Science

“Such indeed is the respect paid to science, that the most absurd opinions may become current, provided they are expressed in language, the sound of which recalls some well-known scientific phrase. If society is thus prepared to receive all kinds of scientific doctrines, it is our part to provide for the diffusion and cultivation, not only of true scientific principles, but of a spirit of sound criticism, founded on an examination of the evidences on which statements apparently scientific depend.”

James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879)

Emphasis mine. Living the life scientific means applying that philosophy to all areas of your life, and admitting when you do not have enough information to make a judgment, something a lot of scientists have a problem with. But this is not a rant about the failings of scientists, this is a rant mostly about this part of the quote:

the most absurd opinions may become current, provided they are expressed in language, the sound of which recalls some well-known scientific phrase.

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In most of life, less really is more. That’s a lesson my long-winded self needs to take to heart.

A lot of systems in our culture work against people who attempt to apply that maxim in their lives, though. As a graduate student in Physical Chemistry, I watched the publish-or-perish system in action, and it definitely encourages quantity over quality. That’s one reason I ran from Academia straight into the arms of Industry (although the money and relative lack of pathological personalities didn’t hurt, either).

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I have written before about how I view the Kyoto Accords specifically and plans to reduce global warming in general with a great deal of suspicion. First you have to get every single country in the world to sign on (impossible), and then you have to figure out a way to enforce the agreement if any country decides to ignore the treaty (double impossible).

According to this news item, India is telling it like it is. Their delegate to a UN conference on climate change currently being held in Bonn said that priority one was combating the crushing poverty under which a significant portion of India’s population suffers. The admission is that only way to do that is to increase emissions and pollution, not reduce them.

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A rather profound bias running through much ecological thought holds that primitive people like hunter-gathers live in “harmony” with the environment and, unlike civilized people, seldom if ever cause significant ecological harm or extinctions. I think this study reported by National Geographic falls into this category. It purports to show that the extinction of macroform mammals like mammoths, camels and horses in North America at the end of the last ice age resulted from climate change and not human predation.

I don’t buy it for several reasons.

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Science blog points to an article in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease [related BBC article] that suggests that Alzheimers results from neural tissue being unable to properly respond to or produce insulin. In effect, the researchers say, Alzheimers may be a form of diabetes.

If borne out, this research raises an interesting possibility: Could the increased rates of Alzheimers seen in recent decades result from the low-fat, high-carb diets used to treat heart disease in the elderly?

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