Why we haven’t caught Bin Laden

Care of Brad DeLong’s invalu­able blog, this nugget out of the Times from Michael Scheur­er, head of the CIA bin Laden unit from 1996–1999. The fol­low­ing was excerpt­ed from a let­ter he wrote to the con­gres­sion­al over­sight intel­li­gence committees:

Sep­tem­ber 2004: In the CIA’s core, U.S.-based Bin Laden oper­a­tions unit today there are few­er Direc­torate of Oper­a­tions offi­cers with sub­stan­tive exper­tise on al-Qae­da than there were on 11 Sep­tem­ber 2001. There has been no sys­tem­at­ic effort to groom al-Qae­da exper­tise among Direc­torate of Oper­a­tions offi­cers since 11 Sep­tem­ber. Today, the unit is great­ly under­staffed because of a “hir­ing freeze,” and the rota­tion of large num­bers of offi­cers in and out of the unit every 60-to-90 days–a process in which expe­ri­enced offi­cers do less sub­stan­tive work and become train­ers for offi­cers who leave before they are qual­i­fied to sup­port the mis­sion. The excel­lent man­age­ment team now run­ning oper­a­tions against al-Qae­da has made repeat­ed, detailed, and on-paper pleas for more offi­cers to work against the al-Qaeda–and have done so for years, not weeks or months–but have been ignored.

Since Sep­tem­ber 11 there has been a hir­ing freeze in the bin Laden unit!? Why are we run­ning up a deficit if not to hire guys to find “the evil one”? Scheur­er, the once anony­mous author of “Impe­r­i­al Hubris,” writes “The pat­tern of deci­sion mak­ing I have wit­nessed seems to indi­cate a want of moral courage, an over­whelm­ing con­cern for career advance­ment, or an abject inabil­i­ty to dis­tin­guish right from wrong.” That seems aimed at CIA man­agers, but applies equal­ly well up and down the chain of command.

Mark Twain on our press corps

Some­how, I fell into read­ing bits and pieces of Mark Twain’s writ­ings. It start­ed with this piece linked from some mp3 blog. Then I start­ed pok­ing through the more obscure works at Project Guten­berg, and wound up with What Paul Bour­get Thinks of Us. I don’t know the pre­cise back­ground of this, but I did find some great quotes.

Twain grabbed me with this para­graph, which may be repack­aged for a per­ma­nent place­ment on this site:

I saw by his own inti­ma­tions that he was an Observ­er, and had a Sys­tem that used by nat­u­ral­ists and oth­er sci­en­tists. The nat­u­ral­ist col­lects many bugs and rep­tiles and but­ter­flies and stud­ies their ways a long time patient­ly. By this means he is present­ly able to group these crea­tures into fam­i­lies and sub­di­vi­sions of fam­i­lies by nice shad­ings of dif­fer­ences observ­able in their char­ac­ters. Then he labels all those shad­ed bugs and things with nice­ly descrip­tive group names, and is now hap­py, for his great work is com­plet­ed, and as a result he inti­mate­ly knows every bug and shade of a bug there, inside and out. It may be true, but a per­son who was not a nat­u­ral­ist would feel safer about it if he had the opin­ion of the bug. I think it is a pleas­ant Sys­tem, but sub­ject to error.

I like the mea­sured skep­ti­cism about our abil­i­ty to tru­ly under­stand the world, and his descrip­tion of nat­ur­al his­to­ry is as good as any, I suppose

Twain then pro­ceeds to a more pre­cise con­sid­er­a­tion of M. Bour­get, but could just as eas­i­ly be talk­ing about David Brooks:

The Observ­er of Peo­ples has to be a Clas­si­fi­er, a Grouper, a Deduc­er, a Gen­er­al­iz­er, a Psy­chol­o­giz­er; and, first and last, a Thinker. He has to be all these, and when he is at home, observ­ing his own folk, he is often able to prove com­pe­ten­cy. But his­to­ry has shown that when he is abroad observ­ing unfa­mil­iar peo­ples the chances are heav­i­ly against him. He is then a nat­u­ral­ist observ­ing a bug, with no more than a nat­u­ral­ist’s chance of being able to tell the bug any­thing new about itself, and no more than a nat­u­ral­ist’s chance of being able to teach it any new ways which it will pre­fer to its own.

Mov­ing on from Paul Bour­get’s unfor­tu­nate ten­den­cy to clas­si­fy peo­ple as “the Amer­i­can Coquette,” or “the Bobo in Par­adise,” Twain address­es anoth­er unfor­tu­nate prac­tice: credulity.

