Meeting Doctor Doom
Forrest M. Mims IIICitizen Scientist
There is always something special about science meetings. The 109th meeting of the Texas Academy of Science at Lamar University in Beaumont on 3-5 March 2006 was especially exciting for me, because a student and his professor presented the results of a DNA study I suggested to them last year. How fulfilling to see the baldcypress ( Taxodium distichum ) leaves we collected last summer and my tree ring photographs transformed into a first class scientific presentation that's nearly ready to submit to a scientific journal (Brian Iken and Dr. Deanna McCullough, "Bald Cypress of the Texas Hill Country: Taxonomically Unique?" 109th Meeting of the Texas Academy of Science Program and Abstracts, Poster P59, p. 84, 2006).
But there was a gravely disturbing side to that otherwise scientifically significant meeting, for I watched in amazement as a few hundred members of the Texas Academy of Science rose to their feet and gave a standing ovation to a speech that enthusiastically advocated the elimination of 90 percent of Earth's population by airborne Ebola. The speech was given by Dr. Eric R. Pianka (Fig. 1), the University of Texas evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert who the Academy named the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist.
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posted by ... @ 8:37 PM
2 Comments:
Mims is the crazy kook.
A number of sources indicate that Forrest Mims has either mis-understood or worse wilfully mis-represented the substance and tenor of the presentation by Dr Pianka, a more factual representation would be that in Dr Painka's opinion the current world population level is unsustainable and that past studies show when a genotype reaches unsustainable levels die-back occurs, either by famine, or by disease. These views are in no way controversial in fact they would appear merely to be an expansion of view previously expressed by Malthus and Ehrlich, what remains controversial is Mims representation of this as some form of advocacy of "biological warfare / terrorism".
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