Bob Novak Did Not Take Science in College

Hurlbut is back again. The science is bad. The ability to 'prove' to a prolifer's complete satisfaction that a disabled embryo is truly disabled is non-existent (they do not believe that now about cloned human embryos or genetically defective embryos that can be identified today through PGD as incapable of development). But, still this sort of pseudoscience is receiving attention. Stranger still, note McCugh's absolutely bizarre argument against Hurlburt:

The only clear criticism on the council came from Dr. Paul McHugh, psychiatry department chairman at Johns Hopkins University. He warned that Hurlbut could be making a "hybrid which would be super-human in some kind of way." Hurlbut responded: "You create an entity that never rises to the level of what can properly be called a living being." McHugh suggested Hurlbut was making "a doomed hybrid" that would not be permitted to become a human being. "Not doomed," responded Hurlbut, "Only doomed if it's alive first."

This whole discussion is straight out of a the Salem witch trials. - Arthur Caplan

The Ever-Increasing Misuse of Science UPDATED

Chris Mooney's great piece on the role of pseudoscience ideology in the discussion of scientific problems is just out in Columbia Journalism Review. Mooney highlights several particularly eggregious cases in which "moral seriousness" (the new Bush/Kass pseudonym for "neocon-friendliness") trumps rigorous science, e.g. the abortion/breast cancer link. Simultaneously, Art Caplan saw this piece in New York Review of Books on the same book that Mooney is discussing. NYRB also discussed the Union of Concerned Scientists' own manuscript on the same phenomenon.