He entered those things in his note-book with­out sus­pi­cion, he takes them out and deliv­ers them to the world with a can­dor and sim­plic­i­ty which show that he believed them gen­uine. They throw alto­geth­er too much light. They reveal to the native the ori­gin of his find. I sup­pose he knows how he came to make that nov­el and cap­ti­vat­ing dis­cov­ery, by this time. If he does not, any Amer­i­can can tell him–any Amer­i­can to whom he will show his anec­dotes. It was “put up” on him, as we say. It was a jest–to be plain, it was a series of frauds. To my mind it was a poor sort of jest, wit­less and con­temptible. The play­ers of it have their reward, such as it is; they have exhib­it­ed the fact that what­ev­er they may be they are not ladies. M. Bour­get did not dis­cov­er a type of coquette; he mere­ly dis­cov­ered a type of prac­ti­cal jok­er. One may say the type of prac­ti­cal jok­er, for these peo­ple are exact­ly alike all over the world. Their equip­ment is always the same: a vul­gar mind, a puerile wit, a cru­el dis­po­si­tion as a rule, and always the spir­it of treachery.

In his Chap­ter IV. M. Bour­get has two or three columns grave­ly devot­ed to the col­lat­ing and exam­in­ing and psy­chol­o­giz­ing of these sor­ry lit­tle frauds. One is not moved to laugh. There is noth­ing fun­ny in the sit­u­a­tion; it is only pathet­ic. The stranger gave those peo­ple his con­fi­dence, and they dis­hon­or­ably treat­ed him in return.

But one must be allowed to sus­pect that M. Bour­get was a lit­tle to blame him­self. Even a prac­ti­cal jok­er has some lit­tle judg­ment. He has to exer­cise some degree of sagac­i­ty in select­ing his prey if he would save him­self from get­ting into trou­ble. In my time I have sel­dom seen such dar­ing things mar­ket­ed at any price as these con­science­less folk have worked off at par on this con­fid­ing observ­er. It com­pels the con­vic­tion that there was some­thing about him that bred in those spec­u­la­tors a quite unusu­al sense of safe­ty, and encour­aged them to strain their pow­ers in his behalf. They seem to have sat­is­fied them­selves that all he want­ed was “sig­nif­i­cant” facts, and that he was not accus­tomed to exam­ine the source whence they pro­ceed­ed. It is plain that there was a sort of con­spir­a­cy against him almost from the start–a con­spir­a­cy to freight him up with all the strange extrav­a­gances those peo­ple’s decayed brains could invent.

The lengths to which they went are next to incred­i­ble. They told him things which sure­ly would have excit­ed any one else’s sus­pi­cion, but they did not excite his. Con­sid­er this:

“There is not in all the Unit­ed States an entire­ly nude statue.”

If an angel should come down and say such a thing about heav­en, a rea­son­ably cau­tious observ­er would take that angel’s num­ber and inquire a lit­tle fur­ther before he added it to his catch. What does the present observ­er do? Adds it. Adds it at once. Adds it, and labels it with this inno­cent comment:

“This small fact is strange­ly significant.”

It does seem to me that this kind of observ­ing is defective.

In this long, but illu­mi­nat­ing pas­sage, Twain essen­tial­ly describes the prob­lems in jour­nal­ism today. On issues like the Iraq War, the 9–11 report and its uneasy rela­tion­ship with its con­gres­sion­al coun­ter­parts, stem cells, Abu Ghraib, John Ker­ry and George W. Bush’s time in uni­form, and a host of oth­er issues, the press response is sim­ply to report what was said, rather than to assess it’s accuracy.

Amer­i­cans fear nudi­ty, even in art

Date­line: Amer­i­ca. Well placed indi­vid­u­als stat­ed today that “there is not in all the Unit­ed States an entire­ly nude stat­ue.” This small fact is strange­ly sig­nif­i­cant. Great world pow­ers includ­ing the ancient Greeks and Romans have appre­ci­at­ed the artis­tic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of nude peo­ple. In many cas­es, the decline in this form of art cor­re­lates with the decline of those empires. The reign of Queen Vic­to­ria marked the end of the ascen­dan­cy of the British Empire, and is also not­ed for its repres­sion of pub­lic sexuality. …

And so forth. I ask lit­tle of the world, but I do ask that reporters dig deep­er. When John Ashcroft announces that his agents have avert­ed dozens of attacks and con­vict­ed bajil­lions of ter­ror­ists, I’d like the press to report that only after review­ing doc­u­ments. I’d like the press to announce that Pres­i­dent Bush released all of his mil­i­tary records only after deter­min­ing that all the records that must exist actu­al­ly do. I’d like arti­cles about Sam Brown­back­’s tout­ing of adult stem cell research to make clear not only that he is try­ing to under­mine embry­on­ic stem cell research, but that med­ical researchers are in broad agree­ment that both approach­es are impor­tant in the search for cures to dev­as­tat­ing dis­eases. The sto­ry isn’t “Brown­back touts adult stem cells,” it’s “Brown­back asserts false dichoto­my between adult and embry­on­ic stem cells.” It seems like reporters who are giv­en nick­names like “Steno Sue” are prac­tic­ing the same defec­tive style of observ­ing that Twain skew­ers so brilliantly.

