Wednesday
May252011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Quote of the day
May 25, 2011 You can see the temptation on occasion to wish to hold the facts close so that you can have internal discussion and the formation of a consensus so that a simple message can be taken out into the market place. My view is strongly that that temptation must be resisted, and that the full messy process whereby scientific understanding is arrived at with all its problems has to be spilled out into the open.’
Lord May, evidence to the Philips Inquiry into BSE, quoted here.
Reader Comments (10)
Better known as the scientific method.
"A case study, on GM crops, was selected as the paradigm, anchoring, case of an issue of
technology governance in the UK in which public participation played a part, at least
rhetorically, at the time of the STAGE network, and which reflected many of the issues raised
by the catastrophes of scientific and technological governance that had arisen in the UK over
the previous 15 years."
Can someone translate, or is 'paradigm' an adjective now..?
James P - use of 'paradigm' ( which comes from the Greek and can be used to mean 'pattern' or 'concept') seems okay as an adjective, but the commas are confusing and seem to be misplaced and the term 'anchoring' doesn't seem to fit either. Some academics appear to vomit random words to muddy the semantic waters. Reminds me of a descriptor for Sociology - 'An obscure glimpse of the perfectly obvious', which is probably a tad unfair to Sociology..
Lord May? Hmmm... Is this the very same Lord May who in 2009 (in the lead-up to Copenhagen) said that, as the world faced the "calamitous trajectory" of catastrophic climate change, perhaps religions ought to get involved and sell the message?
From the Telegraph:
"He said that no country was prepared to take the lead and a “punisher” was needed to make sure the rules of co-operation were not broken.
"Maybe religion is needed,” said Lord May...“A supernatural punisher maybe part of the solution.”
And then the clincher:
"Under stress you reduce complex doctrines to simple mantras," said Lord May.
So we should have had all the "messy data" out in the open for BSE, but not for climate change?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/richard-alleyne/6146656/Maybe-religion-is-the-answer-claims-atheist-scientist.html
I think his best work was at the Golden Jubilee. Seems to have gone downhill since :-(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4nsifplvpk&feature=related
Are we talking Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee, wasn't that 1901?
diamond, gold, silver all gets too confusing for me
Ah BSE...
But the reality is that the BSE scare drove up the market demand for Brazilian beef which has then increased the 'pressure' on Amazonian forests in Brazil (and beyond). Ranchers and loggers are the single greatest source of deforestation activities in the Amazon (>80%). Just yesterday, a conservationist José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife were shot dead.
Mad cow disease causes global warming
But then of course, we've to forget all that and think that global warming will dry up the eastern Amazon, like headless chicken.
James P: I agree.
Alexander K: what's wrong with 'paradigmatic'?
Ah, the joys of pedantry.
"Some academics appear to vomit random words to muddy the semantic waters." --Alexander K.
Perhaps it's because academics have been hanging out with too many attorneys. But I hope the latter trend will soon need to escalate.
@j
Thanks. I checked and 'paradigm' is still a noun...
There is more grammatical uncertainty in the piece with:
"technology governance .. and technological governance"
We are constantly being told that the problem with science is communication, and it's easy to see why.