The response was rather lengthy, but they talked about the research that they have been doing over the past 7-8 years or so and the difference accredited scientists that are working for them. They also claimed that creationists get criticized for not writing peer reviewed articles in journals, but they claimed that they had submitted countless articles over the years and they all get rejected. They simply can’t get printed, was the claim, so they print their own stuff. They also pointed me to the RATE project, which honestly, without knowing a ton about science (though I do know some), is very convincing to me.
The main argument that I found convincing was the presence of helium in the rocks which wouldn’t be there if the rocks were millions of years old. They said they’ve been working on this project about 8 years and have spent $1.5 million on it. They also submitted all of their research to top labs in the country to make sure they weren’t accused of “fudging” the evidence. Check it out (if you have time) and let me know what you come up with.
I’ll be brief in my response here, at least to start: Same old fraud, not even new wineskins.
Oh, Joe: These guys depend on a lack of normal skepticism and a lack of knowledge to perpetrate these frauds on honest Christians. I do wish more Christians would hold their feet to the fire.
The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media.In this case, to media and donors.
The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work. This thread runs through all ICR work. Humphreys’ later attempts at character assassination against his critics specifically for their critiques of the RATE project are exactly the warning sign of bogus science that we should expect, from bogus science. (See the final three paragraphs here.)
The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection. This sign, not so much.
Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal. In place of the usual description of methodologies used so other scientists can replicate the measurement, we get a story about samples for other purposes, purloined for this measurement. Most of the critical references to the conclusion were unpublished, or revealed only in crank science publications.
The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries. See the paper: “Many creationists believed . . .”
The discoverer has worked in isolation. In this case, it’s difficult to know for certain; there is no methodology, no statement of where the work was carried, by whom, and no peer review. No other labs appear to be working on these issues. Dollars to doughnuts this work at government laboratories in Oak Ridge and Los Alamos is not catalogued in the labs’ work records, nor is it reported to Congress. Not only working in isolation, but completely on the sly.
The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation. Humphreys had earlier proposed diffusion rates far in excess of anything measured, and in this case, he assumes similar, completely uncorroborated conclusions.
Second, the conclusions have been challenged (“debunked” might be a better description) by scientists who know the subject matter. There’s a thorough discussion on Talk.Origins, by Kevin Henke (at the University of Kentucky); to summarize, there is no reason to think that helium could get out of those zircon crystals at depth, especially under the pressures at the depths the samples were recovered from; plus there are other problems:
Throughout Humphreys (2005), Dr. Humphreys stresses that his YEC conclusions must be correct because his Figure 2 shows a supposedly strong correlation between his “creation model” and vacuum helium diffusion measurements from Humphreys (2003a, 2004). However, Dr. Humphreys’ diagram has little scientific merit. First of all, his helium diffusion experiments were performed under a vacuum rather than at realistic pressures that model the subsurface conditions at Fenton Hill (about 200 to 1,200 bars; Winkler, 1979, p. 5). McDougall and Harrison (1999), Dalrymple and Lanphere (1969) and many other researchers have already shown that the diffusion of noble gases in silicate minerals may decrease by at least 3-6 orders of magnitude at a given temperature if the studies are performed under pressure rather than in a vacuum. Secondly, because substantial extraneous helium currently exists in the subsurface of the Valles Caldera, which is only a few kilometers away from the Fenton Hill site, Dr. Humphreys needs to analyze his zircons for 3He, and quartz and other low-uranium minerals in the Fenton Hill cores for extraneous 4He. Thirdly, chemical data in Gentry et al. (1982b) and Zartman (1979) indicate that Humphreys et al. and Gentry et al. (1982a) may have significantly underestimated the amount of uranium in the Fenton Hill zircons, which could reduce many of their Q/Q0 values by at least an order of magnitude and substantially increase Humphreys et al.‘s “creation dates.” Dr. Humphreys needs to perform spot analyses for 3He, 4He, lead, and uranium on numerous zircons from all of his and R. Gentry’s samples so that realistic Q/Q0 values may be obtained.
