Health and Medicine

It’s Time To Accept Reality: We Can’t Trust Science Writers, So We Can’t Trust What We Read About Science

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

The ethics rot of “Scientific American” came to a climax last week with the firing of longtime editor-in-chief Laura Helmuth after she went on a social media tirade against Trump voters and tried to blame it on the demon Pazuzu (well, not explicitly, but that was what her “apology” amounted to). During her tenure she had politicized the once respected science magazine, using it to advance her own social justice agenda which dovetailed nicely with that of the extreme progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Weaponizing science for political advantage is more totalitarianism on the hoof, and one might think that Helmuth’s demise might slow down or even begin to terminate this dangerous trend, once rampant on the Reactionary Right, now characteristic of the Doctrinaire Left. Nope.

Based on the latest from esteemed (not by me, but still…) science writer John Horgan, who modestly calls himself “The Science Writer”—he’s a science writer—the political roots of the field’s ethics rot is already embedded too deeply to extract. Horgan has strong credentials, as he’d be the first to tell you. He’s been writing for Scientific American since 1986 with an eight year break in the middle, and also authors pieces on science issues for The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, Washington Post, Time and Newsweek. He has written several books; he’s has been interviewed on PBS, MSNBC, NPR, AP, BBC, and other broadcast media. He’s  lectured at Harvard, Yale, MIT, Caltech, Princeton, McGill and the London School of Economics, among other institutions.

Yet Horgan still thinks that scientists are correct to be driven by political bias and to let it affect their work. His recent essay in the wake of Hormuth’s oh-so-well-deserved demise is a flashing neon warning that science, as an objective, fact-driven, intellectual pursuit for the good of mankind (aka “a profession”) is as dead as Darwin, or mighty close to it. Horgan’s website piece is titled, “Scientific American Loses Its Bold Leader.” “Bold” is a terrific ambiguous cover word. In the case of Hormuth, it means courageous and reckless to the point of subverting her duties. From there, The Science Writer argues,

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Squirrel Ethics: The P’Nut Saga [Corrected and Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

State government officials this week seized and ultimately destroyed P’Nut, a pet squirrel with a popular Instagram page, in Pine City, New York. Somehow, conservatives have decided to make this incident some kind of watershed for state abuse of personal liberties , not to mention pet squirrels. Thus P’Nut has become an election issue; Hey, why not, everything else is from McDonald’s to Liz Cheney. First pet squirrels, next guns and free enterprise. “First, they came for P’Nut, and I said nothing…”

Give me a break.

Mark Longo adopted P’Nut seven years ago in New York City as an orphaned baby squirrel that crawled up his leg after his mommy was squished by a car. The squirrel ended up with his own room, and when Longo and his wife were at home the furry friend wandered wherever he wanted in their house. Longo described P’Nut as “the most charismatic, sassy animal.”

P’Nut also was a profitable animal. The rodent became the face and name of P’Nuts Freedom Farm Animal Sanctuary, a nonprofit Longo and his wife started in April. The Longos contribute half of the organization’s roughly $20,000-a-month expenses to run the sanctuary and donors supply the other half, with most of those donations raised largely through cute P’Nut videos posted on Instagram. “We have rescued over 300 animals in our sanctuary already,” Longo said. “Cats, dogs, horses, goats, sheep, donkeys and pigs.”

Ah! The ends justify the means! Here is the problem: it is illegal to keep wildlife like squirrels as pets, in New York as well as many other states. The full list is here. (Pointer: jeffguinn) According to that source, Arkansas, Idaho, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming all allow people to own pet squirrels. [Note: This is a correction from the original post, in which I assumed that all states would have prohibited P’Nut.]

None of which is relevant to the law in New York and it’s enforcement.

“Following multiple reports from the public about the potentially unsafe housing of wildlife that could carry rabies and the illegal keeping of wildlife as pets, D.E.C. conducted an investigation,” the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation said in a statement after P’Nut was seized. “Investigation” is a bit sanitized: the operation has been described as a raid, and sure sounds like one. Before the officers left with P’Nut (and a raccoon, which nobody seems to care about), they “ransacked my entire house,” Longo said. “They made me sit outside for five hours.”

