John

In the midst of a major system rollout - fated by a major systems bug - the
trouble with the type of applications/systems that I deal with is that they
never fulfil the users requirements - I feel like Norman Foster must have felt
when he discovered his bridge was unable to deal with people walking across it
without undulating like a snake...

However - The lie exists in the continuing statements that a) GM foods are safe
- rather than the true statement that 'we do not know if they are safe but they
probably are' - b) That as as a result of the genetic changes being made less
pesticides will be required - whereas the truth is that nature evolves and the
evolutionary cycle for bacteria, virus and insect is rather short.

The greatest shame lies with the third world scientists who mistakenly imagine
that GM crops will in some way or other free them from the economic tyranny of
the western transnationals and the equivalent tyranny of nature.

Except in the social and political realms science does not and cannot deal with
truth only with various states of the probable...

regards

sdv

John Hewitt wrote:

> SDV, below, gives a rather long list of things that scientists have lied
> about.
>
> I would certainly not dissent from the accusation that scientists lie.  (As
> many readers may know from my web site
> http://freespace.virgin.net/john.hewitt1/  "A Habit of Lies - How Scientists
> Cheat.")
>
> However, even I am unsure of all his examples.  Where, for example, is the
> lying in the GM foods debate?  In that debate I can see Dr. Pusztai having
> been treated rather badly and differences of opinion being voiced
> agressively but lying?  Where is that?
>
> John Hewitt
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: sdv <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Saturday, October 28, 2000 6:43 PM
> Subject: Science and guilt -
>
> > Occasionally I get hints of effects of the messianic work of Sokal et al,
> largely
> > on American intellectuals - the impact in europe having been solely in
> newspapers
> > - starting of course from the quite reasonable joke, but jokes have
> absolutely no
> > intellectual credibility - like comparing a Gilbert and Sullivan opera
> with
> > Mozart.
> >
> > But for once - as a report is issued which mildly attempts to whitewash
> the
> > status of scientists as bearers of truth - after all Althusser's greatest
> error
> > was to equate science with truth, rather than probability.... Enough is
> available
> > on the net for you to draw you  own conclusions but here I'd like to throw
> my own
> > intemperate brick into the glass house.
> >
> > I'd like to construct a small list of things which scientists have lied
> about and
> > helped bring about - including - the turning of cattle into cannibals
> (cows
> > normally eat grass when left to there own devices), they lied to protect
> there
> > jobs, power bases, reputations, the discourses of science. They lied about
> > thalidomide, global warming, the effects of radiation, the testing of
> nuclear
> > weapons (on humans and nature in the 1950s), the safety of windscalle.
> They are
> > lying about the safety of GM foods. Mostly all we can do is listen to the
> > scientists voices and remember that for science truth does not and cannot
> exist.
> >
> > All we can do is listen for the still quiet voices  which try to warn us
> of the
> > inherent dangers that scientists (as jurist/priests) and the state
> > (magician/king) continually place us in.  The still voices of course
> include such
> > luminaries as Deleuze, Dumezil and Virillo but not Sokal - physics having
> been a
> > royal science throughout its usually dubious existence.
> >
> > http://www.guardian.co.uk
> >
> > sdv