The New York Times has a look inside John Kerry’s foreign policy positions and finds an image of someone who seems oblivious to the rest of the world. Kerry has never exhibited leadership as a legislator, but his foreign policy views are completely rudderless in a time when foreign policy is more critical than ever. It was often said that partisanship stopped at the water’s edge, but Kerry and the Democrats have nothing but partisan arguments against Bush rather than a substantive and coherent policy. For the Kerry team, common sense stops at the water’s edge.
Kerry first begins by arguing that he would have sent troops to quell the uprising against Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti. Not only would this position have lead the US into exactly the kind of unilateralism that Kerry has previously called “inept”, “irresponsible”, and “dangerous”, but it would have put the United States in the position of supporting a leader whose “election” had been deemed undemocratic and illegitimate by the UN and the OAS and who was wildly unpopular with his own people.
“I would have been prepared to send troops immediately, period,” Mr. Kerry said on Friday, expressing astonishment that President Bush, who talks of supporting democratically elected leaders, withheld any aid and then helped spirit Mr. Aristide into exile after saying the United States could not protect him.
“Look, Aristide was no picnic, and did a lot of things wrong,” Mr. Kerry said. But Washington “had understandings in the region about the right of a democratic regime to ask for help. And we contravened all of that. I think it’s a terrible message to the region, democracies, and it’s shortsighted.”
In essence, Kerry would have been willing to buck the international system in order to prop up a dictator but wouldn’t be willing to do so to remove a tyrant who presented a clear threat to the region. Such a position is completely untenable and reflects a simpleminded opposition to Bush Administration policy rather than a coherent foreign policy. Such a position would put US troops in support of a crumbling and illegitimate regime, and ensure that the violence in Haiti would only escalate. The international community did the right thing by removing Aristide and beginning to work to ease the suffering of the Haitian people and help them restore a truly democractic system. Yet Kerry is now on the record as opposing that position in a mindlessly partisan repudiation of Bush Administration policy.
This statement is equally troubling:
But in several cases Mr. Kerry declined to say how he would handle some of the stickiest issues: whether to reward Pakistan for its aid against Al Qaeda, for example, or punish it for failing to crack down on what was clearly one of the world’s most dangerous nuclear proliferation networks, based in its own laboratories.
Yet Kerry spend years as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. If he can’t make up his mind now, when will he? Kerry’s Clintonesque indecision on such critical matters does not bode well for someone who has to make life-or-death foreign policy decisions in the rapid-fire 21st Century international arena. What is more notable is how Kerry seems completely nonchalant about the war on terrorism. The single most important question of this election is who will continue to prosecute the war on terrorism? By the way in which Kerry has brushed off the war on terrorism, he is showing his personal distate for the issue. It is simply unacceptable for someone wanting to be a wartime Commander in Chief to not directly deal with the most important foreign policy issue of our time. It’s like FDR never mentioning Hitler in 1944 – it’s not only jarring, it shows someone phenomenally disconnected from the issues of the time.
Kerry then proceeds to argue that the war in Iraq had nothing to do with Libya’s voluntary disarmament of its WMD program. Except that argument doesn’t even pass the smell test. A:) Libya started to negotiate only when it was clear Hussein would be removed and B:) Qaddafi himself has stated that the war was the reason for his choice. So either Kerry is living in an ideological bubble, or he’s deliberately lying. Either way it does not reflect well on his character or competence. His arguments on North Korea are similarly unpersuasive. He argues that Iraq was a distraction from the North Korean issue, despite the fact that the ouster of Saddam put the United States in a much better position in regards to our talks with Pyongyang. Would Sen. Kerry care to offer another reason why Kim Jung Il suddenly decided that bilateral talks with the US be replaced by a multilateral exchange with the powers in the region? It is clear that without the knowledge that we were willing to use force, Pyongyang would never have capitulated.
