[Taxacom] Zebra mussels (was "Merchants...")

[Robin Leech]

Hi one and all,
I dug back into the book, and it was S. Fred Singer who
said, "a billion dollar solution to a million dollar problem."
This is in regard to the acid rain problem.
The problem, Ken and others, is that the US Govt and
large companies continue to believe and fund them.  They
do such a good job of obfuscating everything!
They are pseudo-scientists, I agree, but in the process of
selling their doubts, they have often ruined the lives and
reputations of very competent scientists.
Robin

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kenneth Kinman" <kennethkinman at webtv.net>
To: <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Sent: Friday, April 22, 2011 12:27 PM
Subject: [Taxacom] Zebra mussels (was "Merchants...")


Hi Cristian,
       Yes, pseudo-scientists is a good word for what some of these
merchants became, even if they were good scientists earlier in their
careers.  Science is the gathering and dissemination of knowledge, so
there is nothing scientific about spreading misinformation (even if it
disguised as "doubt" about tobacco or whatever).
       As for the zebra mussels, they reached Kansas about 10 years ago,
and they've even spread west and become established in the Pueblo
Reservoir (Colorado).  Insidious little devils, and a real headache for
cities who get their water from reservoirs and other surface waters.
       ----------Ken

-------------------------------------------------------------
Cristian Altaba wrote:

Yes, merchants of "doubt" (or plain lies) are often pseudo-scientists.
Herewith two examples I know too well:

Massive dredgings in Majorca on pristine sedimentary bottoms (something
most unusual in the Mediterranean) were evaluated as benign, and with a
recovery period of "2 to 5 years" by someone whose initials are CD (no
joke) --a now famous marine biologist at CSIC (the Spanish research
council). In exchange for writing such no-harm reports, he got a lot
of money from an infamous politician now in big trouble (and no lawyer
in sight willing to help him). The "error" in the time scale is at
least three or four orders of magnitude. In order to prove the
sediments were perfect as beach sand, a sample was sieved, washed,
treated with oxygen peroxide, then placed in the oven... and finally
observed under the scope --no wonder it had a uniform grain and was all
white. This kind of stuff is not incompetence. This same person has said
that karst collapses are due to too much water extraction (he was
strongly corrected by the local geologists' association), and also that
he had find the "oldest living organism" in a seagrass prairie that
curiously enough is not one clone, but harbors instead the highest
genetic diversity so far reported for the species. By the way, a
famous Dutch university has just given this fellow the honoris causa
recognition. Obviously there are times and places where telling lies and
getting money for it are a way to promotion.

A similar case, but in freshwaters, is provided by the dramatic impact
of zebra mussels in Spain. I started monitoring the invasion from the
onset, with a shoestring budget. A plan involving 10 universities and
many government agencies was devised to eradicate the exotic. But, big
money was on the other side... so nothing was done, and now this little
mollusk has an economic impact beyond what any politician in sight has
the shame to acknowledge in public. Part of he problem is that from
early on we have witnessed the amazing efforts by IRTA (the Catalan
agricultural research agency) to disprove any relationship between zebra
mussels and anything happening in Spanish rivers. I guess this sounds
pure crap to any North American freshwater biologist. Alas, the more
IRTA says nothing is happening, more money they get!

By the way, Mr CD is now head of an expedition devoted to crunch DNA
around the world, with no understanding of taxonomy. Guess why? Also,
IRTA-based "merchants of doubt" are getting into DNA sequencing. Why?

Best,

Cristian
Cristian R. Altaba
DG Biodiversitat
Conselleria de Medi Ambient
Govern de les Illes Balears




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