Most scientific journals are "peer reviewed,'' which is another way of saying that those responsible for the journal ask other scientists to read the papers and make recommendations concerning their publication. The principal reviewers are usually designated as an "editorial board.'' These reviewers often receive a free subscription to the journal, and their names are printed in each issue. If they are well-respected scientists, this is a benefit for the journal as well.

Although this system helps with publication quality, it is recognized to have serious flaws. Advertised as objective, it often favors those who are friends of the reviewers. Advertised as confidential, there have been many instances of reviewers using their positions to delay publication of work while they or their friends plagiarize the papers under review and rush into publication under their own names. Advertised as raising quality, it often suppresses the publication of innovative work that is not a part of current fad or fashion.

There is an unwritten but very strong rule among scientists today to suppress public discussion of most instances of favoritism and outright scientific dishonesty. Tax-based appropriations of private earnings are used to pay a large proportion of scientists. Public discussion of scientific fraud might threaten to close this money spigot, so just a an occasional instance is publicized to give an erroneous impression that big-time tax-financed science is self-policing. The fad and fashion problem has historically been handled in various ways. For example, publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, PNAS, required only sponsorship by an Academy member and two other reviews which the member arranged. Even scientists with very unusual ideas could usually find at least one such sponsor. This has changed. Now, any publication in PNAS with medical significance must pass an anonymous medical board, so innovation is being substantially suppressed.

So-called "peer review'' has also been adopted by the bureaucratic agencies that distribute tax money to scientists. Having confiscated the earnings of ordinary Americans against their will by threat of force, these people try to show how ethical they are by peer review of proposed research before it is funded. With money at stake, the problems endemic to peer review of publications are amplified.

Government funded research sinks, therefore, to the lowest common denominator of review committees of politically correct "scientists'' who seem to have nothing better to do than sit on government committees. Actually, many good scientists also waste their time in this way because reviewing the grant proposals of others is helpful in having one's own grant proposals approved. Favoritism, theft of ideas, and suppression of innovation are widespread in this process.

"AIDS Trials Take on Peer Review'' by Jon Cohen, Science 271, pp 20-21 (1996), illustrates a further problem - composition of the review committees. With billions of dollars annually available from tax funds and the number of published papers approaching 100,000, AIDS may not be a single disease caused by HIV, and little progress may have been made in its pursuit, but it surely is big business in the government welfare system of grant-supported science.

The squabble reported by Cohen relates to selection of the peer review committees. It seems that the committee members have not published as many articles on AIDS as have those being reviewed. Actually, in view of the sorry state of this field, it might be best to disqualify all reviewers who have published an article about AIDS.

A very outstanding colleague of mine once confided that he had almost lost grant support for his entire laboratory by making a strategic mistake. For the first time in his long and distinguished career, he had applied for a grant to do work that he had not already completed. The research turned out to be more difficult than anticipated, so he was unable to report success in time for the next review.

Dishonesty in grant applications is virtually a way of life in science today. Those who are entirely honest about their work are at such a competitive disadvantage that they are often not funded. The current system, therefore, expects scientists to be dishonest half of the time while they are writing grant proposals and then honest the other half of the time while they are conducting research.

Is it any wonder that the scientific literature is swarming with politically correct, intellectually dishonest articles while most good scientists, afraid of endangering their own grants, look the other way?

Peer review as such or under various euphemistic nom de plumes is also extending its tentacles throughout the American educational system and into general society.

In American universities, even in science, there is increasing use of group work and "peer review'' - the grading of one student by another. This has even extended to the ultimate idiocy of students grading the faculty - a very common practice which selects for professors who reduce the quality of their courses to the norms in order to prevent poor student grades from damaging their own careers.

In the public schools for students in grades 1-12, of course, group-think has become more important than reading, writing, and arithmetic. This social engineering to produce students that do not think independently and are easily molded to the political views promulgated by the state and by the political groups controlling the schools is essentially a peer-review process. Sociological peer-think in both grade schools and the universities is excellently described in "The Dirty War'' by Thomas Sowell, Forbes, January 22, 1996 p. 66.

Science, technology, and free enterprise are listed together on the Access to Energy masthead for several reasons - one of which is that they are intrinsically linked in the human mind. Science and technology have advanced almost entirely on the shoulders of individual innovators - many of whom were opposed by their "peers.'' Those individuals, in order to make their contributions, needed freedom -intellectual freedom, economic freedom, and personal freedom.

Peer review, government confiscation of economic and personal freedom, and the education of American youth in politically correct group-think are beginning to have a devastating effect upon our technologically-based civilization. American enviropolitics, loss of world economic and technological superiority, and loss of the individual freedom for which our country was established are the result.

