Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
One thing you might have noticed - I've had comments a time or two on it from readers - is that I never write about global warming. The only time I've ever mentioned it was in the very limited context of political nonsense, like the kid at NASA telling climate scientists what they can and can't say. There's a reason why I don't comment about global warming - I just don't know enough about it. I've never taken the time to research it and I simply don't have the base of knowledge necessary to make and defend any statement about it. Thus, I don't make any statements about it that I would need to defend; I just think that's the intellectually honest thing to do.
But here's a situation that someone emailed me that I will gladly comment about. A school board in the Seattle area has actually passed a policy restricting the showings of Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, and requiring that if it's showed it must be "balanced". I'm not going to comment on the accuracy of this documentary; I haven't seen it and don't have the knowledge to evaluate it if I had.
But I'll comment on some of the statements made by the school board in making this decision:
"Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He's not a schoolteacher," said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven children who doesn't want the film shown at all."The information that's being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is," Hardison told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD."
In my experience, a great many school boards actually have people who think like this on them. And if they don't, they have people like this they have to cater to. Either way, it is appalling to me that someone this clueless has any influence at all on what is taught in schools. Unfortunately they do, all over the country.
Comments
Students don't belong in schools, they're not schoolteachers.
Whether talking about evolution and creationism, or climate change, the notion of "balance" can be quite foolish. How much quote mining, misrepresentation, and outright lying does it take to balance the amassed published research based on actual data?
Posted by: mark | January 13, 2007 10:39 AM
It is a very intellectually honest comment you make Ed. I find myself in a similar situation on the issue of global warming.
Pity people like that Seattle parent don't share our view. They actually see the preface "I don't know anything about this, but..." as a badge of honor.
Posted by: MarkP | January 13, 2007 11:23 AM
"The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up." So what? Why would Frosty Hardison consider his view of the end times to be relevant to the global warming debate? Does he believe that God's eventual planetary roast somehow renders moot all ethical questions about what happens before then?
He seems to believe this: In the end times everything will burn up. Therefore we may go ahead and damage the world by exacerbating global warming.
So does he also believe this?--In the end times everything will burn up, and therefore I think I'll just go ahead and rob my local bank. Sooner or later the bank will be toast anyway!
Of course he doesn't believe that last bit. Any fundie who stops to think for a moment (snort) will agree that one's end-times beliefs do not moot the ethical questions confronting us in the here-and-now. The inevitability of the end times does not legitimate robbery because robbery is immoral, period. The fundie would be the last to engage in robbery because in doing so, even at the last possible moment before the end of the world, he would jeopardize his salvation.
So the question confronting Hardison is whether the failure to alleviate global warming is immoral. Period. Maybe it's immoral, and maybe it isn't, but the question has nothing to do with the apocalypse.
If the failure to alleviate global warming IS immoral, then Hardison cannot excuse himself by invoking the end times. If the failure to alleviate global warming is NOT immoral, then there's nothing to excuse and he has no need to invoke the end times at all.
So why DOES he invoke the end times on this issue?
Because Hardison is an idiot, and not merely because he's a fundie. He's also an idiot because he can't think through the implications of his own beliefs. He simply uses those beliefs as a get-out-of-jail-free card when it's convenient for him to do so.
Posted by: Eveningsun | January 13, 2007 11:55 AM
While I think the parent you quoted was way off base, I am not sure that Gore's film is actually appropriate for schools. I am all for schools teaching about global warming, but An Inconvenient Truth is rather heavily slanted.
I also think that the whole global warming issue, detracts from the underlying environmental issues. There are a lot of very good reasons to reduce the activities that contribute to global warming, besides global warming.
Posted by: DuWayne | January 13, 2007 12:24 PM
The miracle is that with more than 15,000 locally-elected school boards in this country running the nation's schools, as many kids get good educations as actually happens.
It's a miracle, plain and simple.
