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*sigh* DDT again
Oct. 16th, 2005 12:47 pmTim Lambert spots yet another resurgence of the "environmentalists killed millions by banning DDT" hokum.
I don't think he should necessarily pick on Ron Bailey's late-2004 review of "State of Fear", given that Bailey seems to left Michael Crichton's global-warming-denialist camp since then; I suspect Bailey wouldn't write the review quite like that today. But it's worth mentioning that Crichton's been pushing the DDT story too, and Senator James Inhofe still thinks he's a scientific authority.
An aside: I sometimes cringe at people pejoratively describing Crichton as a science-fiction author. Given his recent output, especially, it seems like an insult to science fiction. On the other hand, I don't want to turn into one of those people who defines SF to exclude everything I don't like. On the other other hand, in terms of marketing and technique Crichton definitely falls comfortably into the techno-thriller category, which is really distinct from the core SF genre and which has different traditions about how you handle rubber science. It's particularly irritating that he so often writes author's afterwords and such that attempt to convince the audience that his bogus science is of urgent real-world importance, and that they so often believe it.
I don't think he should necessarily pick on Ron Bailey's late-2004 review of "State of Fear", given that Bailey seems to left Michael Crichton's global-warming-denialist camp since then; I suspect Bailey wouldn't write the review quite like that today. But it's worth mentioning that Crichton's been pushing the DDT story too, and Senator James Inhofe still thinks he's a scientific authority.
An aside: I sometimes cringe at people pejoratively describing Crichton as a science-fiction author. Given his recent output, especially, it seems like an insult to science fiction. On the other hand, I don't want to turn into one of those people who defines SF to exclude everything I don't like. On the other other hand, in terms of marketing and technique Crichton definitely falls comfortably into the techno-thriller category, which is really distinct from the core SF genre and which has different traditions about how you handle rubber science. It's particularly irritating that he so often writes author's afterwords and such that attempt to convince the audience that his bogus science is of urgent real-world importance, and that they so often believe it.