Thursday, December 15, 2011

Perspective, Get Some.

Another dispatch from BLNN...

Sen. Boxer Warns EPA Provision in GOP Tax Cut Bill Will Lead to Thousands of Deaths
Sen. Barbara Boxer warned Tuesday that more than 8,000 people will die every year if Congress passes the Republican-backed payroll tax cut bill -- because it includes a provision that would delay regulations on industrial boilers.
Ah, yes. The ever-calm and level-headed Barbara Boxer. Certainly she has ironclad sources for this "8K deaths a year" claim, right?
Boxer, citing "peer-reviewed science," rattled off a string of statistics that come from the EPA regarding the impact of the House proposal.
Oh! Peer reviewed science! Well, that settles it then, right? I mean, no "peer reviewed science" has ever proven to be complete and utter bunk, right? Especially if it's extremely one-sided and pushing a particular (liberal) agenda, right? I mean, certainly the esteemed Senator wouldn't just be cherry-picking data or anything? Or, say, omitting critical pieces of information?
On the Republican side, an aide to Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., noted that Boxer's comments seem to ignore bipartisan legislation in her chamber which would also seek to modify the EPA boiler rule and extend the implementation timetable.
Ah. See, that "peer-reviewed science" doesn't apply to legislation sponsored by Democrats. Of course. How silly of us. The policies pushed by Republicans will lead to death by the thousands - we're told this is a scientific fact! (One wonders if this science is, in fact, settled?) When it's a Democrat-sponsored bill, apparently all those cancer cases and heart attacks turn into unicorns and glitter...

It's good to see that Boxer is just as honest and well-informed about EPA regulations as she is about gun control...

That is all.

3 comments:

Bob S. said...

Here is another nail in the coffin of the peer review system

A prominent Dutch social psychologist who once claimed to have shown that the very act of thinking about eating meat makes people behave more selfishly has been found to have faked data throughout much of his career….

In one of the worst cases of scientific fraud on record in the Netherlands, a review committee made up of some of the country’s top scientists has found that University of Tilburg Prof. Diederik Stapel systematically falsified data to achieve the results he wanted.

The committee set up to investigate Prof Stapel said after its preliminary investigation it had found “several dozen publications in which use was made of fictitious data” in the period since 2004, though Prof Stapel’s career goes back to the early 1990s.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/netherlands/8868337/Dutch-social-psychologist-found-to-have-faked-data.html

7 years of faked data -- only caught by 3 grad students.

Not the referees of the process, not the reviewers.....grad students.

North said...

Thinking about eating meat makes the globe warmer. I can fake data to prove it.

Stretch said...

Boxer's constituents vote for her to keep her in DC and away from them.