I previously posted on controversial remarks by UT biologist Eric Pianka regarding the advisability of a global pandemic that could kill up to 90% of the human species. Relying on an article written by respected amateur scientist and writer Forest M. Mims III, based on his notes of the public address, I accepted Mims’s report that Pianka had openly advocated the deliberate release of Ebola virus for the purpose of accomplishing this mass killing, on grounds that it was necessary to drastically reduce the human population to ensure the ecological stability of the planet. There are a few problems with this scenario, however.

First, Mims appears to be the only witness who believes that is what Pianka was saying that day. Pianka himself denies it, and others present give a different version of his message. Second, Mims’s article has been picked up by the right-wing blogosphere, with predictable results: Pianka has received death threats against himself and his family; many members of the Texas Academy of Science who had nothing whatsoever to do with Pianka or his beliefs have received illiterate, but angry and harrassing, messages, in one case filled with misspellings and all-caps references to the Nazis and, for some reason, the movie Soylent Green; there have been calls for disciplinary action by the university (which to its credit is standing firmly on academic freedom, with the exception of a few board members); and right-wing ideologue and “Intelligent Design” guru William Dembski has reported Pianka to the Department of Homeland Security as a terrorist. The Director of Mims’s parent organization, the Society for Amateur Scientists, has also published an inane and scientifically garbled essay claiming psychological insights into Pianka’s mental health, based on his reading of a second-hand paraphrasal of Pianka’s lecture (”I can only conclude that years ago Eric Pianka must have lost touch with his essential humanity, that is, a strong emotional need for his own kind. Now, perhaps driven by that terrible depression that can occur in old men, he seems to have lost touch with reality. I offer this under the touchstone of Ockham’s razor: I think that depression provides the least remarkable explanation for Pianka’s mental descent. . . . [D]epression can be a side effect of aging, especially in men. Moreover, men often express their depression by becoming angry at the world . . . elderly depressed men often become fixated on death. . . . If this explanation is the right one, then he needs to be treated by a psychopharmacologist with expertise in depression. Until he does receive the necessary care, we must think of him as a person in pain . . .”).

In other words, an ordinary display of scholarly debate from the right wing.

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I previously blogged on the question “how much freedom of inquiry is too much?“, specifically regarding controversial or outrageous policy proposals by respected scholars. Dr. Autumn Fiester of the UPenn Center for Bioethics approaches the same question from the perspective of outrageous or frivolous research. She particularly notes the development of a genetically-engineered pig clone containing an enzyme that converts omega-6 fatty acid to the more healthy omega-3, arguing that this is a pure waste of money:

First: the omega-3 pig represents the worst type of “research waste:” precious scientific resources of time, mental energy, and money that could be used to tackle serious human and environmental threats are being devoted to frivolous causes. The list of devastating problems begging for a scientific solution include: chronic, genetic, and infectious diseases, famine, food and water safety, global warming, the destruction of ecosystems – the list goes on and on…

Second: the one problem we don’t have is a shortage of omega-3. Not only is it found naturally in readily available foods like walnuts and fish, but it can be found in supplements and nutritionally supplemented foods like Smart Balance Peanut Butter. We certainly do have a very serious problem of obesity and nutrition in this country, but neither are problems science needs to solve. We are fat because we eat too much, and we are unhealthy because we choose to eat the wrong foods. . . . Offering us genetically modified pork to provide us with a plentiful nutrient is an obvious attempt to drum up a need that justifies the science.

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