Politics and Science

Back in the early days of Fantastiko, I wrote about how this administration handles information provided by scientists. It appears little has changed. In a recent Washington Post editorial, I learned that a 24 year-old NASA spokesman who was politically appointed by Bush recently resigned for lying about having an undergraduate degree (he doesn’t). Most appalling, though not surprising, is the continuing push to inject hot button political issues into science. As the piece points out, placing political pressure on career civil servants is not new. But this administration is taking it to a new and scary level.