Here's a conundrum: I'll wager that the school board member who now claims we should not listen to Vietnam vet, former minister candidate, U.S. Congressman, U.S. Senator and U.S. Vice President Al Gore when Al Gore details the information on global warming found by NASA, EPA and NOAA, insists that kids should say the Pledge of Allegiance -- asking kids to respect the flag and government that he urinates on.
I try not to get worked up about this stuff, but asking for "balance" of Gore's film is a bit like insisting on a Klan rally at a school that has a program for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday.
As I said, it's a miracle any kid gets out of the system, normal.
Posted by: Ed Darrell | January 13, 2007 12:38 PM
I agree with DuWayne that An Inconvenient Truth is slanted. But I don't agree that it's therefore inappropriate for schools.
Instead of calling it slanted, and thus inappropriate for schools, I'd rather we say it presents an argument, and like all arguments has strengths and weaknesses and ought to be critically evaluated.
The danger of banning "slanted" materials from the schools is that students are implicitly taught to believe in that will o' the wisp, objectivity, which they are rarely going to encounter in the real world. Instead of being taught to insist upon objectivity and distrust all else, they should be taught to evaluate arguments. How else can they learn to be good citizens in a culture where 99 percent of the claims they encounter will consist of argumentation of one kind or another?
Posted by: Eveningsun | January 13, 2007 12:42 PM
Frosty Hardison? Really? I mean, I hate to bring up an irrelevant point, but that struck me as much as the End Times/An Inconvenient Truth comment.
More on topic, I too have a real problem with this; science education should deal in what is known, what is supported, and what is relevant. As such, the curriculum is going to be necessarily limited in the scope of its discussion, but this is the classroom, after all--teachers can't cover everything. They will necessarily teach less than the full scope of all the sciences, but attitudes like Ms. Hardison's inhibit even the most basic science education. Her attitude is inappropriate and actually quite nihilistic for someone in her position.
Posted by: ThomasHobbes | January 13, 2007 12:56 PM
Eveningsun -
Being taught objectivity alone, without the tools to evaluate arguments is criminal. But not being taught objectivity, makes it impossible to reasonabley evaluate the myriad of issues that one will encounter in life. Critical evaluation of anything, must start with objectivity.
I wasn't very clear on why I don't think An Inconvenient Truth is innapropriate for schools. It is not simply it's slant - I actually think it is appropriate to teach kids about global warming. Regardless of the causes or our potential to repair or retard the damage, humans are going to have to deal with the consequences of global warming. I just think that it is important to discuss the science on all sides of the issue. Gore's movie doesn't do that. It is not appropriate to present one side, over the course of a couple of class periods, then pick up the other sides later.
Objectivity is not some wil o wisp, it is the fundamental foundation for seeking truth. While it certainly doesn't preclude the possiblity of deluding oneself, it makes it much harder to. When one sets their ideology and preconceptions to the side, when evalutating new information, it can be evaluated on it's merits. Without objectivity, one need not pay new information much mind. It either fits with their world view or it's wrong. Objectivity is adjusting one's world view to fit the best evidence, as apposed to adjusting the truth to fit into one's world view.
Posted by: DuWayne | January 13, 2007 1:08 PM
Why should we expect anything else from government run schools, where the government is expected to teach children to be good citizens? Sorry, Ed, if I opened up a can of worms here.
Posted by: steven | January 13, 2007 1:24 PM
I would also like to mention, that I think Frosty is just one of the parents who complained, not a school board member. The article cited, does not say anything about Frosty being a member, it only refers to Frosty (the article fails to actually sex Frosty either) as a parent of seven children, who doesn't want the film shown at all. I also imagine that Frosty's comment was cited because it is likely the stupidest one. It was a Seattle paper that wrote the original article.
Posted by: DuWayne | January 13, 2007 1:32 PM
OK, the Bible says in the end times everything will burn up. See? Science confirms the Bible once agains!!! We just didn't know it was referring to global warming.
Saying an argument is "slanted" is just a way of saying "I don't like it for some reason." All arguments include supporting information and attempt to answer contrary information if there is any. But having read extensively on global warming I can say it amuses me how people who have never cracked a book that they didn't get at their religious bookstore can say global warming is not "truth".
