March 23, 2004
From the desk of Jane Galt:Purge the PIRGs
A little while back, I had some rather harsh words for Ralph Nader, and especially the PIRG groups he spawned. More on the "science" and "research" those groups produce from Brooklyn College geology professor David Seidemann.
Posted by Jane Galt at March 23, 2004 5:48 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links25 years (and more) ago, I refused to donate to his little scams. I didn't know about the fraudulent "research" but I could see the political agenda.
And I just object on general principles to being forced to contribute to a group that apparently needs to raise money in such a devious fashion.
NYPIRG is certainly not unique. I had long experience with Ohio PIRG. I once threatened to call the police to have them removed from my property, because they wouldn't take "no" for an answer to their request for a petition signature and a contribution.
PIRG's research is useless and misleading (I could see that from my days as an environmental engineer), but someone working for ACSH accusing PIRG of producing misleading hack work is, well, the cauldron calling attention to the open-flame water boiler's low albedo.
(Admittedly, I'd have to spend a couple of minutes on databases finding out where an ACSH report made a distortion, whereas PIRG's report's usually don't pass the laugh test).
I interviewed for a PIRG fellowship when I was graduating from college, and as part of the process we had to stand on a street corner and solicit signatures to "save the trees." I went through my spiel for one woman who actually stopped to listen, and she asked me a number of very sharp questions that I had no answers to (her husband worked for the logging industry.) I went back to the PIRG fellow who was supervising and asked her how they could send us out there without giving us any information about the issue. She looked at me blankly, obviously assuming that "saving the trees" was a worthy enough cause to warrant not having any actual research. PIRG has little room for intellectual honesty and a lot of room for self-righteousness, which is unfortunate for the thousands of undergraduates who pay fees to the group without even realizing it through their university tuition schemes.
When in doubt go to the big guns. A geology professor from Brooklyn College. Excellent work on unearthing bogus research. The erosion of todays scientific morals is one of the largest problems in science today. Groups like petroleum advocacy groups spend millions of dollars funding junk climate science. Perhaps he can do an expose on that next. Or maybe something about science done on behalf of major pharmaceutical manufacturers. NYPIRG is small potatoes compared to those guys. If the focus is on cleaning up science then I say "Follow the money!" Science has been done since it's inception by people with strong opinions, it's those that sell it out for filthy lucre that deserve to be exposed.
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