Science & Technology

Site In Transition: Sorry For The Inconvenience!

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

If you tried to see the site in the last hour minutes or so, you probably noticed that it was a mess. I have upgraded the WordPress subscription so I can, among other things, have more design flexibility, have my own ads to try to finance this project, and some other features….it might also get around the blog’s inexplicable Facebook ban. The problem was that my old theme had been “retired,” so when the software shifted, it didn’t adapt, causing the text to run off the page. It took me a while to a) discover this b) figure out what was going on and c) fix it. (My son helped.)

The current design is temporary, but at least it is readable. I apologize for the inconvenience, but I think this is a positive step for Ethics Alarms.

Unethical Op-Ed Of The Year: “Time To Panic” By David Wallace-Wells

/ Jack Marshall / 46 Comments

Just in time to lay a foundation for Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s hysterical and hilarious “Green New Deal,” the New York Times’ February 16 Sunday Review section devoted its front page entirely to an essay by David Wallace-Wells called “Time to Panic.” It is, of course, about climate change. The Times presented it on a scary red background, with an illustration of someone peaking through their fingers, as if they were watching a tense moment in a horror movie. (I actually do that, sometimes.)

The article is afear-mongering piece that extols fear-mongering, so it basically disqualifies its own credibility. The author’s credibility? It’s a mystery: I spent about 20 minutes on Google trying to determine what Wallace’s background is, and failed. The Times just says that he is an author, and has a whole book coming out, “The Uninhabitable Earth,” from which this junk is adapted. Various bios I could track downonly say that he is a “non-fiction writer”–I don’t know about that. So I’m going to assume that he is just a journalist who has adopted climate change as his hobby horse, and it seems to be working out for him. Since he’s not trained as a scientist–presumably if he had any actual independent technical understanding of climate science he would be waving that credential—we know that like Al Gore, Ocasio-Cortez and whichever Kennedy it is who want to lock up climate change “deniers,” his understanding of the topic is entirely second hand: he chooses to believe reports and summaries of scientific research that he  doesn’t know enough to critically evaluate. We also know that, like Gore and Ocasio-Cortez, who has floated the theory that the earth has only 12 more years before becoming Hell, he believes in hyping and over-stating in order to motivate the public. He says so outright: Continue reading →

A Jumbo! One More Time: If You Trust PolitiFact, You Are As Biased As They Are

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

“Airplanes? I don’t see any airplanes!”

There are no good political factchecking organizations. Some are more ethical than others. Snopes is terrible, biased, and unreliable unless it is really checking urban legends. The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler tries, but he works in the progressive bubble of Democrats who run the place, and he is corrupted. The Annenberg Foundation’s Fact-Check.org claims to be non-partisan and often succeeds, but of late it too has entered political advocacy into a category that is supposed to be only about objective facts.

As a general proposition, it is fair to call the  exercise of “factchecking” inherently misleading and so ripe for abuse that any fact check by a media organization should be viewed with extreme skepticism.

This goes double for PolitiFact; indeed, someone saying that this is their favorite fact checker has triggered signature significance. Nobody who is properly sensitive to partisan bias and committed to objectivity can possibly trust PolitiFact, a feature launched by a Democrat newspaper, the Tampa Bay Times, and recently taken over by the Poynter Institute, which I once respected as a voice for ethical journalism. Like its industry, however, it is corrupt. Either that, or Poynter isn’t providing oversight for PolitiFact.

This is res ipsa loquitur. PolitiFact, like many other media hacks from the Left, meaning almost all of them, is trying to provide cover for the “Green New Deal” that the Democratic Party has foolishly embraced, by throwing up dust, word-salads and lies. The current approach is pure Jumbo, the Ethics Alarms category for a lie in the style and scale of Jimmy Durante’s classic, trying to steal an elephant and upon being stopped by a constable and asked what he was doing with a pachyderm on a rope, exclaiming, “Elephant? WHAT elephant?”

Here’s Politifact, lying: Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: Afternoon Ethics Warm-Up, 2/25/ 2019: “Martina Navratilova A Gender Bigot? …WHAT’S HAPPENING????” (Item #3)?

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments
I learn something every time the transgender ethics issues raise their contentious heads, and usually it’s because of the comments by Zoe Brain, who has forgotten more about these matters than I will ever know.Here she was responding to another commenter, and, typically, pointing out that this area is much, much more complicated than the superficials public debates about it reveal.

Here is Zoe Brain’s Comment of the Day on the post, Afternoon Ethics Warm-Up, 2/25/ 2019: Martina Navratilova A Gender Bigot? The Founding Fathers Nazis? Art Galleries Discriminating Against The Blind? WHAT’S HAPPENING?????