A free man carries his only important "peer'' within himself in his own conscience. He must not be enslaved by external peer review.

Any discussion involving science or technology can quickly become "too complicated for the layman.'' Although some subjects are sufficiently specialized as to require unique study for their understanding, most are not. Usually, the apparent complication arises from vocabulary and conceptual abbreviations that are simple but unfamiliar to the uninitiated. The image of scientists with advanced degrees, high foreheads, and furrowed brows thinking great thoughts that are beyond the ability of most mere mortals is a sham.

It is, however, necessary to the understanding of science as of most other subjects to be able to think - clearly and independently. It is an unwillingness to think that permits most pseudoscience to flourish.

Each day, for example, the front page of The Wall Street Journal displays a graph of a selected economic parameter. Often, this graph is accompanied by a brief statement in a nearby column as to the significance of the latest data point added to the graph.

 

From this column, we might learn something like "yesterday's report of the consumer price index showed an increase of 0.3% from the previous month. This sign of resurgent inflation has dampened the bond market and also caused a drop in stock prices as traders worry that the Fed will raise interest rates.'' But wait - it is immediately obvious from looking at the graph that this index fluctuates in a range of about 0.5% and that last month's number was down by 0.2%. By turning the newspaper sideways and sighting down the curve or by drawing a pencil line through the values to create a rough average, one can see that the 0.3% value is well within the normal fluctuations and no noticeable change in the inflation trend has taken place.

Why then are these apparently mindless single point analyses published alongside the graphs? As a regular reader of this page, I have turned it sideways and visually averaged such graphs literally thousands of times to escape the errors of these written analyses. Are the writers of the front page of The Wall Street Journal addicted to misanalysis in which they blame or credit market movements on whatever number is at hand? Perhaps, but is is far more likely that significant numbers of market participants are mindlessly led to make economic decisions on the basis of insignificant fluctuations.

Everyone should read the first 100 pages of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay, first published in 1841. There is a 1980 edition published by Bonanza Books in New York. Mackay's accounts of the Mississippi Scheme, the South-Sea Bubble, and the Tulipomania are merely extreme examples of ordinary human behavior. This mindless behavior is even quantitatively predictable. Excellent procedures for market trading have been based upon it. A depressingly large percentage of people are controlled by such emotions as greed and fear to an extent that they are swayed only by "facts'' that conform to their desired view. As Adlai Stevenson observed, "Decisions are made in the viscera and ratified by the mind.'' Even obviously flawed "facts'' are sufficient for these people.

"A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper'' by J. A. Paulos in the Skeptical Inquirer, January/February 1996, as quoted in The New American, January 22, 1996, available from 770 Westhill Blvd., Ap-pleton, WI 54914, cites the value of normal oral human physiological temperature, which is 37° Centigrade. Human temperature fluctuates from person to person and as a function of time of day and other factors. Since most values lie between 36.5° C and 37.5° C, the value 37° C - given to only two significant figures - is correctly stated. If the value were given as "37.0° C,'' however, this would be incorrect unless it was accompanied by an analysis of errors stating the experimentally observed variations in the values.

Most people know this value as 98.6° Fahrenheit, which contains three significant figures and is actually the exact conversion of 37.0° C.

Therefore, 98.6° F is incorrectly stated. Most people have enough experience with taking temperatures that they realize that 98.6° F is only an average value - until symptoms of disease are present. Then, any deviation above 98.6° F is usually considered significant - because the subject then has a greater personal interest in the higher value..

We also are very familiar with the fact that temperature depends upon the location of the thermometer - oral, rectal, or under arm in the example above. At the local hardware store, we can buy dual thermometers with elements for outside temperature and inside temperature. Virtually all adults have experience with thermometers and with the fact that temperatures fluctuate within normal ranges and vary with the location of the thermometer.

There is, however, a group of people with personal interests in promoting two peculiar popular delusions about temperature - 1. They claim that the current temperature of the earth is the best of all possible temperatures. 2. They claim that carbon dioxide from the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas is causing that perfect temperature to change, so we should reduce this burning.

Since this is supposed to be very scientific, we probably shouldn't mention that these are generally the same people who promoted the idea in the 1970s and 1980s that the world would soon run out of oil and natural gas, so we should reduce burning. Moreover, these are largely people who promote population reduction, world government, and the expenditure of huge sums of tax money on enterprises from which they personally benefit. All three of these interests are served by schemes to forcibly control world output of carbon dioxide.

