Will the BD nut-cases make bombs and blow themselves up on Monsanto? I seriously doubt it, but culturing a society of acceptance of flim-flam men and fairy-tales, in my humble opinion, creates more harm than the temporary pain for the insular ego of telling someone they are wrong when they are blatantly actually wrong.

Anyone seen the movie Idiocracy? It’s worth it.

No doubt burying a cow’s horn full of Bull fertilizer has some modest effect, but not likley more than the fertilizer and calcium from the horn would have if poured from bags of triple 15 and calcium nitrate.

But the power of belief is a strong one, and keeps people engaged in behaviours which may of themself be positive.

Just wonderfull.
Stu

When we first started Smith-Madrone on 1971 we had to get a logging permit to re-claim the old vineyard and part of that permit required us to remove all large woody debris from the streams and cut down all dead snags. Removing the large woody debris was for stream flow and to prevent flooding and removing the snags was for fire prevention.

Thirty years later we did another small logging job and the environmental rules changed 180 degrees. Because large woody debris offered shelter to fish during large water events we were prohibited from removing them. Because dead snags were now viewed as biodiversity we were prohibited from cutting them down.

When I was a member of the Napa River Watershed Task Force I asked one of fisheries scientists if large woody debris wouldn’t increase sedimentation and hence a reduction in the spawning redds. He answered that sedimentation was old news and that large woody debris was more important.

I suspect that in another 30 years they’ll have another view, which will hopefully be closer to the truth.
Thanks,
Stu

Cheers,
Doug

I also recall a (two part?) series on PBS that followed grad students in a biology lab at Columbia University. Problem is that the scientific process is not particularly telegenic, particularly if you want to show it in any depth.

I think there is a perception problem regarding what the scientific method is. Even for those of us trained in a science. Clean, shiny lab, white coat, one variable, statistical analysis, one question answered. But it is indeed messy. Over the long-haul, self-correcting, even when you throw in fraud. Consider that post-menopausal hormone replacement therapy was shown by scientific studies to be healthy and life-enhancing. Until other scientific studies showed that it increased the incidence and mortality of breast cancer. Hence, the decline in use of hormone replacement therapy and a subsequent drop-off in female breast cancer rates. It is hard to accept the about-faces when science corrects itself. But that is how knowledge evolves. Now, if only we can find a way to guarantee that the placebo effect will always work if you know you are getting the placebo.

Thanks Stuart and all contributors to an enlivening dialogue.