The “dating” equations in Humphreys et al. (2003a) are based on many false assumptions (isotropic diffusion, constant temperatures over time, etc.) and the vast majority of Humphreys et al.‘s critical a, b, and Q/Q0 values that are used in these “dating” equations are either missing, poorly defined, improperly measured or inaccurate. Using the best available chemical data on the Fenton Hill zircons from Gentry et al. (1982b) and Zartman (1979), the equations in Humphreys et al. (2003a) provide ridiculous “dates” that range from hundreds to millions of “years” old (average: 60,000 ± 400,000 “years” old [one significant digit and two standard deviations] and not 6,000 ± 2,000 years as claim by Humphreys et al., 2004). Contrary to Humphreys (2005), his mistakes are not petty or peripheral, but completely discredit the reliability of his work.
I think ICR is affect loaded. For years they argued that because there is so little helium in the atmosphere, the Earth cannot be very old. Helium gas floats to the top of the atmosphere and drifts off into space, so there can never be a large accumulation of the stuff in the air. ICR is making a similar argument here: That helium must migrate out of rocks and drift away. Alas, there isn’t much support for the claim that helium cannot be contained in a rock matrix, especially under significantly greater pressures achieved in large rock masses, deep underground. There are a lot of examples of gases being trapped in rocks; that helium in the air drifts away does not mean helium in rock will drift away.
Third, the RATE project tends to rely on disproven or highly questionable claims, rather than solid science. The claims of polonium haloes once were published in a reputable journal, but retracted by the journal after scientists trying to replicate the results discovered that the author had sampled much newer magma intrusions in granite*, and not the base granite at all (* that is, lava that squeezed into cracks in the granite). ICR continues on as if the paper had not been found faulty, as if the results had never been retracted. In any other context, this would be considered academic fraud at best. Were it done as research under a federal grant, it would be a felony.
Fourth, there is the issue of whether RATE can do anything other than fog up the area. One of the original goals of RATE was to date the rocks from Noah’s flood. As you know, claims that such a flood ever occurred are regarded as crank science among geologists. After several years of discussion and meetings, RATE participants announced they had been unable to distinguish which rocks on Earth are pre-flood, and which are post flood. Consequently, dating the rocks of the flood was precluded because they could not be found, reliably (or at all!).
This is long-term scam stuff, Joe. How many little old ladies and upstanding men in how many congregations have given how many millions of dollars to this quackery? Imagine what good could have been done had those dollars gone to honest enterprise among Christians.
Joe, does this stuff make you angry? It should. ICR confesses to have spent $1.5 million in this project over eight years — ostensibly a science project, and yet not one single publishable science paper out of it.
This is academic fraud of the most foul kind, to me. It angers me that ICR carries on these frauds with money contributed by trusting Christians. One has a right to expect better ethics from people who claim to be engaged in ministry for Jesus, I believe.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn released his hold, Rep. Jason Altmire’s bill moved, and three weeks ago the post office in Springdale, Pennyslvania, was named in Rachel Carson’s honor. On the internet, yahoos still try to blame her deaths from malaria, claiming that her message of stewardship was misplaced, and led to a “ban” on DDT that allows malaria to run wild.
Off the internet, serious scholars still work. SUNY Press published a compilation of lectures at Oregon State Univesrity commemorating the 40th anniversary of Carson’s most famous book, Silent Spring. The new book,Rachel Carson: Legacy and Challenge is edited by Lisa Sideris and Kathleen Dean Moore.
The press release from the University of Indiana is below the fold.
My earlier post urging readers to contact Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal to urge him to veto the latest creationist eruption the Louisiana Lege gave him, produced an interesting comment. A fellow named Wayne provided links to a presentation by some guy named Perry Marshall, in which Marshall flails vainly against evolution theory. The video is billed as one the Louisiana Coalition for Science “fears.” Wayne wants to know, should we keep children from seeing it?
Marshall apparently isn’t even an engineer, but instead designs ads for internet placement — at least one step removed from the usual joke about engineers as creationists. Of course, that doesn’t help any of his arguments.
Wayne linked to three YouTube presentations, about half of the presentation Marshall made at an unidentified church (there are five segments total, I gather). What you see is bad PowerPoint slides, with audio. Marshall suggests that evolution couldn’t get from the American pronghorn antelope to the African giraffe, but in classic creationist form, he doesn’t address the unique signs of evolution we find in giraffes (neck, vagus nerve, for example) nor in pronghorns (bred for speed to beat the American cheetah, which is now extinct, and thereby hangs a great tale of sleuthing by evolution).
