>>> Posting number 1246, dated 29 Oct 1996 11:44:21
Date:         Tue, 29 Oct 1996 11:44:21 -0400
Reply-To:     Discussion of Fraud in Science <SCIFRAUD@CNSIBM.ALBANY.EDU>
Sender:       Discussion of Fraud in Science <SCIFRAUD@CNSIBM.ALBANY.EDU>
From:         Al Higgins <ach13@louise.csbs.albany.edu>
Organization: Sociology Department  UAlbany
Subject:      Not Another Review
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                                Not Another Review!
 
     I've just finished R. C. Lewontin, Biology as Ideology: The
Doctrine of DNA. (New York: HarperPerennial, 1992.)  It's a
wonderful read and I thought of writing yet another review.  But
then came a better idea: let Lewontin speak for himself and let
him tell of some of the gamesmanship involved in the Human Genome
Project.
 
     I've selected a few pages of a this book with which to
represent the whole.  This short selection is just a taste of the
rich and rewarding substance of the whole which is, itself, a
tiny book (only 123 pages).  Tiny though it may be, the book is a
substantial contribution to understanding that one must be
sceptical of science.  That institution of science, in spite of
the extraordinary good press and the attributions of success,
ought to be recognized as just another human institution with all
the usual warts.
 
     Here's the Agassiz Chair in Zoology at Harvard, as it were,
"blowing the whistle" on some of his colleagues in biology.  And
it makes delightful reading.  The pages quoted below are pages 48
through 57.
 
                           +++++++++++
 
[. . .]

[. . .]
[. . .] A purely
          commercial interest has so successfully clothed itself
          in the claims of pure science that those claims are now
          taught as scientific gospel in the university schools
          of agriculture.  Successive generations of agricultural
          research workers, even those who work in public
          institutions, believe that hybrids are intrinsically
          superior even though the experimental results that
          contradict this have been published in well-known
          journals for more than 30 years.  Once again, what
          appears to us in the mystical guise of pure science and
          objective knowledge about nature turns out, underneath
          to be political, economic and social ideology.
 
  A. C. Higgins
  SS 359  SUNYA  Albany, New York 12222
  ACH13@CNSVAX.Albany.edu
  Phone: (518) 442 - 4678; FAX: (518) 442 - 4936
  SCIFRAUD@CNSIBM.Albany.edu