V: The Series, which aired on NBC in the mid 1980s, was one of the all-time worst shows in the history of television. After two successful mini-series, it became an "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes"-equivalent cult classic.
The show, about aliens who supposedly come to Earth in peace but actually come for other reasons, included an interesting side story. The "vistors" (one of the two reasons for the series name) commander blamed much of the resistence on "the scientists" who he said were opposing the superior technology being offered to the humans. Plot outlines are hard to find these days but as I remember 20+ years later, they included the demonizing of, turning popular opinion against, and rounding up of the scientists.
The scientists were being persecuted for explaining that the technology the visitors were offering would not deliver what was being promised and wasn't the gift the aliens said it was.
Substitute the word "economist" for "scientist" in the above paragraphs and you'll see where I'm going with this. Somehow, in the midst of an election campaign where the economy is the biggest issue, it's suddenly in vogue to demonize economists.
A small part of this is the profession's fault. It has become an easy target after decades of incorrectly forecasting recessions and other events, letting people know that it was possible to fine tune the economy, and too often allowing partisan diatribes to masqerade as objective economic analysis.
But its only a small part. The events of the past month or so, when solid and largely unified economic analysis was dismissed as the uninformed opinion of academics who don't understand the way the world really works, is scary in large part because it was so quickly effective.
This is hardly the first time that economic opinion and analysis has been so easily and quickly and derisively given short shrift. Bill Clinton was able to dismiss a Congressional Budget Office analysis of his health care plan by saying that it was just a technical argument. And the ongoing debate about whether tax cuts increase or decrease revenues, which seems to have been settled in all but the most extremely partisan sects of the Republican Party, is the best example of all.
My guess is that this is likely to continue. Although the economics profession has many leaders, no one seems to be empowered to defend the profession in general against attacks like the ones that have happened recently.
Join the club of irrelevant scientists
This administration has loaded advisory committees with members of the religious right, and dismissed the scientific mainstream as purveyors of "junk" science. From Scientific American:
"The current Bush administration, in four years has:
* Rejected the scientific consensus on global warming and suppressed an EPA report supporting that consensus.
* Stacked numerous advisory committees with industry representatives and members of the religious Right.
* Begun deploying a missile defense system without evidence that it can work.
* Banned funding for embryonic stem cell research except on a claimed 60 cell lines already in existence, most of which turned out not to exist.
* Forced the National Cancer Institute to say that abortion may cause breast cancer, a claim refuted by good studies.
* Ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to remove information about condom use and efficacy from its Web site.
Here in Minnesota the agricultural experts warned of dangerous food shortages before the ethanol policies were installed. Nobody listened to them. The same group of experts just came out and pointed to their previous analysis and said, "well, we told you so, but even we didn't think it would happen this rapidly."
When politicians reject good science the results will be disastrous. Yes, this includes what the economists are telling them.
Ask your scientist friends what they think of this administration.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/14/opinion/14sat1.html
Demonizing Scientists
Minnesota Mom makes some valid points. However, she is completely wrong about global warming: there is no scientific consensus on global warming except for agreement that temperatures have been somewhat warmer in recent years. No other agreement (about cause, consistency, expected duration, effects of prolonged warming, etc.) exists.
The Clinton administration did far more damage to science than did the Bush administration. Clinton completely politicized the administrations of the Centers for Disease Control (which then renamed itself the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and (less importantly) the Smithsonian Institution. I'm a physician, but I stopped believing anything from the CDC back in 1997. The CDC knowingly publishes lies that promote its internal political agenda (which seems to revolve around aiding vaccine makers and drug companies). Since Clinton, the NIH has spent hundreds of millions of dollars for research on "Complementary and Alternative Medicines" otherwise known as snake oils and quackeries. Bush gets no free pass: the above-named agencies got worse throughout his administration, and no effort was made to de-politicize them. In fact, the CDC tried to pander to Bush's right-wing Christian supporters by removing all references to sexually transmitted diseases from its web site!
When the CDC's #1 administrator publishes a study that absurdly concludes that obesity causes more deaths than all other diseases combined and the National Cancer Institute spends over 100 million dollars studying how quackeries can aid cancer treatments, I can understand why more persons choose to ignore all scientific and medical findings.
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