I find this interesting (oil spill "scientist")

[n2doc]

Controversial professor fired from spill team
Bloomberg News
May 18, 2010, 10:02PM


Jonathan Katz, a physics professor at Washington University in St. Louis., said he was fired from the team of scientists chosen by Energy Secretary Steven Chu to help BP control the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
“Some of Professor Katz's controversial writings have become a distraction from … addressing the oil spill,” said Stephanie Mueller, an Energy Department spokeswoman.
Katz wrote articles on his website such as “What Is Political Correctness,” “In Defense of Homophobia” and “Why Terrorism Is Important.”

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/deepwaterhorizon/7011519.html


Notice, they said "fired" rather than "resigned". This means to be that the arrogant SOB made them get rid of him. Team players will always "resign" to put a graceful end to awkward situations. I hope this puts him on the permanent sh** list for all such panels. For the life of me I can't figure out how he got on there in the first place.

[northzax]

1. honestly, who cares about his beliefs outside of his area of expertise?

his disgusting social views have absolutely no impact on his ability to contribute to solving this technical problem.

[sui generis]

3. so if he advocated burning jews?

he's by far not the only fish in the sea - so good riddance. Also, being in a position of public scrutiny reflects badly on everyone he reports to.

People on federal payroll are subject to standards for propriety in their personal lives. It's usually pretty subjective if it comes into review but anyone who draws SES grade salary is subject to greater scrutiny.

[northzax]

5. but he's not SES

he's a tenured professor. now this may have been a bad choice for his university, but it's a choice they made, non the less, and no matter of offensive or disgusting opinions can remove him from that position.

and frankly, if he's got a track record of troubleshooting that could be useful in this circumstance, well then, let's not stand on societal niceties. he can go crawl back under his rock AFTER we fix the incredible devastation we are facing.

[sui generis]

10. so being for burning jews should be overlooked as

standing on "societal niceties?"

Have you lost your damn mind? :P

Seriously zax, crackpottery about gay Americans is not the least bit more acceptable. Anyway, he's outta there and good riddance. He is NOT the solution to the incredible devastation we're facing.

Nothing in this world hinges on a lone scientist, or it's not science.

[n2doc]

4. They do matter

Because they indicate how he thinks, or rather, they demonstrate an irrationality that would not be acceptable in trying to solve this case.

Frankly, I see nothing in his background that suggests an particular expertise that would be helpful.

And finally, you might ask, why was he initially selected? Often, people are selected for these things because they are buddies with someone doing the selecting.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

6. Agree and disagree.

RFK Jr.'s belief that vaccines cause autism should be immaterial to his ability in filing a lawsuit against BP. But then again, if he thinks that autism is caused by vaccines, I question is basic competency at rational thought, which is required for being a good lawyer.

[joeybee12]

7. Lots of homophobes don't...n/t

[janx]

8. His disgusting social views and his decision to make them

public are an indication of his logic, which has everything to do with science. It would indicate to me that his critical thinking skills were inferior.

[northzax]

9. he's a bigot and a bit of a crackpot

this is obvious. however, that doesn't necessarily exclude him from being able to contribute to physics or this particular problem. need I remind you of the long list of eminent scientists in history who have been a bit off? if he has something to contribute to this particular problem, let him contribute to it, then go climb back under his rock.

[ljm2002]

11. Actually, he did not contribute much...

...by his own admission after the first trip to the Gulf. His training and experience are not directly applicable, and unlike someone like, say Richard Feynman, he doesn't seem to be that good at thinking creatively outside his area of expertise.

Good riddance.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

2. Sometimes a person is not given the choice. n/t

[caraher]

12. He does have some possibly-relevant fluid dynamics experience

From his web site:

Prof. Katz is working on problems in boundary layer hydrodynamics. He analyzed the process of rapid adiabatic blowdown of a pressure vessel, and derived a novel dimensionless number describing the importance of buoyancy-driven circulation, resulting from the competition between conductive heating of the gas near the wall and the adiabatic cooling of the gas in the interior of the vessel. He is now working on double-diffusive boundary layers, such as those between water and glycerin or plasmas of different composition in laser-fusion targets, in which both momentum and mass diffuse, and in which the composition (affected by mass diffusion) affects the viscosity (that determines the diffusion of momentum).

I'm less troubled by his abhorrent social views than the possibility that he's got a technical bias toward simplifying more than is allowed by the physics. For instance, he is pushing an atmospheric model "for pedagogical purposes" that seems designed to bolster climate-change skepticism:

Prof. Katz has studied the problem of geoengineering to counteract the warming effects of anthropogenic carbon dioxide by introducing artificial scattering aerosols into the stratsophere. This is an old idea, inspired by the observation of cooling following large volcanic eruptions that loft sulphur oxides to the stratosphere where they form sulfuric acid droplets, a connection first noted by Benjamin Franklin. He has investigated the questions of determining the best material to use, the best form in which to loft it, and the best means of lofting. The tentative answers are sulfur, liquid hydrogen sulfide and rockets. In any such scheme questions of chemical kinetics arise that are not important in natural volcanic injection.

In a related project, Prof. Katz has developed a simple pedagogical one-equation greenhouse warming model controlled by the infrared opacity of water vapor, the most important greenhouse gas. In this model the climate is generally intrinsically unstable, with two stable limit points, glaciation and warm interglacials. Then our present intermediate state can only be maintained by continual geoengineering, with or without anthropogenic greenhouse gases.

My inclination would be to assume that Steve Chu had good reasons for appointing him in the first place, and I'd trust Chu's judgment as a physicist. But it also seems like there probably are people with at least comparable qualifications who wouldn't bring along so much negative political baggage. I'm glad he's out, but more because I think he comes to his science with an axe to grind (why else pretend that water vapor "controls" greenhouse warming?).

[amborin]

13. he's a climate change denier; that calibrates his "science"