Else where in the article EPA studies have repeatedly flunked outside reviews by panels established by the agency itself, but no outside panel is set to evaluate this one.

I happened over to the SEA blog this morning and was looking at discussion about science which was alleged to be ignored. The SEA is upset that a decision was not made their way. They are upset that a decision maker, actually made a decision rather than take a poll.

To excerpt from the article talking about discussion nine years ago, it was said Frank O’Donnell, then-executive director of the Clean Air Trust, called talk of regulating lawn mowers “crazed propaganda.

Today, however, EPA openly seeks implementation of pollution standards for lawn mowers that would supposedly cut smog-causing emissions by 35 percent. As for O’Donnell, he’s now president of Clean Air Watch where he’s working hard to implement that “crazed propaganda.”

Another quote from the article There are also safety concerns. The EPA proposal would almost certainly require installation of catalytic converters. Yet the heat put off by catalytic converters is such that the EPA itself recommends against parking cars in tall grass because of the chance of fire. But using such a device on a machine that is in constant contact with grass is okay?

This is clearly a case of junk science. The trade if against some at best small amount of harm from lawnmower exhaust with the real risk of a great increase in lawnmower fires. Tell the nine or ten year old in the burn unit that this was “good science.”

I am going to trackback this to the SEA website and see if reasoned discussion occurs there or here.

Ryan T. Anderson over at First Things writes:

The truth about the technical challenges and scientific hurdles for embryonic stem-cell (ESC) therapies is finally getting out. The truth, of course, is that there are no human embryonic stem-cell therapies even in clinical trial, let alone ready for therapy, and there have been no major treatment models in animals, either. Adult stem cells, however, have already been successful in treating more than seventy different diseases in actual human beings.

Readers of First Things are well aware that the main objection to current methods of embryonic stem-cell research is that they involve the destruction of living human embryos, that is, human beings at the embryonic stage in their lives. This is a principled objection to the direct and intentional killing of human beings.

There is no principled objection to stem-cell research, not even to embryonic stem-cell research, provided that methods that do not destroy embryos are pursued… . .

Big note Meanwhile, adult stem-cell therapies are healing patients now—despite the fact that they receive only a fraction of the funding.

read it all

Is global warming open for discussion? Or are conflicting observations to be dismissed?

Is evolution open for discussion? Do not limit your thinking to evolution versus intelligent design.

Is religion as it has been called in comments at sefora.org willful ignorance?

Is there a right for scientific research? If so, is there a right to tax people to provide for such research?

Are research practices subject to moral and ethical constraints. If so what is the source of those moral and ethics.

Can science really be separate from religion, morals, or ethics? I ask this question both of those who think they should be intermixed and of those who do not.

From a “friendly press”; Scientists and Engineers for Change formed to support the election of John Kerry in 2004. . .. reemerged . . . Scientists and Engineers for America. . political consultant . . . is the group’s new executive director. I see little prospect of Scientists and Engineers for America, will ever be being more than another moveon.org. This excerpt, which I have more fully quoted and below, and what I read on the site cases me to so conclude.

The philosophy of Scientists and Engineers for Change appears to be that of the secular humanist. Secular humanism is a naturalistic world view. Protagoras claim that “man is the measure of all things,” can be seen as the historic foundation of the philosophy. The secular humanist in general rejects God or that matter they reject all that is supernatural. Protagoras said “Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not or of what sort they may be, because of the obscurity of the subject, and the brevity of human life”

Much of the stated goals of the group are something that could be of interest to Traditional Christian, albeit to a much lesser extent to biblical literalists. It is the tone that makes me think that this group is anti-Christian. It is not that they want to close churches, it is they do not want Christian morals or values to interfere with government funding of what they envision as science. It is a matter of you can have your religion, just do not let it be part of the political process.

What secular humanist and all who in effect worship at the altar of science miss is that there is more to knowledge than what we can observe. There is more to knowledge than human reason. I here will not get into philosophy concerning our knowledge of God. I will just say we have knowledge of God that we have obtained by means that are not testable by the scientific method.