Presumably they were making sure that the house didn’t contain any other illegal residents. “We have had P’nut for seven years without a single complaint,” Longo said. “Now it’s suddenly an issue? It’s not like we were hiding him.”

Well, yes. That’s the problem. Longo and his wife were openly violating a law, and the argument for letting P’Nut keep hiding his nuts under their rugs is simple: the law is the law, there is no exception for cute law-breaking or profitable law-breaking. Regardless of the squirrel’s popularity and use in fundraising for a worthy cause, a law that isn’t enforced when it is broken for reasons some people think are justifications isn’t a law at all.

This isn’t just one slippery slope, it is several. Today it’s P’Nut the Squirrels, then it’s whenever that raccoon was, and tomorrow it’s Chewy the Wolverine.

“To the people who filed complaints, thank you for taking away the best part of me, thank you for taking away my best friend,” Longo whined online.

Conservatives have to stop flipping their values any time they see a chance for political point-scoring. This is called lacking integrity. Taking away P’Nut is based on the same principle that says “good illegal immigrants” should still be deported, Hillary Clinton shouldn’t get away with mishandling classified materials, and that if Donald Trump is prosecuted for mishandling documents, Joe Biden should be as well.

The King’s Pass is a rationalization even if the king is a squirrel.

A grace note: P’Nut had to be euthanized after he bit one of the officers as they removed him from his happy home, so they had to see if the squirrel had rabies. Good for P’Nut: he didn’t go down without a fight. We can’t blame him for not knowing the law.

Comment of the Day: “Just So There Is Accountability and We Don’t Forget, Here’s a List of The Lying Media Propagandists Who Claimed Trump Said He Wanted Liz Cheney Shot…”

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Time for a Trump Derangement report Comment of the Day. This admirable job by AM Golden fills the bill nicely, especially since I had almost the exact same conversation with my own “not unintelligent” relative who has been a raging, drooling, Trump Derangement victim getting progressively (double meaning, there) worse (Stage 1, 2, 3, 4, now 5, and I suspect Stage 6 is terminal) for almost a decade. There is a viral social media tale with video about a woman who interrupted a conversation between two black Trump supporters to start screaming about how he was a criminal who wants Liz Cheney to be put in front of a 9-person “firing squad.” This lunatic also claimed to be well-informed, though she must only frequent MSNBC and other propaganda outlets that haven’t thoroughly debunked this most recent desperate lie. (All you have to do is read what Trump said.) There may be a new one by now; I haven’t checked.

I am going to depart from the usual format with COTDs here and follow AM’s post with some supplemental analysis of my own.

In the meantime, here is AM Golden’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Just So There Is Accountability and We Don’t Forget, Here’s a List of The Lying Media Propagandists Who Claimed Trump Said He Wanted Liz Cheney Shot…,” which is a follow-up to this earlier post regarding the unforgivable “Trump threatened Cheney” AXIS hit.

***

Trying to convince people that what Trump said is being misrepresented, and deliberately so, by the Democrats and their media advocates is like pulling teeth.

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When Ideology-Driven Fads Harm the Innocent…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

On Twitter/”X,” the advocacy organization “Restore Childhood” documents the horrific case study of a little boy pushed into “gender affirming care” by his woke-lunatic mother, facilitated by unethical medical professionals. Below is the tweet series. You can watch the disturbing videos here.

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Comment of the Day: “Is This the Level of Critical Thinking Devoted To Pro-Abortion Advocacy?”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Sarah B.’s excellent Comment of the Day on the post, “Is This the Level of Critical Thinking Devoted To Pro-Abortion Advocacy?” stands on its own and makes any introduction from me supoerflous beyond, “Here it is.”

