Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

[Barry Karr <SkeptInq@AOL.COM>]

The Center for Inquiry is Pleased to Announce:


Science and Ethics:
How Scientific Inquiry Helps Frame Value Judgments
May 13-16, 2004 * Toronto, Canada

see:  http://www.centerforinquiry.net/conference-2004.html

For many centuries scientists and philosophers believed that with the
advance of scientific knowledge, literacy, and education, humankind could
become liberated from ancient fears and superstitions so that a wiser and
more humane ethical outlook could develop. It was believed that scientific
inquiry could be applied to moral values and modify them in the light of
their causes, rational consistency, and a regard for empirical consequences.
This viewpoint is sympathetic to the classical attempt to apply reason to
conduct, and it is consonant with the Enlightenment goal of achieving human
progress. Many people thus were committed to using science to reconstruct
the traditional sources of morality and to form entrenched
socio-political-economic institutions.
 
First, many religionists hold that without belief in God and in absolute
religious commandments, no moral standards are possible (a premodern view).
Second, postmodernists, while skeptical of religious metaphysics, are
likewise skeptical of science, believing that it offers its own mythology
and that consequently no progressive emancipation agenda is possible for
humanity. Third, many scientists and philosophers have in the past held that
science deals with facts and that moral values are based on passions and
feelings. Hence, it was held that science cannot help frame rational moral
judgment.
 
This conference will challenge these assumptions and bring to the fore a
renewed challenge to integrate the sciences and ethics as disciplines.
 
* Accommodations: Courtyard Marriott, Toronto, 475 Yonge St., Toronto,
Ontario,  Canada, M4Y1X7; 416-924-0611.
 
* For more information, contact David Koepsell at CFI, PO Box 741, Amherst,
NY 14226;  716-636-7571 ext. 215, or via e-mail at dkoepsell@centerforinquiry.net.

* Media representatives should contact Kevin Christopher at CFI, PO Box 741,
Amherst NY 14226, 716-636-7571 ext. 217, or via e-mail at kchristopher@centerforinquiry.net.

PRELIMINARY Schedule

THURSDAY, MAY 13
Registration: 3:00pm
Reception: 6:00-7:00pm

THE SCIENCE OF ETHICS
Introductory Keynote Addresses: 7:00-9:00pm
Prof. Paul Kurtz, SUNY at Buffalo, Chairman, CFI
Prof. Mario Bunge, McGill University

Friday, May 14
Registration: 8:00-9:00am

THE ROLE OF SCIENCE IN ETHICAL INQUIRY
9:00-12:00pm
Prof. Austin Dacey, Director of CFI Education Programs (Chair)
Donald B. Calne, M.D., Author, Within Reason; University Hospital, UBC
Prof. Bill Rottschaefer, Prof. Emeritus, Lewis & Clark University
Prof. Christopher DiCarlo, University of Ontario Institute of Technology
Luncheon, 12:00-1:45pm
Prof. Scott Lilienfeld, Andrew Skolnick,
Kimball Atwood, M.D.
"The Assault on Scientific Medicine"

MEDICINE AND ETHICS
2:00-5:00pm
Vern Bullough, Ph.D/R.N., University of Southern California (Chair)
Bernard Patten, M.D., FACP, F.R.S.M.
Robert Buckman, M.D., Princess Margaret Hospital, University of Toronto

Saturday, May 15
SCIENTIFIC FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY
9:00-12:00pm
Prof. Richard Hull, Prof. Emeritus, SUNY at Buffalo (Chair)
Ronald Bailey, Science Editor, Reason
Prof. Gilbert Hottois, Brussels
Prof. James R. Brown, University of Toronto

Luncheon, 12:00-1:45pm
"Defending Science in an Irrational World"

HUMAN BEHAVIOR AND ETHICS
2:00-5:00pm
Prof. Jim Alcock, Glendon College, York University (Chair)
Prof. Barry Beyerstein, Dept. Psychology, Simon Frasier University
Prof. Mariam Thalos, University of Utah
Prof. Owen Flanagan, James B. Duke Prof. Philosophy, Duke University

AWARDS Banquet, 6:00-9:00pm
Jim Underdown, M.C., CFI West Executive Director
Awards to Irving Louis Horowitz and James Alcock

