Rigging For Effect: Science and Politics

"[T]est results with laboratory mice show a direct cause-and-effect link between exposure to fine particle air pollution and the development of atherosclerosis...[The study] may explain why people who live in highly polluted areas have a higher risk of heart disease." NIH Study on Air Pollution and Health

The study caused a minor media sensation, with both journalists and health experts claiming the study provides strong evidence that PM2.5 is causing serious harm to human beings...there's much less here than meets the eye. The mice used in the study were genetically engineered in ways that make them unrepresentative of even real-world mice, much less of humans. The mice were designed to lack the gene for apolipoprotein E (ApoE), a key substance for fat and cholesterol metabolism. As a result, these ApoE "knockout" mice have blood cholesterol levels 5 to 6 times greater than normal mice when fed regular rat chow....Of Mice and Men, Joel Schwartz, TCSDaily.Com, 4/18/2006

How strange science becomes when desired objectives become imbedded in tests so that tests "prove" expected results. Imagine reporting injury statistics for a given car model, but only including injuries from accidents where the airbags had failed or where seatbelts hadn't been worn. Rigging for effect, in fact, violates a maxim of science, that results can't be decided in advance, especially to suit an ideological bent. There was one place where this didn't apply in recent historical memory, Stalin's Soviet Union, where genetics were expected to prove political objectives. What's going on? Or has it been going on for a long time?

Luther