When Twain writes the para­graph begin­ning, “But one must be allowed to sus­pect that M. Bour­get was a lit­tle to blame

him­self,” he gets to the heart of the prob­lem. We can and must blame admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials who lie to a reporter because “they seem to have sat­is­fied them­selves that all he want­ed was ‘sig­nif­i­cant’ facts, and that he was not accus­tomed to exam­ine the source whence they pro­ceed­ed.” But a jour­nal­ist who allows that per­cep­tion to stand is equal­ly cul­pa­ble. This is why peo­ple are so exer­cised about Robert Novak’s will­ing­ness to blow a CIA agen­t’s cov­er just because the White House leaked the infor­ma­tion to him. Many peo­ple have point­ed out that the sto­ry a good jour­nal­ist would have writ­ten was “White House attempts to leak ID of secret agent.” Many – per­haps a dozen or more – reporters received the leak. Many did the hon­or­able thing and refused to act on it. But the leak­er knew he must “exer­cise some degree of sagac­i­ty in select­ing his prey if he would save him­self from get­ting into trou­ble.” He only leaked to peo­ple who would look the oth­er way, and kept try­ing until some­one actu­al­ly ran the story.

This is also why the New York Times mea cul­pa was so frus­trat­ing. They admit­ted that they had been fooled as bad­ly as M. Bour­get – that there was, in Twain’s words, “a con­spir­a­cy to freight [it] up with all the strange extrav­a­gances those peo­ple’s decayed brains could invent”. The Times right­ly calls the “con­science­less folk” what they are, but refused to make Twain’s leap and call the kind of observ­ing defec­tive, even as the liars lied.

On Anniversaries

I wrote this two years ago, in the run up to the first anniver­sary of the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks. When­ev­er I re-read this, I’m struck by how much the res­o­nance of that day has shift­ed. In these post-Fahren­heit-911, elec­tion sea­son, best sell­ing 911 com­mis­sion report days, it can seem like the major events of that day revolved around the Pres­i­dent in Flori­da, a few bureau­crat­ic war­riors in the White House. Through that diver­sion, Sad­dam Hus­sein gets dragged into the fray, along with 1,000 dead Amer­i­can soldiers.

But Sep­tem­ber 11 hap­pened to nor­mal peo­ple in New York, and low and mid-lev­el fig­ures in the Pen­ta­gon. And it’s still hard to watch the videos of the tow­ers falling, or the planes crash­ing into them. I near­ly cried this morn­ing, lis­ten­ing to an NPR report on Ger­ard Bar­ber’s wid­ow. Even with the metic­u­lous details of the 9–11 report, I still haven’t ful­ly com­pre­hend­ed what hap­pened that day. I don’t know if any­one has, and I know our lead­ers haven’t.

Sep­tem­ber 11, 2002

For the past few nights there have been swarms of mayflies on every street light in town. After a year of wait­ing as lar­vae at the bot­toms of rivers, they emerge to mate. Each mayfly only lives one day, and the entire emer­gence is over in a week. In some areas a mayfly emer­gence can be so large that cities bring out snow plows to clear the streets. The oth­er emer­gence that I’ve noticed is memo­ri­als of Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001 on tele­vi­sion and radio. I keep wish­ing for a plow to clear the air waves of these con­stant rec­ol­lec­tions and recount­ings of the events of that morn­ing. The prob­lem is that, like most peo­ple, I nev­er for­got. There is no riv­er in our sub­con­scious so deep that these mem­o­ries could hide for a year, and being so near to the sur­face we don’t need help dredg­ing them up for a memorial.

Every time some­one men­tions the World Trade Cen­ter the mere words bring back harsh mem­o­ries of that morn­ing. When I heard a brief note on the morn­ing radio that a plane had struck one of the Twin Tow­ers, I turned on the tele­vi­sion to see if there was any more infor­ma­tion else­where. I was grate­ful that I had bought a tele­vi­sion recent­ly, and that the pre­vi­ous ten­an­t’s cable had­n’t run out yet. I watched as the dif­fer­ent net­works scram­bled to find out what had hap­pened, what was hap­pen­ing, and what would hap­pen next. I lis­tened and watched, hop­ing some­one would say some­thing more insight­ful than my stunned curs­ing as I watched each tow­er collapse.

I can still relive those hours I spent with my eyes glued to the tele­vi­sion and my ears glued the radio and tele­phone. I remem­ber first think­ing that some pilot made a big mis­take, and think­ing that it’d be no big deal. I knew that the Empire State Build­ing had been hit by a plane in the 40’s with no ill effects, and I knew the tow­ers had with­stood a bomb­ing. I remem­ber the way con­fi­dence turned to hor­ror when a sec­ond plane struck. I remem­ber the hor­ror deep­en­ing as rumors that the Pen­ta­gon had been struck were con­firmed. I remem­ber the rumors of oth­er planes that might be head­ing for oth­er tar­gets, a fear which did­n’t end until every plane was on the ground, hours lat­er. I remem­ber when smoke and dust thick­ened and there were first rumors and then con­fir­ma­tion that the first tow­er fell. I remem­ber when the sec­ond tow­er fell, and the smoke had cleared enough that I could see it, and I had to keep remind­ing myself that it was­n’t a movie, even though that was exact­ly what it looked like. I remem­ber see­ing a giant hole in the sky­line when I flew home for Thanks­giv­ing. I remem­ber how peo­ple on the streets of New York still stopped and stared when a plane flew overhead.