“There are over 6,000 genetic differences, affecting everything from the skin to the brain…There is no possible drug cocktail, therapy, or surgery that can change one’s gender.”

The evidence strongly suggests that’s correct. Once set in the womb by neural development in the third trimester, the resultant development paths are tightly constrained, regardless of post natal hormonal environment. Of course, as physiological characteristics such as genitalia are formed earlier, gender and sex may be discordant.

“There are over 6,000 genetic differences, affecting everything from the skin to the brain.”

But a bone marrow transplant changes that. Or can do.
See Bone marrow-derived cells from male donors can compose endometrial glands in female transplant recipients by Ikoma et al in Am J Obstet Gynecol. 2009 Dec;201(6):608.e1-8 & Transplanted human bone marrow cells generate new brain cells by Crain BJ, Tran SD, Mezey E. in J Neurol Sci. 2005 Jun 15;233(1-2):121-3 :

It’s really only important when measuring statistical sensitivity to various chemicals. 46,XY mothers exist. 46,XX fathers exist (though far fewer than 46,XY mothers, apparently). And of course 47,XXY people exist.

“The very “best” options are still merely cosmetic.”

A matter of opinion. Womb transplants have proven to be very successful for some Intersex women. It’s only a matter of time before they’re made available to Trans women with similar physiology. And in order to justify that “cosmetic” opinion, you’d have to justify why you’re picking one set of physiological characteristics – say height – over another, say bust size. Or vice versa.

I think you’re right in your opinion, but I have no idea how I’d go about justifying that, and could easily be persuaded to change my mind.

It’s anything but simple. Sorry.

Unethical Quote Of The Week: “Meet The Press” Host Chuck Todd

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Silence, Denier!

“Just as important as what we are going to do this hour is what we’re not going to do. We’re not going to debate climate change, the existence of it. The Earth is getting hotter, and human activity is a major cause. Period. We’re not going to give time to climate deniers. The science is settled, even if political opinion is not.”

NBC’s “Meet The Press” host Chuck Todd, introducing a “special” edition today on climate change.

It’s difficult to see the progressive-mainstream news media alliance more openly flexing its totalitarian muscles than that, is it?

“Settled science” on this topic has become one more debate and knowledge stifling cliché,   like similar dishonest word games such as “right to choose,” “sensible gun laws” and “comprehensive immigration reform.” It also means “Shut up!” Todd demonstrated this literally, by refusing to allow any dissent on a program with the objective of frightening the public into accepting draconian and speculative policy measures by uncritically accepting a doomsday scenario that is anything but settled science.

This is not merely bad science, it’s unethical journalism. I presume that the program didn’t mention, for example, the inconvenient report just this week  that 2018 had the fewest major tornadoes in recorded in history.

Wait—how could that be, when the much ballyhooed (and criticized)  federal report on climate change had Democrats crowing things like Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson (D–TX),  the presumed chair of the House science committee in January, about the certainty of report’s conclusion predicting “increased wildfires, more damaging storms, dramatic sea level rise, more harmful algal blooms, disease spread, dire economic impacts, the list goes on and on. That being said, all hope is not lost, but we must act now. We have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, work on adaptation and mitigation, and explore technology solutions such as geoengineering and carbon capture and sequestration”?

The less-destructive tornadoes go along nicely with the highly- reduced numbers of major hurricanes in the past decade. Don’t they at least suggest that the “settled science” can’t predict what is going to happen as accurately as “settled science” should? Does the settled science know how long warming trends will continue? How warm it will get? Whether various proposed measures will be effective in combating it? Does the settled science know why every model has failed so far, and why all the dire reports still must be called speculative at best, irresponsible hysteria at worst?

Most news media that reported the tornado data never even linked it to climate change models and the federal report, which it directly contradicted. Check the Hill for example. Call me a stickler, but I like my “settled science” a lot more settled than “the Earth continues to warm due to man-made pollution, and this is causing catastrophic extreme weather that threatens our lives, economy and infrastructure, but for some damn reason this hasn’t been true of hurricanes and tornadoes—you know, the most destructive storms there are?–lately and we don’t know why.” Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “Open Forum Ethics, Climate Change Thread”

/ Jack Marshall / 51 Comments

This is the second Comment of the Day that surfaced during this week’s open forum. It was sparked by this comment, changing the subject at hand from the wisdom of training women in the military to that old stand-by, climate change. Slickwilly wrote,

… Global Warming (excuse me: “Man Made Climate Change”) is a hoax, designed to transfer wealth to the Global Elites.

