Biological weapons or biological research?

After Wuhan, the distinction between research and weapons development, while important, is effectively moot. Operating on the (reliably & repeatedly proven) assumption that most state actors will break virtually any law/norm/good sense to further secure themselves, I am just going to assume Russia's claim the U.S. was developing biological weapons in Ukraine is basically true. 

As Politifact might say, this unproven claim is 100% false!*

*technically possible--anthrax, small pox, super death virus, and maxplaguespreader2000, etc. could theoretically be used as biological weapons in the wrong hands.

Or the "research" can be leaked from a lab by a moron or spy, all while governments point fingers, raise taxes, and invade other countries.

I believe Russia as far as I can throw it, but I wouldn't put it past our government. There is no effective difference between biological research (for very, very dangerous and communicable diseases) and biological weapons development except on paper, they know this, they rely on it, and they exploit it. How do I know? Because if I were a jealous superpower, I would do the same damn thing. It doesn't excuse it. If not Ukraine, then somewhere else, but probably too many somewhere elses including Ukraine.

I'm pessimistic any country will own up to their wrongs or take a hard turn towards benevolence any time soon.

I'm realistic that questionable, potentially dangerous, and probably dubious "research" is taking place all over the world.

But I'm optimistic we will (if slowly) change things for the better. 

[Postscript: I get that we need research on deadly viruses, if we want to have a chance to understand and protect ourselves against them. I don't think that means we need 1000s of labs across the world operating with alarmingly low levels of transparency and security.]

Farewell PopSci

The Popular Science website/webzine whatever decided that the solution to bad speech is more speech. Just kidding, they're stomping down dissent because they don't like it.

What do you say when you ban something you don't like? You say it's for the greater good, especially since that bad thing is poisoning the water supply!

Comments can be bad for science. That's why, here at PopularScience.com, we're shutting them off. . . .

Another, similarly designed study found that even just firmly worded (but not uncivil) disagreements between commenters impacted readers' perception of science.

If you carry out those results to their logical end--commenters shape public opinion; public opinion shapes public policy; public policy shapes how and whether and what research gets funded--you start to see why we feel compelled to hit the "off" switch.

A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics. Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. [emphasis mine]

What the hell is a "scientifically validated topic"? I was under the impression a topic was a subject or range of similar subjects up for discussion or observation--basically everything under the sun, including the sun. I wonder if they meant to say scientifically validated hypotheses or better yet, popular areas of research? Popular in the sense that it's an easy pretense to suckle Uncle Sam's tit.

If you guys are having a difficult time finding some tax-and-spend Democrats to throw some money your way on the Holy Grail of celebrated lefty causes, then you're doing something horribly wrong. And it aint the goddamned comments on your amateurish articles.

It's not like we have reason to be skeptical of scientific studies.

I used to visit PopSci on a somewhat regular basis. The comments were occasionally childish, but often informative. I think the real problem was that a significant portion of their articles were poorly written, like they were straight from the mouth of a troubled adolescent communist with daddy issues. One of their regular contributors felt the need to continually blame Republicans for what happened to be wrong in the world that day. That guy always got raped in the comment sections, and rightly so.

I could say something about heat and a kitchen, but no. They have every right to piss on their commenters. I was not a commenter there, and now I'm not a reader. 

Via Ace.