Work and a Blogger issue have kept me offline for the last day or two, and lots of other people have weighed in on the latest Bush administration attack on science, but I still wanted to throw in my .02.
The Bush administration apparently gave some political idiot with no experience or background in science a job as a public affairs hack at NASA headquarters. From this position, idiot-boy has seen fit to try (with a notable lack of success) to muzzle a well-known climate scientist, and to make sure that the NASA website doesn't do anything to piss off creationists.
The irony of all this going on at the same time that Bush is wandering around talking about the need to improve our standing in science is impressive, but that's really all that's remarkable about this event.
I'm pissed off about it, but entirely unsurprised. This is just the Imperial Presidency in action again. The sole mission of this administration right now is to make the president look good. Everything else comes later. We've seen it with regard to the warrentless wiretaps (sorry, I forgot, that's been rebranded as "terrorist surveilance"), we've seen it with Iraq, and we're seeing it now with science.
It's bad. It's fundamentally wrong. It's scary. It's threatening our democracy. But it's not a surprise.
3 comments:
I wonder if you see the irony in your rant? Would a scientist like yourself be better suited for this Public Relations gig at NASA. I would hate to hear you in action when someone questioned your authority if I have indeed interpreted the empirical evidence with accuracy?
PS This is still a mighty fine blog you have, though!
The second link in the second paragraph doesn't work.
An extra "http" got added to it somehow.
As a communications guy, I would trust my scientist colleagues and aid them in using language that best represents reality. I would not tell them to distort reality.
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