Comments on: The Scientifically Incorrect Guide to Politics: Tom Bethell’s Propaganda Piece

By: Fabio

Fabio — Mon, 19 May 2008 15:52:49 +0000

Well I hope you do every review with this method. Or do you do it only with mavericks? Which is propaganda? So I understand from your review that everything is false there? I bet you are kidding. Or paid?

By: Patrick

Patrick — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 02:58:12 +0000

I saw the cspan event hosted by the heritage foundation that was in late June. I laughed a lot at what was said. One of the funniest things said was that Intelligent Design was not shrouded religion. I have seen the decision on the Dover Case on I.D. and even the proponents of I.D. (Behe etc.) consede that you must go to the supernatural to explain it. There is some talk about extraterrestials but it all seems to come back to an supenatural intelligent being.
You can find the Dover case’s decision on the CNN website in PDF form. It is a work of Art.
Bethell also said that the recent find that “Junk DNA” having more use that expected is evidence that Evolution is wrong. He said that the whole genome is used. My research on the issue shows that SOME of the nonsense DNA is used and is used to diagnose certain cancers. He also leaves out that a huge number of that Junk DNA has similar (upwards to 90%) genes to Rats Fish and other “lower animals”.
If I am mistaken on anything I have said give me feedback.

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 00:04:00 +0000

Once you’ve established that a source is untrustworthy, you can’t trust anything that source says. It might be right, but how will you ever know?

An example from a completely different field is Ward Churchill. He may have done some good scholarship on Native American issues, but you can’t trust it, given his career track record.

By: Anthony Kendall

Anthony Kendall — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 14:54:00 +0000

A couple of readers now have written to inform me about mosquitoes developing resistance to DDT. For some strange reason, I didn’t even think to check on this before I posted my DDT review.

Of course, Bethell left this out of his book entirely. That is because ignoring mosquito resistance to DDT meant that he could legitimately make his claim of millions killed each year from lack of spraying DDT. But, in reality, blanket spraying of DDT as it was done in the 1950s and 1960s rapidly lead to the development of DDT-resistant mosquito strains that could still transmit and host the malaria virus.

Also, there is no international ban on DDT use, just in some western countries, like the US, where malaria was largely eradicated. In African countries, as I noted in my review, there is continued DDT use, and in many cases it is done in a sustainable fashion that should limit the spread of DDT-resistant mosquitoes.

I’ve updated the review itself, but I also wanted to post here that I’ve rescinded one of the few kudos I offered to Bethell. He witheld an extremely imprtant piece of scientific information and painted a grossly exaggerated picture of the negative influence of DDT spraying.

I’m sorry to say that I fell for it completely, despite my skepticism about nearly everything else in Bethell’s book. This does demonstrate the dangers of books like Bethell’s very well. Though I’m not an expert in the field, I have somewhat extensive scientific training and I read widely, yet I still believed his completely one-sided claims. Again, I repeat my trash-heap recommendation for this book, but with a bit more vigor this time.