Posted by: decrepitoldfool | January 13, 2007 1:54 PM
decrepitoldfool -
Actually, saying an argument is slanted (at least what I refer to when I say it), is saying the the only evidence presented in that argument, is the evidence that supports it. That it also means their is something one doesn't like about the argument, is incidental.
To be clear, I am not saying that global warming is not "true." It quite obviously is. What some people, who are far more educated than myself about the subject, are questioning, is how much humans have influenced it, how much we can actually do to reverse it and whether or not putting the focus on global warming is a good tactical idea.
I should also be clear that I am inclined to believe that we are seriously contributing to global warming. Not only that, but I have faith enough in human enginuity, to think that we can reverse it. The fact that I believe it, doesn't make Gore's movie about it, any less slanted.
OT, I also fear that the focus on global warming has taken the focus off of the many other reasons not to do the things that contribute to global warming. Very little attention is paid to the air we breath, the water we drink and the soil our food is grown in - in light of the debate over global warming. These are a lot less abstract to most people, than the dangers of global warming.
Posted by: DuWayne | January 13, 2007 2:43 PM
It would be nice if clowns like Mr. Hardison followed Mr. Braytons' example and avoided commenting on subjects on which they have no information.
Posted by: SLC | January 13, 2007 2:57 PM
"Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He's not a schoolteacher," said Frosty Hardison
Middle Tennessee State, FIsk and UCLA seem to disagree with this.
Posted by: Lettuce | January 13, 2007 3:16 PM
Sorry, DuWayne, I should recognize there is a correct meaning for the word "slanted" and you are using it that way. There is also a popular, and demagogical meaning for the word, and it means "Fair And Balanced" ;-)
In which vein, it does bother me that some people pit arguments from climate scientists against arguments from preachers or lawyers and call it 'balance'. That seems kind of like apples and oranges to me, like pitting Philip Johnson against Stephen Jay Gould.
As to the tactical focus on global warming, I do think it is the largest-scale environmental catastrophe ahead so it deserves a crisp focus, whatever is abstract or concrete to the people. Other huge problems include the deterioration of sea life diversity, rainforests, etc. Naturally there are relationships among these problems so we can't fix one environmental problem to the exclusion of all others. I'm all for teaching kids about complexity using the environment as an example. Ditto for other complex problems of sociological, technological, etc.
Posted by: decrepitoldfool | January 13, 2007 3:36 PM
Other people who weren't schoolteachers: Einstein, Newton, Fermi, Galileo, Copernicus, Euler, Gauss .. ad nauseum.
Is their point that only schoolteachers are qualified to educate school students?
Then are only schoolteachers qualified to teach schoolteachers? If we get rid of college graduates, we can cut teacher pay considerably.
Posted by: OldFart | January 13, 2007 4:00 PM
Not to worry, DuWayne--we agree here far more than we disagree. I certainly agree with you about "adjusting one's world view to fit the best evidence," etc. When I wrote of objectivity being a will o' the wisp I didn't mean to make some deconstructionist philosophical statement, only to convey how rarely objectivity is encountered in the real world of FOX News, TV commercials, talk shows, etc.--and thus how important it is to expose students to and teach them to analyze slanted arguments. I think it would be easy enough to have high school students view An Inconvenient Truth and then dig into the film's sources, compare those sources' credibility to the sources cited by global-warming critics, etc. In addition, any halfway decent high school teacher (OK, so maybe there's not that many of these around) could point out the film's rhetorical strategies, logical fallacies, etc. We do this sort of thing all the time at the college freshman level, so I doubt it would be over the heads of high school juniors or seniors.
Posted by: Eveningsun | January 13, 2007 5:08 PM
[Sorry this is lagging the discussion a bit, but the list that follows I thought I had ready to post but could only find versions that needed some work. I'll post this and catch up offline. The list also uses bullets which can occasionally preview fine but post incorrectly. Late: And went to post and couldn't get into into the site. And then couldn't post! And, I also apoligize for the length, it's a personal writing defect combined with short deadlines.]