There is a certain sorry vanity is the assumption that I can deduce all I will ever need to know from observations of the physical world. This let it be clear. This is not a position taken by all scientists. Many scientists including me fully acknowledge that God has revealed knowledge to us that we will never fully understand.

Here is a not so friendly press A new political action committee enters the fray.

The friendly press is: “Scientists and Engineers for Change formed to support the election of John Kerry in 2004. Today it has reemerged bearing a new strategy, a new name—Scientists and Engineers for America—and a new attitude, one reflecting the idea that, to flex their political muscles, scientists need to do a lot more than simply give talks. Mike Brown, a lawyer and political consultant who directed the successful 2004 congressional election campaign of Jim Moran (D-VA), is the group’s new executive director. (seed magazine October 2006)”

It can honestly be said that science is really a philosophy. It is a philosophy in that it is a set of ideas or beliefs relating to a particular field or activity. Science has only it practical application to warrant it as in any as a superior form of knowledge. That is if science is a superior form of knowledge.

Knowledge is sometime broken down into as follows. LOGICAL There is a knowledge resulting from an understanding of the relationship of ideas to one another. SEMANTIC There is knowledge resulting from the meaning of words. SYSTEMIC There is knowledge resulting of learning a system of words, or symbols and how they relate to one another. EMPIRICAL There is a knowledge that comes through our senses. Science is an example of this type of knowledge.

Science is really a way to test, validate, and catalog empirical knowledge. Nevertheless, much of what we all think of as science we know not as empirical knowledge but by a combination of the other three forms of knowledge. Most of what we each understand as science we did not observe ourselves we learned though the use of words so we can see it as semantic knowledge. In the transfer of knowledge with science we generally use systematic logic so these other two forms of knowledge generally come into play. One reason to have science is to make the transfer of knowledge practical. This is why we study science. I can say science is the study of others’ empirical knowledge.

History is another collection of knowledge. At some point history was empirical but here just like in science most of what we think of as historical knowledge is learned by means of semantics. Is historical knowledge less valuable because it is not subject to testing today?

Philosophy of History is an area of philosophy concerning the eventual significance, if any, of human history. Furthermore, it speculates as to a possible teleological end to its development—that is, it asks if there is a design, purpose, directive principle, or finality in the processes of human history. Philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy that studies the philosophical assumptions, foundations, and implications of science, including the formal sciences, natural sciences, and social sciences. In this respect, the philosophy of science is closely related to epistemology and the philosophy of language. The above is taken from the related topics over at Wikipedia.

My point is that science and history are really theories of knowledge. The philosophy of history is partially subject to itself. You can analyze if the philosophy of history has had eventual significance. I would say that it has. I have pondered the thought but I see no way the scientific method is subject to itself. This is in part true because the scientific method is not empirical knowledge. In other words, we cannot scientifically show science.

This is my take on the Bill of Rights for Scientists and Engineers. Warning there is more a bit of hyperbole here both from them and me. At least I hope it is hyperbole to some degree on their part.

Effective government depends on accurate, honest and timely advice from scientists and engineers. Science demands an open, transparent process of review and access to the best scholars from around the nation and the world. Mistakes dangerous to the nation’s welfare and security have been made when governments prevent scientists from presenting the best evidence and analysis. Americans should demand that all candidates support the following Bill of Rights:

Except for the first sentence there appears to be underlying assumptions that make the motivations suspect. The idea of access to the best scholar of the world troubles me the most. My experience in thirty years of engineering has been when getting down to brass tacks that scholars are borderline useless.

Scholars or as I prefer to call them academics more often than not are followers of trends and forget basic engineering. The academic communities tend to have their own set or orthodoxies. These orthodoxies have a tendency to be politically liberal. Academics also tend to focus on the process and the expense of getting real work done.

Except in the parts of the academic world most engineering is not an open or transparent process. Companies that want to profit from the work have paid most engineers and therefore rightly keep the work within the context of the company. When the government is the customer, they must protect the work of private companies as provided by contract. This has provided the government quality goods and services for a long time. I fail to see a compelling reason that we should change this.

