Re: ASA complaint (fwd) (fwd)

Hey Khaldoun, thanks for a great post.  I am not sure which is more amusing, 
this quote:


> As any
> > philosopher of science knows, moral positions cannot
> > be deduced from
> > science itself, meaning sociological theory and
> > research, no matter how
> > advanced, cannot tell us whether any particular
> > social policy (such as the
> > decision to go to war) is desirable or undesirable. 

which is perfectly obvious so long as your reading in the philosophy of science 
began and ended with the positivist texts you were assigned back in the '50s, 
or the list of signatories, which includes:

anti-civil liberties 'communitarian' Amitai Etzioni, who played Giddens to 
Clinton's Blair throughout the nineties,

Frank Lechner, who, within two or three days of Sept 11 was calling for a 
bombing campaign against Afghanistan in the New York Times,

Ted Goertzel, a hack principally known for tormenting various left-wing e-mail 
lists and his fawning celebrations of Fernando Cardoso (his argument usually 
being that sociologists should be really excited that one of us has been 
elected president of such a large country).

Of course, liberals at the ASA have also been known to play the 'science' 
game--recall the claims of a scientific consensus around the worth of 
affirmative action in the resolution on that matter a few years ago.

Steven Sherman