Perverting science for politics

[tw]

From the NY Times of 9 Feb 2007:

Price of Next Big Thing in Physics: $6.7 Billion
The proposed machine, physicists say, is needed to complement to the Large Hadron Collider now under construction at the European Center for Nuclear Research, CERN, outside Geneva. That machine will be the world’s most powerful when it goes into operation this fall, eventually colliding beams of protons with 7 trillion electron volts of energy apiece. Physicists hope that using it they will detect a long-sought particle known as the Higgs boson, which is thought to endow all the other constituents of nature with mass. They hope, too, to discover new laws and forms of matter.

But protons are bags of smaller particles called quarks and gluons, and their collisions tend to be messy and wasteful. Because electrons and positrons have no innards, their collisions are cleaner, so they can be used to create and study with precision whatever new particles are found at CERN.

Notice where science does not promote the advancement of mankind. Not in the US and for good reason.

At a news conference in Beijing an international consortium of physicists released the first detailed design of what they believe will be the Next Big Thing in physics: a machine 20 miles long that will slam together electrons and their evil-twin opposites, positrons, to produce fireballs of energy recreating conditions when the universe was only a trillionth of a second old. ...

The International Linear Collider collaboration, led by a steering group chaired by Shin-ichi Kurokawa, of Japan’s High Energy Accelerator Research Organization, or KEK, consists of 1,000 scientists and engineers from 100 countries.

Big price? Well the International Space Station was only supposed to cost $8 billion and has already cost on the order of $80 billion. ISS still does no science but is promoted by an MBA president. $6.7 billion for actually doing science research? By comparison, that price is a discount. Meanwhile George Jr will send a man to Mars only to promote his legacy at hundreds of $billions - screw science. To do so, George Jr is stripping the 10% of NASA's budget that acutally does science.

Whereas the transistor was the future for baby boomers, quantum physics is the future of this latest generation. But thanks to a mental midget and a dictatorship party of extremists, science is being driven from the United States.

How can you tell where science is fleeing to? Even in a science once dominated by Americans, advance physics must be done elsewhere. The fusion reactor (ITER) will probably be in Europe. CERN (France and Switzerland) will soon have a working Large Hadron Collider. And now an International Linear Collider is publicly proposed where? With so much fear and dictators advocating Fatherland security, then international science conferences remain outside America. Even when defining the next generation WiFi (now known as 802.11n), at the last minute American 'we fear' security banned most of the Chinese experts as a threat to national security. The message is clear to science. Clearly those Chinese were going to steal secrets of DisneyWorld.

Quantum physics moves to where peope instead want to advance mankind. This is where new jobs will be created. But science is too complex for brown shirts - so dumb as to not even ask simple questions such as, "When do we go after bin Laden". Quantum physics? Instead god will give it to us? And so science and the new jobs must go elsewhere. Another tribute to the MBA president and those brown shirts who blindly support him. This is what happens when some actually thing Fox is News or Rush 'tells it like it is'.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by tw

snip~ How can you tell where science is fleeing to? Even in a science once dominated by Americans, advance physics must be done elsewhere. The fusion reactor (ITER) will probably be in Europe. CERN (France and Switzerland) will soon have a working Large Hadron Collider. And now an International Linear Collider is publicly proposed where? ~snip

So what? The findings that come out of these research projects will be published quickly. That's how these researchers get their woody, by being published and recognized by their peers. They don't expect the general public to understand, no less appreciate, what they discover.

Like many things the transistor was invented here. Hooray for us. But who made the most money and provided the most jobs from it? Sushi anyone?

[tw]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Like many things the transistor was invented here. Hooray for us. But who made the most money and provided the most jobs from it? Sushi anyone?

Because the transistor was invented here, also came most electronics jobs in ... America. For example, who made and mass produced the first semiconductor switch - ESS1? AT&T. Where was it first installed? Succasunna NJ. What made it possible? The transistor was developed in NJ. These switches were/are so massive - created so many jobs - that very few companies existed in the world to manufacturer them. AT&T, Siemens, Northern Telecom, Alcatel (?), and ... I forget the fifth ... Stromberg?