Kerry is a weak candidate on foreign affairs. His foreign policy is a simplistic negation of the Bush Administration’s policy, his positions lack coherence, and he barely mentions the most important issue of this election. The fact that Kerry very rarely mentions foreign policy on the stump, except to use it as a hammer against Bush is equally telling. John Kerry may have been a war hero in Vietnam, but he is not Commander in Chief material, and a Kerry presidency would return the US to the rudderless foreign policy of the Clinton Administration – a foreign policy that directly lead to the deaths of thousands of Americans at the Khobar Towers, our embassies in Africa, the USS Cole, the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the fields of Shanksburg, Pennsylvania. It is a price that cannot be afforded, and Kerry is not the kind of President that this country can afford in a time of war against an insidious and ruthless enemy.
Excellent post.
Darn straight. I wish that every human in America could read and understand this post. The latter, saddly, is likely beyond many liberals, who seem to base their political and social opinions on the emotional drumming-ups of their party leaders.
As a future Kerry voter, I don’t see a problem here. Like Bush he’ll just flip-flop his foreign policy the minute he hits office.
When did a politician’s views before he took office ever have anything to do with what he did after he took office? Certainly not for this adminstration.
Quite frankly, that’s one of the worst arguments I’ve ever heard.
Bush’s change of heart on foreign policy was motivated by the incineration of 3,000 people – a pretty damn good reason to do things a different way. Bush didn’t have hindsight back then – Kerry does. Kerry’s policy prescriptions are completely antithetical to the needs of winning this war. Kerry should know better – but clearly he doesn’t.
We can’t afford a President that won’t prosecute this war to the uttermost. All it takes is one loose nuke and Manhattan becomes uninhabitable for the next few millennia. Sorry, but I’m not going to take that risk on someone who is more concerned with kissing the asses of Dominique de Villepin and Jacques Chirac than winning this bloody war. When millions of lives and the future of the country are at risk, I’m not going to cast my vote in the futile hopes that John Kerry will suddenly get a clue after three decades of idiocy.
When millions of lives and the future of the country are at risk, I’m not going to cast my vote in the futile hopes that John Kerry will suddenly get a clue after three decades of idiocy.
Well, jeez, Jay, since you still support Bush even after he’s betrayed every principle your party used to stand for, why am I not surprised to hear you not support Kerry?
Can we hear a view from somebody who isn’t afflicted with Bush Fellation Syndrome? Personally I’m convinced that the threat to the future of the country isn’t the occasional Muslim carbomb but rather the triple threat of vanished jobs, failing schools, and diminished civil liberties (especially free speech) – all a direct result of Bush’s actions.
…not to mention the climate change, which could kill a lot more people than any bombs could ever kill in a matter of years.
Can the ad hominems. I’ve disagreed with Bush on trade, Medicare, McCain-Feingold, and other issues – but he’s still better than John Kerry by a mile.
Unemployment is 5.6% – as low as it was during the Clinton years. Our schools are funded better than they were under Clinton (although we still desperately need school choice and vouchers), and last time I checked, the only camp Michael Moore stands a decent chance of being sent to is Fat Camp.
As for climate change, the eruption of Krakatoa dumped more carbon compounds in the atmosphere in one day than all of human civilization, altering global temperates by far more than any rational prediction of global warming today – and nothing significant happened. 1 cubic mile of ash can’t “destroy the planet”, yet a bunch of half-cocked alarmists want to argue that greenhouses gasses do. Already Bjorn Lomborg has shown that global warming is bad science and alarmism with little basis in fact or science.
You want to know what the real threat is? In June 2001 the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies ran a simulated smallpox attack called “Dark Winter” in which al-Qaeda infected 1,000 individuals with smallpox.
At the end of the exercise, it was predicted that there were 30 million dead – and that was the conservative estimate.
An attack with an avian flu variant could kill 80 million, and that’s just in the US.
Go ahead and stick your head in the sand – those of us with a sense of priorities understand that terrorism is a clear and present threat, and the next attack won’t kill 3,000, but 3 million unless we do everything in our power to prevent it.
“I would have been prepared to send troops immediately, period,” Mr. Kerry said on Friday, expressing astonishment that President Bush, who talks of supporting democratically elected leaders, withheld any aid and then helped spirit Mr. Aristide into exile after saying the United States could not protect him.
John Kerry thought about sending troops, however he is still waiting for UN permission to send them.