Central to this issue, of course, are thermometers. We have already had a large increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. What has been the effect on temperature? Figures 1 and 2 show some of the data. Figure 1 is reproduced from "1995 Captures Record as Warmest Year Yet'' by R. Monastersky, Science News, 149 p 23 (1996). Figure 2 is from World Climate Report 1, No. 1 p4, as cited with other similar figures in Access to Energy 23-3, November 1995.

Figure 1, in various incarnations, has been publicized extensively throughout American newspapers and magazines by the global warming industry. Several things about this figure are, however, rarely mentioned. 1. The temperature rise between about 1910 and 1940 restored global temperatures to their more usual norm from an unusually cold period known as the "Little Ice Age.'' Moreover, this rise preceded most of the rise in carbon dioxide and therefore could not have been caused by that rise. 2. The period from 1940 to 1980 was one of rapid rise in carbon dioxide, but no temperature increase occurred. 3. The rise between 1980 and the present is probably an artifact of the location of the thermometers - at surface sites throughout the world.

Human activity is known to increase temperatures at many surface sites. Also, the rise between 1980 and 1995 is not uniform - temperatures in eastern North America, southern Europe, and northern Africa did not rise. This nonuniformity might be just an artifact of weather variability except for Figure 2, which shows the global temperature average for the Northern Hemisphere up to an altitude of about 4 miles during the same period - as recorded from satellite measurements and plotted as open circles - with no rise in temperature. The upper line in Figure 2 plotted as closed circles is the predicted temperatures from global climate models - the same models that global warming gurus claim have been verified by Figure 1. Southern Hemisphere satellite values show essentially the same pattern. See Access to Energy 23-3.

The rise in carbon dioxide is expected to cause a rise in temperature. The question is, "how much rise?'' Based on the data so far collected, the answer to that question is apparently "an insignificant rise.''

In the absence of cooperative thermometers, the global warmers have been looking for other indicators - such as increased rainfall caused by increased evaporation of water caused by higher temperatures. World Climate Report 1, no. 3, p 1, available from P. O. Box 455, Ivy, VA 22945, reports that Vice President Gore, in his "Earth Day'' speech, said, "Torrential rains have increased in the summer during agricultural growing seasons.'' Figure 3 shows the data on which Gore based his remarks. Karl, T. R., Knight, R. W., and Plum-mer, N., Nature, 337, pp 217-220 (1995), found a 2% increase over the last 80 years in the amount of precipitation falling during rainstorms of two inches or more in 24 hours (as plotted in Figure 3). About 10% of the world's rain falls in these rainstorms. Described another way, there was one more such day of 2-inch rainfall on average in each 730 days.

This sort of finding is already questionable because there are many ways to look at rainfall data. Did they try one-inch days, three-inch days, five-inch weeks, or other subdivisions? It is likely that numerous subdivisions were tried and the "best'' one published. Was the statistical significance of the result corrected for these other tries?

Leaving this aside, however, notice that most of this increase occurred before 1940 - again before most of the carbon dioxide release.

Figure 4, however, provides further embarrassment for Gore's rain dance. It is one of five similar figures (the others show essentially the same result for different geographical regions) in "Evaporation Losing Its Strength'' by Peterson, T. C., Golubev, V. S. and Groisman, P. Y., Nature 377, pp 687-688 (1995). Reported are data from 936 evaporation-pan stations where rate of water evaporation is measured. Evaporation rate is, of course, dependent upon many factors besides temperature, but the "torrential rains'' are supposed to have resulted from increased evaporation. As the figure shows, evaporation rates have actually fluctuated downward during the period in question.

Maybe these people should go back into the global cooling business (in which many of them were found during previous decades). The satellite data shows a slight cooling and the rest of the data, probably just from ordinary fluctuations, looks better for them there, too.

In all of this reactive comment, however, we should also not lose track of the basic premises of the global warmers - now a new popular delusion of our time. The first premise is that the current temperature of the earth is perfect, and that any deviation is undesirable. The second, regarding the alleged culprit, carbon dioxide, is that increased CO 2 can only do harm. It can never do good.

Actually, a large part of the world's population lives in regions that are colder than desirable. A little more warmth and rain would probably be welcomed in many places. Although it does not look as if CO 2 from coal, oil, and natural gas is going to provide much more of either, the greenhouse effect from increased CO2 should eventually be detectable. Increased atmospheric CO2 is, however, already providing a lot more plants and animals - something the enviros claim to want.

