Ron Bailey has a rational discussion of them, and a well-deserved slap at scientists who fancy themselves policy makers:
…a word of unsolicited advice to scientists who want to play in the public policy arena. Facts by themselves do not immediately entail the adoption of particular policies. Many of the scientific “facts” cited by activists arise from contested epidemiological data and controversial computer models. For example, if humanity is significantly warming the planet, it is entirely possible that the best policy is to encourage rapid technological progress and economic growth so that any problems caused by such warming can be dealt with more effectively and fairly in the future. And how does one make the trade-off between possibly harming a few species of birds through the use of DDT, and using the insecticide to prevent the deaths of millions of people each year from malaria? These are political decisions. Suggestive scientific data certainly help guide our decisions, but they do not mandate any particular policies
Ron Bailey has a rational discussion of them, and a well-deserved slap at scientists who fancy themselves policy makers:
…a word of unsolicited advice to scientists who want to play in the public policy arena. Facts by themselves do not immediately entail the adoption of particular policies. Many of the scientific “facts” cited by activists arise from contested epidemiological data and controversial computer models. For example, if humanity is significantly warming the planet, it is entirely possible that the best policy is to encourage rapid technological progress and economic growth so that any problems caused by such warming can be dealt with more effectively and fairly in the future. And how does one make the trade-off between possibly harming a few species of birds through the use of DDT, and using the insecticide to prevent the deaths of millions of people each year from malaria? These are political decisions. Suggestive scientific data certainly help guide our decisions, but they do not mandate any particular policies
Ron Bailey has a rational discussion of them, and a well-deserved slap at scientists who fancy themselves policy makers:
…a word of unsolicited advice to scientists who want to play in the public policy arena. Facts by themselves do not immediately entail the adoption of particular policies. Many of the scientific “facts” cited by activists arise from contested epidemiological data and controversial computer models. For example, if humanity is significantly warming the planet, it is entirely possible that the best policy is to encourage rapid technological progress and economic growth so that any problems caused by such warming can be dealt with more effectively and fairly in the future. And how does one make the trade-off between possibly harming a few species of birds through the use of DDT, and using the insecticide to prevent the deaths of millions of people each year from malaria? These are political decisions. Suggestive scientific data certainly help guide our decisions, but they do not mandate any particular policies
Mouse brains, that is. This may be a major medical breakthrough. Phil Bowermaster has the story. He also has some thoughts about post-election civility and blogging.
With about 1 percent of incoming comets ending up on relatively short-period Earth-crossing orbits, it is expected that several thousand dormant comets could be currently posing a potential threat to our planet.
Recent surveys of the Earth’s immediate vicinity should have turned up some 400 such objects, whereas only a handful have so far been found.
The researchers dismiss the current belief that all the “missing” comets have disintegrated into meteor streams. If this had happened, they argue, then we should be seeing a far greater number of meteor showers and a much brighter zodiacal cloud than is observed.
They propose instead that the majority of these comets have become exceedingly black, with such low surface reflectivities that they could not be observed against the blackness of space by optical means.
I wrote recently about the evolution of cooperation, and its implications for Iraq and the Middle East. I noted that the winning strategy in an iterated prisoner’s dilemma game was “Tit for Tat.”
Now I discover that on the twentieth anniversary of the original computer tournament, a new, even better strategy has been discovered.
I think that this is a good thing, for the same reason that Ramesh (presumably?) thinks it bad–because if true, it provides constitutional protection for cloning.