Unemployment is 5.6%
Cite your source. Are you talking about people who don’t have jobs, people who aren’t looking for jobs, or people who have stopped drawing unemployment benefits? Because obviously, none of those are the same thing.
Our schools are funded better than they were under Clinton
You know as well as I do that money isn’t a magic pill. We need better schools, period, and we need to keep creationism out of them.
As for climate change, the eruption of Krakatoa dumped more carbon compounds
Compounds that rapidly precipitated out of the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases don’t do that.
Already Bjorn Lomborg has shown that global warming is bad science and alarmism with little basis in fact or science.
Funny – I guess I’ll take the word of a consortium of Nobel-prize-winning scientists,and the proven statistical correlation between greenhouse gases and rising climate temperatures, over your guy Bjorn anyday.
but 3 million unless we do everything in our power to prevent it.
Well, pardon me for not believeing that igniting a global conflagration in the Muslim world is the best way to accomplish that.
See The Bureau of Labor Statistics for the figure, as well as the methodology involved.
Of course, all the problems in our schools are related to creationism, and not lazy and dishonest teacher unions, a culture of acceptance for absolute failure, and a system where inefficiencies are tolerated rather than elminated…
Of all the worries about education, creationism is about the last worth thinking about.
Lomborg’s work (Amazon link) has never been debunked – in fact, the Danish Ministry of Science vindicated Lomborg’s methods against charges of dishonesty last year. There is absolutely no scientific certainty on the issue of global warming, and anyone who says otherwise is lying through their teeth. Nobel Prize winners don’t always agree, and to argue that global warming is a scientific fact is untrue.
That argument was made before the attack on the Taliban – it didn’t happen. It was made when we continued to bomb during Ramadan… nothing happened. It was made before Iraq… nothing happened. We heard Chomsky talking about the “silent genocide” in Afghanistan that never happened, and there was no mass exodus of refugees, no mass humanitarian emergency, no explosion of the “Arab street” after either Afghanistan or Iraq.
One would think by now such arguments would have long ago died away in the face of reality…
Let’s review what has happened:
– The Taliban has been eliminated.
– Saddam Hussein is in prison.
– Libya has voluntarily disarmed itself of WMDs.
– India and Pakistan have reduced tensions significantly, and are actively working to settle the issue in Kashmir.
– North Korea has dropped demands for bilateral negotiatons and accepted multilateral negotiations.
– Syria has begun diplomatic negotiations with Israel and begun closing Hizb’Allah offices in Damascus.
– Closing the accounts of groups that finance terrorism has reduced conflicts worldwide from the Tamil Tigers from Sudanese rebels…
By all accounts, that’s more than any US President has achieved since Truman…
See The Bureau of Labor Statistics for the figure, as well as the methodology involved.
Thanks for the link, because when I examined their methodology, there were 1.7 million workers without jobs not included in the unemployment figure. Show me figures that take the increased number of people abandoning hope of working and you might have a point.
Of course, all the problems in our schools are related to creationism
Of course not. It was just an example of how conflicting ideologies are harming our schools. Clearly we agree on the problems but what is Bush doing to fix them?
Lomborg’s work
Can you point me to peer-reviewed primary literature? I don’t accept popular-press books as good science,and neither should anybody else.
Let’s review what has happened:
And yet, folks around the world hate us. People are embarassed or outright afraid to be identified as Americans when traveling abroad. If you think that’s a situation that’s going to keep us safe from terrorism, you’re a lunatic.
Lomborg’s work (Amazon link) has never been debunked – in fact, the Danish Ministry of Science vindicated Lomborg’s methods against charges of dishonesty last year.
A little more on this – as usual, Jay, you’re either telling lies or are misinformed. According to this website:
The ministry decided that the Danish committees on scientific dishonesty (DCSD) had made a number of formal errors when they issued their verdict, and that the verdict is therefore not valid. The ministry did not, however, comment upon wether Lomborg was dishonest or not; they were not warranted to comment on this.
At present, it is not known if DCSD will treat the case once again and make a new verdict.
If you believe that Lomborg was cleared of scientific dishonesty then I assume that you believe O.J. Simpson is innocent, too.