We have already written extensively about the remarkable work of Sherwood Idso and his colleagues and many other scientists on increased growth of plants with increases of carbon dioxide. See, for example, Access to Energy 21-1, 21-3 and 21-4. Also, read "CO2 and the Biosphere: The Incredible Legacy of the Industrial Revolution'' by Sherwood Idso (1995), available from Department of Soil, Water, & Climate, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108.

Another recent paper, "Carbon Dioxide Uptake by an Undisturbed Tropical Rain Forest in Southwest Amazonia, 1992 to 1993'' by J. Grace, et al, Science 270, pp 778-780 (1995), reports that a mature rain forest was found to be absorbing 8.5 (plus or minus 2.0) moles per square meter per year of additional CO2. From this we calculate (8.5)(44)(4.05)(10³)/(454) = 3,334 or, rounding appropriately, 3,300 pounds per acre of CO2. This CO2 is being synthesized into between one and two tons of new plants and animals per acre per year in the Amazon rain forests. In the United States, as we calculated earlier (see references above) from U. S. Forest statistics, the increase in CO2 is producing 600 pounds per person per year of additional standing timber for every man, woman, and child Will you read about these benefits in the press or hear about them from the enviro-wonders supported by the multibillion dollar "environmentalist'' industry? No. All we hear from them is word about the ongoing, tax-financed ($2 billion per year) witch hunt for evidence of catastrophic global warming. Witch hunts are also covered in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (pp 462-564).

"Decline of the West'' in Nuclear Issues 17. p3, December 1995, available from APG, 8 Ruvigny Mansions, Embankment, Putney, London SW15 1LE, reports that Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia. and Thailand are building and/or planning new nuclear power installations.

It is expected that the number of nuclear plants in Asia will double from the current 79 to about 150 during the next 15 years. Japan, Ko-rea, and Taiwan respectively already generate 27%, 35%, and 33% of their electric power from nuclear plants. (See Access to Energy 23-3. p 2.) The United States has 109 nuclear power plants generating 22% of its electricity, but has only one new plant under construction.

The Asian countries are also developing a broad infrastructure of uranium enrichment, fuel fabrication, and reprocessing facilities, and India and Japan have fast reactor development programs.

Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, India, and Pakistan, respectively, have 50, 10, 3, 6, 9, and 1 nuclear plants in operation and 30, 13, 12, 2, 13, and 1 nuclear plants planned or under construction.

Uranium Information Centre Newsletter No. 6, November/Decem-ber 1995, available from GPO Box 1649N, Melbourne 3001, Austra-lia, reports that Australia has about 40% of the western world's low-cost uranium reserves (recoverable at less than $80 per kilogram).

As this decline continues and we become the non-producers, we are definitely going to need a "World Government'' to tax Asia for a welfare program for the United States. Asia will, no doubt, cooperate.

The science of wound ballistics is a quantitative and well-devel oped discipline. "Wound Ballistics and Soft-Tissue Wound Treatment'' by Martin L. Fackler in Techniques in Orthopaedics 10, pp 163-170 (1995), and "Differences in the Wounding Behavior of the Two Bullets that Struck President Kennedy; An Experimental Study'' by John K. Lattimer, et al in Wound Ballistics Review 2, pp 13-37 (1995), available from the International Wound Ballistics Association, P. O. Box 701, El Segundo, CA 90245, are good illustrations of this.

The Fackler article addresses the widely believed myth that bullet velocity determines tissue damage. He shows that tissue damage is primarily a function of projectile design, which determines the tendency of the bullet to yaw or disintegrate.

The Lattimer article presents a very extensive array of experimental evidence in support of the position that President Kennedy and Governor Connally were struck solely by two bullets fired by Oswald. Anyone who holds a different view owes it to himself to read this excellent and detailed report of experimental research.

For those interested in minimizing the probability that they or their loved ones will ever suffer injuries of interest to Drs. Fackler, Lattimer, and their colleagues, there is one premier American authority - Jeff Cooper. If there were a Nobel Prize for practical advice and training for personal defense, Jeff Cooper would have received two or three.

Cooper writes like a modern Mark Twain - with, however, titanium ink and knowledge based on a lifetime of practical and teaching experience. A complete listing of his books and articles should be available from P. O. Box 401, Paulden, AZ 86334. Some can be obtained from ordinary commercial sources.

"Baseball Teams Beaten by Jet Lag'' by L. D. Recht, R. A. Lew, and W. J. Schwartz, Nature 377, p 583 (1995), reports a statistically significant (P = 0.006) effect of jet lag on baseball players who have traveled by air across three time zones within the previous three days.

After separating jet lag effects from other parameters such as home field advantage, they found that jet lag reduces the number of runs scored per game by 1.24 (plus or minus 0.45) runs if the travel across time zones has been eastward. Westward travel has no effect.

