Republicans vs. Science: Ranking the Candidates

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/01/republicans-vs-science-ranking-the-candidates.html

[font face=Times,Times New Roman,Serif]January 6, 2012
[font size=5]Republicans vs. Science: Ranking the Candidates[/font]

Posted by Nicholas Thompson

[font size=3]“To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.”—Jon Huntsman, tweet, August 18, 2011

“Yeah well, I’ll be the first one to take him up on his offer.”—Rick Santorum, MSNBC, August 19, 2011

The Republican Party has often been the party of science and technology. Abraham Lincoln created the National Academy of Sciences and earned a patent on shipping technology. The creationist Democrat William Jennings Bryan twice lost to the Republican William McKinley. Dwight Eisenhower was perhaps the most forceful Oval Office advocate for science and technology of the last century. By the nineteen-seventies, Republicans—particularly Richard Nixon—had begun to view scientists as agitating liberals. But through the Cold War, Republicans often backed the greatest scientific and technical schemes: from missile defense to the ARPANet.

Now, tragically, science has been made partisan, and the tech world, with its liberal Silicon Valley center, is headed that way. In 2003, Nicholas Lemann, writing for The New Yorker, asked Karl Rove to define a Democrat. “Somebody with a doctorate,” Rove said. “What was Daniel Bell’s phrase? The information class.” The divide, however, is not total. The Democrats still have their Bryans, and the Republicans still have their McKinleys. In the spirit of giving the most pro-science and pro-tech members of the G.O.P. their due, here’s a ranking of the six remaining Presidential candidates:

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[Lionel Mandrake]

1. The New Yorker hasn't a clue about science.

The New Yorker has a long tradition of excellent writing and excellent editing, but its editors don't know much about science. They have published good articles about medicine and geology, but they also published Paul Brodeur's three articles that were later pasted together to form a ridiculous book, The Great Power-Line Cover-Up (1993).

To see what the IEEE thinks of The Great Power-Line Cover-Up, browse:
http://ewh.ieee.org/soc/embs/comar/brodeur.htm

Nicholas Thompson is a perfect example of a scientifically challenged New Yorker editor. He conflates science with technology. Thus Thompson rates Newt Gingrich #1 for "his beliefs in the virtues of space exploration and his opposition to regulating the Internet" and praises Gingrich further because: "He was an early adopter of Twitter, and he once made the cover of Wired."

The fact that Thompson was a senior editor at Wired Magazine for five years before coming to The New Yorker might help explain his assessment of Gingrich.