Lomborg’s work is junk science. None of it has ever been subjected to peer review, apparently.
It’s Table A-12, and the figure is 5.9%, which is still what it was during the Clinton Administration.
Well, you’ve never been convicted of sexually assulting small woodland creatures, but we all know you spend all your time in the woods rogering Bambi…
That isn’t a logical argument, and your conclusion is irrelevant to the actual argument being made.
The investigation by the Danish Ministry of Science found that the attacks against Lomborg were motivated by politics with little evidence in fact. Their conclusions were authoritative, and the Danish Ecological Council has not resubmitted their work because it has already been shown to be groundless.
I assume you’ve read it then? If you had, you’d know that Lomborg uses peer-reviewed scientific evidence culled from a wide variety of sources including the UN as well as secondary sources. The only junk science is the kind of scare tactics used by the environmental lobby to justify wasteful and dangerous policies like the Kyoto Treaty.
It’s Table A-12, and the figure is 5.9%, which is still what it was during the Clinton Administration.
According to the table, when you take into account all measures of labor underutilization, you get 9.6 percent. What was it under Clinton?
If you had, you’d know that Lomborg uses peer-reviewed scientific evidence culled from a wide variety of sources including the UN as well as secondary sources.
So what? I can quote peer-reviewed sources in my book “Jay don’t know science” but that doesn’t make it science.
Show me Lomborg’s peer-reviewed work on the subject. Anything else is irrelevant to a scientific discussion.
According to the BLS it averaged 10% during 1995. At this time in 1996 it was 10% as well. Remember that this figure includes people who work low-income jobs for economic reasons – which is a sizeable amount of people.
(You can look up the figures here)
Note that even in the socialist paradise of Sweden the unemployment rate (and Eurostat uses the same methodology as the BLS does) is 6.0%. In France the unemployment rate alone is 9.5% and Germany it is 9.2%.
By all reasonable economic figures, so long as productivity continues to hover around 3% and GDP growth continues to hover around 5% as predicted, job growth should continue.
Furthermore, withheld tax receipts had their highest year-over-year gain since July 2001 in February – and withheld tax receipts are a statistically-significant indicator of job growth.
Note also that the reduction in unemployment just so happens to coincide exactly with Bush’s tax cuts… the same cuts that John Kerry wishes to eliminate…
Peer review is not an infallible indicator of academic honesty (remember Michael Bellesilles?). Lomborg’s work has been reviewed repeatedly and savaged mercilously, and yet at no time has there been a work which has disproven Lomborg’s evidence. Lomborg isn’t some random wacko, he’s a noted statistician and his work is extensively referenced.
Furthemore, if you’ve never even read the book, exactly what gives you the right to dismiss it out of hand?
Note also that the reduction in unemployment just so happens to coincide exactly with Bush’s tax cuts… the same cuts that John Kerry wishes to eliminate…
Are we looking at the same table? Because I see a trend of decreasing unemployment in the Clinton years, and a trend of increasing unemployment during the Bush years. I don’t see anything like a reduction in unemployment coinciding with tax cuts.
Peer review is not an infallible indicator of academic honesty (remember Michael Bellesilles?).
You mean the history professor whose academic fraud was uncovered by the peer-review process? How on earth does that support your point?
Lomborg’s work has been reviewed repeatedly and savaged mercilously, and yet at no time has there been a work which has disproven Lomborg’s evidence.
Until he submits to peer-review he hasn’t produced any scientific evidence. He’s just producing opinions.
Furthemore, if you’ve never even read the book, exactly what gives you the right to dismiss it out of hand?
The fact that it’s not peer-reviewed primary research.
Bellesiles wasn’t caught until after his article and book were published and he’d won the Bancroft Prize.
Bellesiles shows that a work which is based on fraudulent information that fits into the preconceptions of a group of reviewers can pass through just fine until someone challenges it.
Lomborg’s work attacks the preconceptions of the environmentalist movement just as critics of Bellesiles attacked his fraudulent history – and both were right on the money.
Lomborg’s work attacks the preconceptions of the environmentalist movement just as critics of Bellesiles attacked his fraudulent history – and both were right on the money.
