More Scientists At Work

Scientists have attained the cultural equivalent of gods, at least amongst the Scientismists who revere that which they don't actually comprehend: science. But the reality is that not only is much of science corrupted by "publish or perish" and the drive for the next grant; much of science is just sloppy:

"More than 1,100 laboratory incidents involving bacteria, viruses and toxins that pose significant or bioterror risks to people and agriculture were reported to federal regulators during 2008 through 2012, government reports obtained by USA TODAY show.

More than half these incidents were serious enough that lab workers received medical evaluations or treatment, according to the reports. In five incidents, investigations confirmed that laboratory workers had been infected or sickened; all recovered.

In two other incidents, animals were inadvertently infected with contagious diseases that would have posed significant threats to livestock industries if they had spread. One case involved the infection of two animals with hog cholera, a dangerous virus eradicated from the USA in 1978. In another incident, a cow in a disease-free herd next to a research facility studying the bacteria that cause brucellosis, became infected due to practices that violated federal regulations, resulting in regulators suspending the research and ordering a $425,000 fine, records show.

But the names of the labs that had mishaps or made mistakes, as well as most information about all of the incidents, must be kept secret because of federal bioterrorism laws, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which regulates the labs and co-authored the annual lab incident reports with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The issue of lab safety and security has come under increased scrutiny by Congress in recent weeks after a series of high-profile lab blunders at prestigious government labs involving anthrax, bird flu and smallpox virus. On Friday, a CDC investigation revealed how a rushed laboratory scientist had been using sloppy practices when a specimen of a mild bird flu virus was unwittingly contaminated with a deadly strain before being shipped to other labs.

Earlier this summer, other researchers at CDC potentially exposed dozens of agency staff to live anthrax because of mistakes; nobody was sickened. Meanwhile, at the National Institutes of Health, long-forgotten vials of deadly smallpox virus were discovered in a cold-storage room where they weren't supposed to be."

Who knows how much sloppy science of the dangerous kind actually went un-cataloged? And who knows how much published science is actually phony and didn't get caught in the infamous science journal cleanups? Science is big business and generates income and prestige for universities who would never kill their golden goose by exposing it.

And science is the only source of knowledge for the philosophically impaired. So what we do know is that much of what they claim to know is phony science, sloppily done in pursuit of publication and grants. That would seem to be a hindrance. But if one cares only about an ideology, phony data is never a hindrance.