And the most recent studies, while not ending the debate, indicate that routine P.S.A. testing appears not to reduce the number of deaths, and if it does, the benefit is exceedingly modest.
To judge by the language used in the days since 11 September, ignorance, demonisation and the drowning out of nuanced debate indicate that much of the US establishment can no more tell the difference between Iran and Afghanistan than they could between China and the Soviet Union in the early 1960s - the inexcusable error which led to the American war in Vietnam.
Mr. Obama was notably noncommittal about his previous proposal in Tuesday's Democratic debate, indicating that he would add new conditions, especially on spending by independent groups, to his previous pledges to accept the deal.
Informal surveys taken after the debate indicated that audiences who listened on the radio tended to think Nixon had won, while those who watched on TV claimed victory for Kennedy.
Mr. Dickinson said that analysis after the Obama-Romney debate indicated that the audience was equally divided between Republicans and Democrats, which suggested the debate was a rare instance in which the body politic was all looking at the same thing.
Zerhouni himself made no reference to that debate, indicating that as an immigrant from Algeria 27 years ago, he "could never have dreamed of" being chosen to head NIH, which he called "the driving force behind our nation's preeminence in the biomedical sciences".
The predominant populist flavor of last night's debate indicates that the political conversation is gradually but definitively shifting towards the needs of the 98percentt.
Interestingly, these numbers held fairly firm through the most-substantial part of the contraceptive debate, indicating that not many people were being influenced by either side (or that the American people rate their president's job approval on different criteria than those in the media, perhaps).
The current state of debate indicates that the TOL still has conceptual and epistemic worth.
