WASHINGTON D.C. -- Years ago I recall a cartoon in a lampoon issue of National Review that showed a pot-bellied Archie Bunker-type reading the newspaper and commenting to his wife-in-curlers: "Sez here they’ve taught chimpanzees to speak. Great--another Third World country in the U.N." Sure enough, on Monday came the news out of Georgia State University that researchers there have taught a chimp a vocabulary and grammar of about 3,000 words, and have "conversed" with the chimp by means of a Stephen Hawking-style voice box.

At first glance this would seem like grist for the Diversity Industry, and a positive boon for animal-rights activists who have always wanted to extend the franchise from bipeds to quadrupeds if not centipedes. But wait. The chimp’s first words were: "Please buy me a hamburger." I am not making this up. This suggests that chimps may not yet be ready for our vegan, egalitarian world, and don’t understand the concept of respect for the human rights of other species--something that observers of tigers and lions have long been able to tell you. The chimp also requested a swimming pool, which adds plausibility to the theory that men--not to mention Man--did indeed evolve from chimps, and got their petit bourgeois tastes from chimps, too. "From chimps to chumps," the feminists might say.

Another old cartoon has been brought to life by science headlines this week. This cartoon showed the two lab researchers in their white coats, with one remarking, "This study proves that worrying about cancer causes cancer." Today the Associated Press reported that a federal science advisory panel is recommending the discontinuation of the gasoline additive MTBE (which is based on the much-subsidized ethanol), because lab tests have found that MTBE causes cancer in rats and, ipso facto, may do so in humans as well. MTBE is supposed to boost the oxygen content of gasoline and reduce pollution, but the National Academy of Sciences concluded in May that MTBE’s effect on air quality improvement was negligible. Meanwhile, the highly volatile MTBE has contaminated an estimated 10,000 groundwater sites in California alone. There were warnings and complaints about MTBE from the beginning, but these were all waived off by the environmental regulators because "They Know Better Than Us." Meanwhile, nearly all the presidential candidates (with the notable exception of John McCain) trample through Iowa reassuring farmers that the federal ethanol subsidy is sacrosanct.

Finally, on the junk-science front is news that should, but probably won’t, cause a few Cassandras of the apocalypse to shut up. Despite study after study showing that electromagnetic radiation from power lines poses no health risk to humans, worrywarts continue to hype the issue and expand it to related objects such as microwave ovens and cellular phones. Now comes word out of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California, an arm of the Energy Department, that biologist Robert Liburdy rigged his study to support the electromagnetic radiation theory by tossing all data that didn’t fit. After discovering the fraud, however, it took three years, for the Lab to fire the offending scientist. Footnote: the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory is a center for research supporting the global-warming hypothesis. Maybe we should review that data, too.

--By Steven Hayward