I have proof: the UN has admitted this openly. Given that our press is Elitist themselves, of course this gets little coverage.

https://www.investors.com/climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism/

Progressive Elites like socialism because they think they will be the rich upper class that always develops, while the masses starve. (Need I point to EVERY place it has been fully implemented?)

Is it ethical to lie about science to further a political agenda?

The climate change fearmongering has ticked up a notch recently, and the rhetoric of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is essentially arguing that climate change perils demand extensive government control of technology and the economy—that is, socialism, and less freedom— and the U.N., which is increasingly candid about its position that only world government, or at least a significant surrender of national interests and autonomy, can save the planet. These are really political positions rather than ecological ones,  and are germane to slickwilly’s assertion.

That does not mean that climate change is a hoax. It does mean, in my view, that the climate change doomsayers and the scientists who have foolishly allied with them, have permanently, yes permanently, destroyed their credibility and their relevance to policy. The recent government climate change assessment followed the trend.

Also crippling itself as a resource and asset is the news media, which have been in full-throated support of unproven environmental doomsday scenarios for decades, and have been unwilling or incapable of rendering unbiased and apolitical analysis. Instead, they strategically feature deliberately scary pieces like this, aimed at the gullible and scientifically dim:

…If we proceed to use up all the fossil fuels on Earth, it could warm by as much as 17 degrees Fahrenheit by 2300.

As the ocean warms, its oxygen levels will continue to drop. If ancient history is any guide, the consequences for life — especially marine life in the cooler parts of the ocean — will be disastrous.

“Left unchecked, climate warming is putting our future on the same scale as some of the worst events in geological history,” Dr. Deutsch said.

If…could…if…”on the same scale.” ARGHHH! That’s good enough for me! Who’s going to be the wise and benevolent dictator to save us?

Here is Michael West’s Comment of the Day on the climate change thread on the post, Open Forum Ethics

I think “science” benefits greatly from public ignorance of what science is. We have this notion in our minds of lab coated brainiacs running through deliberative experiments to either falsify or strengthen a “guess” (hypothesis) about some process. That’s only one *method* of science.

A lot of science, however, Climate Change Science among them, really consists of gathering VERY incomplete data, running a series of statistical models (all dubious…you know, lies, damn lies and statistics) and methods of “purifying” the data. In the end, those sciences are essentially advanced forms of what the ancient philosophers did: look around the world and try to draw inferences and conclusions from a bewildering amount of information in order for us to make sense of our world.

Knowing this, Climate Science is closer to religion and philosophy than it is to lab-coated men and women running rigorous and repetitive cycles of intentional experiments. At which point, we can only analyze the conclusions of such “scientists” in terms of their own worldview. Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month: Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa)

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

You know when I mentioned that Ted Lieu was NOT the most “foolish, dumb, frightening” member of Congress? Steve King was one of the people I was thinking of.

In case you haven’t heard the widespread mockery, King asked Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai  at this week’s House Judiciary Committee hearing about alleged bias and abuse of power by the tech behemoth,

“I have a 7-year old granddaughter who picked up her phone during the election, and she’s playing a little game, the kind of game a kid would play. And up on there pops a picture of her grandfather. And I’m not going to say into the record what kind of language was used around that picture of her grandfather, but I’d ask you: How does that show up on a 7-year old’s iPhone, who’s playing a kid’s game?”

Pichai responded,  “Congressman, the iPhone is made by a different company.”

Kindly leaving out the obligatory, “You moron.” Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up. 11/27/18: Unethical Perry Mason, Icky Science, Race Card-Playing Democrats, Intrusive Bosses And Slanted History

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

Good morning…

1. They are showing “Perry Mason” reruns again on cable TV. That was the show that made my generation want to be lawyers, under the delusion that a defense attorney could regularly prove a criminal defendant innocent. (Pssst! They are almost all guilty.) The show holds up, but boy, Perry was sleazy. In an episode I watched while I was sick, he had his investigator tell the hapless prosecutor, Hamilton Burger (Ham Burger to his friends) that he had found an incriminating piece of evidence that proved someone other than Perry’s client had committed murder. Ham relied on the information and got the killer to confess once he was faced with the production of the “smoking gun.” But Perry’s investigator hadn’t really found anything.

Having one’s agent lie to the state prosecutor is a serious ethics breach. Perry also caused the DA to tell a falsehood to get the confession, though Burger wasn’t lying, since he believed Perry’s contrivance. Prosecutors are no more allowed to lie than other lawyers, but when they do lie “in the public interest,” they seldom get more than a slap on the wrist from courts and bar ethics committees, if that. Burger didn’t seem very upset that Perry conned him, because the real killer was caught. The ends justifies the means, or did in “Perry Mason.”

