The loveliest of lovelies, Darieth Chisolm just told me in a TV news report (one that included the completely necessary comment from a local priest) that stem cell research is "controversial."
Funny. I just checked with Gallup, the polling folks, and they say otherwise. Take a look:
Yea, that's some controversy.As a scientific endeavor, Americans have a generally positive reaction to embryonic stem cell research. A solid majority of Americans (typically 60%) agree with using stem cells derived from human embryos for medical research; 61% consider such research morally acceptable.
That's the general picture. More specifically, only 11% of Americans want unfettered government funding of embryonic stem cell research while 19% want no funding whatsoever. The broad middle group believes there should be limited funding -- either with keeping the current restrictions (24%) or easing those restrictions (42%).
Because the issue is not highly important to most Americans, the public has, at different times, shown majority support for conflicting funding policies. [emphasis added.]
To be fair, David, this is "contraversial". Just because a majority supports something doesn't make it right or non-contraversial. In the early 20th century, I would imagine that a solid majority of Americans, probably at around 60-70%, would support the notion of lynching black men accused of raping a white woman. But that certainly doesn't -- and didn't -- make it any less contraversial.
ReplyDeleteWith all due respect, Admiral, I think it does.
ReplyDeleteUnless, like our two competing spellings, we have two competing meanings of the word "controversy."
:-)
I would posit, though, that when close to 2/3 of a democracy's population decides that a given course of action is "morally acceptable" that should settle whether there is a "controversy" in play.
If you are defining "controversy" as "any sort of strong disagreement regardless of the sizes of the groups disagreeing" then at what point would it cease to be a disagreement?
You posited (though offered no evidence to support it) that 60-70% of the American people in the early 20th century would have supported at least some lynchings. For the sake of the argument let's say that that's true.
You're right that in itself that wouldn't make lynching right.
But I wasn't talking about whether stem cell research is right (although a majority of Americans do think so) or whether it's wrong. I was talking about whether there's enough of a disagreement to qualify it as "a controversy."
If ANY disagreement is enough to qualify something as "controversial" then given the fact (and here's the link) that a full 6% of the American population thinks that the Apollo moon landings were faked, should we now and forever more talk about them as "The Controversial Moon Landings"?
6% of 300 million is 18 million and 18 million is more than the population of New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago combined.
Isn't that enough to call them "the controversial moon landings"?
With much Respect.