

Scientist's Firing After 36 Years Fuels 'PC' Debate at UCLA - cwan
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/08/31/pc-professors-firing-fueling-exhaustive-debate/

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jberryman
Fox news has an agenda with stories like this. Can we get a better source?

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Neon2012
How about the magazine "Nature"?
[http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2010/09/enstrom_...](http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2010/09/enstrom_und_drang_1.html)

You need to realize that "better" sources might not report the story because
it doesn't fit with their agenda.

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natrius
It's hard to find a widely accepted news source with as much of an agenda as
Fox has. Fox News is an overtly partisan observer. It's reasonable to ask for
further corroboration.

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c1sc0
Don't you stop being an observer when you're a partisan?

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lzw
Science is not politically correct, as we've seen in the whole Global Warming
fiasco. Ever since the government took over the universities, we've seen this
increasing more and more.

I say this as scientist who used to work for a major university in a major
national lab. Certain outcomes are not acceptable, even if they are
scientifically correct.

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mturmon
Since when did "the government" take over "the universities"? What department
of "the government" gives orders to university professors? DARPA? NOAA?

I guess this is a transnational agreement, because faculty move back and forth
across the oceans, and their opinions don't change much. "The government" must
be a lot more well-organized than I'd suspected.

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noblethrasher
Admittedly I've never verified this but one of my history professors said that
the department of education (under the Bush administration) requested that the
instructors present a more pro-American narrative (or rather complained of a
very anti-American bias in recent scholarship).

(Obviously you should take this hearsay anecdote with the proverbial minimal
quantity of sodium chloride but I'll try to verify it with some other
professors in the department.)

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msie
_In 2003 he wrote a study, published in the British Medical Journal, in which
he found no causal relationship between secondhand smoke and tobacco-related
death – a conclusion that drew fire both because it was contrary to popular
scientific belief and because it was funded by Philip Morris._

Oops! I wouldn't call it a study. I'd call it PR work.

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dantheman
Who cares who paid for the study as long as it is carried out correctly? It
may warrant extra scrutiny, but the more there is the better.

That's the beauty of science -- it doesn't matter who's involved as long as
it's correct.

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msie
I see you agree with me. It does warrant extra scrutiny.

Frankly, it doesn't matter if the study is carried out correctly or not. All
that matters is that a study in some journal says that second-hand smoke is
not bad for you.

