On Not Being Politically Correct

A short list of areas where I am way outside of the P.C. comfort zone:

1. I don't believe in Global Warming.

I'm sorry. I'm a scientist. When I first got a job after college I was shocked when I was asked to perform experiments to determine that our product was the best, whether it actually was or not. I got a feel for shoddy science.

Scientists are just like everybody else. There is this mystique that science is untouchable and data is sacred. It's not. Scientists fudge stuff all the time. When I see data on a politically hot issue such as global warming, I usually assume that nine out of ten scientists are lying. This is also true of research on homosexuality, race studies, mental illness, smoking, and gender. Oh, and to be fair, I usually assume data concerning a commercial product to be suspicious. Simple fact, data sets are manipulated all the time.

Listen, complex systems are very hard to model. The human brain is an example. We have very foggy ideas of what is going on between our ears. Many, if not most, treatments for mental illness are the result of trial and error. The global environment is another example of a very complex system. It is effected by so many factors that it is impossible to reliably predict the impact of a single stimuli. It is the very certainty that pro-Global Warming scientists claim that instantly labels them, to me, as liars.

After all, how many opportunities do scientists get to be sexy? Not many.

2. I don't like Martin Luther King, Jr.

The media, and the culture in general, lionizes Martin Luther King, Jr. He's a national saint. Listen, the guy was a philanderer. It's pretty well-established fact that he used money from church donations on prostitutes.

Second, he was a huge fan of Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood. He saw abortion as a legitimate means to advance the cause of Black America. I can't, in good conscience, celebrate a guy like that.

3. I don't think women and men are exactly the same.

Yes, I think men and women are different. I think that women are in general more sympathetic, more patient, and more understanding than men. On the whole, I think men are more aggressive, more decisive, and more impartial than women. I don't think this is so in every case, but I do think it is a good rule of thumb.

This has all kinds of trickle-down effects that make me very un-P.C. For example, and this is one that drives my wife crazy, I don't think that women should speak in Church. In my own defense, I think the reason women shouldn't speak in Church is due to the weakness of men more than the sly motivations of women. Admittedly, it's complicated.