You know, if you had any respect for facts or logic or actual debate, you’d have addressed my point instead of regurgitating your “Institutions of Higher Learning” trope ad nauseam.

Neoconservatives have constructed an entire New Scientific Method based on ignoring facts, making facts up, and pulling crypto-Galileos. And I see you’re into the business of ignoring facts too.

heraldblog – In the case of Silent Spring you are aruging the possitive from the book (alternative methods of pest control) while I am arguing the negative (dangers of chemical pest control). The book prominently presents both ideas. Given that the book was advocation for the ban of certain chemicals and the inclusion of fable highlighting the negative, my interpertation is an accurate one.

bi – Social science, political science, etc key weakness is the inability to consistently reproduce real world results with anything close to the labratory accuracy demanded by the physical sciences (ie fail the scientific method). Think of it as the rotten apple princple. The physicial sciences, technical fields, etc. had developed a certain level of cache from being able to prove results. The other fields attempted to leverage this by requesting / demanding the consideration granted those in the provable fields. While this worked for a limited time, in general the result has been to consider all proclimations suspect. This represents a generic answer not a complete answer.

That presumption is just far too charitable.

“The new tools are not as effective as DDT and they cost significantly more.”

Oh, that gets even better. When scientists manage to develop expensive and ineffective tools against malaria, it’s all thanks to the great work of people who write books with made-up facts?

“Once the Institutions of Higher Learning started lumping political and scocial science with the hard sciences…”

No. This whole thing has zilch to do with “Institutions of Higher Learning”. I don’t need a PhD in Rocket Science to see that neoconservatives hate not only “Institutions of Higher Learning”, but also the whole idea of the scientific method, the whole idea of rational, skeptical, empirical inquiry, and the whole idea of logical discourse. When people construct an entire “scientific” methodology based on ignore facts, make up facts, and make veiled references to Galileo, it’s clear that they simply have no interest in facts or logic.

Perhaps we have a different understanding of factual errors. The base premis of Silent Spring was that the use of Chemicals would doom us all. 45 years later that premis has been proven (in the kindest possible terms) inaccurate. For specifics: Incorrect information relating to cancer & DDT, unsubstantiated relation of normal use to human liver and kidney failure, complete failure to account for the decline in bird population prior to the use of DDT, failure to account for additional contributing factors (calcium deficiency) to weak bird egg shells, questionable application of Audobon Society bird census findings, partial retraction of findings that DDT was the source of the thinning of eggshells*.

*Anderson DW, Hickey JJ, Risebrough RW, Hughes DF, Christensen RE. Significance of chlorinated hydrocarbon residues to breeding pelicans and cormorants. The Canadian Field-Naturalist

Of course, it was exactly this kind of thing that formed the basis of legitimate complaints about the earlier bias against DDT (which never came close to a ban, but undoubtedly influenced policy choices on occasion).

Silent Spring was largely factual – the only serious error was something Carson wrote about cancer. But the rest of the book has stood up very well over the last 45 years. I wrote my master’s thesis on Silent Spring, and I can tell you that Carson never advocated banning all pesticides. Her critique centered on how they were used, or rather abused. It would help your case if you actually read the book before offering your comment.

The DDT issue is an example of emotion moving past the reality of the known science. Unfortunatly for the author of the post, the issue is a point for the other side. Before the DDT ban there was a real chance to erradicate malaria. Someone wrote a book that turned out to be not factual (silent spring) and convinced alot of people to push for a ban. This is not to say DDT is a good chemical. It just happens to be better than the alternatives.

As for why “consevatives” ignore scientist. Once the Institutions of Higher Learning started lumping political and scocial science with the hard sciences, all of them became suspect. When some wackjob with a PHd. starts spouting nonsense it has the same tarring effect as when Pat Robison spouts about killing Chaves. Develop some higher standards and maybe you can get their respect back.

One of the hazards of navigating parallel universes is that sarcasm is often lost.

eudoxis: So when “[n]ew tools such as long-lasting insecticide-treated nets and artemisinin-based combination therapies” managed to be found by real scientists doing real work, it’s all thanks to the help of people who write books with made-up facts?

To the contrary, the increased focus on DDT has heightened political awareness of malaria. Any increase in public information about malaria, whether from the pro- or anti-DDT camp, is effective in putting malaria back on the western attention map where it has languished for so long.

“Global Malaria Control in the 21st Century
A Historic but Fleeting Opportunity

Richard G. A. Feachem, DScMed; Oliver J. Sabot, BA

JAMA. 2007;297:2281-2284.

There is today more attention to and financing for malaria control than at least the past 4 decades. Following the collapse of the global eradication campaign in the early 1970s, malaria control programs around the world dwindled as funding dried up, technical guidance became confused and at times contradictory, and much of the global community seemed ready to accept that malaria was an unavoidable fact of life in tropical regions.1 Gains that had been made in reducing the burden of the disease in Asia and Latin America eroded, while in sub-Saharan Africa, the already intolerable number of deaths began to increase as the primary means of defense, chloroquine, increasingly failed.2

Since the turn of the 21st century, however, there has been resurgence of focus on the burden of malaria and opportunities for its control. New tools such as long-lasting insecticide-treated nets3 and artemisinin-based combination therapies4 have proven highly effective in reducing morbidity and mortality, and there has been substantial investment in further innovation, from the discovery of a long-sought vaccine to the development of new treatments. Financing for malaria endemic countries to purchase and deploy these and other critical tools has increased dramatically with the advent of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, and the US President’s Malaria Initiative, increasing 10-fold between 1998 and 2006.5-7 Unprecedented political attention has been devoted to the disease in both the global north and south.” More at JAMA.