Sunday, May 16
(Concurrent Sessions)
NATURALISM, SCIENCE AND ETHICS
9:00-12:00pm
Susan Jacoby, Director CFI MetroNY (Chair)
Oliver Curry, Rutgers University
Sanal Edamaruku, President, Rationalist International, India
Prof. David Koepsell, Executive Director, Council for Secular Humanism

POLICY AND ETHICAL JUDGMENTS
9:00-12:00pm
Jan Eisler, CFI Board of Directors (Chair)
Prof. Irving Louis Horowitz, Transaction Publishers, Rutgers University
Prof. John Novak, Brock Univ. College of Education
Tom Flynn, Editor in Chief, Free Inquiry

FIELD TRIP, ONTARIO SCIENCE Center
12:00-5:00pm



2)  Articles of Note:

Defying Psychiatric Wisdom, These Skeptics Say 'Prove It'
By ERICA GOODE
Published: March 9, 2004  New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/09/health/psychology/09SKEP.html

They have been called assassins and parasites. They receive hate mail from the proponents of a variety of popular psychotherapies. The president-elect of the American Psychological Association has accused them of being overly devoted to the scientific method.But the ire of their colleagues has not prevented a small, loosely organized band of academic psychologists from rooting out and publicly debunking mental health practices that they view as faddish, unproved or in some cases potentially harmful.



Sceptic versus psychic
By Xavier La Canna
February 23, 2004 Melbourne Age

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/02/23/1077384671735.html

A Melbourne sceptic has lodged a formal complaint with Consumer Affairs he hopes will force American psychic John Edward to prove claims he communicates with the dead



The Camera Never Lies, but the Software Can
By KATIE HAFNER  The New York Times
March 11, 2004

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/11/technology/circuits/11imag.html?8cir

WHEN John Knoll created Photoshop in 1989, he knew he was designing an image-editing program that could be used in good ways and bad.  But even Mr. Knoll, who wrote the software with his brother, Tom, was unprepared for how outlandish photo manipulation would become.  "When we worked on it, mostly we saw the possibilities, the cool things," said Mr. Knoll, 41. "Not how it would be abused."

The same tools that can be used to crop, retouch and otherwise edit digital images can be used just as easily to distort, alter and fabricate them.  With Photoshop and similar programs now widely available in inexpensive, easy-to-use consumer versions, just about anyone with rudimentary computer skills can cut, paste, erase, combine and retouch photographs.  It doesn't take much skill to make the unreal seem real.



NASA Agrees to New Study on Mission to Telescope
By Wareen E. Leary,   New York Times
March 12, 2004

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/12/science/12HUBB.html


WASHINGTON, March 11 ­ The Hubble Space Telescope may have won a reprieve
from an early death. Under Congressional pressure, NASA agreed on Thursday
to have the National Academy of Sciences examine plans to cancel a space
shuttle mission to repair and upgrade it.


Researchers Retract a Study Linking Autism to Vaccination
By ANAHAD O'CONNOR,  New York Times
March 4, 2004

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/04/science/04AUTI.html?ex=1079240400&en=e3b137b38e3ad646&ei=5070

Ten of the 13 scientists who produced a 1998 study linking a childhood vaccine to several cases of autism retracted their conclusion yesterday.

In a statement to be published in the March 6 issue of The Lancet, a British medical journal, the researchers conceded that they did not have enough evidence at the time to tie the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, known as MMR, to the autism cases. The study has been blamed for a sharp drop in the number of British children being vaccinated and for outbreaks of measles.


Leon Kass, You Silly Ass!
Please stop denying you tilted the bioethics panel.
SLATE ,  ByTimothy Noah
Posted Monday, March 8, 2004

http://slate.msn.com/id/2096848/


The ruckus over changes in the composition of the President's Council on Bioethics has its roots in a White House meeting that occurred on July 9, 2001. It was during this meeting that President Bush began to formulate his policy on stem-cell research, which allows federal funding for research involving embryonic stem cell lines developed before August 2001, but none on stem-cell lines developed since then. (Bush claimed his decision would leave scientists with around 60 viable embryonic stem-cell lines to use in federally funded research. But there were never anywhere near that many. As of today, only 15 such embryonic stem-cell lines are available.)