Dear All,

IMPORTANT NOTE: To deal with the overload issue we are developing two different lists for these bulletins: list A, for people who want every bulletin and list B, for those who only want the really important ones - e.g. scientific or legislative breakthroughs or urgent action of national importance. As we develop the logistics for this it would be helpful to hear from people who want to be on the second list (LIST B). If I don’t hear from you I will assume that you are content to get every bulletin.

Don’t you just love hypocrisy exposed?

Below we have printed a report of Tony Blair’s speech to the Royal Society in Oxford, on Nov 3, 2006. He urged more young people to go into science and used this opportunity to whack the “anti-science” brigade.  We have also printed a response from Doug Cross, who having experienced the government’s own “anti-science” the hard way, knows that the problem lies closer to home.

In my view, Blair should have urged both young and old scientists to resist any pressure (whether economic or political) which tries to get them to bend the truth. Without truth there is no science. When governments (as Mr. Blair’s does) put pressure on their bureaucrats to bend or conceal the truth in the interests of some “policy”, then they move from “science” to “anti-science.” Doug Cross warns that it isn’t the animal welfare people Blair should be most worried about but those “oh so respectable” scientists who do their master’s bidding. There are so many examples of this it is heartbreaking. I will cite just one from the US.

It is an example I have cited before. It is the case of  the “anti-scientists” in the US EPA pesticide division who went through incredible contortions on behalf of their friends at Dow AgroSciences, which is using sulfuryl fluoride as a fumigant on food in warehouses and processing plants.

The key issue in the approval process was whether the fluoride residues left in and on the food - together with the other sources of fluoride to which we are exposed - will exceed the safe reference dosage (RfD) for each age range. Over a space of three years these “anti-scientists” have produced three different RfDs for a 7 kg infant.  These RfDs became successfully larger (i.e. less potective) with each intervention by FAN:

 RfD1 = 0.114 mg/kg/day;

 FAN intervened: RfD2 raised to 0.570 mg/kg/day;

 FAN intervened again: RfD3 raised to 1.14 mg/kg/day.

The end result is that the “latest” safe reference dosage for a 7 kg infant is now TEN times higher than the safe reference dosage for a 70 kg adult. Preposterous but true. To get to this point they used this logic: 8 mg of fluoride per day is safe for an adult and therefore it is safe for all ages regardless of their bodyweight. This is as absurd as saying that if 1000 mg of aspirin is safe for an adult, then it is safe for a baby!

Note all three assessments started from the same starting point: the EPA’s safe drinking water standard. Same starting point BUT three different outcomes. No new science, but one simple constant need: to get approval for Dow AgroScience’s fumigant. It’s called working backwards from the result you require. That Mr Blair is “anti-science” and that is what we have to root out of government and teach our students about, whether they become scientists or not.

Ironically, DOW has a very slick new TV ad which introduces a new element to the world - the human element - its symbol Hu. The voiceover says, “Nothing more fundamental, nothing more elemental, the human element.”

Sadly, it is often this human element  - when working for some master other than the truth - which makes a mockery of what science should be.

Paul Connett

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1939339,00.html

Alok Jha, science correspondent
Saturday November 4, 2006
The Guardian

Scientists welcomed Tony Blair’s call yesterday for young people to “change the world” by taking up science to find ways to fight climate change.

Critics, however, warned that poor prospects for careers in science and corporate interests in scientific research could yet undermine the prime minister’s ambitions.

Mr Blair’s comments were made in a speech in Oxford, the fourth talk in a series on securing Britain’s future. His main message was to encourage young people to engage with science. “We need our young people today to embrace science enthusiastically, to realise that challenges like climate change can only be beaten by motivated and dedicated scientists.”

He also criticised the “anti-science brigade”, which he said threatened progress in Britain. “We need political and science leadership that stands up to them. If we hadn’t taken on the animal rights extremists, we might well have lost essential scientific research to Britain with incalculable economic damage to the country, to say nothing of the value of the research in the treatment of disease.”

Chris Higgins, director of the Medical Research Council’s clinical sciences centre, said: “It is wonderful to have leadership from the top recognising the importance of science. Science is not simply about facts, as we are often told at school, but is the best way we have of discovering new things about the world.”

David Lloyd-Roach, of the Institution of Civil Engineers, said: “Failure to encourage young people to study science will lead to an inability in tackling climate change. Without promotion of science, we will not educate tomorrow’s engineers to create the infrastructure of the future.”

Peter Cotgreave, director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering, said the government could take credit for investing in UK science. “But there is still a long way to go for science in schools.”

Evan Harris, Liberal Democrat science spokesman, said the government’s policies would undermine some of Mr Blair’s good intentions. “He has presided over the imposition of massive debt on science graduates, a failure to provide specialist science teachers in our schools, and allowing the closure of university science departments by imposing a free market on higher education.”

Sue Mayer, director of lobby group GeneWatch, said that the prime minister seemed “blind to the dangers of corporate control of science and deaf to the genuine concerns that people have about the impacts of new technologies on society”.
——————————————————-

Science and anti-science

Mr Blair should look much closer to home for the ‘anti-science brigade’  that he says threatens our progress and our  prosperity. Many of  the ‘campaigners’ that he dismisses so casually are themselves highly experienced and reputable scientists, far more intimately familiar with the politically inconvenient evidence of science and the difficult moral issues raised by it  than those

politicians who accuse them of their alleged ‘outrageous distortion  of fact’.

The demonization of those who stand firm against the entrenched and ill-founded claims of the Establishment is now rampant.  Scientific reputations are subjected to orchestrated programmes of denigration;  any research liable to produce embarrassing results is immediately deprived of funding. And, where even these tactics fail, whispered threats of physical  violence convince all but the bravest to back off. When I first became a  scientist, fifty years ago, my only concern was for accuracy and truth; now friends warn me to watch my back, and I take precautions to ensure that my data are secure and freely accessible to others.

Nowadays, scientists must too often make the challenging decision; stand firm or walk away? Mr. Blair’s despised ‘campaigners’ are deliberately weeded out by the Establishment, isolated, starved of funding, leaving behind those of lesser minds and uncertain  morality, who choose to turn their backs and endorse the official line. So the  public is battered by repeated reassurances of a ‘consensus of experts’ over  global warming, GM foods, Gulf War Syndrome, pesticides, MMR vaccine, fluoride in the water, and other current fields of controversy. There are no such consensuses.  All too often Establishment policy reflects only political - and  increasingly now, economic - aspiration; where

inconvenient evidence emerges, no expense is spared in suppressing it.

Yet still such measures fail, and many young people - those not yet ground down by years of forced difficult  personal choice between ethics and economics - feel angry at being pressurised, deceived, or coerced. This is the rotten under-belly of the bright and shiny science that Mr. Blair so

enthusiastically peddles, the real and obvious source of the disillusionment with science amongst our young people.

First put your own house in order, Mr. Blair; then you might one day regain the authority to presume to preach to us.

Douglas Cross, Environmental Analyst and  Forensic Ecologist

Lyndhurst, Brompton Regis, Dulverton, Somerset TA22  9NJ