First a note on Ed Darrel's comment. He'll likely agree and it simply was overshadowed by glow of good line, something I fall prey to repeatedly. It's not a miracle our school system works as well as it does, but the result of all the hours of work and sacrifice done by the non-idiots who take up the good fight at their local level. It's a difficult and rather thankless undertaking.
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DuWayne is missing a fundamental issue, as generally most people do. And so because of that, he's misdefined "balance".
Simply focusing on GW science and analyzing it claim-counter-claim as a teaching example in "science", is, by itself, a highly unbalanced approach. Indeed, the most likely way that would get done in the classrooms across America would be tacitly going out, grabbing up a mess of elements of a professionally designed, specked-out, written, executed, monitored-and-adjusted, long-running psychomarketing campaign. And then dumping all that into the classroom. No district or teacher is going to teach, for example, the various GW summary reports.
So, a classroom discussion essentially becomes a very large amount of science that implies we should, and many domain expert scientists who say we must, respond to GW, abbreviated into a highly abstract version. The other side is a public campaign, funded by Exxon, that's very carefully and successfully aimed at providing the appearance of a scientific controversy, and a few hired gunslingers with "Phd" tattooed on their forearms that lie [plenty of evidence] about an extremely narrow slice of a massive data set. The campaigns "script" has specific strategies for specific types of citizens but the bottom line is it pits civilians, including school teachers, against the persuasion industry. Large numbers of average people fall prey to this industry on a daily basis.
Gore's movie, of course, is also such a production. No doubt about that. But a Johnny-come-lately. And small potatoes compared to the many years of subtle falsehoods spread around by a group of professional liars. [I reference the campaign, not the science].
However, there is theoretically a way to bring this into the classroom. One could include in the lesson plan a thorough unit on media literacy, particularly something related on negative psychomarketing campaigns, and dismantle the global warming skeptics campaign as the teaching example.
Problem is, as much as possible about this campaign is hidden. For example, my list posted separately below comes from a SciAm thread whose commenters reveal a highly coordinated, narrow set of talking points, some very irrational. Who "wrote" those talking points?. Who were the contracts between? How much did it cost. Etc. Of course, such information is only barely discernible using an investigative reporting team. Very few teachers would spend 3 or 4 hours walking students through the gaggle of lies in a collection of Wall Street Journal editorials on the subject.
Without such a campaign focus, it would be akin to discussing the Terry Schiavo brouhaha as a medical case, or worse, a medical dilemma, and ignoring its contemporary political context and the 30-year history of that context. It's virtually impossible to approach a rational or critical look at only the science involved in such a manipulated social context. Just creating the agenda for classroom discussion of GW demands recognition of sophisticated pre- and post-filtering of data for and its processing by the public, the hockey-stick being a great example.
So, fundamentally I agree with DuWayne's analysis, I'm a big fan of teaching critical thinking, and I've taught it myself. But the idea that the public, including teachers and curricula providers, can ferret out the professionally implanted parts of their own worldview. . . at this point it's a pipe dream. Correctly teaching media literacy in schools? Today? Not a chance.
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P.S.
Having looked at this while waiting for SciBlogs to become accessible I see some items not as obvious as I treat them. I can do a decent precis of these if that's of interest. 1. Why/how the hockey stick is a great example, that is, why the discussion itself in the classroom is a victory for Exxon and that proving the campaign wrong on that is useless [assuming it is wrong for discussion purposes]. 2. Uncovering a common, unconscious, and incorrect "pro-GW activist" assumption about the campaign's goal illustrates its mechanics and predicts the next phase. 3. Critical thinking and education in it, while necessary, will fail against the approach outlined below without thorough, detailed, and technical education in this specific technology. The reason involves pre-conscious techniques and so neuroscience and the realities of contemporary adult lives in the U.S. This is a huge problem for science communication.
