Good ol' Katherine Harris
Jul. 6th, 2005 14:12![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torquillThis caught my eye, mainly because it has to do with plant pathology. It is, however, also a tale of the same sort of corruption that pervades the current White House. Which makes sense, given who Katherine Harris is.
Pressure was put on Florida officials to test "Celestial Water" as a cure for citrus canker
I haven't researched citrus canker specifically, but I remember hearing that it's been a real scourge in Florida over the last four years or so. It's a bacterial disease, and the combination of wet weather (which helps it spread from tree to tree) and hurricanes (which injured the trees, making wounds where disease could enter) has made a serious impact on the citrus orchards. The only treatment for most cankers is to cut off the affected parts, which in many cases in Florida has meant taking out trees entirely. Everyone's looking for some other way, but I don't know of any.
When Katherine Harris, who knows absolutely zip about plant disease, hooks up with a New York Rabbi and a cardiologist to suggest a cure, it makes me angry that scientists have to comply with ignorant superstitious beliefs just because of who she is. Other quacks are brushed off with a quiet "do the research and let us know". Yet this Kabbalist dreck gets tested by the state, because a U.S. Representative is breathing down people's necks.
Gah. I get irritated by politicians messing with climate change data, but I guess when they mess with my profession, it gets personal.
Pressure was put on Florida officials to test "Celestial Water" as a cure for citrus canker
I haven't researched citrus canker specifically, but I remember hearing that it's been a real scourge in Florida over the last four years or so. It's a bacterial disease, and the combination of wet weather (which helps it spread from tree to tree) and hurricanes (which injured the trees, making wounds where disease could enter) has made a serious impact on the citrus orchards. The only treatment for most cankers is to cut off the affected parts, which in many cases in Florida has meant taking out trees entirely. Everyone's looking for some other way, but I don't know of any.
When Katherine Harris, who knows absolutely zip about plant disease, hooks up with a New York Rabbi and a cardiologist to suggest a cure, it makes me angry that scientists have to comply with ignorant superstitious beliefs just because of who she is. Other quacks are brushed off with a quiet "do the research and let us know". Yet this Kabbalist dreck gets tested by the state, because a U.S. Representative is breathing down people's necks.
Gah. I get irritated by politicians messing with climate change data, but I guess when they mess with my profession, it gets personal.
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no subject
Date: 2005-07-06 23:02 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-07 02:28 (UTC)Climate change is happening. It sucks when politicians mess with the science, because that means any progress we can make against it is hampered.
Likewise, plant disease happens... and believe it or not, it might affect you personally nearly as much as climate change is. Most people don't realize how much money and effort go into just disease and pest control in agriculture, though the impacts of the chemicals on personal health are becoming a more widely understood phenomenon. It sucks when politicians mess with the science, because that means that further progress against plant disease is hampered.
However, when it's my field they're screwing with -- when I know exactly what they're talking about and how it works, when I'm going to be one of those scientists that's being screwed with in Florida -- that makes it personal for me. I am not a climatologist, the climate change science has a level of abstraction. Plant pathology does not.