Exploring an enormous inexplicable meatball at the bottom of the ocean

Wrong answer, College Boy!

According to today’s Guardian, biologist John Beddington, the “Chief Scientific Advisor” to the UK government, has issued some advice. (See Don't alienate your advisers, chief scientist tells ministers.)

Like the U.S. government, the British government is routinely advised by academics—scientists and other experts.

That’s good. By and large, we have every reason to suppose that such people are in a privileged position of knowledge and understanding relative to their fields.

And, especially nowadays, the average Joe (or Jane) is an ignoramus about almost everything.

Like I said, our British cousins routinely rely on, or at least solicit, advice from academics. But, warns Beddington, there’s a problem: “Government … is in danger of eroding the relationship and squandering [academics’] expertise.”

What's this? People who actually know something might just take the ball and march home?! How come?

Well, it seems that Britain’s ministers often blow off expert advice for political reasons. And then, to add insult to injury, they reprimand scientists for their impolitic advice!

According to the Guardian,

The situation is particularly fraught when eminent scientists are asked to advise on politically sensitive issues, such as the government's drug policy. A debate over the risks of recreational drugs erupted into a public row in February when the former home secretary, Jacqui Smith, vetoed recommendations from her own drug advisers to downgrade ecstasy from its class A status.

A parliamentary report published last week directed further criticism at ministers for demonstrating a cavalier attitude to scientific evidence, which was often viewed as "at best a peripheral concern, and at worst as a political bargaining chip."

Gosh. It sounds like the Brits are as backward as we are. Backwarder even.

The report “called on chief scientists within government departments to name and shame ministers who flout scientific advice when formulating policies.”

Would "shaming" somebody work? Maybe in the U.K. Here, it would likely ensure the guy’s standing as a real American.

Plus they’d replace “flout” with “flaunt.”

The chair of the committee (that issued the report) isn’t demanding that government policy always reflect scientific evidence. He’d be happy, it seems, if ministers were to refrain from making “false claims.”

Whoa. What an unreasonable guy.

I don’t think Beddington wanted his advice to be made public. Those clever Guardian scribblers used the Freedom of Info Act to acquire his letter to a former government official. That’s where he was doing his squawkin’.

In his letter, Beddington referred specifically to a dust-up created when home sec "Jacqui" admonished an academic advisor for “comparing the risks of ecstasy with horseriding in an academic journal shortly before the council announced its recommendations on the drug.”

Yeah, but what if they're actually comparable? Those Brits fly off horses a lot.

The admonition and subsequent media brouhaha "will discourage scientists from working with government," wrote Beddington.

Beddington’s esteemed predecessor has weighed in, emphasizing the importance of scientists giving "honest, rigorous and independent advice" to government.

He added:

"During the Bush period in the White House, scientific advice was not only ignored but sometimes absolutely overturned for no good reason at all. Documents were altered by the White House, including Environmental Protection Agency documents on climate change, with absolutely no scientific input to explain why. There's a situation where the scientific community have every right to say there's little point in working with this government”….

Well, I’m glad that we Americans are so useful. –As an example of how absolutely not to do things.

Stupid People are, you know, an interest group with real clout

Meanwhile, many Americans (aka Stupid People) are convinced that Prez Obama’s health care proposal is a plot to kill old people and to provide reparations to African-Americans for slavery. Others (of the GOP "base") are convinced, overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. and thus he is the amazing Illigitimate Negro Prez.

Some of these people hint at the need for revolution. They keep eyeing their guns. They mutter about "one world government."

"End times."

Many prominent Republicans have gone out of their way not to discourage these spectacular ignoramuses and racist yahoos. It’s a new low for Republicanism. And that’s really saying something.

I'm starting to get worried.

BACK TO GOVERNMENT AND SCIENCE:

Prez Obama has pretty consistently indicated that he means to reverse the Bush administration’s de facto exclusion and/or perversion of science. In the case of the space program, he created the “Augustine committee” to review NASA’s plans and projects.

Good idea. I think Bush wanted us to return to the moon to get cheese.

Alas, physicist and government watchdog Bob Park reports that (the NY Times reports that)

a panel of the Augustine committee favors a plan for human space flight that would go beyond low-Earth orbit, but avoid the deep-gravity wells of the Moon and Mars. What's left? The article suggests Lagrange points, asteroids and the small moons of Mars.

We’re gonna send people to Lagrange points? For all the potential importance of Lagrange points, their intrinsic interest is zero. Is this just an indirect way of saying there is no role for humans in space?

Politically, it’s easier to fund the space program if it offers “humans in space.” People just love to see astronauts in their space suits on big Hollywood adventures. For many Americans, essentially, the space program is an adventure epic (“We do it because it's hard”) with splashy action sequences—like, say, exploring an enormous inexplicable meatball at the bottom of the ocean.

Cool!

Scientifically, humans in space means absurdly inefficient research, since robots and gizmos can do more for much less. If scientists ran the show, we’d bail on humans in space and send mechanical surrogates every time.

But where does Bruce Willis fit into all this?

He don't.

So guess what? We’re gonna put people back in space, even if it means checking out scientifically uninteresting “points” and wasting vast shitloads of money.

We don’t really give a damn about science, do we?

OC Republican attacks a power pole

(From OC Reg)