The authors point out that, although this factor affects only 5% of games played, division titles in 1991 and 1993 in the National League West were lost by western teams to eastern teams by only one game.

Baseball is only a game, but the greater message to Westerners is clear. If the issue is important, have the Easterners come to you.

In the politically supercharged atmosphere that surrounds this particular controversy and with key data in the hands of politically controlled government agencies, the causes of the increased incidence of debilitating diseases among participants in the Gulf War may never be reliably known. Soldiers in foreign wars have often found that their immersion in an unfamiliar biological environment has led to many casualties - sometimes more than those inflicted by their opponents. The current availability of modern chemical and biological agents is a further complication. Regardless of hypothetical causes, empirical findings on the cure of these soldiers are of great importance.

"Doxycycline Treatment and Desert Storm'' by G. L. Nicolson and N. L. Nicolson, J. Am. Med. Assoc. 273, pp 618-619 (1995), and "Progress on Persian Gulf War Illnesses - Reality and Hypothesis'' by G. L. Nicolson et al, Int. J. Occupational Medicine and Toxicology 4, pp 1-6 (1995), report an antibiotic treatment successful in treating 55% of the Gulf War Syndrome cases on which it has been tried.

Professor G. L. Nicolson is in the Department of Tumor Biology, University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 77030. Telephone (713) 792-7481.

• "Get a Whiff of This!'' by James Bovard in The Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, December 27, 1995, p 10 discusses the new en-viromania, "Multiple Chemical Sensitivity'' or MCS. One Julia Ken-dall, coordinator of the "Chemical Injury Litigation Project,'' in San Francisco is quoted as saying, "No one should be wearing perfume to theaters. Why should we have brain damage because people are wearing toxic chemicals? ..... Basically, we want to destroy the fragrance industry.'' The Human Ecology Action League has announced, "Perfume is going to be the tobacco smoke of tomorrow.''
  
  Fueled by the Americans with Disabilities Act under which they are bringing lawsuits and pandered to by HUD which is giving them tax money, MCS activists are on a roll. Apparently, if these people can smell it, they file suit - and some of them have very sensitive noses.
  
  
• "New Limits to Scientific Immigration'' by J. Kaiser, Science 271, p 281 (1996), reports that Senator Alan Simpson has sponsored a bill that would specifically limit the immigration into the United States of skilled workers and require special fees to be paid by employers of such workers. The goal is to keep people with scientific and technical skills out of the country. Perhaps you thought that these nuts were only only trying to keep out inexpensive farm laborers or welfare cases?
  
  
• Henry Gee, "The Moon's a Balloon,'' Nature 378, p103 (1995), uses the occasion of a review of two books about Apollo 13 to ridicule the manned space program. For a full page in Nature, Gee derides the greatest engineering accomplishment in human history. Gee says he was eight years old in 1970 - he has apparently regressed since.

• Why Government Doesn't Work by Harry Browne (1995), St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. This is a well-written book clearly explaining the fundamental reasons for most government failures. An extra feature is that it does so without limiting its audience by confusing the issues with particular political prejudices.
  
  
• "The Truth is Never Out of Date'' by Lynne V. Cheney, Reader's Digest, January 1996, pp 135-138. Beginning with an example of a math teacher who opposes practice addition of a grocery bill because it teaches students "that paying for food is natural,'' this article examines the current effects of moral relativism.
  
  
• The Vision of the Anointed by Thomas Sowell as reviewed in Destiny Magazine, January 1996 p 30, available from P.O. Box 1000, Selma, OR 97538. This book is a devastating critique of elitists who are above the facts that constrain mere mortals.
  
  
• "Hubble's Deep View of the Universe'' by R. Cowen, Science News 149, January 20, 1996, p 36. They left the Hubble Space Telescope aimed at one small bit of sky for 10 consecutive days and then combined the 276 exposures. The image contains 1,500 galaxies. Even the small photographic print displayed in this article is breathtaking.
  
  
• "Subtle Impact'' by Ed Carson, Reason, February 1996, p 14, reports that, although tests show that airbags reduce fatalities in front-end collisions by 24%, drivers actually are more likely to be killed with air bags than without them. See "Risk'' in Access to Energy 22-11, p 1 for further discussion of how safety devices lead to more recklessness.
  
  
• Has Radiation Protection Become a Health Hazard? by G. Wilander, published by The Swedish Nuclear Training and Safety Center, P. O. Box 1039, S-611 29 Nykoping, Sweden as reviewed by S. Rippon, Nuclear News, November 1995, p. 58.