Marshall’s presentation is insulting. To me as a historian, it’s astounding how he can’t accurately list sequences of events well known to history. The science errors he makes are errors any 7th-grade student might make — but he’s passing them off as valid criticism of evolution theory.
Here’s the first YouTube presentation, and below the fold, my response to Wayne.
These presentations are an omen. They are sent to us as a warning for what the Discovery Institute will try to sneak into classrooms if Jindal signs that bill into law — heck, they’ll try anyway, but we don’t have to drill holes in our kids’ heads to make it easier for con men and snake oil salesmen to get their fingers in there.
It’s a twist on the usual position, where religious fanatics argue that science should be watered down in public schools, or that some form of creationism should be taught to cast doubt on the science.
The essay was published at a blog called An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution. An engineer named Gordon Glover argues that evolution should be taught, first, because it’s good science. Second, he says teaching evolution “enhances” critical thinking — a point I agree with; in my experience, students get more creative when they study and understand the real creative work of real scientists, and students become much more discerning about what is good science and a good argument.
Third, for private Christian schools, Glover argues that teaching evolution opens another opportunity to discuss Biblical inspiration.
The first reason is the most powerful. Sticking to good science also presents an opportunity to stand up for good ethics.
Take a look at Glover’s arguments. Is he right? What do you think? Should scientists argue for including evolution in religious schools where it is avoided now? As always, comments are open.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Educators don’t know beans about motivation I think. I still see courses offered on “how to motivate” students to do X, or Y, or Z — or how to motivate faculty members to motivate students to do X. This view of motivation is all wrong, the industrial psychologists and experience say. A student must motivate herself. A teacher can remove barriers to motivation, or help a student find motivation. But motivation cannot be external to the person acting.
Frederick Herzberg wrote a classic article for The Harvard Business Reviewseveral years back: “One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?” Herzberg would get a group of managers together and ask them, “If I have six week-old puppy, and I want it to move, how do I get it to move?” Inevitably, one of the wizened managers of people would say, “Kick him in the ass!” Is that motivation? Herzberg would ask? Managers would nod yes.
Then, Herzberg would ask what about dealing with the pup six months later. To get the older pup to move, he’d offer a doggie yum, and the dog would come. “Is that motivation?” Herzberg would ask. Again, the managers would agree that it was motivation. (At AMR’s Committing to Leadership sessions, we tried this exercise several hundred times, with roughly the same results. PETA has changed sensitivities a bit, and managers are fearful of saying they want to kick puppies, but they say it in different words.)
Herzberg called this “Kick In The Ass” theory, or KITA, to avoid profanity and shorten the phrase.
Herzberg would then chastise the managers. Neither case was motivation. One was violence, a mugging; the other was a bribe. In neither case did the dog want to move, in neither case was the dog motivated. In both cases, it was the manager who was motivated to make the dog move.
Herzberg verified his theories with research involving several thousands of employees over a couple of decades. His pamphlet for HBR sold over a million copies.
Education is wholly ignorant of Herzberg’s work, so far as I can tell. How do I know?
The sad part about this is that I bet if a mere, ordinary teacher were to have made some similar statement, he or she would be treated more like the student rather than the principle.
Now imagine if some student at the school had said something along the same lines in a writing assignment. We would be hearing about zero tolerance all over the place. The student would be out of the regular classroom so fast it would make your head spin.
No charges will be brought against New Braunfels Middle School Principal John Burks for allegedly threatening to kill a group of science teachers if their students’ standardized test scores failed to improve, although all four teachers at the meeting told police investigators Burks made the statement.
Kick in the ass, knife in the back, knife in the heart — that ain’t motivation.
As God is my witness, you can’t make this stuff up. I’m not sure who deserves more disgust, the principal who made the threat and probably didn’t know anything else to do, or the teachers who didn’t see it as a joke, or treat it that way to save the principal’s dignity — or a system where such things are regarded as normal.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
I’m often struck at how creationists, including advocates of intelligent design, cannot maintain an argument in favor of their perverse beliefs against science for more than about five minutes without descending into erroneous descriptions of science, or outright lies.