It is because I remem­ber these things that I don’t need a memorial.

Memo­ri­als are for events that have end­ed. We hold parades and pic­nics on Novem­ber 11, the day that World War One end­ed, not June 28, the day that Arch­duke Fer­di­nand was shot. Sim­i­lar­ly, we should­n’t feel the need to memo­ri­al­ize Sep­tem­ber 11 as a spe­cial day, not until this is over, and not until we know what “this” is. We may have need­ed the nation­al media to help us accept and under­stand what hap­pened in the imme­di­ate after­math. Now we need them to stop. We know what hap­pened, and we want it to stop happening.

I don’t think our lead­ers tru­ly want a memo­r­i­al event either. Memo­ri­als require intro­spec­tion, a capa­bil­i­ty lack­ing in the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion. They are mov­ing for­ward, at times try­ing to end this war, at times try­ing to expand it. On Sep­tem­ber 11, George W. Bush will watch as New York Gov­er­nor George Pata­ki reads the Get­tys­burg address. They will stand at the site of what was once the World Trade Cen­ter, then The Pile, Ground Zero, and now The Void. Lin­col­n’s ded­i­ca­tion of a ceme­tery will be used to com­mem­o­rate a site on which almost three thou­sand peo­ple died, some pul­ver­ized and burnt into the dust which has been baked onto the sur­round­ing build­ings. It seems appro­pri­ate, but the dif­fer­ences between these two pres­i­dents’ cir­cum­stances are sub­stan­tial. Lin­col­n’s words explained the deaths of thou­sands of sol­diers in terms of the grand idea for which they were fight­ing. It is a speech that inspired, and con­tin­ues to inspire, pride in the idea and neces­si­ty of a unit­ed Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. George W. Bush will be fac­ing the fam­i­lies of peo­ple who died with­out know­ing why, in a nation that is already unit­ed. He will be try­ing to con­vince the peo­ple that a war against Iraq is the right reac­tion to the events of last year. Lin­coln was able to con­nect the bod­ies beneath the ground at Get­tys­burg to the future actions of the nation. George W. Bush will not do that, because no such con­nec­tion can be made here. The fact that few of the events sched­uled call for orig­i­nal speech­es by our lead­ers shows that they are no more able than any one else to put those deaths into per­spec­tive, and to look inside them­selves and those events for real meaning.

The meaning of scientific dissent

While I’m ham­mer­ing the notion of dis­sent in sci­ence, there are a cou­ple of pieces to dis­cuss. The charm­ing Sci­ence­Blog had an arti­cle a while back head­lined News­pa­pers’ focus on bal­ance skewed cov­er­age of glob­al warm­ing. The upshot is that arti­cles about glob­al warm­ing tend to over-empha­size the exis­tence of any dis­agree­ment about the nature of cli­mate change. Almost every sci­en­tist who has looked at the data and the mod­els that have been pub­lished agrees that aver­age tem­per­a­tures will rise mea­sur­ably in the next 25 years, and will con­tin­ue long after that. Most sci­en­tists also agree that that process is under­way already, and the con­se­quences for life, human and oth­er­wise, will be substantial. 

There are a small num­ber of peo­ple who dis­agree. Many work in or near the fos­sil fuels indus­try. They argue that we can’t be 100% sure that every­thing that works in the lab will work plan­et-wide. Our mod­els are based on assump­tions and the lim­it­ed under­stand­ing we have of com­plex weath­er pat­terns. This is all true.

It is also irrel­e­vant. In a court of law, we could­n’t get a con­vic­tion from what we have. We prob­a­bly also could­n’t get a con­vic­tion from a jury over rel­a­tiv­i­ty, spe­cial or gen­er­al, and prob­a­bly New­ton­ian laws of grav­i­ta­tion could get a hung jury with the right lawyers.

Fifty years ago, the tobac­co indus­try, aid­ed by tru­ly great sci­en­tif­ic minds like Ronald Fish­er, avoid­ed legal action against can­cer sticks through sim­i­lar argu­ments. Cor­re­la­tion does­n’t equal cau­sa­tion. Lab­o­ra­to­ry stud­ies of rats may not gen­er­al­ize to the com­plex real world of humans. Stud­ies by inde­pen­dent sci­en­tists show­ing that tobac­co caus­es can­cer can be matched by Big Tobac­co fund­ed research show­ing no effect.

Now, Big Tobac­co argues against any lia­bil­i­ty for their prod­ucts because evi­dence, and a grow­ing con­sen­sus, exist­ed about the dan­gers of smok­ing when many mod­ern can­cer patients start­ed smok­ing. In essence, they argue “It’s your own damn fault for believ­ing us.”

