Re: Now that the UfO cover-up is over, what do we do about the "debunker problem?"

On Dec 13, 9:58�am, "H." <hbo...@charter.net> wrote:

"Sir Arthur CB Wholeflaffers ASA" <scie...@zzz.com>
wrote in messagenews:2e9c6aba-a465-4b27-92de-2e73e3782ff1@a39g2000pre.googlegroups.com...
On Dec 12, 10:52 am, "H." <hbo...@charter.net> wrote:

"Sir Arthur CB Wholeflaffers ASA" <scie...@zzz.com>
wrote in
messagenews:c94b9f21-3b96-48bd-94f0-e4e6b81e3db7@z3g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
On Dec 10, 10:41 am, "H." <hbo...@charter.net> wrote:
=====================================================
I am the Spook you insane idiot. We are deleting your
long insane rants because we need the space for
better
things like starting the crusade to impeach The
Obomination for screwing up America. You will be one
of the first Liberals to be eliminated. The Spook has
spoke.
H.


Dear Mr. spOOk, Your kind, which has already been
repeatedly stated,
has no place amongst us decent, moral citizens. �Your
kind and your
cult are slated for a FEMA camp, so GET MARCHING. �And
"H"eroin: good
riddance to bad bad rubbish!

===========================================================
Dear Mr. Dumbo Holeflapper,
You still do not understand, you have been selected to
be eliminated.
Remove your shirt or dress whichever you are wearing at
the moment and check the back. �See the big black
"bulls eye". �Now do you understand?
The Spook has spoke.
H.


Again, your kind has no place here, so get out.  You and your cult are
non-entities and have been branded truth-terrorists by the State
apparatus.  This is your last warning, until the next one.  Don't
wait, surrender now!!

When Good Science Goes Bad/The "Business" of Science
by Joel Bliefuss

     Corporate America, building upon its control of the national
economy, the electoral system and the mass media, is set to acquire
its next major property: the world of science.  Business propagandists
understand that with science on their side they can drown out
environmentalists, sow confusion among the public and thus curtail the
growth of ecological awareness.

     And ecological awareness is "one of the last internal obstacles
to the complete hegemony of transnational corporate capitalism"
remarks writer Brian Tokar.  O' Dwyer PR Services, though viewing the
situation differently, knows what's at stake: Public perception of the
environment is "the life-and-death PR battle of the 1990s."  Elizabeth
Whelan, director of the industry-funded American Council on Science
and Health, is armed and ready.  According to Whelan, in this PR
battle there are two kinds of science: the sound, sensible All-
American variety, and "mouse terrorism" which postulates that any
chemical that kills a rodent is harmful to humans.

     Whelan, a widely quoted science "expert" funded by the Chemical
Manufacturers Association and other corporate interests, is not alone
in her crusade against public-interest "terrorists."  In 1993, Garrey
Carruthers founded the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition to aid
"corporations or industry groups that are confronted by unsound
science."  Carruthers, a former Republican governor of New Mexico,
argues that "science used to guide public policy decisions should be
on sound principles, not on emotions and beliefs considered by some to
be politically correct."  One of the missions of groups such as
Whelan's and Carruthers' is to convince the media that
environmentalists are motivated solely by politics and that industry
is driven by rational science.  "We need to be deeply concerned about
the welfare of our families when public health policy is set not by
scientists but by political operatives and special interests with axes
to grind and agendas to fulfill, " writes Whelan.

     Not surprisingly, the corporate press is particularly amenable to
such persuasion.  Citing statistics from Whelan's group, a September
1994 Fortune magazine article warned that, "America's environmental
policy-making has increasingly been driven more by media hype and
partisan policies than by sensible science."  Fortune's Ann Reilly
Dowd reassured readers: "Despite the waves of panic that roll over
America each year, some 500 scientists surveyed by the American
Council on Science and Health have concluded that the threat to life
from environmental hazards is negligible."  And in truth, the American
council on Science and Health has little trouble finding 500
scientists to back up its pro-industry propaganda.  Scientific
research is a largely corporate affair.

     "Much of the science research in the United States is being done
at universities that are funded by corporations, or in the
corporation's own research laboratories," says Joe Belluck, a staff
attorney at Public Citizen's Congress Watch.  "Further, the only way
to develop your status as a scientific expert is to get your research
published and peer-reviewed by other experts whose careers, in turn,
depend upon corporations."

     Harvard University, America's pre-eminent institution of higher
learning, is a leader in providing academic research to the corporate
community.  As Lawrence Soley reports in his recently released book
"Leasing The Ivory Tower," Harvard's Institute of Medicine is
establishing a research center in which university scientists will
work side by side with their corporate counterparts.  In fact,
corporate offices will occupy four of the center's 10 floors.

