Monday, September 04, 2017
Ignoring science past and present
The key piece of information was the part about personality types and political views with conservative brains tending toward authoritarian politics. If data disagrees with your beliefs then suppress the data. This attitude underlies all sorts of political thinking that influences policy, especially when the GOP is in power.
One of the most conservative places I have lived was Richland, Washington, home of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and probably has more PhD's per capita than nearly any other city of comparable size (about 90,000 back in the 1970's). In spite of all those highy educated folks, a liberal friend who recently retired from Battelle NW lab in Richland, tells me the city and entire area is rampantly conservative and pro-creationist, including many of the professionals on the reservation.
Starting with the Manhattan Project, data suppression and secrecy was a way of life for Hanford managers (think coverups of radioactive waste spills and decades of deliberate stack emissions of radioactive iodine). Up until the late 1970's, Hanford geologists denied the presence of any significant faults on the reservation (faults = earthquakes = problems for waste disposal = cutting of funding). At the same time it was increasingly clear to outside geologists that significant faults where present. By the early 1980's a new generation of Hanford geologists (including my friend) were mapping faults all over the reservation. Last year a university geologist documented an active fault crossing the reserve, the Cascade Range, and ending near Seattle. This is a seemingly small example of data manipulation but it was highly relevant to the future disposal of high level radioactive waste, a problem we have yet to solve and one for which Obama took a huge step backwards by ignoring science and cancelling the Yucca Mountain project.
Multiply this type of behavior, self-preservation via denial of facts, across all our government agencies and you have a huge problem. Overlay this innate agency behavior with an administration whose policy is to distort data and reality for political gain (weapons of mass destruction in Iraq) and the costs and dangers become immense. Add to that a private sector doing the same thing (ignoring all data indicating trickle-down economics does not work or that tax breaks for the wealthy do no improve the economy) and our downward spiral seems inevitable. Universities, once a counterbalancing force for questioning authority and seeking truth have evolved into job trainers feeding bodies into the status quo machine. A great way to control the message is to replace live professors with cookie cutter on-line courses. Besides a cheaper alternative, you eliminate off-the-cuff remarks and spontaneous classroom discussions fraught with questions that the university-industrial complex does not want to hear. The next 50 years will be ugly as we wade around in rising sea water wearing blindfolds and wondering why our feet are wet.
One of the most conservative places I have lived was Richland, Washington, home of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and probably has more PhD's per capita than nearly any other city of comparable size (about 90,000 back in the 1970's). In spite of all those highy educated folks, a liberal friend who recently retired from Battelle NW lab in Richland, tells me the city and entire area is rampantly conservative and pro-creationist, including many of the professionals on the reservation.
Starting with the Manhattan Project, data suppression and secrecy was a way of life for Hanford managers (think coverups of radioactive waste spills and decades of deliberate stack emissions of radioactive iodine). Up until the late 1970's, Hanford geologists denied the presence of any significant faults on the reservation (faults = earthquakes = problems for waste disposal = cutting of funding). At the same time it was increasingly clear to outside geologists that significant faults where present. By the early 1980's a new generation of Hanford geologists (including my friend) were mapping faults all over the reservation. Last year a university geologist documented an active fault crossing the reserve, the Cascade Range, and ending near Seattle. This is a seemingly small example of data manipulation but it was highly relevant to the future disposal of high level radioactive waste, a problem we have yet to solve and one for which Obama took a huge step backwards by ignoring science and cancelling the Yucca Mountain project.
Multiply this type of behavior, self-preservation via denial of facts, across all our government agencies and you have a huge problem. Overlay this innate agency behavior with an administration whose policy is to distort data and reality for political gain (weapons of mass destruction in Iraq) and the costs and dangers become immense. Add to that a private sector doing the same thing (ignoring all data indicating trickle-down economics does not work or that tax breaks for the wealthy do no improve the economy) and our downward spiral seems inevitable. Universities, once a counterbalancing force for questioning authority and seeking truth have evolved into job trainers feeding bodies into the status quo machine. A great way to control the message is to replace live professors with cookie cutter on-line courses. Besides a cheaper alternative, you eliminate off-the-cuff remarks and spontaneous classroom discussions fraught with questions that the university-industrial complex does not want to hear. The next 50 years will be ugly as we wade around in rising sea water wearing blindfolds and wondering why our feet are wet.
# posted by Rockdoc @ 7:50 AM 