They are prob­a­bly right, as will the cli­mate sci­ence skep­tics be 30 years from now when Flori­da is almost entire­ly under water.

It isn’t clear that the “Intel­li­gent design” gang will ever be made to fess up. After years of hard work, they snuck a pla­gia­rized arti­cle into a small jour­nal. They can now claim some sort of par­i­ty with real sci­en­tists. “Look!” they’ll say, “our one paper more than bal­ances 150 years of metic­u­lous research which entire­ly sup­ports the neo-Dar­win­ian syn­the­sis. We are no longer crack­pots, but pub­lished scientists.”

A skep­ti­cal pub­lic would con­sid­er this argu­ment, and would con­sid­er that they only got pub­lished by cheat­ing. A sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly lit­er­ate press would essen­tial­ly ignore this paper next time Kansas drops evo­lu­tion from the schools. This isn’t good sci­ence, and The Pan­da’s Thumb has a bunch of arti­cles explain­ing why. It does­n’t inform the debate, because it isn’t good sci­ence. Only good sci­ence coun­ters good sci­ence. One great exper­i­ment can unrav­el a bril­liant mod­el, but one crap­py arti­cle does­n’t mat­ter to anything.

Untitled

[Sci­ence Blog — News­pa­pers’ focus on bal­ance skewed cov­er­age of glob­al warm­ing] This is a place­hold­er for later. 

Science and politics of atrazine

I feel bad blog­ging Chris Mooney’s pieces so much, but what the heck

In the course of a post on “sound sci­ence” in reg­u­la­to­ry deci­sions, Chris brings up atrazine regulation:

Weiss does a par­tic­u­lar­ly thor­ough job of dis­cussing a Data Qual­i­ty Act case study that I myself did­n’t get to touch on: The use of the act to pre­vent reg­u­la­tion of the her­bi­cide atrazine, despite per­sua­sive evi­dence that it caus­es her­maph­ro­dism in frogs. Tyrone Hayes, the U.C. Berke­ley sci­en­tist con­tend­ing that atrazine caus­es these prob­lems, has pub­lished in Nature and the Pro­ceed­ings of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, and has seen his work “echoed by at least four oth­er inde­pen­dent research teams in three coun­tries.” Hayes’ crit­ics, by con­trast, are employed by Syn­gen­ta, the man­u­fac­tur­er of atrazine. Yet because of dis­crep­an­cies between the exist­ing stud­ies, the Data Qual­i­ty Act helped block tougher atrazine reg­u­la­tions at EPA. Once again, that’s telling

As it hap­pens, I had just been read­ing about atrazine in Thomas Frank’s excel­lent book, What’s the Mat­ter with Kansas? Of course atrazine was less the point than Sam Brown­back­’s role in sti­fling reg­u­la­tion on atrazine as Sec­re­tary of Agri­cul­ture in Kansas. He was the last Ag Sec­re­tary to be appoint­ed by agrobusi­ness, and as the offi­cial regulator/representative of big her­bi­cide, he made atrazine reg­u­la­tion voluntary.

Atrazine is, of course, spec­tac­u­lar­ly tox­ic. It has been shown to cause her­maph­ro­ditism in frogs. Treat frog eggs with atrazine and each frog that sur­vives turns out both male and female. There are reports of atrazine caus­ing infer­til­i­ty. I believe, but can’t track this down, that atrazine caus­es liv­er dam­age. Tests here at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas showed that atrazine in water dis­rupts ecosys­tems by dis­rupt­ing algal growth and oth­er ele­ments of food chains.

Farm groups claim that more mod­ern appli­ca­tion prac­tices can make atrazine safe, but Euro­pean reg­u­la­tors have imposed a ban effec­tive as of next year. The major hur­dle to ban­ning it here is that the cur­rent inter­pre­ta­tion of the Data Qual­i­ty Act is pre­vent­ing a ban. Chris Mooney has blogged this exten­sive­ly, so I’ll let him give the back­ground. Accord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle Mooney cites, a sci­en­tist work­ing for the major sup­pli­er of atrazine did stud­ies and found out about the hor­mon­al dis­rup­tions which lead to her­maph­ro­ditism. The com­pa­ny refused to let him pub­lish. When he final­ly did pub­lish, they pub­lished a num­ber of stud­ies which either failed to find any sup­port for her­maph­ro­ditism, or required very high dos­es of atrazine. The EPA “would even­tu­al­ly lev­el sting­ing crit­i­cisms at those stud­ies for their poor design and slop­py imple­men­ta­tion,” but the dam­age was done. There was the sem­blance of sci­en­tif­ic debate, and that was all they needed.