Also created was a massive electronics industry on Long Island that later moved to Silicon Valley, Texas, etc. Why did AT&T begin losing market share? Well, in part because they were only interested in telephony. Also in part because their chief innovator, Jack Morton, stifled development of the Integrated Circuit. So who got all the IC jobs? Where were all digital ICs and standard architectures for those ICs developed? CMOS ICs that is now standard in all computers were pioneered and manufacturered just down Route 22 in RCA, Somerville NJ. Just down the road from where the transistor was invented.

In the US, basic research resulted in whole new and massive industries. Jobs and wealth created because the transistor was invented here. So successful as a result that even a European inventor of the transistor (who was six months late) had to come to America to continue his innovations (which I believe then resulted in the early LEDs – again more American jobs).

When basic research goes elsewhere, well, who is the world leader in robots? Who is the world leader in automotive power systems? In each case, they do the basic research - therefore jobs and wealth follow.

So where do the jobs for quantum physics get created? Not in nations that spurn innovation?

Meanwhile America even graduates fewer innovators making America an importer of engineers - just like oil. That is the attitude of this administration that has also cut back significantly on basic research for life sciences. Either you go be an MBA, or go overseas to innovate.

But don't worry. Be happy. We were number one! That cheer is not heard in football stadiums.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Also created was a massive electronics industry on Long Island that later moved to Silicon Valley, Texas, etc.

And then it all went to Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, China, etc. Seems they did quite well on our inventions, why couldn't we do well on theirs?

[Happy Monkey]

Bush is the first president to start censoring out the results as they come in from federal science institutions. Bush removed the page for any study that he disagreed with from US government websites. This is a whole diferent ballgame from taking the special-interest study results as they come in.

[Beestie]

Bush removed the page for any study that he disagreed with from US government websites.

I'm gonna need direct evidence of that (please, no blogs). Ideally, a link to both the the government website copy and the science website copy of whatever finding was altered. But an article in a respected media outlet would suffice (please no Ananova). I have heard this before and I would like some corroboration.

[Troubleshooter]

This page has lots and lots of links on it. References galore.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Scientific groups angry at loss of Elizabeth Blackburn from group considering stem cells | By Maria Anderson

US President George W. Bush dismissed two members of his President's Council on Bioethics last Friday afternoon in a move that has been dubbed a “very ill-advised decision” by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) president Bettie Sue Masters.

http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20040303/04

Edit: just added a few words

[Beestie]

Thanks, TS, that is the link I was looking for yesterday but apparently wasn't Googlefied yet.

Looks like I focused on the wrong members of the council and it appears the original concern that the Council is stacked appears to be a valid one.

That is extremely disheartening.

[Troubleshooter]

Originally posted by Beestie
Thanks, TS, that is the link I was looking for yesterday but apparently wasn't Googlefied yet.

Looks like I focused on the wrong members of the council and it appears the original concern that the Council is stacked appears to be a valid one.

That is extremely disheartening.

Thanks. I get so many, and such a varied list, of newsletters that it's only a matter of time before a topic gets picked up in one, or many, of them.

And I agree, disheartening, but not surprising.

I'm just sitting around waiting for the revolution at this point.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally posted by Beestie
But an article in a respected media outlet would suffice (please no Ananova). I have heard this before and I would like some corroboration.

ANWR wildlife maps: LA Times Text LA Times link (pay for archive) Wired News

Sex education: NYT Text NYT link (pay for archive)


And here is a collection. This is not an unbiased source - Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) - but it is a good list for reasearch purposes.

[SteveDallas]

Originally posted by Beestie
I'm gonna need direct evidence of that (please, no blogs). Ideally, a link to both the the government website copy and the science website copy of whatever finding was altered. But an article in a respected media outlet would suffice (please no Ananova). I have heard this before and I would like some corroboration.

Politics and Science in the Bush Adminsitration is a good place to start. Since it's produced by Congressional Democrats, it's obviously not free from suspicion of bias. However, it is copiously footnoted and usually provides the "before" and "after" information when it discusses web site changes.

[Beestie]

I actually went through and read quite a few of the linked articles (thanks) and, in particular, comments by former admin officials going all the way back to the Nixon administration including officials in the first Bush administration.

[head shaking]
What I didn't find was anyone outside of the White House who disputed the allegation. That's just flat out irresponsible.
[/head shaking]

[Happy Monkey]

Like so many of Bush's failings, he doesn't dispute it. He considers it a strength. And who knows, politically he may be right. I hope not.

[Happy Monkey]

And here's a big one. EPA air quality.

[Happy Monkey]

Logging policy.