And I’ll believe you – just as soon as he submits to peer review. After all anybody can publish a book.
There is no doubt that a John Kerry presidency would be extremely dangerous. We must all work very hard to see that it never becomes reality.
To add to the comments on unemployment, this from The Economist:
The jeremiahs point out that a net total of 2.3m jobs have been lost since Mr Bush came to office.
Although this date is often used as the starting-point from which to make a comparison, it is a silly one. In early 2001 the hangover effects from the investment boom of the late 1990s were only starting to be felt. Unemployment, at 4.2%, was unsustainably below the “natural” unemployment rate, consistent with stable inflation, that most economists put at around 5%. In other words, perhaps two-thirds of those 2.3m jobs were unsustainable “bubble” ones. Given the scale of job losses—along with the shocks of a stockmarket bust, corporate-governance scandals and terrorist attacks—it is a wonder that the recession was so mild.
Hey, if you guys don’t like science, that’s fine. Nobody’s making you use any. Just turn your computer back in and go live in a cave if you don’t like how science works.
But the fact that Lomborg won’t submit his work to peer review makes it immediately suspect, just like cold fusion. Peer review works. It’s the best process for identifying junk science. And the fact that Lomborg refuses to submit his ideas to it is very telling.
Um, his book is published. It has been submitted for peer review, because anyone can go to their local Barnes and Noble and pick up a copy. In fact, you can read his footnotes, download the statistical tables from various websites, fire up a copy of Systat (or calculate the correlation coefficients and Pearson chi-square values yourself), and determine that he is correct in pointing out that the statistics and the accusations don’t even remotely agree.
In fact, Lomborg points out some glaring things like predictions that Miami Beach will be underwater in 10 years when the estimates of sea table increase are .16 cm according to the very sources cited.
None of Lomborg’s research is secret, it’s very well documented – except environmental ideologues like Chet want to instantly dismiss any evidence contrary to thier preconceptions out of hand.
Just think about it – the science of climatology is less than 100 years old. We have accurate worldwide climatological data that only goes back 50 years. In the year 986 Greenland was a fertile paradise – now it’s a frozen wasteland. We have no idea if the current global temperature spread itself is a statistical outlier. We know that it is virtually impossible to predict chaotic systems like the dynamics of climate on a planetary scale.
Yet you want to argue that we can determine that A:) the planet will warm by x degrees by date x and that B:) we know enough to say exactly why this is happening despite the fact that we have no “control” for such an experiment.
Such arguments don’t even pass the smell test, yet they are practically religious dogma among environmentalists – in the same way that the epicycles tried to explain the retrograde motion of the planets 2,000 years ago… and it’s quite likely that it’s just as wrong an explanation.
“Miami Beach/16cm=underwater??”
Of course dude!!! 1 meter would draw half the human race(!), so 16 cm is very likely to put underwater Miami Beach (and most of southern Asia)
“Yet you want to argue that we can determine that A:) the planet will warm by x degrees by date x and that B:) we know enough to say exactly why this is happening despite the fact that we have no “control” for such an experiment.”
x is not so precisely stated, but this pretty much the “global warming theory”, yes! (by the way, you should have use “x and y”, and not “x and x”: for two different sets of data, because if used in the same sentence “une inconnue” (an unknow parameter) remains the same. Here temperature and year can obviously not have the same value – a bit picky, but we’re talking about science, arent’ we?). We do not control all aspects of Nature, but we do test some products (like CFCs for example, and see that they interact badly with O³ for example, which may destroy our ozone layer…) You don’t have to know all ingredients of the cake to know that if there is beef and strawberry, it’s gonna taste like feets!
“Such arguments don’t even pass the smell test”
Amazing nose you have Jay, because “global warming” is not a rumor without any evidence (like WMDs). Many scientists actually share this view (not only ecologists freaks). You may not agree, or don’t want to believe it, but the earth is warming (http://www.wmo.ch), and human activity is most likely involved in it.
Do you really think that changing the composition of the atmosphere by producing masses of CO², CFC (and so many other products in soils, water…) won’t affect the climate in any way? Really?