That also leads us to a per­son­al hob­by horse of mine. Sci­en­tists don’t work by giv­ing every study equal weight. Sci­en­tists look at the back sto­ry of a paper, they look at the tech­niques, and they look at how the results sit rel­a­tive to the pre­pon­der­ance of good research. That is some­what sub­jec­tive, yet almost all sci­en­tists will reach the same opin­ion about a giv­en study. The exis­tence of a paper dis­put­ing a con­clu­sion is not dis­proof, it’s just anoth­er dat­a­point. Sci­en­tists are able to do what they do because they are experts. Gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tors, or, god help us, indus­try lawyers, are not experts. If a bunch of sci­en­tists with no dog in the fight all say “Atrazine is bad news,” it’s bad news. It does­n’t mat­ter that some guy pub­lished one crap­py paper show­ing only a weak effect, if anoth­er guy has a real­ly excel­lent study where every frog in an atrazine con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed area is a her­maph­ro­dite. They aren’t equal, and should­n’t be weighed against each other.

The Intersection of Science and Politics

David Orr, wrote The Cor­rup­tion (and Redemp­tion) of Sci­ence in Con­ser­va­tion Biol­o­gy, Vol 18, Issue 4, pp. 862–865. (Links will only work for peo­ple with sub­scrib­tions.) The issue begins with a large spe­cial sec­tion on the politi­ciza­tion of sci­ence pol­i­cy. I’m not endors­ing all the argu­ments in Orr’s piece, but I like some parts.

Orr starts with the Union of Con­cerned Sci­en­tists report, blogged by Chris Mooney and oth­ers. He takes off on that and writes: 

To those pay­ing atten­tion, find­ings such as these will come as no sur­prise. They fit a larg­er pat­tern that ranges from the mis­use of intel­li­gence infor­ma­tion to jus­ti­fy the war in Iraq, to decep­tion about the bud­get, the econ­o­my, and the effects of tax cuts, to … well the list goes on, and in its length and scope it, too, is unprece­dent­ed. Some may object that such infor­ma­tion is par­ti­san and has no place in this jour­nal and no bear­ing on its mis­sion of bring­ing authen­tic sci­ence to bear on the prob­lems of con­ser­va­tion. On the oth­er hand, what­ev­er one’s pol­i­tics, the cor­rup­tion of sci­ence and pub­lic infor­ma­tion for polit­i­cal ends ought to be deeply offen­sive to sci­en­tists and cit­i­zens alike. Allowed to con­tin­ue it will, like Lysenko­ism in the Sovi­et Union, demor­al­ize sci­en­tists, degrade the rep­u­ta­tion of sci­ence, and dis­cred­it the infor­ma­tion nec­es­sary to a free soci­ety. And, specif­i­cal­ly for those work­ing in con­ser­va­tion biol­o­gy, it means that research, what­ev­er its mer­it or import, will be dis­count­ed or dis­re­gard­ed by fed­er­al agen­cies, the Con­gress, and the White House.

This real­ly touch­es on ever­thing that absolute­ly must be said, and it’s a pow­er­ful argu­ment for sci­en­tists tak­ing strong sci­en­tif­ic posi­tions as sci­en­tists. There has been some dis­cus­sion on the right way for sci­en­tists — or pro­fes­sion­als in gen­er­al — to blog their pol­i­tics. Some (I think I saw this first at Pharyn­gu­la) take the posi­tion that pol­i­tics can’t be sep­a­rat­ed from the per­son, so let’s talk about sci­ence, pol­i­tics, art, what­ev­er. Oth­ers say that defend­ing sci­ence per se requires being pol­i­tics. In the same issue of Con­ser­va­tion Biol­o­gy, Lang­don Win­ner writes “Now sci­ence itself looms as a con­ve­nient tar­get, just anoth­er com­mu­ni­ca­tions chan­nel ready to be adapt­ed to the dic­tates of a rapid­ly mov­ing, pow­er-hun­gry social move­ment. Will sci­en­tists and schol­ars yield to this aggres­sive onslaught, tak­ing their research grants and lay­ing low? Or can we hope for a more pos­i­tive, more hope­ful, more force­ful response?”

The counter-argu­ment is that sci­en­tists should sep­a­rate sci­ence from pol­i­tics lest sci­ence be dimin­ished and made par­ti­san. The Endan­gered Species Act is a case where sci­ence and pol­i­tics coex­ist bad­ly. Exact­ly what con­sti­tutes a species, sub­species, or geo­graph­ic vari­ant is nev­er a clean line (which is why Dar­win want­ed to abol­ish the con­cept of a species). Since the only way for sci­en­tists to demand pro­tec­tion for a par­tic­u­lar habi­tat for sci­en­tif­ic rea­sons is to iden­ti­fy an endan­gered species, it cre­ates an incen­tive to empha­size small dif­fer­ences between pop­u­la­tions, cre­at­ing endan­gered “species,” which then need protection.