1. Federal policy shall be made using the best available science and analysis both from within the government and from the rest of society.

At first this idea looks good. Who could disagree that you should use the best available science? However, there is a major practical fault in the discussion. What is the best available science? I would say that overall the best available science comes from those who are active in that particular area. My sense is that the owners of the site infer by this that most of the best science comes from the university.

I would be properly upset is my work was put on a par with some two-month academic study, but the implication here is that is what they expect. If my employer has spent many millions of dollars on a project to meet a specific need of the government, why should it be subject formal review by some academic with a political agenda?

There is also in this statement an implied assumption that science trumps moral or ethical considerations. Just because something can be done does mean it should be done. The so-called best science answer may in fact be immoral.

2. The federal government shall never intentionally publish false or misleading scientific information nor post such material on federal websites.

I sense that this statement is in reaction to some press where some government agencies have failed to present certain minority or dissenting views when publishing policy decisions.

Government agencies are tasked to take action to protect safety, health, or welfare. These agencies need to rely upon good science to make these decisions. Nevertheless, they also must consider the policies of the administration, the law, morals, ethics, and other things.

3. Scientists conducting research or analysis with federal funding shall be free to discuss and publish the results of unclassified research after a reasonable period of review without fear of intimidation or adverse personnel action.

If you are part of an engineering team, you agree to abide by the rules set forth when you joined. Often this means that the results of the work belong to who paid for the work. Part of owning the results of the work is the choice if or when to publish. Part of our governmental process is to have decision makers.

The mention of a reasonable period of review is interesting. It is interesting because of what it implies. To me it implies that after sometime anyone should be free to publish whatever they think they discovered, even when those tasked with the proper usage of that information have not accepted the opinion for whatever reason.

4. Federal employees reporting what they believe to be manipulation of federal research and analysis for political or ideological reasons should be free to bring this information to the attention of the public and shall be protected from intimidation, retribution or adverse personnel action by effective enforcement of Whistle Blower laws.

This is an open invitation to take every dispute within government agencies and make it into a public discussion. If this is to be public policy, then we undermine the process by which decisions are made. Government decisions are made for political and ideological reasons all the time, this is why we have elections so the political and ideological framework is from time to time changed.

5. No scientists should fear reprisals or intimidation because of the results of their research.

Here is one with which I can agree. However, this does not extend to unauthorized publication of such research or other violation of the terms and conditions upon which the research was funded.

6. Appointments to federal scientific advisory committees shall be based on the candidate’s scientific qualifications, not political affiliation or ideology.

Why would anybody put on a panel those who have and ideology opposed to that of the person doing the appointing? The idea that there is pure science devoid of ideology is pure fancy.

7. The federal government shall not support any science education program that includes instruction in concepts that are derived from ideology and not science.

Science itself is a philosophy or one could say ideology. I fear that this plank has much to do with giving to the academic community that which is not theirs. Namely the right to choose what is taught to our children.

8. While scientists may elect to withhold methods or studies that might be misused there shall be no federal prohibition on publication of basic research results. Decisions made about blocking the release of information about specific applied research and technologies for reasons of national security shall be the result of a transparent process. Classification decisions shall be made by trained professionals using a clear set of published criteria and there shall be a clear process for challenging decisions and a process for remedying mistakes and abuses of the classification system.

Give me a break here. The classification system has had it abuses for sure. Nevertheless, it is necessary and the implied taking that authority away from the President and his designee and giving it to some unaccountable group of people is ridiculous.

I can see a few conditions where it might be necessary, but overall what give a person the right to withhold for those who have paid for it the results of his labor?

Within the context of this post, I have engaged in a bit of hyperbole. My point is that the academic’s work is no more meaningful, no more honest, and no better science than the work I do for my employer. I make no apology for working for industry. I realize that many academic’s work very hard. I fear however, that often the work it toward the artificial goal of getting published.