March 16, 2013
GIVEN SCIENCISM'S INABILITY TO WITHSTAND RATIONAL ANALYSIS...:
Ignoble Experiment : This is what happens when dogma distorts science. (Michael Rosen, March 18, 2013, Weekly Standard)
...what choice do they have but bullying? Posted by Orrin Judd at March 16, 2013 8:02 AMA meta-study that appeared in the Annals of Internal Medicine last September found no "strong evidence that organic foods are significantly more nutritious than conventional foods." A dozen Stanford researchers combed some 237 studies that analyzed food consumption and health outcomes among thousands of people, only to conclude (in the words of the study's senior author) that "there isn't much difference between organic and conventional foods, if you're an adult and making a decision based solely on your health."In the weeks that followed, progressive foodies and activists were, predictably, apoplectic. The study was "an exercise in misdirection" and "junk science" that "conveniently obscur[ed] important features of organic agriculture," according to Mark Bittman of the New York Times, who likened the Stanford findings to "declaring guns no more dangerous than baseball bats" and to "comparing milk and Elmer's glue on the basis of whiteness."When scientific facts collide with the ingrained worldview of left-wing activists like Bittman, chaos ensues--and it is such disorder among progressives that Alex Berezow and Hank Campbell capably catalogue in this penetrating, entertaining world tour of what they label the "anti-scientific left."For all the bluster on opposition to science emanating from conservatives, Berezow and Campbell note that it's progressives--whom they distinguish from less-leftist liberals--who "have mastered feel-good fallacies" and "bully the scientific community into playing along."