Sci­ence is harmed in sev­er­al ways by these manip­u­la­tions. First, sci­en­tists are less trust­ed when they state that a par­tic­u­lar habi­tat is impor­tant for species that are unde­ni­ably endan­gered (eg. con­dors, fer­rets, wolves). Sec­ond, the sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture is biased towards split­ting species apart when some­times they ought to be lumped. The process of revis­ing species or gen­era, nam­ing new species or fold­ing old species togeth­er into a sin­gle named group, is a vital way of inte­grat­ing new tech­niques and data, and review­ing old research. If polit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions dri­ve a choice to split out a geo­graph­ic vari­ant into a new named group, that under­mines the sci­en­tif­ic process. Third, it weak­ens pol­i­tics, by let­ting con­ser­va­tion­ists hang onto endan­gered species as the major tool for pro­tect­ing habi­tat, rather than demand­ing coher­ent laws that pro­tect habi­tats, ecosys­tems, and the com­plex process­es that go on.

There is an ongo­ing con­tro­ver­sy about Pre­ble’s Mead­ow Jump­ing Mouse in Col­orado. Zapus hud­so­nius pre­blei is an endan­gered sub­species of mead­ow jump­ing mouse that lives in the foothills of the Rock­ies. It occurs in areas that devel­op­ers want to work in, but also areas that you and I might want to hike in. I’m sure moose, deer, elk, ante­lope, weasels, bob­cat, and a host of oth­er ani­mals that aren’t endan­gered play there too. At least some of that area ought to be set aside for con­ser­va­tion. But if this sub­species is rolled into the near­est sub­species, noth­ing at all stands in the way of devel­op­ment. Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly, that’s irrel­e­vant. But the home­builders’ asso­ci­a­tion have fund­ed research into the sta­tus of the sub­species. Sci­en­tists inter­est­ed in con­ser­va­tion will present their evi­dence that the sub­species is dis­tinct, home­builder fund­ed sci­en­tists will show small genet­ic diver­gences, or min­i­mize sta­tis­ti­cal dif­fer­ences in skull mea­sure­ments, and even­tu­al­ly some gov­ern­ment body will make a deci­sion that has eco­nom­ic and envi­ron­men­tal pol­i­cy implications.

I don’t know whether that or sim­i­lar con­tro­ver­sies over spot­ted owls, Flori­da pan­thers, or dozens of oth­er species say about the rela­tion­ship between sci­en­tists and pol­i­tics. Should we just get involved in smarter pol­i­tics, or should we strenghthen our voice in pol­i­cy debates by back­ing off of explic­it advocacy?

Kerry/Edwards in Lawrence

Last Thurs­day, the Kansas Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty announced that after their ral­ly at Union Sta­tion in Kansas City, John Ker­ry and John Edwards would be stop­ping in Lawrence.

Rather than go all the way to Kansas City at 8:30, Unisia and I decid­ed to stay up late and see them at 11:30 pm. We arrived a lit­tle ear­ly, and took some pic­tures. Even­tu­al­ly they announced that things were run­ning long in KC, and said that the train would be by at 1 am. Unisia decid­ed that was get­ting a lit­tle late, so I dropped her off at home and went back. Even­tu­al­ly train arrived, and left with­out stop­ping. After wak­ing up the pas­sen­gers on the Amtrak train that came first, and every­one on the cam­paign, we were dis­ap­point­ed, although John Ker­ry did wave to us.

The ener­gy in the crowd was amaz­ing, giv­en that it was 1:30, but even lit­tle kids were excit­ed. A bunch of peo­ple showed up with Bush/Cheney ’04 signs, but union guys with signs blocked them from view.

Eliz­a­beth Edwards blogged the expe­ri­ence on the train, and promised that the cam­paign was “scram­bling to find a way to show Lawrence the same affec­tion it had shown us.” They did so in style, send­ing John and Eliz­a­beth out to vis­it us on Sunday.

There are copi­ous pho­tos at my Fot­ki album and the New York Times cov­er­age is OK too. We were out­side, but man­aged to get right down under­neath the walk­way he spoke from. Both Edward­ses spoke and made us feel like we mat­ter as Kansans. Since our elec­toral votes will cer­tain­ly go to Bush, that’s real­ly an accomplishment.

It was incred­i­bly excit­ing and fun and ener­giz­ing. Unisia had been skep­ti­cal about Edwards once, but came away real­ly jazzed about the cam­paign. She lives in Ohio and votes in Flori­da, so get­ting her to be pos­i­tive­ly engaged by the cam­paign is great.

On a relat­ed note, she knows a lot of peo­ple who were Repub­li­cans who are swing­ing to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty. It’ll be inter­est­ing to see if the Dems can seize the cen­ter and a bunch of tra­di­tion­al Repub­li­cans long term, or if the ele­phants reform them­selves in time to run Lau­ra Bush in 2008.

Stem cells and the limits of life

On the third anniver­sary of the deci­sion to lim­it stem cell research, Lau­ra Bush endorsed the exist­ing stem cell pol­i­cy. Lots of blog­gers, espe­cial­ly Chris Mooney, have been push­ing this as a wedge issue that the Democ­rats can win on, and right­ly so. Even the Bush­es seem to think so.