One volcano produces more atmospheric CO2 than anything humanity has ever done, and Earth has been volcanically active since it formed.
Global warming is as much junk science as global cooling was in the 1970’s and mass starvation was in the 1960s. In both cases “responsible” scientists like Paul Erlich made idiotic predictions that were parroted by the media and held to be incontrovertible facts despite being completely and utterly wrong. The same is true today with the dire predictions of global warming.
Greenhouse gasses = CO2 – the same CO2 produced in volcanic eruptions. Most other compounds (other than CFCs) are heavier than air and can’t effect the upper atmosphere.
Why yes, I would. The UN found that global forest cover increased between 1950-1994. In another survey from 1990-2000 the same results were found. Indeed, the amount of forest cover in the US has increased by 388 000 hectares/year. (http://www.unece.org/stats/trend/ch10.htm)
In fact, the more industrialized a country is, the bigger the chances of forests being saved – because industrialized countries don’t need wood for fuel and build more buildings out of metal and other substances. Also, forest fires are stopped rather than devasting entire ecosystems as they did. The US has more forest cover now than it did before the Colombian age thanks to firefighting and conservation efforts.
Also, forest fires are stopped rather than devasting entire ecosystems as they did.
Forest fires are an important part of the forest ecosystem. A number of species (like jack pines) can’t even reproduce unless there’s a fire.
You’re just being asinine if you think that the commerical replanting of forests is equivalent to the late-stage forests that were cut down, especially in terms of CO2 scrubbing.
The difference between a late-stage forest being cut down and burning to the ground is best described by the technical term bupkis…
I’m not for harvesting ancient redwoods, but at the same time the demands of the environmental movement are truly ridiculous. Not cutting away undergrowth has killed far more trees than logging has – and considering that the environmental lobby is more familiar with Park Avenue than a national park, it’s no wonder there’s so much ignorance about basic forest management.
The difference between a late-stage forest being cut down and burning to the ground is best described by the technical term bupkis…
Funny, I would presume that the presence or absence of millions of tons of ash nutrients providing food for first-stage forest pioneer species is a little more than bupkis. Not to mention the species that require burning to open their seed cones.
But then it wouldn’t be conservatism if it didn’t reject good science for ideology…
And of course you missed my point. The trees being replanted to replace decade-old forests are all juveniles. They simply can’t process as much CO2 as late-stage forests.
Which isn’t the argument being made. Limited control fires are a part of forest management. However, that isn’t relevant to the CO2 issue. Large-scale forest-consuming fires aren’t positive by any means. Thanks to forest management, fires don’t consume large fractions of the West each year like they did before human settlement. Unless you want to argue that losing millions of acres of old-growth forest (far more than is ever logged) is somehow a good thing.
And it wouldn’t be liberalism if it didn’t display a large chip on the shoulder and childish ad hominems…
Which contradicts your first point.
Thanks to intelligent forest management like clearing out nutrient-sapping brush, controlled burns, and culling, fires no longer devastate the ecosystem, and even the UN acknowledges that we have far more forests now than ever before. Of course, if the environmental lobby had its way no one could touch a forest, we couldn’t build roads as firebreaks, and we’ll have another summer in which half the West ends up in smoke thanks to the triumph of Park Avenue liberalism against common sense.
Which contradicts your first point.
The only way you could come to that conclusion is if you didn’t understand my point in the first place.
There’s a lot of people coming down on Bush over his environmental policies, and it’s not just the tree-hugging granola hippies I detest as much as you do. It’s scientists of every stripe, outdoor sportsmen – everybody who recongnizes their vested interest in the quality and purity of outdoor resources. That’s a lot of votes that won’t be for Bush.
The people who care about the quality and purity of our natural resources are the people who actually have to make their living on the land – which is why the reddest of the red states are the most heavily forested and the most heavily agricultural. Bush’s forestry policies are badly necessary in order to prevent the kind of wildfires that decimated forests in the West, threatened homes, and destroyed ecosystems.
While we’re on the subject of the environment, what’s it going to take to get Cheney to release the names on his energy panel? What’s it going to take to convince Scalia to recuse himself from a case he’s clearly not able to try without bias?
