|
World Is Improving and/or Doomed, Signs (and These Links) Suggest
By Todd Seavey
As many commonsensical acquaintances of mine say -- especially if I ramble on too long about some current scientific controversy -- "Yeah, you find one study that says one thing, and then there's some other study that says the opposite." That summary may leave out some of the nuances of the scientific process, but it's not such a bad description of the way media coverage of science lurches back and forth between utopian and apocalyptic announcements.
The overall truth about health in the U.S. would be better described as gradual progress, and that progress was nicely summed up by Brad Rodu and Philip Cole in their January 26, 2007 Washington Post article, "Here's to Your Health: Americans Are Posting Gains in the Most Vital Statistic of All," which noted, among other good signs, that life expectancy in the U.S. is now approximately seventy-eight years, nearly double the average from a century ago, and rising. (Rodu was co-author of a journal article about using smokeless tobacco instead of cigarettes as a means of harm reduction, an article that was the basis for ACSH's booklet on that controversial topic. This idea could help combat one of the biggest drags -- no pun intended -- on life-expectancy gains.)
Some people's imaginations are only fired by revolutionary changes and so they fail to appreciate the small gains civilization is making around us all the time -- though sometimes even the little steps can be made exciting. Check out the winners of the most recent Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Awards. (At their presentation here in New York City, I think the most visually striking, and slightly disturbing, item on display was an oddly nimble and doglike, lanky, four-legged robot.)
But there'll always be the pessimists who see each advance as a new opportunity for catastrophe or negative side effects. Witness the career of living lawsuit-machine and regulation-generator Ralph Nader -- on display this week in the new documentary about his life, An Unreasonable Man -- or Michael Moore's less-than-objective appeal for participants in his documentary Sicko, about the failures of the U.S healthcare system, due in theatres in July.
There's a growing resistance to the doomsayers of both right and left, though: witness ACSH Trustee Dr. Lee Silver defending biotech against the charge that it violates the sanctity of life (the latest exchanges in his ongoing battle with fellow Princeton prof Robert P. George are on NationalReview.com) -- or watch the crude yet powerful new documentary Mine Your Own Business about the way environmentalists ignore the people, desperate for work, who are kept poor by the environmentalists' efforts to squelch economic development projects (whether in Romania, Chile, or Madagascar), leaving the locals both less healthy and less efficient in their use of natural resources.
Looming above all these topics this week, though, is climate change. Indeed, I'll be hosting a debate on that topic -- between former MIT research scientist turned quantitative analyst Chuck Blake and Columbia-trained engineer turned Climate Change Foundation head Andrew McKeon -- on Wednesday, Feb. 7 (8pm) at Lolita Bar in Manhattan. Note that ACSH is neither affiliated with the debate series I host nor possessed of an official position on the issue of climate change. But with a major UN report on climate change being released in parts beginning this week, this is an even hotter topic than usual, and Blake and McKeon weren't the only ones who thought it worth arguing about, with both the NYSalon and Intelligence Squared debate societies planning debates in the next two months on this and related topics (NYSalon's featuring Reason science editor Ron Bailey, a contributor to ACSH's book, Are Children More Vulnerable to Environmental Chemicals?, and Intelligence Squared's featuring author Dr. Michael Crichton, who was honored by ACSH in 2005).
By Valentine's Day, then, maybe we will have settled the question of whether we're going to live happily ever after or die in a blazing inferno -- or, just maybe, do something in between that's a bit less headline-worthy.
Todd Seavey is Director of Publications at the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH.org, HealthFactsAndFears.com).
LGK (January 31, 2007)
I enjoyed your Jan 30, 2007, ACSH article, "World Is Improving and/or Doomed...." One short question and one long comment: The Question: I get the distinct impression that ACSH staff in general do not believe that there is global warming caused by the production of carbon dioxide. In your article, you state that ACSH has not published an official position on the global warming debate. Why is that? The Comment: I am not yet convinced that global warming is anything more than part of a natural cycle of global temperatures and/or regional (not global) temperature increases. If the globe is warming, I am fairly certain that there is little we humans can do to stop it (except perhaps a "nuclear winter," if even that theory is factual). I am 47 years old with three teenagers. One of my challenges is helping my children to discern between junk science and real science when even their science teachers in school all believe and expound on things like global warming. Sometimes the challenge is easy. My youngest child has a science teacher who plainly tells the class that he believes in ghosts, and that he takes vacations to alleged haunted locations to search for ghosts. When you have a teacher who so blatantly suffers from a deficit of good judgment it is easy to dismiss anything else they say. But when a science teacher is far more grounded and charismatic, the students often lack the tools to make a strong case against junk science. My only advantage is that my children trust my judgment. When I tell them, as I read in Crichton's _State of Fear_, that the CO2 levels during the last major ice age were a thousand times higher than now, and thus CO2 cannot be a significant factor even if global warming is real, my children believe me. What I advise them to do in school, however, is to parrot back to the teacher the desired response, prefacing it with "according to ____...", which allows them to give the "right" answer without having to pretend that they believe it themselves. I also encourage them to research the topic themselves, but that has limitations. I am a mechanical engineer, but I am not a climatologist. It would take me many months of focused study to come up to speed on the relevant science and form a truly educated opinion. Thus I do what my children (and most of the public) do, which is to search out the educated opinion of someone I trust. For the public, all science debates are debates of trust. The one who can put forth the most convincing image of credibility is believed. If neither is more credible than the other, then we simply follow the crowd.
Todd Seavey (January 31, 2007)
Well, partly it's just that we have a procedure for tackling issues in which we generally refrain from commenting on things that we haven't commissioned a peer-reviewed paper on.
Partly it's the fact that climate isn't as directly body-related as most of the health issues we focus on.
And partly it's because we are actually a lot more cautious about leaping into debates than some of our detractors might think -- watching not for situations where, say, half the scientists say one thing and half another (and we think one half is more likely to be correct) but usually for situations where, say, 95% of scientists say one thing but the media and political activists say the opposite.
Gauging the consensus of scientists on the highly politicized topic of climate can be almost as tricky as gauging the climate itself, whereas, for instance, we're very confident in saying that medical experts overwhelmingly agree the benefits of vaccines tend to outweigh their risks, etc.
Nigel Bark (February 8, 2007)
I have three comments:
1. To LGK
Be very careful of getting science facts from a science fiction novel - even one full of scientific graphs and tables. According to articles in Science 25 November 2005 reporting atmospheric Carbon Dioxide during the past 650,000 years (from Antarctic ice) at no time was the level significantly higher than just before the Industrial Revolution. And the level has increased enormously since then.
2. I think it is very unfortunate that the impression has been left that the ACSH award to Michael Crichton was related to his book (a novel, written for entertainment, with a provocative theme which certainly increased its publicity and sales) rather than for his earlier work emphasizing the importance of the scientific basis of health.
3. Todd, I agree with your three reasons for ACSH not having a position on global warming but I would qualify the second suggesting that global warming may well become a health issue: 35,000 people did die of heat related deaths in Europe in 2003, the hottest summer on record in many countries.
And I disagree with your implications about the third reason. There are almost no earth or climate scientists who don't accept that there is global warming and that it is related to human activity (though there is enormous variation in the extent of both that they accept). Those who disagree seem to be other kinds of scientist, or fiction writers or powerful politicians and of course the oil industry. Although there are activists (that I support in this case to try and make the government take note of the science), in general the media and the politicians in this country have been very slow to accept the science.
|