Posted by: SkookumPlanet | January 13, 2007 6:48 PM
Recognizing Negative Psychomarketing Campaigns
__________________________________________________________
Some hallmarks of the fingerprint of an organized, professional, negative psychomarketing campaign. These campaigns are usually partially, or completely, covert:
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• focus on "character" of messenger/opponent in a way that allows dismissal of the message/argument
• confusion about actual facts at issue
• repetitious "talking points" or criticism, easily and repeatedly addressed, that continually resurrect
• proponents' certainty of data, often erroneous, that positions are based on
• focus on rhetorical argumentation, especially noticeable when new, reliable facts are introduced into larger discussion
• difficulty of getting adherents to discuss data/facts and admit error
• poor contextual reference, distinguishing personal/organized difficult, even with good data
• sublimation of energy into repetitive debate/discussion structures that produce no results
• focus on narrow part of data/issue relative to full amount available [where applicable]
• obsession with such narrowness to exclusion of readily available overview of issue
• focus off issues of decision-making methodology under obviously time-constrained conditions
• through time, new arguments/talking points materialize and rapidly spread [information contagion?]
• details and rhetorical argumentation distract pattern-recognition from larger contexts, campaign's existence
• kernels of truth in otherwise incorrect but widely held views [Tough to differentiate from everyday juicy stories. Journalists constantly chase these, only to find no story.]
• belief opposition succeeds via conspiratorial means, to varying degrees
• part of power and/or financial competition between parties on a larger sociopolitical level
• patterns/profiles/"scripts" of campaigns discernible, even strategies, with enough data
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None of these signs individually, or even several, are demonstrative, of course, and can arise from other causes. One would want to review a wide array of data, such as mass media, to begin to come to a conclusion about the existence of specific campaigns. I note these signs because the existence of these negative- or anti-PR campaigns and the tools for analyzing them are not widely known. These might be considered part of a robust media literacy, something sorely lacking in the U.S.
Posted by: SkookumPlanet | January 13, 2007 6:49 PM
SkookumPlanet -
I think a simpler way of expressing my objections to Gore's movie, being shown in the classroom, is that it is a political film. Like religion, more so in fact, politics has to stay out of the public schools. The discussion underlying the politics is essential. But it is not acceptable to indoctrinate school kids with any political view, any more than it is to indoctrinate them with religion. Teach them the best information we have, just don't try to tell them what to do with it. Though, I also strongly support teaching kids how to think, something the schools sorely miss on.
Posted by: DuWayne | January 13, 2007 7:08 PM
DuWayne, you should get a better shovel, or at least dig in one spot.
Posted by: Greg | January 13, 2007 7:59 PM
DuWayne I have not seen the movie so I will not judge it, but the original objection to the movie was religiously motivated. Like, I said I did not see the movie, but the facts are clear. The earth is getting warmer FAST. Faster than ever in at least the last 600 million years (We don't have good data for before that time). Most of the warming is caused by humans putting Co2 in the air. All this is just as sure as evolution, the big bang, and plate techtonics. What will happen next is not clear, but even though many of the climate models do not agree, none of the predictions are very good for mankind. So you object to that being taught?
Wishing global warming is not happening will not stop it anymore than thinking the plates don't move will keep earthquakes from happening.
Posted by: Tulle | January 13, 2007 8:25 PM
I have seen the movie and was generally impressed, although the spin was pretty heavy-handed at times. Thanks to skookum as ever for the analysis of the meta-debate, I think he is spot-on.
Nevertheless, I have to agree with DuWayne that the movie is not really appropriate for a high school audience, in that it is essentially political in its analysis of a legitimate scientific question. In other words, while I think it is ridiculous to insist on a scientific "balance", it would be entirely appropriate to want an analysis of competing political claims. These would include economic analyses, potential demographic changes, destabilization of goverments, and a lot more than high school kids are prepared for.
Which is not to say that global warming is not a great topic with which to introduce the scientific method to teens. I just wouldn't use "An Inconvenient Truth" as the curriculum.
