"FDR" wrote in message
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The Republican War on Science
by Chris Mooney


America has long prided itself on its dynamic industrial and
scientific innovation. We boasted of our investment in research to
produce new technology, products and medical breakthroughs,
because we
were a country always moving forward. Born of a revolution that
rejected the stultifying constraints of Monarchist governments, we
were unleashed to invent a future without constraints.

So historians, in a few years, may look back on the era of right
wing
Republican rule and wonder how we became saddled with a government
that is intent on moving the nation backwards instead of forwards.
It's as if you were a passenger in a car speeding down the
expressway
at 60 miles per hour and suddenly the driver threw the gear into
reverse.

The technological pride this country had is dwindling. Not only
from this
administration, but from companies moving it out to foreign
countries, and a
weakened higher education system because we value popstars,
celebrities and
athletes much more than engineers and scientists.

We never have valued engineers and scientists much.
Why is that such a surprise?? By the time Einstein
made it to the US, he was more celebrity than scientist
at that point. Hawking is probably more well known
for being "the guy in the wheelchair who was on
Star Trek playing poker" than his theories. Carl Sagan
was a scientist who was more well known for his
showmanship and his apocryphal "Billions and billons"
quote than as a scientist. I once heard from a coworker
who went to Cornell that there used to be a t-shirt
making the rounds at Cornell that had the top lies told
at Cornell. One of them was (not an exact quote, but
close), "I take a class taught by Carl Sagan."

One of the major sources of funding for research was
the DoD and DoE during the Cold War. When that
ended, a lot of money available for funding dried up
and went toward other things. Priorities changed, too:
look at the decision to scrap the Superconducting
Supercollider (SSC), or the constant shifting of priorities
away from a Mars mission. The SSC was deemed too
costly, and the Mars mission meets heated debate over
what our national priorities should be. The Cold Fusion
debacle 15 years ago also demonstrated the fractured
nature across scientific disciplines: chemists and
physicists were arguing rather loudly about the results
of Pons' and Fleishmann's experiments not in a reasoned
manner, but more in the manner of "we found it first, so
nyaah nyaah nyaah" reserved for children.

There is also a distinct disconnect between what the
public and the people with the purse strings feel is
important, and what the academic scientific community
feels is important. Try and suggest that the space
program should be significantly scaled back so that
hunger in Africa could be given priority, and you'll
get an earful from the scientific community on that.

--Mike L.