Here it is…

***

I believe that the reasons many women want abortion to be legal are, when delving down deeply: fear and guilt. Please note that my argument is not meant to absolve anyone of responsibility, especially as I am dang near an anti-abortion absolutist, but instead what motives I have seen in my argumentation with pro-abortion (they hate that label because “we aren’t for abortion, we’re for women having the right to choose what is best”) advocates before the argument degenerates into some form of the above as their “knock down, undeniable” argument to shut me up. (Tearing it apart just turns into accusations of me being brainwashed and the conversation devolving into at least one side calling names, though my temper has occasionally dropped me to their level.)

I’m going to start with guilt, because it is the easiest to explain. Many women know someone who has had an abortion. My cousin had one for reasons that are at least sympathetic – the child was diagnosed with a genetic mutation that is always fatal if the diagnosis was correct (many are not) – even if I think she was completely in the wrong. She is hardly the only person in my circle that has had an abortion or helped someone obtain one. Most people who do this recognize somewhere that this may have been a “choice,” but it was the wrong choice. Many people are nearly eaten-up with guilt about the child they know they killed. I know people who have broken down in tears in private over this, even though they are pro-abortion in public.

They have pro-abortion stances that seem to cover up the guilt. They often act as though they believe that if everyone supports abortion and allows it up to birth or beyond, they will finally not feel guilty because the only reason they feel guilty is the societal pressure to accept that abortion killed a baby.

Fear, however, is the primary reason so many women want abortions to be legal. Men, since time immemorial, have gotten away with consequence-free sex, while women bear most of the negative consequences. Men don’t get pregnant. When it comes to STDs, women are far more susceptible then men, being the penetrated rather than the penetrator. Frankly, men (as a whole) desire sex more than women. It is a generality, but one that I have found to be true, as iin the saying, “Men trade love for sex and women trade sex for love.” This puts an unequal spin on the consequences.

Men, again generally speaking, desire sex more. Women bear a higher cost for sex than men. This lack of equality is a breeding ground for fear. Women who have regular sex will get eventually face pregnancy, contraceptives or no, if it continues over a long enough time span, assuming they do not have fertility issues,

There are many fears that women can have regarding pregnancy, and today’s society has bred even more. Men have the advnantage of consequence-free or at least consequence-reduced sex. See “The Scarlet Letter” or any dead-beat dad to prove my point. Women can fear that the trials of parenthood, and there are many, will leave them holding the bag when the man responsible bolts. This is exacerbated in today’s society when many of the Y-chromosomed fail to grow out of acting like boys and never develop into men.

Another fear is that having a baby ties you down to marriage to a man whom you should not be with. A girl’s crush on the wrong boy whom she then decides to sleep with so she can keep him can suddenly become horrible marriage, bound together with children when she becomes pregnant even when he actually does take responsibility. Sure, you can get divorced if things are too bad, but you are back to being a single mom, maybe with child support. The system also has a number of loopholes that can wreck any chance of acquiring a decent amount of money to help with the kids. Again, if you get pregnant and have a baby, the odds seem stacked against you.

There is also the fear of what kids will do to your education and career. If you have to pay for a babysitter, it hurts your chances of being able to afford college, and feeding two mouths while paying off student loans is harder than just feeding yourself. Of course, having to be up at night with a teething child rather than studying or sleeping before a test is its own struggle. How can you make it? And all those career women? If that is what you want out of life, you will struggle when you have to take time off because the kid is throwing up or has a fever, something that happens all the time when kids are little. Even when they are older, is your presence at their piano recital or sporting event more important than your presence working the hours needed to get that big promotion? A child makes achieving your goals harder.

What about all the things and experiences you want out of life? Society is pushing so many different concepts now of what happiness is, but very few of them work with children. You can’t reasonably take small children to many concerts. Sporting events are expensive and now you have to buy not one, but two tickets, or pay for a babysitter who costs a decent fraction of those tickets? The money that you spend on diapers, wipes, formula, clothes, medical care and the rest could have gone towards you having fun and enjoying life. Or maybe you are a minimalist and for you good times are possible living with the bare minimum. Well, that bare minimum is now cluttered with toys, covered in spit-up, and smelling like pooped diapers. There go your dreams.

