There she goes again! I wish she didn't have the power to annoy me, but she does. I perform an exorcism by composing a letter. If it is never published, that is fine: the therapeutic effect is more than adequate compensation.
"I'm not surprised to learn, by way of Katherine Kersten and one of her college Republican friends (column, October 25), that there is a geology instructor at the University of Minnesota guilty of 'side comments bashing President Bush.' For the president's approval rating among scientists is likely even lower than it is among the general public.
"In its report 'Scientific Integrity in Policy Making,' signed by more than 500 American scientists, including 48 Nobel laureates and 127 members of the National Academy of Science, the Union of Concerned Scientists charges that the Bush administration has in systematic and unprecedented fashion suppressed scientific work, on subjects ranging from climate change to forest management to reproductive health to endangered species to Iraq's aluminum tubes, when the conclusions of the work are deemed unfriendly to the administration's political agenda. The report is available here.
"Or maybe the geologist has been to the Grand Canyon and detected 'faith-based' science in the park service bookstore, where one can now purchase Grand Canyon: A Different View--the "different view" being that the canyon was formed, not millions of years ago by the movement of the Colorado River, but within the past few thousand years by events described in the Book of Genesis.
"If people who care for science have a dim view of President Bush and his many zany supporters, I presume even Kersten thinks they should be allowed to say so!"
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