The editorial board of USA Today sees New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman’s probe as an “exercise in politics” and says it raises “serious First Amendment concerns” [USA Today] Concur, more or less: Washington Post editorial board (“Exxon deserves criticism, but it didn’t commit a crime…. Legitimate scientific inquiry depends on allowing strong, even unfair, criticism of the claims that scientists make.”) Related: Adam Freedman, City Journal (“bid to criminalize skepticism.”)
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The only way to take politics out of science is to ban corporations from advocating and financing scientific studies. Only the government should sponsor scientific inquiry because lords knows you don’t get any politicking in the government. If that doesn’t work you could try validating the studies irregardless of whom and where funding came from. Science is Science. Somewhere in these studies there should be some facts that can be either confirmed or refuted even if they were obtained from Exxon labs.
“The only way to take politics out of science is to ban corporations from advocating and financing scientific studies. Only the government should sponsor scientific inquiry because lords knows you don’t get any politicking in the government. ”
That is bass akwards thinking. If you want politics out of science, you need to get the government out of funding science.
However, even that isn’t enough. To truly depoliticize science, after cutting off government funding, You need to get scientists to stop demanding that scientific research result A requires that the government take action Y.
Please tell me you’re being sarcastic.
That would obviously and severely violate the First Amendment, but even THAT wouldn’t be enough. Even if you had such a ban, it would be enough for the scientists to give a copy of their results to the right Senator or journalist, and then someone else would carry the water for them.
I was being a little cheeky. I thought “lords knows you don’t get any politicking in the government” was the tell.
I cannot get my head around the headline: “Exxon has a right to its opinion.”
Exxon is an inanimate object. I am unsure how it can have an opinion, let alone whether it has the right to it.
I know, I know, corporations are people, or whatever. That does not mean that this makes any sense. We should come up with another construct for corporations rather than personification.
I would put this under the same tag as the Sidney Silver story. Just another example of graft and corruption caused by dishonest people in government and people trying to make a dishonest buck off of them or make an honest buck through disingenuous means.
If Exxon cannot have an opinion, then how can the New York Times Company have an opinion?
And since almost all government research is done by corporations that are government contractors, who is going to do the “government research “?
It’s not even that. It’s imaginary.
But it has an opinion the same way that the state of New York has an opinion. And that is, some actual person with authority to do so speaks on the entity’s behalf. (If charges are brought, it won’t be Eric Schneiderman vs Exxon; it will be New York vs Exxon, even though New York is just as imaginary.)
But anyway… if Exxon is incapable of having an opinion because it doesn’t really exist, then how can it be punished for expressing that opinion?
Exxon Mobil is a thing. So are you. Grammatically, we’re all nouns.
Exxon Mobil is a collection of people who have banded together to drill and process and sell petroleum and its products and have adopted a limited liability corporation for the process. By what stretch of the imagination is that different from any other group of people who have banded together for a common purpose,whether it be for profit, fun or salvation?
What it comes down to is “No one should be permitted to say anything I disagree with.”
Bob
If a group of people is an animate object that can formulate an opinion, then that same group of people can form the mens rea to commit a crime.
That said, if a corporation is found to have committed a criminal act, should not the ones who formulated the intent to perform that act be found criminally liable, even though only some of those people knew the act was criminal?
In other words, if a group of people can form an entity and get the protections afforded to individuals, should not the same group of people be liable for the improprieties of the entity?
It’s rarely done, but the law does allow for a corporation to be criminally prosecuted in its own right.
While a corporation can’t be put in prison, penalties include fines, putting the corporation in receivership (which would be analogous to house arrest) and revoking the companies corporate charter (corporate death penalty)