But there are just some fas­ci­nat­ing philo­soph­i­cal issues in this that get glossed over too fast as this has been politi­cized. The debate, for those join­ing us recent­ly, is to what extent stem cells obtained from human embryos ought to be acces­si­ble to sci­en­tists con­duct­ing research. Some peo­ple think life begins at the instant sperm and egg join. They think that destroy­ing an embryo — even to obtain life sav­ing cures down the road — is murder. 

This gets com­pli­cat­ed because the embryos sci­en­tists want to use are pro­duced in fer­til­i­ty clin­ics. The clin­ic induces ovu­la­tion, har­vests a dozen eggs, and fer­til­izes all of them in vit­ro. They let them all grow for a while, and then implant the three or four that appear health­i­est. The oth­ers are frozen indefinitely.

“Pro-life” advo­cates see those as liv­ing beings, but seem to have no prob­lem with the prac­tice of “selec­tive har­vest,” in which, once the preg­nan­cy has reach a favor­able stage, all but one or two of the embryos are abort­ed. Nor do peo­ple who hold that blas­tu­la is equiv­a­lent to an adult human life object to those eight cell spheres being frozen for­ev­er. It’s only when some­one wants to do some­thing use­ful with them that it becomes problematic.

This bears some sim­i­lar­i­ty to a conun­drum posed by some philoso­phers about a man in a truck. He’s dri­ving along, and sud­den­ly, the brakes fail. Ahead of him is a school bus full of chil­dren, and to the side is a sin­gle child walk­ing to the bus. If he turns, he kills only one per­son, but he has made an act of com­mis­sion in select­ing that per­son to die. If he allows the truck to con­tin­ue in its course, he can feel like he isn’t respon­si­ble for killing dozens of chil­dren, because chance put them there.

If you accept a world view in which events are all part of a plan, then the school bus is in front of the truck for a rea­son, and a grand pur­pose exists in the unknow­able future for the thou­sands of embryos frozen in fer­til­i­ty clin­ics around the world. There­fore, to take a pos­tive act that choos­es between options — rather than allow­ing the clock to run out — shifts respon­si­bilty from the unknow­able mind of God to your own imper­fect human mind.

If you believe that events can hap­pen by chance alone, you have to respond dif­fer­ent­ly. If the bus is ahead of you because Tim­my, the first kid picked up in the morn­ing, tripped and slowed every­thing down, then your deci­sion to plow into the bus isn’t ran­dom, it’s an act that you choose. You bear the respon­si­bil­i­ty for your deci­sions because some­times things just hap­pen, and as intel­li­gent peo­ple, we have to respond to sur­pris­es, and accept respon­si­bil­i­ty for those responses.

The prob­lem of valu­ing poten­tial or actu­al life is an increas­ing­ly big prob­lem, and we ought to have an hon­est and broad philo­soph­i­cal debate about these issues in soci­ety. Choos­ing to use blas­tu­lae for sci­en­tif­ic research, choos­ing whether to have an abor­tion, sign­ing a liv­ing will, car­ry­ing out the orders in a liv­ing will, and mak­ing deci­sions on behalf of a per­son with­out a liv­ing will are all aspects of this ques­tion. It’s hard not to feel like there is a dif­fer­ence between stand­ing up for the life of a four cell blas­tu­la that will nev­er come to term and stand­ing up for a four year old who needs a bone mar­row trans­plant, or for an eighty four year old with dia­betes, heart dis­ease, and prostate can­cer. As a soci­ety, we have qui­et­ly and sub­tly cre­at­ed ways for the ter­mi­nal­ly ill adult to make deci­sions about their end of life. The blas­tu­la and the infant can’t decide between the paths avail­able to them. Soci­ety has to estab­lish rules or defaults, but they need­n’t be absolute. We should no more com­pell a blas­tu­la to be kept in a freez­er for­ev­er than for­bid a child with cys­tic fibro­sis to drown in her own mucus. Why not allow the peo­ple who con­tributed the egg and sperm that com­pose a blas­tu­la to release that embryo to sci­ence? In essence, exer­cise their pow­er to with­draw life sup­port and allow the remains to be used to save that CF patient, or a father who — like Lau­ra Bush’s or my moth­er’s — suf­fered from Alzeimer’s.

Grammy winners too evil for Kansas

Accord­ing to the Kansas Attor­ney Gen­er­al libraries aren’t able to decide what music they want.

Uber-con­ser­v­a­tive Phil Kline decid­ed that Devo, Lou Reed, and Out­kast were among the ups whose albums “pro­mote vio­lence or ille­gal activity.” 

But did­n’t the librar­i­ans object, and ask to be able to choose their albums accord­ing to their own com­mu­ni­ty standards? 

The Kansas Library Asso­ci­a­tion, which advo­cates for pub­lic libraries, said it had no objec­tion to the attor­ney gen­er­al’s actions.

“This was very sim­i­lar to what libraries do all the time,” said Rosanne Siemens, the group’s exec­u­tive direc­tor. “It was­n’t so much an issue of tak­ing things out but deter­min­ing what would be best. They did libraries a big favor by select­ing these CDs because there’s no way libraries could have said what they wanted.”