Joe Carter pens the very well-read Evangelical Outpost. He attends church regularly, I gather, considers himself a good Christian, and for all I know studies the Bible regularly and tithes. But he’s also an advocate of intelligent design. In 2007 he provoked a bit of a storm claiming that scientists were making the case for ID by advocating evolution (no, it doesn’t make much more sense in the longer argument). (See “The moral imperative against intelligent design,” and “. . . in which I defend the judiciary against barbaric assault.“)
Had the critics remained silent over the past decade, ID might possibly have moldered in obscurity. If they had given the theory the respect accorded to supernatural explanations like the “multiverse theory” it might even have faded from lack of support.
But instead the theory’s critics launched a irrational counter-offensive, forcing people into choosing sides. The problem with this approach is that the more the public learn about modern evolutionary theory, the more skeptical they become about it being an adequately robust explanation for the diversity of life on earth. For instance in Expelled, Michael Ruse and Richard Dawkins provide two explanations for how life probably began. Ruse says that we moved from the inorganic world to the world of the cell on the backs of crystals while Dawkins says that life on earth was most likely seeded by aliens from outer space.
When even Dawkins admits that intelligent agency is involved in creation of life on earth it isn’t difficult to see why other people think it is plausible.
Is there a claim in there that is not completely false? Is there one claim that is not demonstrably in error — or an outright lie?
What virus causes this rabid departure from truth-telling among creationists? For if it’s not a virus, it’s a moral failing of the faith, isn’t it? And knowing that, wouldn’t advocates of Christianity’s growth, like Joe Carter, take steps to hide their prevarications?
If you have an idea what the cause is, comments are open.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Bill Howdle lives, for a while longer anyway, in Manitoba. He’s got heart disease and a brain tumor, which explain the name of his blog, Dying man’s daily journal.
Rachael Ray wore a black and white patterned scarf at a shoot for a Dunkin’ Donuts ad. As a Blood to a blue bandana or a Crip to a red one, LGF pulled out their rhetorical guns and started firing. ‘Aren’t those the colors of Yassir Arafat’s group, Al Fatah?’ LGF wonders.
Dunkin’ Donuts pulled the ad rather than risk offending anyone. The scarf had a paisley design, a company spokesman told LGF — and no one disputes that.
Does anyone else see the irony of Little Green Footballs complaining about this and inciting a mob? What will they do when they realize that green was Mohammed’s favorite color, and is almost an official color of Islam?
And when the truth comes out, will it be that LGF was mainstreaming terrorism to sell Little GreenFootballs — like mob action against a donut shop — occasionally outing one of their friends or some innocent person to avoid suspicion themselves?
Pandagon keeps feet on the ground: “I had to double check the URL to make sure this isn’t a Malkin parody site, because this is hard to swallow as written by a sincere human being. The paranoid wingnuttery is too pitch perfect.”
Update: Greater, sadder irony: Rachael Ray’s site today featured a nice tribute to our troops, with recipes.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
To now, I’ve just had policy differences with McCain, and much admiration for his having gone through his prison experiences while maintaining a high degree of balance. The video is damning. Is it accurate?
Any McCain defenders out there who can make the case against what the video seems to say?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Steve Milloy and an entire host of DDT denialists hope you never read any newspaper from Africa. Your ignorance is their best argument.
If you don’t read African newspapers, they can continue to blame environmentalists for any case of malaria that occurs in Africa. They’ll claim, though it’s not true, that environmentalists urged a complete ban on the use of DDT. They’ll argue, falsely, that African governments were bullied into not using DDT by environmentalists, ignoring the fact that some African nations have just never been able to get their kit together to conduct an anti-malaria campaign, while other nations discovered DDT was ineffective — and most of the nations have no love for environmentalists anyway (Idi Amin? Jomo Kenyatta? Who does Milloy think he’s kidding?).
If you don’t read African newspapers, you’ll miss stories like this one, from the Daily Times in Malawi, that say it’s Milloy’s old friends in the tobacco business who stand in the way of modest use of DDT.
If you don’t read African newspapers, you’ll miss stories like this one, from New Vision in Kampala, Uganda, that say it’s the cotton farmers who stand in the way of modest use of DDT.
If Steven Milloy wanted to get DDT used against malaria in Africa, in indoor residual spraying (IRS) campaigns, all he has to do is pick up the phone and ask his friends to allow it to be done.