Posted by: kehrsam | January 13, 2007 9:06 PM
Tulle -
I have been quite clear that I want the science of global warming taught. No question that this is a critical topic to teach and discuss. What I object to is the slant. The movie is political propaganda - no matter how accurate. I would raise the same objection to Control Room or The Fog of War being shown, in spite of agreeing with the propaganda in them.
There are a lot of great resources for teaching students about global warming and other environmental issues. Resources that do not get into the politics at all. There are even resources that promote alternative energy and propulsion - starting kids out quite young even. While I have no objections to my child watching a certain amount (though at five, we're really focused on other things) of this sort of documentary, I do object to pushing political views on the children of others, in public schools. I similarly object to my child having political views pushed on him in public schools.
Posted by: DuWayne | January 13, 2007 11:24 PM
Tulle -
Let me add that the objections are not neccesarily religiously motivated. Certainly the one example cited was, but that person is obviously a crackpot. As the quote came out of the Seattle Post Intelligencer, it doesn't surprise me.
But here is another quote from the article Ed cites;
The National Science Teachers Association turned down an offer from the film's producers for 50,000 free DVDs for classroom use. The association said it didn't want to be seen as politically endorsing the film or to open itself to requests from other special interests.
I would try to find a few more reactions from educational associations, but it has been a long day. I'm tired and BBC sitcoms are on in about twenty minutes.
Posted by: DuWayne | January 13, 2007 11:45 PM
Tulle said:
Is this exactly true? At the beginning of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, about 55 million years ago, temperatures rose at least 5 degrees C over a period of less than 10,000 years (Nature 441:610). This also was apparently related to atmospheric CO2 increases, although the mechanisms are not understood (Science 314:1556-1557 (8 Dec 2006); this article provides a short perspective on consideration of the PETHM as a model for current global warming). The occurrence of the Gaskiers glaciation, of global extent, about 580 million years ago, further leads me to wonder if current warming is really the fastest rate in the past 600 million years.(Of course, this does not diminish the seriousness of the current situation.)
Posted by: mark | January 14, 2007 11:01 AM
First a note that mark is correct about the Earth's past global heating information. And I'll make explicit what I think he's implying, perhaps, to Tulle. Exaggeration and inaccuracy are ultimately an enemy in this arena. The reason I mention this is because what follows is an example of the other side's methods, and it relishes such seemingly small errors, overmagnifies them, and can keep them in the public sphere for years. Again, small errors in the communication choices/use of the hockey stick have come back and first bit, then locked its jaws onto, those mistakes. Jujitsued it actually, from a perfect symbol of the GW problem into a perfect tool for Exxon's goals. It's as clear an example currently in play that I can come up.
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DuWayne
I have no problem with defining the Gore movie as political, nor your resultant suggested approaches. However, analyzing politics when a particular political approach has intentionally gone underground is very much akin to analyzing, to pick one, the politics of TV commercials for this year's new auto models. It can be done but it's an extremely sophisticated and demanding piece of work.
Your reference to the science teachers association is a perfect example. They turned it down because they receive funding from Exxon [and more from others, etc]. No admission of this, of course and it should be noted the member teachers were free to toss the DVDs in the trash. This was a national story and within days another science teaching association requested copies. If the news article you reference doesn't mention those details, both the reporter and editorial are derelict. Unprofessional.
Such a journalism screwup is common and worthy of an op-ed. I've done that before when my old-home-town newspaper published an op-ed article that attempted to humiliate parents and others for concern about the alar-apple scare of years back. It was by Dr. Elizabeth M. Whelan, executive director of the American Council on Science and Health. The editor simply took their attached biograph and printed it, labeling them a "consumer group advised by 200 physicians and scientists."
In actuality they were, and almost certainly still are, an astroturf group, primarily funded by the petrochemical industry, during some years back then getting one-quarter of their annual funding from alar's manufacturer, Uniroyal. The individual membership, the "advisers", were mostly employees of the industry. Readers of the original op-ed, which likely was sent to hundreds of newspapers, had no means to identify the organization. It was a week before my explanation of all this got published, which is not effective timing. Clearly the paper's editor had no idea.
