The Obama phenomenon

WITH THE entry of Sen. Barack Obama, the emerging race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination has become exponentially more interesting.

The 45-year-old Obama gives the field an infusion of youth and deprives the front-runner, Sen. Hillary Clinton, of a monopoly on appeals to history-making. Clinton would be the first woman nominated by a major party; Obama would be the first African American nominee.

For the moment, at least, Obama is enjoying the glow of a candidate whose visceral appeal to voters has surged ahead of their knowledge of him. In these early windows, voters tend to project the qualities they long craved in a candidate onto the fresh face who is thrilling audiences with talk about "new ideas" or generational change. But the presidential process is grueling and revealing, and has a way of exposing the deficiencies in a candidate's positions or personal mettle, as Gary Hart learned in 1984 and Ross Perot found in 1992.

It's much too early to talk about handicapping a battle of the firsts, Clinton and Obama -- especially because some politicians who have been there before, namely John Kerry and Al Gore, may yet get into the race.

But it's not too early to anticipate that Obama will contribute to the scope of the debate in a positive way for Democrats. One of the traits that distinguishes him from other prominent Democrats is his comfort with public discussion of religious faith and patriotism. He has talked openly about his own faith as well as the party's need to reach out to evangelicals and other churchgoing Americans.

The Republicans have artfully exploited the Democrats' unease with religion to help build a base in the so-called "red states" of the South and Midwest. Obama could help the party make inroads with what GOP strategists like to call "values voters."

Obama's entry also elevates the Iraq war as an issue in the Democratic primaries. Clinton and other Senate Democrats who were in office in 2002 carry the baggage of having voted for the authorization of force in Iraq. Obama, an Illinois state legislator at the time, opposed the invasion.

Now, Obama must fill in many blanks for voters as he tries to persuade them that his judgment, intellect and instincts can compensate for a comparatively short immersion in the issues confronting an American president.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA), Jan 18, 2007

In death, a president gets his respect

I find the recent love fest in the news media over what a wonderful "uniter" former president Gerald Ford was after the Watergate mess to be very interesting. This isn't the news reaction I remember at the time of Ford's presidency ("'Good and decent man' served us well," Opinionline, The Forum, Friday).

Just as Ronald Reagan was portrayed as a detached old fool by some members of the news media during his term as president and then honored as the slayer of the Soviet dragon after his death, Ford was once vilified by reporters and hounded by seemingly every wag with a camera or typewriter.

Ford was run into the ground by every outlet from Saturday Night Live to network news programs and newspapers.

Even good old Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., admitted during the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Awards ceremony in 2001 that he was once a Ford-basher, but that time had proved him wrong and that Ford was the right man for the time. Wow!

It wouldn't surprise me one bit that 30 years from now, we might be hearing a different account of the presidency of the liberals' favorite pioata, George W. Bush.

Robert Fillman

Indianapolis

Civility remembered

I did not vote for former president Gerald Ford when he ran in 1976; I voted for Jimmy Carter instead. At the time, I was angry over Watergate and Ford's pardon of former president Richard Nixon in September 1974. I think this pardon, more than anything else, contributed to Ford's electoral defeat in 1976.

Looking back more than 30 years later, I still believe that Ford's pardon of Nixon was wrong. Nixon was just as guilty as his aides, who were convicted for their Watergate crimes.

I would, however, take Ford over any modern-day, right-wing Republican, including our current president, George W. Bush. Ford seems moderate compared with the righties we have today in politics and their ultra right-wing, talk-radio cohorts.

If Ford were in politics today and expressed his past views, those right-wing, talk-show fanatics would have their knives and swords ready to stab him for his moderation.

Also, Ford and Carter deserve to be commended for the fine relationship they developed after they left politics. You never would have known they once ran against each other.

Unfortunately, that civility is lacking today and might never return.

Source: USA Today, JAN 03, 2007

Checking The Facts

My Concise Oxford Dictionary defines "facts" as "truth" and "reality", as a "thing that has known to have occurred, to exist, or to be true". Most people would have no problem with this definition, particularly when it comes to scientific facts. After all, gravity is gravity. Oxygen is oxygen. And that is all there is. But this simplistic perception is dangerously obsolete.

Scientific facts do not exist in "reality" as absolutes simply waiting to be "discovered". Facts become facts not just through the procedures of science but also through a social process; and every fact has a social history associated with it. The really interesting fact is that scientific facts come in a variety of forms -- as false facts, changing facts, sliding facts and contested facts.

