What's New Friday April 18, 2008

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday   18 Apr 08   Washington, DC

1.  SCIENCE DEBATE 2008: SOME DAYS GET REALLY LONG. 
The "Compassion Forum" on Sunday night at Messiah College was not exactly 
the debate scientists had hoped for.  It wasn’t a debate at all; Hillary 
Clinton and Barack Obama were interviewed separately.  Jon Meacham of 
Newsweek asked Senator Clinton straight out, "do you personally believe 
life begins at conception?"  "I believe the potential for life begins at 
conception," she began.  Would she now try to explain to this Christian-
conservative audience why a single cell is not just a very small person?  
Not a chance; she wandered off into a discussion of her Methodist roots.  
It would be up to Senator Obama.  Campbell Brown of CNN, Meacham’s co-
host, asked Obama what he would say to one of his daughters if she asked 
him if God really created the universe in six days.  Glory!  It was the 
opening scientists pray for, a chance for an audacious young man to tell 
the story of creation to the entire nation.  "No dear, the story of the 
beginning of the universe is far grander than that.  It is 14 billion 
years old and still changing.  Science has learned much, but there is far 
more still to be learned . . ."   Of course he did not say that.  He 
said, "Six days in the bible may not be 24-hour days."  Sigh!  They 
debated again on Wednesday - nothing to report.

2.   GHOST SCIENCE: HOW WIDESPREAD IS THE PRACTICE?
Vioxx was a top selling painkiller until Merck took it off the market in 
2004 after evidence linked it to heart attacks.  Merck reached a $4.85 
billion settlement of thousands of Vioxx lawsuits, but, according to a 
story by Stephanie Saul in Wednesday’s New York Times, documents released 
in those cases reveal a practice of promoting Vioox by recruiting doctors 
to sign drug studies actually ghost written by Merck.  

3.  JOHN A. WHEELER: PERHAPS THE BEST PHYSICS TEACHER. 
John Wheeler, who died Sunday at 96, loved science.  He was much more than 
the man who coined the term "black hole."  There will be many lengthy 
obituaries to this man but I remember him best for his battles with 
parapsychologist J.B. Rhine and for his attempt to have the Parapsychology 
Association expelled from the American Association for the Advancement of 
Science, a fight he lost.   Forced by a lawsuit to issue a public apology 
to Rhine, he told me it was the most difficult thing he had ever done.  We 
are better because he was among us.

4. EDWARD N. LORENZ: THE FATHER OF CHAOS THEORY.
A meteorologist, Lorenz died Wednesday at 90.  He found that seemingly 
insignificant differences in initial conditions can lead to wildly 
divergent outcomes of complex systems far down the road.  At a AAAS 
meeting in 1972, the title of his talk asked "Does the Flap of a 
Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas."  Alas, the 
frequency of storms cannot be reduced by killing butterflies.

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
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