I actually ran into this again with the same individual and organization on a nationally syndicated TV talk show [these days talk/scandal type] and was on the phone with an associate producer before the hour program ended. They also obviously didn't have a clue. However, the ACSH, it's nature, and it's agenda were widely known among environmental organizations and a simple phone call to any of those would have provided "balance" in the very minimal responsibility of identifying the group's nature.
The entire purpose of this type of pyschomarketing is a drip-drip-drip in the background, that only gets remembered in the very simplest of forms -- "some environmental groups say alar was no big deal." That's reality for most people most of the time, this has been carefully studied by those that do this, and it's a stealth campaign designed to sneak past guardian filters in people and institutions. Their entire m.o. is invisibility and emotional preconditioning. The alar story and it's fall-out were over when the op-ed was broadcast.
In other words, if the editorial staffs in media conduits can't figure this out, an overt part of their portfolio, how are the rest of us to do so? I've seen a few estimates of many hundreds to a few thousand such astroturf groups in the U.S.
And of course, there's the obvious but rarely even mentioned issue of the organization, then director Whelan, the membership/adviser roster of scientists and engineers, and the funders being amoral liars content to do anything they can get away with and distorting democratic decision-making in the process.
No way this is lobbying. If someone used this level of deceit to attack the professional reputation of an individual member scientist by, say, claiming falsification of data in peer-reviewed journal reports, slander lawsuits would ensue. Yet, there's an enormous amount of such organizational behavior with roughly similar goals, to anonymously slander something important involved in social decision making.
At this point there exists no effective sociopolitical protector organization. Our gatekeeping processes have become real hit-or-miss, overwhelmingly miss, operations. I've got a paragraph of six or seven process manipulations by Right Wing, Inc. involving news media, manipulations that are basically invisible to the public. Somehow, someone had to analyze how the press internally operates to find these influence points and then specifically design these tactics.
It gets very insidious. I'll paraphrase this to avoid the research, but it's within this school year in the SF Chronicle. An educational theater group which travels the country giving free performances in schools, showed up this year with a performance that struck a single teacher as rather odd. Eventually, this was traced to a funder of the group with interest in sociopolitical issues and then that information was brought to the attention of the press. Of course, the troupe claims there's no direct connection.
Yes, this particular type of school-related mendacity is easily solved, although I doubt many school systems will figure it out. But there's always the notion, particularly coming from the right, that just getting the funding information to people and letting them decide for themselves is all that's needed. In practicality that's a crock. To individual school principals, to school districts, this is free educational entertainment from dedicated educators. Few will even think to get and publish an updated list of it's funders every year. And to expect the public to have the interest or to take the time to figure out the funding of thousands of groups' often myriad funding sources? Especially when petrochemical astroturf groups have "health" or "environment" or "grassroots" in their titles? And of course, these type things can and often are nested so there are shells in shells in shells. I'll borrow a phrase from PZ. It's a farrago of lies.
And, no, I don't have a good suggestion for effectively doing something about it. This, right here, is the best I can come up with.
Posted by: SkookumPlanet | January 14, 2007 5:44 PM
Over at Framing Science, I have this post up on why Inconvenient Truth is not appropriate for science class:
http://scienceblogs.com/framing-science/2007/01/creationist_parent_gets_inconv.php
Posted by: Matthew C. Nisbet | January 16, 2007 12:22 PM
I see the 'Alar' story popped up a lot of places recently.
For the record, the 'Alar scare' PR piece is being hyped, it was a lie, and now it's a recycled lie, part of the general attack on regulation for health reasons. Analyzed here:
July 2005, Vol 95, No. S1
American Journal of Public Health S81-S91
© 2005 American Public Health Association
DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2004.044818
PUBLIC HEALTH MATTERS
Regulatory Parallels to Daubert: Stakeholder Influence, "Sound Science," and the Delayed Adoption of Health-Protective Standards
http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/full/95/S1/S81
Posted by: Hank Roberts | April 19, 2008 3:45 PM