Why Sarah Palin is wrong about fruit flies – Times Online.
I don’t normally (maybe that should be I won’t normally since this blog is less than a month old) blog on politics but I think there’s a bigger issue here.
It’s about the dumbing down of science along with the dumbing down of society.
The kind of comments that Palin makes about scientific research just drive me up the wall. You know, I might not always get the research that other people do. That’s fine with me. We should be paying scientists to be smarter than us. There’s this ridiculus notion in modern society that the individual knows best and that experts are useless. Well, that makes sense – if we want an entire society run at a grade three level!
The whole point of having brilliant people work at Health Canada or the CDC or CISIRO or whereever is that they make decisions and give advice for the benefit of society based on their skills, which are superior than most for their given expertise. This is not a bad thing! It would be a bad thing if we all stood up and said “I ain’t gonna let no egghead decide what’s best for me! I’ll cure ma own damn cancer using vinegar and soap.”
Read this. And then go hug an egghead studying fruit flies.
