Re: [asa] forensic science and wrongful convictions

At 01:25 AM 9/12/2006, Dawsonzhu@aol.com wrote:

>I would expect that good detectives will search for as many avenues
>as possible to nail down their man. And that is also the best way
>to do good science. The more independent ways you can nail down what
>is going on, the better.

@ Yeah! Now we're talking.

"...we need to get environmentalism out of the sphere of religion. We
need to stop the mythic fantasies, and we need to stop the doomsday
predictions. We need to start doing hard science instead. ... How
will we manage to get environmentalism out of the clutches of
religion, and back to a scientific discipline? There's a simple
answer: we must institute far more stringent requirements for what
constitutes knowledge in the environmental realm. I am thoroughly
sick of [the P-word] of so-called facts that simply aren't true. It
isn't that these "facts" are exaggerations of an underlying truth.
Nor is it that certain organizations are spinning their case to
present it in the strongest way. Not at all---what more and more
groups are doing is putting out is lies, pure and simple. Falsehoods
that they know to be false.

This trend began with the DDT campaign, and it persists to this day.
At this moment, the EPA is hopelessly [the P-word). In the wake of
Carol Browner, it is probably better to shut it down and start over.
What we need is a new organization much closer to the FDA. We need an
organization that will be ruthless about acquiring verifiable
results, that will ___fund identical research projects to more than
one group___, and that will make everybody in this field get honest fast.

Because in the end, science offers us the only way out of [the
P-word]. And if we allow science to become [the P-word], then we are
lost. We will enter the Internet version of the dark ages, an era of
shifting fears and wild prejudices, transmitted to people who don't
know any better. That's not a good future for the human race. That's
our past. So it's time to abandon the religion of environmentalism,
and return to the science of environmentalism, and base our public
policy decisions firmly on that. ~ Michael Crichton
Environmentalism as Religion -
Here: http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/index.html

~ Janice

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Received on Tue Sep 12 18:23:49 2006