stand up for REAL science

We had a record number of trick-or-treaters last night with lots of teenagers. Somehow we've managed to escape the egging and pumpkin smashing through the years. I know I'm lucky in my career because many of the kids I teach are honors students. These students have been raised in homes where education is valued as a precious gift, as a path to a better life.

On the other hand, some kids are raised to be dismissive of education, and in particular to despise science. It doesn't help when their minister tells them on Sunday to "close your minds to ideas that could lead you away from God" after railing against evolution. But it was a senior honors student who asked a few years ago, "Why should we bother learning about science, when it just changes?" (FWIW, this student was also convinced the moon landings were a hoax.)

Although I'm not a huge fan of Christopher Hitchens, he does a nice job of skewering the McCain-Palin anti-science attitude:

Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured.

I'd argue against the "cultured" part; Hitchens would undoubtedly consider many out here as "uncultured" because of our love of mountain oysters, green bean & dumpling soup, and line dancing. "Culture" is a product of a particular place and time. If one must love Wagnerian opera, caviar, and the latest fashions to be considered "cultured," then many of us are certainly nekulturny.

In this day and age, though, education is free and readily available in most parts of our country. There's no excuse for ignorance anymore, yet we've been subjected to an anti-science administration for the past eight years. Is it a coincidence that we're now in an economic meltdown, embroiled in the Iraqi inferno, and relying increasingly on foreign countries to provide goods and services? When evidence is suppressed instead of carefully considered, it only follows that bad policy decisions will be made. "Yee-haw is not a foreign policy."

Ignorance rarely leads to bliss, and the science-bashing McCain-Palin ticket might not be very happy in a few days.

Added in edit: Here is a must-read from evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, of the University of Chicago, emphasis mine:

As a geneticist, I've worked on fruit flies in the laboratory for three decades. I know the fruit fly. The fruit fly is a friend of mine. And believe me, Sarah Palin doesn't know anything about fruit flies.

"When Palin declares that we don't have to know what causes global warming in order to fix it, she's not only exposing herself as a scientific illiterate; she's going against two centuries of American progress in technology, medicine and science. Trying to bond with the American people by taking pride in your ignorance and making science the common enemy - now that's a bridge to nowhere.