30699: Kondrat (reply) Durban and others re violence in Haiti and the Lancet Study (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

Peter Kondrat kondr8@gmail.com writes:

Lance,

You may have an opinion about violence in Haiti . . . about the Latortue
government . . .  and about those who refuse to demonize your little
bogeyman, Titid . . . but science does indeed trump opinion in the 21st
Century. We've had our nuts recently telling us that global warming is a
fairy tale, that the Holocaust never happened. If you want to challenge a
scientific study in a respected medical journal, you have to come up with
something a little more solid than tired anecdote, speculation, imputed
motives and innuendo to be seen as credible. Even (or especially) on
Corbett.

You hate the politics of one of the people who authored the study. Big deal.
Do you actually think that you can challenge a scientific study by calling
it a "scientific study" instead of a scientific study? If your denunciation
of this scientific study is to carry any weight, you have to make a case
that the author's politics tainted the science. You haven't come close to
doing that. Every scientist (every person) has a set of political beliefs,
even if those beliefs can be labeled "apolitical." Einstein was a pacifist:
would you question his theories simply because you are not a pacifist? What
about Descartes: do you challenge his mathematical conclusions because you
can't stomach his proof of the existence of God? Did Werner Von Braun's
rockets suddenly obey different laws of physics when he quit working for the
Nazis and started working for the Yanks? What else do you dispute as
scientifically or mathematically suspect: global warming? the population of
the US? the formula for finding the area of a circle?

We are still waiting for some substantial critique by you of the Lancet
study of violence in Haiti after the 2003 coop . . . something that carries
some scientific heft, as the study did. Something that has to do with
observable facts outside your head.

Your silly declamations, and sad innuendo just don't cut it.

Best,

Peter Kondrat