I am a fan of peer review. Over the long term it works, but if you try to publish something politically incorrect or that runs against the accepted wisdom, it may take a generation to get the idea accepted. Kuhn describes this very well in his Stucture of Scientific Revolutions. Older scientists rarely change their minds, but as they die off and/or retire, younger and more open minds actually look at the evidence.
This happened decades ago when Robin Warren said he could cure ulcers with antibiotics. The established medical community laughed at him and it took him over four years to get his findings published in a “A-level” peer reviewed journal. The delay was not due to any fault of his own, just that his peers didn’t believe his research. Many doctors had established careers in treating ulcers and now this Australian said any doctor could cure them with antibiotics? Nonsense!
Yet, such was the case and peer review eventually worked. But many people suffered needlessly because of the closed minds of many in the peer review process. And, one of the reasons why Warren and Marshall’s article was finally accepted was because they were making public announcements about their success and the journal finally felt compelled to print something (probably hoping others would refute it).
So, yes, the peer review process works. But it is a slow process, especially when findings overturn the collective wisdom. Scientists are people too and make many, many assumptions. This is how science works, by building upon the work of others. But more assumption testing needs to be done as well. Sometimes bypassng the peer-review process is the best way to ensure the work is eventually peer reviewed.
Regarding Lomborg’s book – the debate about peer review may have been for nothing. I’ve read parts of it and I will eventually finish the entire thing. It is a tremendous collection of figures. As one who is part of the peer review process, I can say there is not much to peer review in the parts I have read to date. In the chapters I have read, he does not make theories of his own. His book is a compilation of data collected by other sources (such as the UN). He uses this data to refute claims made by others. I’ve checked a few of his cites and these have been correct.
Perhaps his other chapters include some theories of his own; in which case they should be peer reviewed before being taken seriously. However, what I have read to date is simply a collection of statistics (carefully documented so even non Ph.D. can verify them) that present a fairly accurate picture of the world today.
In my experience, those who are upset with him either 1) have not read his book or 2) promote junk science and are upset there is a single resource that allows laypeople to easily lookup data to fact check them.
Lomborg himself is an enviromentalist who has some major concerns about how we use and abuse technology. His great “sin” (accourding the wackos) is that he wants to make environmental decisions based upon the best data available instead of blindly accepting any environmental claim. In fact, he is providing peer review for the junk scientists and they do not like it.
I perform peer review all of the time in my area of specialty – gene therapy for cancer. I accept and reject a lot of manuscripts. I also teach an entire journal club graduate course on statistical interpretation and “re-review” of manuscripts that have been deemed acceptable by this process – we easily reject over 50% of the papers that were published after peer review. Anyone who says “It got published in a peer-reviewed journal – it must be right” doesn’t understand either the process or the reality of review, and has a very simplistic view of the scientific process as well.
Similarly, work that was not submitted to a peer-reviewed journal can be subjected to strenuous review by the “peers” who would have reviewed it had it been submitted to such a journal. If the data holds up under this review process – it doesn’t matter.
The commenter arguing that everything in peer review is great and everything NOT in peer review sucks has both a simplistic and naive view of how the process really works. You shouldn’t believe everything you read, whether it is peer reviewed or not.
Micahel Bellesiles work was not found to be fraudulent by his peers – it was lovingly embraced without any critical evaluation. His fraud was exposed by Clayton Cramer – not a “professional historian”, and initially discounted by many because he was an “amateur” and not one of Bellesiles peers. In this case, an external review revealed what the peers failed to see. So tell me again, exactly, how the external review of Lomborg doesn’t count?
i don’t like john kerry at all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Only a terorist would vote for kerry.
Kerry can’t make up his mind! If he becomes president he’ll screw up every thing! BASH KERRY!
If the rumor of kerry stopping hunting and fishing is true he needs to realize we have freedoms, but however if kerry is elected we won’t have them anymore
I loved what you have said and could not agree whit you more. thank you for writting this, it is helping me alot on a school paper on why i hate Kerry and why he should not become our President.
GO BUSH!!!