-seeking, bipolar, prozac, leotards, lap dancing, email, tape recorder, CDs, airbags, plastic explosive, plastic, robots, cars, liposuction, transduction, superconduction, dish antennas, step aerobics, smoothies, twelve-step, ultrasound, nylon, rayon, teflon, fiber optics, carpal tunnel, laser surgery, laparoscopy, corneal transplant, kidney transplant, AIDS… None of this would have meant anything to a person in the year 1900. They wouldn't know what you are talking about. Now. You tell me you can predict the world of 2100. Tell me it's even worth thinking about. Our models just carry the present into the future. They're bound to be wrong. Everybody who gives a moment's thought knows it. I remind you that in the lifetime of most scientists now living, we have already had an example of dire predictions set aside by new technology. I refer to the green revolution. In 1960, Paul Ehrlich said, "The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines-hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Ten years later, he predicted four billion people would die during the 1980s, including 65 million Americans. The mass starvation that was predicted never occurred, and it now seems it isn't ever going to happen. Nor is the population explosion going to reach the numbers predicted even ten years ago. In 1990, climate modelers anticipated a world population of 11 billion by 2100. Today, some people think the correct number will be 7 billion and falling. But nobody knows for sure. But it is impossible to ignore how closely the history of global warming fits on the previous template for nuclear winter. Just as the earliest studies of nuclear winter stated that the uncertainties were so great that probabilites could never be known, so, too the first pronouncements on global warming argued strong limits on what could be determined with certainty about climate change. The 1995 IPCC draft report said, "Any claims of positive detection of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced." It also said, "No study to date has positively attributed all or part of observed climate changes to anthropogenic causes." Those statements were removed, and in their place appeared: "The balance of evidence suggests a discernable human influence on climate." What is clear, however, is that on this issue, science and policy have become inextricably mixed to the point where it will be difficult, if not impossible, to separate them out. It is possible for an outside observer to ask serious questions about the conduct of investigations into global warming, such as whether we are taking appropriate steps to improve the quality of our observational data records, whether we are systematically obtaining the information that will clarify existing uncertainties, whether we have any organized disinterested mechanism to direct research in this contentious area. The answer to all these questions is no. We don't. In trying to think about how these questions can be resolved, it occurs to me that in the progression from SETI to nuclear winter to second hand smoke to global warming, we have one clear message, and that is that we can expect more and more problems of public policy dealing with technical issues in the future-problems of ever greater seriousness, where people care passionately on all sides. And at the moment we have no mechanism to get good answers. So I will propose one. Just as we have established a tradition of double-blinded research to determine drug efficacy, we must institute double-blinded research in other policy areas as well. Certainly the increased use of computer models, such as GCMs, cries out for the separation of those who make the models from those who verify them. The fact is that the present structure of science is entrepeneurial, with individual investigative teams vying for funding from organizations which all too often have a clear stake in the outcome of the research-or appear to, which may be just as bad. This is not healthy for science. Sooner or later, we must form an independent research institute in this country. It must be funded by industry, by government, and by private philanthropy, both individuals and trusts. The money must be pooled, so that investigators do not know who is paying them. The institute must fund more than one team to do research in a particular area, and the verification of results will be a foregone requirement: teams will know their results will be checked by other groups. In many cases, those who decide how to gather the data will not gather it, and those who gather the data will not analyze it. If we were to address the land temperature records with such rigor, we would be well on our way to an understanding of exactly how much faith we can place in global warming, and therefore what seriousness we must address this. I believe that as we come to the end of this litany, some of you may be saying, well what is the big deal, really. So we made a few mistakes. So a few scientists have overstated their cases and have egg on their faces. So what. Well, I'll tell you. In recent years, much has been said about the post modernist claims about science to the effect that science is just another form of raw power, tricked out in special claims for truth-seeking and objectivity that really have no basis in fact. Science, we are told, is no better than any other undertaking. These ideas anger many scientists, and they anger me. But recent events have made me wonder if they are correct. We can take as an example the scientific reception accorded a Danish statistician, Bjorn Lomborg, who wrote a book called The Skeptical Environmentalist. The scientific community responded in a way that can only be described as disgraceful. In professional literature, it was complained he had no standing because he was not an earth scientist. His publisher, Cambridge University Press, was attacked with cries that the editor should be fired, and that all right-thinking scientists should shun the press. The past president of the AAAS wondered aloud how Cambridge could have ever "published a book that so clearly could never have passed peer review." )But of course the manuscript did pass peer review by three earth scientists on both sides of the Atlantic, and all recommended publication.) But what are scientists doing attacking a press? Is this the new McCarthyism-coming from scientists? Worst of all was the behavior of the Scientific American, which seemed intent on proving the post-modernist point that it was all about power, not facts. The Scientific American attacked Lomborg for eleven pages, yet only came up with nine factual errors despite their assertion that the book was "rife with careless mistakes." It was a poor display featuring vicious ad hominem attacks, including comparing him to a Holocust denier. The issue was captioned: "Science defends itself against the Skeptical Environmentalist." Really. Science has to defend itself? Is this what we have come to? When Lomborg asked for space to rebut his critics, he was given only a page and a half. When he said it wasn't enough, he put the critics' essays on his web page and answered them in detail. Scientific American threatened copyright infringement and made him take the pages down. Further attacks since have made it clear what is going on. Lomborg is charged with heresy. That's why none of his critics needs to substantiate their attacks in any detail. That's why the facts don't matter. That's why they can attack him in the most vicious personal terms. He's a heretic. Of course, any scientist can be charged as Galileo was charged. I just never thought I'd see the Scientific American in the role of mother church. Is this what science has become? I hope not. But it is what it will become, unless there is a concerted effort by leading scientists to aggressively separate science from policy. The late Philip Handler, former president of the National Academy of Sciences, said that "Scientists best serve public policy by living within the ethics of science, not those of politics. If the scientific community will not unfrock the charlatans, the public will not discern the difference-science and the nation will suffer." Personally, I don't worry about the nation. But I do worry about science. Thank you very much.