2. Ick or ethics? A Chinese scientist claims that he had successfully employed embryonic gene editing to help protect twin baby girls from infection with HIV. We are told that bioethicists in China and elsewhere are reacting with “horror.” Writes the Times,

“Ever since scientists created the powerful gene editing technique Crispr, they have braced apprehensively for the day when it would be used to create a genetically altered human being. Many nations banned such work, fearing it could be misused to alter everything from eye color to I.Q….If human embryos can be routinely edited, many scientists, ethicists and policymakers fear a slippery slope to a future in which babies are genetically engineered for traits — like athletic or intellectual prowess — that have nothing to do with preventing devastating medical conditions.”

As with cloning, my view on this controversy is that a new technology does not become unethical because of how it might be used. That unethical use will be unethical, and that is what needs to be addressed when and if the problem arises. (Airplanes could be used to drop atom bombs!) The fear of “designer babies” also seems to be an example of “ick”—it’s strange and creepy!—being mistaken for unethical. Making stronger, smarter, more talented and healthier human beings is not in itself unethical, even if it is the stuff of science fiction horror novels and Josef Mengele’s dreams. Continue reading →

Late And Fevered Ethics Musings, 11/15/18: Pardon Hillary, And More Surprises

/ Jack Marshall / 59 Comments

Ugh.

I can’t tell you how much I hate operating at quarter-steam like this. I have an ethics seminar to get through in two days, so I’m trying to be responsible. Luckily I have to deal with this about once every three years or so.

1. Baseball rejects consequentialism! New York Mets right-hander Jacob deGrom won the National League Cy Young Award after leading the majors in earned run average, meaning that he gave up fewer runs per 9 innings of any pitcher. Indeed, deGrom’s major-league-leading 1.70 ERA was two-thirds of a run lower than the next closest NL hurler, Philadelphia‘s Aaron Nola (2.37), and the second best by any starter this century.  Despite his own excellence, his team, the disappointing New York Mets, lost most of his starts, and deGrom only had a 10-9 record for the season. Traditionally the Cy Young honor, meant to designate the best pitcher in each league, has gone to the pitcher who won the most games while not disgracing himself in other categories. With the advent of statistical analysis, however, it has even dawned on the most meat-headed sportswriters that all a pitcher can do is prevent the other team from scoring, and if his team can’t score behind him, it says nothing about his ability at all.

In other words, doing “good” must be judged by what an individual does, not what happens that is beyond his control as he does it or after. Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: Mid-Day Ethics Warm-Up, 10/16/18: The Jerk Squad (Item #2)

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Elizabeth Warren has been allowed to have her embarrassing experience with DNA testing slide back into the memory hole, and Massachusetts voters happily returned the Leftist demagogue to the Senate. Ignoring the character deficiencies of its Senators is a long tradition in my home state. For once, my sloth in not posting Comment of the Day in a timely fashion has paid dividends, for it allows me to raise the Warren fiasco of last month…yes, it was less than a month ago, incredibly—in all of its yummy ethics nastiness.

johnburger2013 authored this commentary, and here is his Comment of the Day on Item #2 in the post, Mid-Day Ethics Warm-Up, 10/16/18: The Jerk Squad, in which I opined in part,

If all goes well, Elizabeth Warren’s triumphant discovery that she is 99.9% white and therefore was justified in representing herself as a “person of color” for institutional diversity purposes will sink her career aspirations as deep as they deserve to be sunk. The fact that so much of the mainstream media is willing to have their credibility brought down with her is indicative of how stupid bias will make people. The Daily Beast, for example, writes in a headline, “Warren revealed results show Native American heritage Monday.”

Keep it up, guys. Pretty soon the jig will be up for identify politics, since  if 1/1,024th Native American means “Native American heritage,” then everyone is “of color” somehow. In that case, perhaps we’ll owe Warren a debt of gratitude….

Now here’s jb….

Warren had an easy out of this mangled story: She should/could have said that she believed her family’s telling of the events and, being originally from Oklahoma, it would be reasonable to believe that she had Native American heritage.* But, she elaborated on the story, to make it more compelling. She also told interviewers her father’s parents did not approve of his choice for a wife because her mother was Cherokee.**

Warren is a lawyer and, supposedly, is very bright. If you’ve watched or listened to CNN and MSNBC for the last four years or so, she is the very embodiment of moral authority over all things . . . erm . . . moral, guided by a passionate desire to help the poor and the middle class.

She knew, and reasonably should have know, that DNA is not determinative of Native American heritage. What matters is being included in the tribes’ relevant hereditary scrolls. In fact, she said that in an interview, so she was aware of the standard and she is aware that she is not so listed. Continue reading →