Then there are the fears surrounding pregnancy itself. Honestly, maternal mortality rates aren’t that bad, if you ignore those who didn’t receive prenatal care, weren’t able to give birth with medical care at least nearby if not in the hospital, and who haven’t already had an abortion (which increases the chances of life-threatening complications in future pregnancies). However, women do die when pregnant, even in the best of circumstances. Therefore pregnancy is an elevated risk. What about complications? What if you really need an abortion to survive?

Adoption has its own fears. Assuming I do go the adoption route, what if the child has anything other than the perfect childhood? What about if they end up in foster care? What happens if they or, assuming I keep the child, we end up in poverty? All of that misery is avoidable with abortion.

There are other fears. There is the fear of rape. If you get raped, you could get pregnant. Surely you can’t be expected to have the baby of your attacker. What about the fear of disabled children who may or may not live as long as you want or fear? Birth defects happen, incest or not, but that fear is especially true if you were raped by a relative. What happens if you fall in love with this baby and it dies? Then you are left with heartbreak.

What happens if you have a special needs child? That could mean you have to care for that child all of its life and yours; you can never retire and might die in poverty. How about any horror story you hear about on social media that may or may not be the full truth? We NEED abortion to deal with this! If we can’t decide to end a pregnancy when something is wrong, we are not equal to men.

Again, these are not my beliefs, merely a summary of the beliefs I have heard whenever I speak with a pro-abortion believer. I can think of responses to most if not all of these. However, the response this post was based off of is essentially about getting rid of some of the fears. Usually I see that response coupled with a guarantee that men will no longer rape women, that medical care will be so advanced that women never have a problem with pregnancy, and that no woman will ever have to have a job she doesn’t want or is beneath her. The fears that drive women’s desire for abortion make for some illogical outcomes and arguments.

That being said, I am ashamed of my sex for our illogical outbursts that demand the deaths of our own children. The demand that started this post is just one of many of those illogical outbursts, and I apologize for my sex for their saying it.

On the Bight Side, at Least the Coach Didn’t Order Them To Jump Out a Window…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I guess I understand how this could happen, but I don’t want to.

Student cheerleaders at Evans Middle School in Lubbock, Texas displeased their cheerleading coach by doing the “wrong cheer,” whatever than means, and she disciplined them by ordering the girls to do “bear crawls” and “crab walks” for miles on an outdoor track when in was nearly 100 degrees in Lubbock and the temperature on the track was well over a hundred. Some of the girls became sick under the sun, all of the cheerleaders ended up with first and second degree burns on their hands and knees, and at least one had to go to a burn center.

When they complained that the track was painful, the coach reportedly said that she didn’t care, and to keep crawling. Parents are furious, naturally, and the evil teacher has been placed on leave (she should be prosecuted—Special query for Humble Talent: Would it be unethical for me to add, “and should be shot”?), but what bothers me is that none of the girls had the sense, character and courage to refuse to accept the cruel punishment, and when the coach said that those who didn’t “crab walk” on the hot track would jeopardize their “cheer careers” (Remember, this is Texas, aka. Bizarro World), at least one girl—we would call her a “leader”—didn’t say, “Well take this cheer and shove it, I’m out of here!,” stop crawling, and walk away on her feet. Movie fans of the original “Carrie” will recall that the protagonist’s chief foe refused to do push-ups as her gym teacher’s punishment for mocking her vulnerable classmate in the shower. That character is a jerk, but she is a gutsy jerk.

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“Submitted For Your Approval…”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

While searching for Pete Rose posts in preparation for this one, I ran across an ethics multi-issue post from February 11, 2020, shortly before the Wuhan virus messed with our economy, our democracy, our laws, our health, our social interactions, our culture, our health and our sanity (but it was racist to blame it on China. Don’t get me started….). I don’t remember writing it at all, so I was fascinated to read this:

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Ethics Villain: Former NYC Pandemic Lockdown Czar Dr. Jay Varma

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

We can now add this shameless creep to the list of powerful state and municipal hypocrites—they are too many to list, but EA spotlighted some of them— who violated their own excessive pandemic restrictions because, after all, they are better than the little people, and because they could. I’m filing all of them with the health officials who announced that letting Black Lives Matter disrupt cities and government functions while doing millions of dollars in damage made the racist, Marxist group immune from the restrictions on church gatherings, funeral and family gatherings.

