Policy, Uncertainty and Global Warming

by Steve Clarke
April 9, 2008

The Australian today contains a link on its front page to an article entitled ‘Academic cool on warming’(http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23509775-2702,00.html) together with a link to a recent speech by the retired Vice-Chancellor of the University of Canberra Don Aitken entitled ‘A Cool Look at Global Warming’

(http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/files/aitkin.pdf). Aitken urges agnosticism regarding the scientific evidence for anthropogenic global warming. Aitken is no expert on climate science, his expertise lies in the fields of political science and history. However, his best points are political rather than scientific points, so this is not a reason to dismiss what he has to say out of hand. Aitken’s main contention is that the consensus view on the extent of the danger of climate change that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) advocates is a political creation rather than a genuine consensus of scientists; and he is convincing in arguing that the IPCC consensus is most unlike scientific consensuses that have emerged over time and that it appears to be manufactured, at least in part, by political pressures. So it is wrong to call the IPCC case for anthropogenic global warming a received view in the same way that the Theory of Evolution or the Universal Law of Gravity is a received view. He also makes the good point that the evidential basis that underpins the IPCC consensus is dangerously over-reliant on predictions generated by models of the global climate. But reality is much more complicated than our simple models allow. We don’t understand the many ways in which causal factors that are relevant to creating the earth’s climate interact, and it is dangerous to presume that we do understand such matters.

Expert advice

by Janet Radcliffe Richards
April 9, 2008

Last Friday, on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions?, one of the questioners picked up a theme that had appeared many times in the media during the week. ‘What is the point’, he asked, ‘of asking for advice from an expert independent panel of advisers and then disregarding it?’.

He was referring to leaked information that the government’s Advisory Commission on the Misuse of Drugs was going to recommend that cannabis should retain its current status as a class C drug, but that the Prime Minister was nevertheless ‘minded’ to restore its former B classification. Class B drugs are regarded as more serious than those of class C, carrying a five year maximum prison sentence for possession, as opposed to the current two years.

The stresses of 24 hour creative work: How much would Aristotle blog?

by Anders Sandberg
April 8, 2008

New York Times writes about the stressful
lifestyle of for-pay bloggers. The bloggers get rewarded for being
prolific and quick to comment, but since the Internet never sleeps they feel a
pressure not to sleep either. The result is physical and emotional stress that
never lets up – especially since often the home is also their workplace. This
is just one example of the high stresses of many new creative class occupations. Is there any way out of knowledge-economy workaholism?

The case against love: A recent legislation on incest

by Rafaela Hillerbrand, Humtec
April 7, 2008

Germany’s highest court
recently upheld the law making incest a criminal offence that can be prosecuted
with up to 2 years. It thereby rejected an appeal from a man who has four
children with his sister. The pair fell in love when they met for the first
time at adult age, after being brought up separately. Last week,
the enforcement of the law, which would amount to 17 month in prison for the
man, has been delayed. He and his sister now await the decision of minister of
justice of the appropriate
federal state.
Prior to and following the
decision of the highest court there has been a lively debate on upholding a law
that for many seems nothing but a historical relict and lacking sound
justification.

Helping human-animals to die

by Dominic Wilkinson
April 4, 2008

A French woman, Chantal Sebire with a disfiguring and painful terminal
illness recently failed in her appeal for medical assistance to help
her to die. Before her death Chantal Sebire was quoted as saying “We
wouldn’t let an animal go through what I have had to endure”(1).
Euthanasia for animals is commonplace, and is widely accepted as a
morally acceptable response to animals whose suffering is unable to be
relieved. But, with the exception of a few places such as the
Netherlands, Belgium and the US state of Oregon, euthanasia for humans
is legally prohibited.
But is it speciesist to make a distinction between animal and human
euthanasia? In the case of terminally ill humans who request medical
assistance in dying we may have more reasons to permit euthanasia than
in the case of animals. If the arguments against euthanasia are so
forceful that it should not be permitted even in tragic cases like that
of Chantal Sebire should animal euthanasia be prohibited?

Read More »Helping human-animals to die

Junk science reporting

by Toby Ord
April 3, 2008

Science constantly gives rise to new information, new technologies, and new ethical dilemmas. To keep abreast of such changes, we need good science reporting in the newspapers, television and online. However there is a fundamental disconnect between the way science works and the way the media works which leads to big problems in mainstream science reporting. This is excellently illustrated by two of today’s news stories.

Catholic Conscience and Hybrid Embryos

by Mark Sheehan
April 2, 2008

The first hybrid embryo was created yesterday and the debate about it and the HFEA Bill continues. Recently, the most senior Catholic scientist Sir Leszek Borysiewicz has criticised the Church for its position. Sir Leszek is quoted in The Times as saying:

I was brought up as a Catholic at home, both my parents are Catholics and I have continued to be a member of the Church … I go to church but I have had considerable issues with some of the stances the Church has taken on a variety of health-related issues. My conscience tells me very firmly that I should support the Bill as it stands.

Extinction Risks and Particle Physics: When Are They Worth it?

by Anders Sandberg
March 29, 2008

The Large Hadron Collider, LHC, is the worlds biggest particle accelerator and due to start investigating the structure of matter later this year. Now a lawsuit has been filed in the US calling on the U.S. Department of Energy, Fermilab, the National Science Foundation and CERN to stop preparations for starting the LHC for a reassessment of the safety of the collider. The reason is fears that the high energy collisions could cause some form of devastating effect threatening the Earth: either the formation of miniature black holes, strangelets that absorb matter to make more strangelets or even a decay of the vacuum state of the universe. Needless to say, physicists are very certain there are no risks. But how certain should we be about safety when there could be a risk to the survival of the human species?

Peering into the mind and ‘new threats to privacy’

by Guy Kahane
March 28, 2008

In recent studies, neuroscientists have been able to use brain imaging to reliably predict inner states such as lying or intention. In a groundbreaking study published in a recent issue of Nature (and briefly summarised here, here and here), Kay and his colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to make predictions about what subjects were seeing. Using a complex mathematical model based on decades of research into the human visual cortex, measured brain activity to estimate which grayscale natural image the subject was seeing at a given point in time. This goes beyond prior attempts at ‘brain reading’ in that the analysis did not merely use simple artificial stimuli or generic statistical signal-processing methods to identify neural patterns but employed data about the early stages of visual processing to develop a model that was then able to accurately predict which of a large number of novel and complex natural images was seen by the subject.

PatientsLikeMe.com

by Tom Douglas
March 27, 2008

The New York Times recently published a feature article on a website called PatientsLikeMe. This is an online community like facebook or MySpace, but with a medical twist. The members have serious medical conditions, like Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, or HIV, and they use site to post quantitative information about their treatment and symptoms. The site then presents this information for all to see. For example, users can search the website for a drug and then view bar graphs illustrating reasons that members take the drug, the distribution of dosages, length of treatment, reasons for stopping treatment, and patient ratings of the treatment. Individual profiles also show line graphs plotting disease progression and showing major treatment events. The aim is to offer patients the information required to better tailor their own treatment.

It’s easy to think of both risks and benefits of this sort of website.