     With a weak-willed president and a Republican-dominated Congress,
corporate-sponsored science is exercising unprecedented influence in
Washington.  Michael Kehs of Burson-Marsteller, the world's largest
environmental PR company, celebrated the election of Gingrich and
company in last February's issue of O' Dwyer's PR Services.  "Greenies
appeared to be in control when President Clinton played sax at the
first-ever environmental inaugural ball.  Today, however, the business
community enjoys the upper hand," Kehs told O' Dwey's.  "Today there
is a new contract on the street.  And although the word 'environment'
is never mentioned, many observers believe it's less a contract with
America than a contract on environmental busybodies."

     The Republicans have made good on that contact.  Under
legislation passed by the House and pending in the Senate, all new
environmental and public safety regulations must undergo a risk
assessment and a cost-benefit analysis, both of which will be
conducted by panels of experts that included scientists from affected
industries.  Formerly established legislative safeguards are also
under attack.  Last month, in an effort to derail the planned phase-
out of ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons, a House science
subcommittee held hearings on the "myths and realities" of ozone
depletion.  One of the Republicans' experts was Fred Singer, an ozone-
hole skeptic whose last peer-reviewed work on ozone was published in
1971!

     Rick Hind, the legislative director of the Greenpeace toxic
campaign, finds the Republicans' search for pure science
disingenuous.  "The only sound science is in the sound studios of
bands like the Rolling Stones and REM; otherwise it is a very
subjective thing," says Hind.  "Capitol Hill Republicans say they want
sound science, but at the same time they're calling for companies to
have representatives on the risk-assessment panels that set standards
for their industry.  Ironically, that's already the case.  The
Republicans would only make it worse."  A 1989 report from the Senate
subcommittee on toxic substances expressed concerns about the EPA
scientific advisory panel (SAP) that reviewed the pesticide Alar: "The
fact that seven out of eight members of the Alar SAP did consulting
for the chemical industry while they served on the SAP certainly gives
the appearance of bias."  The report concluded that the "EPA must re-
examine its conflict-of-interest regulations to ensure that the
American people are guaranteed scientific judgments made by a clearly
unbiased panel."

     Nobody listened then.  Nobody is listening now.  In this respect,
the Clinton EPA is no different than its predecessor.  Take the
current wrangling over how to regulate dioxin, the most hazardous
industrial byproduct known to humans.  The EPA's Science Advisory
Board is currently  reviewing the agency's much-delayed dioxin
reassessment.  Of particular interest are two scientists chosen by the
EPA to serve on the board's 25-member health panel: William Greenlee,
of the University of Massachusetts at Worcester, and John Graham, who
is with the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis.  Greenlee and Graham
were put in charge of critiquing the section of the risk assessment
that dealt with the question of what quantity of dioxin is "safe."
According to a Greenpeace report, sources within the EPA have told the
environmental group that Greenlee and Graham "are the two member of
the...health panel who most actively and consistently challenged the
validity of the dioxin health-risk conclusions contained in the EPA
[reassessment] report."  Not surprisingly, the career's of those two
scientists are heavily financed by dioxin-creating industries.

     Greenlee admits as much.  At the May meeting of the Science
Advisory Board, members of the board's health panel were asked to
disclose research grants in dioxin-related fields.  According to
transcripts of that meeting, Greenlee stated, "In addition to funding
from [the National Institute of Health], I have received research
grants from the American Forest and Paper Association and General
Electric, and I've also received gifts for research from the Chemical
Manufacturers Association and Dow Chemical."  Greenlee never explained
what "gifts for research" entail.  He also went on to say, "Those of
us for whom dioxin supports our family, sometimes we keep looking for
problems that aren't necessarily there because it puts food on the
table."  And what good food that must be.  The total of the gifts, and
grants that Greenlee has received from Dow Chemical, the American
Forest and Paper Association and the Chemical Manufacturers
Association exceeds several million dollars.

     Graham's Harvard Center for Risk Analysis is also heavily
dependent on the corporations that release dioxin into the
environment.  In April, a month before the EPA's Science Advisory
Board meeting, his center organized a conference on drinking water and
health risks for the Chemical Manufacturers Association and the
Chlorine Chemistry Council, a subgroup of the CMA established to deal
with the dioxin issue.  Graham has also received funding from a host
of companies with a stake in the dioxin reassessment, including CIBA-
GEIGY, Du Pont, General Electric, Georgia-Pacific, Hoechst-Celanese,
ICI Kodak, Monsanto and Olin.  To top it all off, between 1990 and
1994, the center received unrestricted grants of unknown amounts from
Dow Chemical, the company that Greenpeace characterizes as "the
world's largest root source of dioxin."  And while Graham and Greenlee
were taking command of the Science Advisory Board health panel, two
other members of the panel, Frederica Perera, a professor of
environmental health sciences at the Columbia University School of
Public Health, and Ellen