Someone who will lie to you about their friends’ misdeeds, and try to pin it on a nice old lady like Rachel Carson, will go Charles Colson one better: They’ll walk over your grandmother to do what they want to do. In fact, they’ll go out of their way to walk over your grandmother.
Government teachers, can you find this in the textbooks you use in your classes?
Nat Hentoff reports:
The Bush administration believes, he said, “that the president could ignore or modify existing executive orders that he and other presidents have issued without disclosing the new interpretation.”
I noted before, these are exciting times to be teaching, with all these examples of Constitutional law, and Constitution abuses, and President Bush’s War on the Constitution in the headlines, or buried on page 14, every day.
Richard Weikart is an arm of the Discovery Institute’s disinformation brigade. A couple of years ago he published a book attempting to link Darwin to the Holocaust in a blame-sharing arrangement. This book and some of its arguments appear to be the foundation of the text used to write the script for the mockumentary movie “Expelled!” featuring Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein.
Which is to say, the basis for the movie is dubious. Weikart’s scholarship creating links between Darwin, science and Hitler is quite creative. It is also based on arguments created from Darwin’s writings that mislead the innocent about evolution, science and history, or which get Darwin and evolution exactly wrong.
Michael Ruse published an op-ed in a Florida paper in February — a piece which is no longer available there (anybody got a copy?Nebraska Citizens for Science preserved a copy) — and Weikart responded, restating his creative claims. Alas for the truth, Weikart’s canards are still available at the Discovery Institute website, putting an interesting twist on Twain’s old line: The truth will go to bed at night while a falsehood will travel twice around the world as the truth kicks off its slippers.
Looking for Ruse’s piece, I found Weikart’s response here and here. I composed a quick response pointing out the problems, which I would like to posit here for the record — partly because I doubt Darwiniana gets much traffic, partly because the censor-happy folks at Discovery Institute don’t allow free discussion at their site, and partly so I can control it to make sure it’s not butchered as Weikart butchers Darwin’s text.
Weikart’s strip quoting of Darwin is most disappointing. [Weikart wrote:]
Darwin claimed in chapter two of The Descent of Man that there were great differences in moral disposition and intellect between the “highest races” and the “lowest savages.” Later in Descent he declared, “At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.” Racial inegalitarianism was built into Darwin’s analysis from the start.
Darwin argued the differences in intellect and manners between the “highest” of men and the “lowest” of men did NOT change the fact that we are are all related — legally, Darwin’s argument would evidence a claim absolutely the opposite of what Weikart claims. Here are Darwin’s words from Chapter II of Descent of Man, as Darwin wrote them, without Weikart’s creative editing:
Nor is the difference slight in moral disposition between a barbarian, such as the man described by the old navigator Byron, who dashed his child on the rocks for dropping a basket of sea-urchins, and a Howard or Clarkson; and in intellect, between a savage who uses hardly any abstract terms, and a Newton or Shakespeare. Differences of this kind between the highest men of the highest races and the lowest savages, are connected by the finest gradations. Therefore it is possible that they might pass and be developed into each other. [emphasis added]
That’s not inegalitarianism at all — Darwin’s saying they are the same species, related closer than the poets allow. If we stick to the evidence, and [do] not wander off into poetic philosophy, we must acknowledge that Darwin’s own egalitarian spirit shows here in the science, too. It would be an odd kettle of fish indeed that a crabby guy like Hitler, who shared the antiscience bias of Weikart’s organization, would suddenly accept the science of a hated Englishman that ran contrary to his other philosophies. Who makes the error here, Hitler or Weikart? If they both think Darwin endorsed racism, they both do — but there is not an iota of evidence that Hitler based his patent racism on science, let alone the science of an Englishman.
As to the second quote, Weikart leaves the context out, and the context is everything. Darwin is not arguing that “savages” (the 19th century word for “aboriginals”) were less human, nor that they are a different species. He was arguing that in some future time there would appear creationists like Dr. Weikart’s colleagues at the Discovery Institute who will deny evolution because, once Europeans and others with guns conduct an unholy genocide (which Darwin writes against in the next chapter), and once humans wipe out chimpanzees, orangs and gorillas, the other great apes, the creationists can [then] dishonestly look around, blink their eyes and say, “Where are the links? There cannot be evolution between (Animal X) and humans!”