Jay Varma, however, is special.

Dr. Jay Varma was the senior advisor for public health in New York City under Mayor Bill de Blasio, another ethics villain. Varma imposed extraordinary restrictions on public outings, gatherings, and personal activities. But a video has been released showing Varma admitting that he ignored his own policies to attend sex parties. A spokesman for Varma told CBS News New York he and his wife held two sex parties in a hotel with friends after he had banned such gatherings; Varma also admitted participating in a dance party with about 200 people underneath a Wall Street bank in June of 2021.

Varma was fired as executive vice president and chief medical officer at SIGA Technologies after confirming the reports about the video. Good. But it’s not enough. There have not been adequate consequences for any of these power abusing, elitist totalitarians and liars.

A Visit to Football’s Bizarro World

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Sure, I guess in a crazy system where universities pay students to play football for them, this story makes sense, sort of.

The star starting quarterback for UNLV, Matthew Sluka is quitting the team after UNLV’s first 3-0 start in 40 years. He says he will sit out the rest of the season because the school hasn’t ponied up the $100,000 he says he was promised by an assistant coach before committing to the school this offseason.

Ah, remember those quaint old days when college football heroes devoted their passion and athletic talents to winning for team, the school, and fellow students? Today instead of “Win one for the Gipper,” it’s “Show me the money.” Tell me again why we let educational institutions run professional football and basketball teams stocked with phony students who usually graduate, if they graduate, having learned nothing but how to talk to their accountants?

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Ethics Quiz: Sympathy For Really Stupid Accident Victims

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

That’s a scene above from Quentin Tarntino’s “Death Proof,” and a dumber movie you are never likely to encounter. The clip is there not to celebrate the movie, originally half of a misconceived bomb called “Grind House,” but to illustrate the real and incredibly stupid phenomenon called “car surfing,” which has had a recent resurgence among teens thanks to social media.

15-year-old Cyprus High School (Utah) sophomore Ava Broadhead is now in a coma after she fell off the top of a moving car. She was car-surfing, and “unfortunately, pavement isn’t as forgiving and the victim hit their head,” a police officer told the news media. Ava suffered massive head injuries and faces a long recovery, with the chances of regaining her previous level of brain function slim.

A GoFundMe page seeks donations for Anna, stating, “Your generous donations will go directly toward her medical care and the resources needed to support her recovery. Any amount, no matter how small, will make a huge difference in Ava’s journey. If you are unable to contribute financially, we ask that you keep Ava in your prayers and share her story to raise awareness about the real dangers of car surfing.”

Who has have explained to them the dangers of riding on the outside of a moving car?

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

How much compassion and sympathy, if any, is appropriate in response to someone harming themselves by engaging in such reckless behavior?

This kind of story always puts me in a quandary; I think I have posted about my dilemma before. My son nearly got himself killed or crippled a few times, although never doing anything quite as stupid as car-surfing. I note that the Go-Fund-Me page has raised only $6,000 so far, and I strongly suspect the weak response is because many have the same reflex reaction I do, which is that I’d rather give money to the victims of misfortunes they didn’t almost literally ask for. Anna’s story reminded me of the July Fourth accident this year when an idiot put fireworks on his head and set them off.

Of course Anna gets some points off her Darwin Awards score by virtue of her tender age…but how many? She devastated her own life while immersing her family in tragedy and the crushing burden of caring for her. It wasn’t intentional, but a drunk getting behind the wheel of a car isn’t intentionally trying to kill anyone, either.

I know that this self-inflicted tragedy will naturally cause many to blame social media. The suspicion lingers, however, that anyone foolish enough to try car-surfing is going to be disaster-prone one way or another.