Carl Zimmer has fun with creationists

Human beings have 23 pairs of chromosomes but our closest cousins the chimpanzees have 24 pairs. This was at one time a puzzle because if, as the theory of evolution says, both species share a common ancestor, how could it be that in the relatively short time after the human and chimp lines separated about six million years ago, humans could have lost an entire chromosome, with all the genetic information it contained, and yet survived as a species? [Read more…]

Sherlock in love

When you read classics like Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, A Study in Scarlet, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and The Three Musketeers, I am sure the thought crosses your mind, “These books have great stories, excellent writing, and strong characters but there’s something missing. What they need to be really great are some explosive and graphic sex scenes.” [Read more…]

Betrayed by Breyers

I am extremely conservative in my food tastes, tending to favor a few favorite things and eating them over and over again, rather than experimenting with new items. I am not particularly fond of sweet foods but once in a while I get the desire for them and on those occasions my selection has always been for Breyers cherry vanilla ice cream and Cadbury’s chocolate. [Read more…]

The ‘terrorism expert’ industry

Ken Silverstein has a good article in the June 2012 issue of Harper’s Magazine (p. 58-59, behind a paywall) looking closely at the resume of one Matthew Levitt, one of the many so-called ‘terrorism experts’ who on closer examination do not seem to have the kind of expertise they claim to have. Their main function seems to be to hype the terrorist threat beyond all recognition and it is easy for them to do so because everyone, except the general public, benefits: They get paid to give their opinion as ‘expert witnesses’ in the government’s prosecution of terrorism cases, the media get to write sensationalistic stories, and the government achieves its goal of keeping the population terrified and docile.

In the past decade, the federal government has brought to trial hundreds of alleged terrorists. Some of these cases have been deadly serious and others decidedly dubious, but regardless of the indictment’s plausibility, prosecutors often rely on an “expert witness” to frame and buttress their charges. In their constellation of star witnesses, few have shone brighter than Matthew Levitt, Ph.D., who has testified or submitted written opinions in at least thirteen terrorism-related trials.
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Terrorism experts often have professional, ideological, and financial incentives to side with the government. For his turns as an expert witness, Levitt typically bills the government $200 an hour. Not coincidentally, his role also dovetails neatly with the policy objectives of his employer, the Washington Institute, which was founded by the powerful pro-Israel lobby AIPAC. These gigs are, of course, self-reinforcing, each one serving to further legitimate Levitt as an expert. Less well served by this arrangement are defendants, whose cases can be won or lost on the basis of witness testimony that is all the more convincing when the government withholds so much of the hard evidence from the jury.

And so it goes.