Darwin wrote:
At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked (18. ‘Anthropological Review,’ April 1867, p. 236.), will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, [emphasis added] and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.
In the end, Darwin wrote against genocide, against racism, and in favor of the higher thinking abilities of all dark-skinned people. He wrote in favor of Christian morality. Darwin himself remained a faithful, tithing Christian to the end of his life.
Such a man, and such amazing science, deserve accurate history, not the fantastic, cowardly and scurrilous inventions Dr. Weikart has given them. We should rise to be “man in a more civilized state” as Darwin had hoped.
One of the ultimate defenses of creationism, once you’ve demonstrated that there is no science and no good theology in it, is the creationist claim “it doesn’t hurt anyone.”
Well, yes, it does. Over the years I’ve noticed that creationism appears to suck the intelligence right out of otherwise smart or educated people. I also note that it tends to make otherwise good and honest people defend academic debauchery and dishonesty.
It’s as if claiming to be creationist hogs all the available RAM in their brains and forces a near-total synapse shutdown.
Cases in point: Creationists are scrambling to the defense of the mockumentary movie “Expelled!” in which Ben Stein trots out almost every creationist canard known to Hollywood in defending some of the greater misdeeds of the intelligent design hoaxers. Otherwise sane, good people, claiming to be Christian, make atrocious defenses of the movie.
I cannot make this up: Go see Mere Orthodoxy and Thinking Christian. Bad enough they defend the movie — but to defend it because, they claim, Darwin and Hitler were brothers in thought? Because evolution urges immoral behavior? I stepped in something over at Thinking Christian, and when I called it to the attention of Tom Gilson in the comments, he deleted the comment. (I’ve reposted, but I wager he’ll delete that one, too, while letting other comments of mine stand; he’s got no answer to any of my complaints.)
The stupid goes past 11, proudly, defiantly. The Constitution specifically protects the right of people to believe any fool claptrap they choose. These defenses of a silly movie come awfully close to abuse of the privilege.
Update: Holy mother of ostriches! Tom Gilson at “Thinking Christian” has a nifty device that bans people from viewing his blog. Paranoia sticks its head into a whole new depth of sand! Here’s a truism: Creationists who like to claim Darwin was the cause of Stalin and Hitler, which is by itself an extremely insulting and repugnant claim, almost never fail to resort to Stalinist and Hitlerian tactics when their claims are questioned. Call it Darrell’s Law of Evolution History Revisionism.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Regnery Publishing is today at least as inaccurate, if not as completely vitriolic, as any of the nasty newspapers published in the John Adams administration. Regnery is the publisher of Jonathan Wells’ mostly fictional, all incorrect account of biology, Icons of Evolution, for example.
I see from the index on Amazon that I get a mention. I hope Murray claims I caused one of those disasters. You can bet that if he says it, the opposite is true.
In the past couple of months I have had a couple of opportunities to spend some time in libraries and with databases. Checking out the citations from Steven Milloy’s “100 things” about DDT list, I discovered not a single citation relating to DDT’s effects on birds was correct; those articles that did exist concluded opposite what Milloy claims. Some of the articles simply didn’t exist. Bet Murray doesn’t question a single claim from Milloy.
And, did you know that DDT problems were common items for newspapers through the 1950s? You won’t learn that from Murray’s book.
Update, May 2: I have a copy of the book (Regnery did not provide it); it’s worse than I had imagined. Examples: The quote from this blog is criticized as being inaccurate; the quote describes Bush administration policies in 2004 and corporate actions in Uganda to discourage DDT spraying which continue. Murray’s rebuttal discusses Bush administration actions taken two years later, but fails to note that they have not yet worked.
Worse example: Murray has an entire chapter accusing “environmentalists” of being asleep at the switch for damages to fish and other wildlife due to birth control pill residues in the water; he fails to mention that DDT causes exactly the same problems. He fails to note that DDT and especially DDE are endocrine disruptors usually cited as culprits in these cases. He fails to note that the issues are at the top of the list of environmental organizations involved in fish, river conservation, and pesticide safety issues. Regnery’s name is rapidly becoming synonymous with”wildly inaccurate and politically skewed.”
Alas, that’s what I got from a skim of the book before this evening’s meetings.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 