A common false fact is oxygen. Every student learns that Lavoisier, the French chemist executed in the Revolution, discovered oxygen. But the name actually refers to a nonexistent element whose meaning comes from a false theory of chemical composition. For "oxy" means "sharp-maker"; its best translation is in German, Sauerstoff -- sour stuff. Lavoisier believed that this gas, when supporting the combustion of elements, made them into acids. This worked for sulphur and phosphorus. But Humphrey Davy showed that it did not work for "muriatic acid" -- what we now call hydrochloric acid. Its active constituent, chlorine, had no oxygen in it. So Lavoisier's theory was refuted, and oxygen deprived of its meaning, just two decades after its discovery. But try to find this in a chemistry textbook.

Textbooks themselves are a great place to find out how much the "facts" change. In some subjects, particularly chemistry, what is given to students as facts at one level is rejected as simplistic at the next. In other subjects, a given fact changes from one theoretical structure to another. For example, the "fact" that light behaves as a wave is conveniently forgotten in photovoltaic effects where it is treated as consisting of photons; but the "fact" that it behaves as a particle is ignored in explaining the phenomenon of Newton's rings. So the nature of calculation determines which "fact" is regarded as "fact". Even the facts that are by definition "constant" can change. Hubble's constant, which is the yardstick for measuring the size and age of the universe, has been bungee-jumping for decades.

Sometimes well-known facts become false in retrospect, thanks to the advances of science. A wonderful recent example is the total reorganisation of the classification of plants, thanks to the use of DNA techniques. All sorts of plants, which had been considered closely related because of superficial similarities, are now discovered to have very different DNA. The botanical map will have to be withdrawn; many of its previously accepted facts are now seen to be false.

Sliding facts appear where science meets public policy. In the 1970s and 1980s, newborn babies were given vitamin K to prevent bleeding. But in the 1990s, research linked vitamin K to risks of cancer in children. Similarly, when first used in the 1960s, breast implants were "safe". But in the 1990s they began to be linked to connective tissue diseases. In both cases, different studies prove different things -- and none of them have "proved" breast implants or vitamin K to be either "safe" or linked to statistically significant "higher risks". The "facts" slide from one position to another.

Given the risks involved, it is important for sliding facts to be pinned down. Indeed, when it comes to risks, all facts are contested facts. For example, since the late 1970s we have been hearing that children living near electric power lines have a higher risk of developing leukaemia. But what are the facts? Well, a number of epidemiological studies appear to confirm the fears -- but none of them have transformed the fear into a fact. The latest study, published in July 1997 in the New England Journal of Medicine, found a 24 per cent increase in risk. But this result is statistically non-significant and researchers have used the study to argue that there is "little evidence" for a risk of leukaemia from electric cables. However, a similar study by the World Health Organisation, which also produced a statistically non-significant result, actually provided "substantial" evidence for a link between passive smoking and lung cancer. So why is the latter generally accepted as a "fact" and the former not given half a chance?

A great deal of science depends on statistical inferences. But no statistical survey or test can ever "prove" a causal relationship between two factors. So results are always stated in terms of levels of "confidence". Different problems are conventionally investigated to different "confidence limits". Now, whether an inquiry is accurate to 95 or 99.5 per cent depends on the values defining the investigations, the costs and weight placed on social, environmental or cultural consequences. In other words, it is social and political power, backed by hard cash, that defines the level of confidence to which a risk problem is investigated.

For instance, when a dangerous chemical plant is placed in an area with an aware and politically active citizenry, the risks are worked out to a high level of confidence. However, when the same plants are located in an area where the citizens themselves are ignorant of the dangers and do not command political power, the confidence levels are much more relaxed. The people of Bhopal and Chernobyl know this to their cost. In the case of passive smoking, no one but the wicked tobacco companies will cast doubt on any "proof' of carcinogenicity. However, there are powerful interests with a lot at stake financially if power lines turn out to be carcinogenic.

So we can't take facts for granted. Neither can we uncritically equate them with "truth", "reality" and "existence". Indeed, we should assume that facts, because they are largely (although not wholly) socially constructed, will change and could be false. I think it is always necessary to ask how probable is a given "fact", how well supported is it by evidence, how well does it withstand competent criticism, how transparent are its promoters in explaining how their results were derived, and how sincere are they about engaging in dialogue with critics. Even then, I will keep my mind open for possible unexpected changes.

By Ziauddin Sardar