Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Pharyngula: Treating honest science as a crime

I find myself reading every single post on Pharyngula, even though I don't much care about evolutionary biology, nor debunking ID. I just like what he writes and who he skewers. And this post is a good example of why I like him so much: The swiftboating of Eric Pianka

Get used to it. This is part of the right-wing strategy to attack the academy: when scientists honestly state bad news (and there is much bad news, and it's growing), they are going to be rabidly accused of all kinds of outrageous crimes. It's the new McCarthyism. The majority of us do not support short-sighted policy, we don't endorse jingoism, we are going to urge people to think before acting, we are going to predict the consequences of bad policy, and we are generally going to be critical of demagogues and fools…and that is being treated as a crime.

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