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Bush vs. Kerry on Science
chrisspurgeon writes "The science journal Nature put 15 questions to Senator Kerry and President Bush. Read the candidates' responses on topics such as stem cell research, greenhouse emissions, and manned spaceflight to Mars."
I would have liked to hear what the other candidates' responses would have been, for contrast. Kucinic in particular.
In a chart, even better.
(going to be some election, with even non-Americans like me taking this intense an interest, hm?)
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
...in .pdf format is here if you don't want to hassle with the Flash presentation.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Why the hell did they need to make this into Flash? There are no animations, no images, just hyperlinked text which is rendered too small... or not at all at first actually, as I normally use Firefox with adblocker.
With regards to the questions, wouldn't it have been more fun if they had asked B and K unprepared questions on science directly in person, without any speechwriters to hide behind?
"The HIV virus is a retrovirus. Can either of you tell us what that means?"
"Give us the strongest arguments pro and con for the existance of man-made global warming."
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
I suspect more non-Americans than Americans are taking a really keen interest in this election. Considering that only, what, 40-odd percent of eligible voters actually bother to turn out on election day in the states, you could hardly say interest there is raging, despite the fanatical partisans we see all the time on the news. Given the disproportionate effect that US policies have on my country (Australia), I would kill to be able to vote in this election.
Of course, if non-US citizens could vote, it's pretty clear what the result would be. Although maybe we shouldn't publicise this, it might provoke a nationalistic wave of support for you know who...
Read Pynchon.
I really hope you guys elect Dubya again. We in Europe need all the help we can get competing in science, so Bush is our man.
Oh no... it's the future.
I was amused that most of Kerry's responses mentioned John Edwards, but Cheney is not mentioned ONCE in Bush's answers. I suppose that makes sense for the questions about energy policy...
Its clear that the candidates don't ever plan on using these responses verbally. I'd love to see W try and pronounce "carbon sequestration". (In the Bush response to question #12.)
This has been a test. If this had been an actual Sig, you would have been amused.
...that Bush didn't write those answers himself. For one thing there are words of more than three syllables used throughout.
The Bush campaign hasn't suffered at all from this attack on Bush's intelligence. It didn't suffer in 2000 either. However, Al Gore's campaign did latch onto it in an attempt to put down Bush and gain more support for the Dem's. It didn't work, in fact, it played to Bush's advantage. Instead of focusing on real issues, Gore was busy telling us all what a moron W was. You'll notice Kerry hasn't taken that strategy. There's a reason.
It should be noted that the current ban on stem-cell research actually only prevents funding research on the topic. Has anybody else seen that piece on 60 Minutes about the Howard Hughes research center that has been able to research it anyway because of its massive private funding?
That said, I'm still against the blocking of research funds. More eyes can be useful on this subejct, obviously.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
In fact, why not expand this to other issues? Why not require an on-the-spot literacy and basic knowledge test? I think that this would be a great idea, no leader left behind, and all. I may sound snarky, but i mean it. I'd love to see them have to answer some basic stuff. Things they really ought to know if they've got their hands on the purse strings and their finger on the button...
1. Which country does the US currently owe the most money to?
2. How much is one trillion, in millions?
(If you can't answer this, i don't want you spending my taxes. The English answer is often different from the American answer, too.)
3.a. What's the basic standard treatment for radiation sickness?
3.b. How thick should the walls of a fallout shelter be?
***
What else should be on the test?
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
You are missing the point. Nobody is saying that science can replace religion. The previous poster's point was that the Christian faith in particular requires an attitude that is directly in opposition to the scientific process.
Only if you have to take the Bible literally. For example the Roman Catholic church reformed in the 60's to become much more liberal by normal Christian attitudes. Basically they say that if the Bible says "the Earth is flat" and then someone proves that it isn't, then the Bible was wrong. That's ok because it doesn't have to be taken for literal truth, or maybe someone messed up copying things along the way, or whatever. I have a fundamentalist geologist friend and he said "due to the abundance of evidence I can only say that the Earth is several billion years old." (I forget if it is billion or billions, sorry). Some religions and people are anti-science. But don't assume that Christians are all as shallow as you make them out to be. To semi-quote Neil Stephenson in Snowcrash - "Most smart people come to realize that 90% of the Bible is crap. The problem is they assume that the whole thing is crap, when that 10% is very important."
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
That star wars thing was a great idea in the 80's. Throw some money at it and watch the soviets squirm. Now? I just don't know what the hell is going on with it. Sure, it might be good to research and test at a low level of funding but to start sticking those interceptors in silos when we haven't had a real unscripted test of the real launch vehicle? It seems like we're spending a lot of money on it before we're sure it's actually going to do anything. As far as what the N. Koreans will do, who knows. Their leader is as crazy as a shithouse rat.
From the article linked to the story poster: Yucca Mountain as a possible repository for the nation's nuclear waste - but fierce disputes over whether the site might leak radioactive material have held up its construction ever since
I have a question that's so simplistic that I expect it's stupid. Admittedly I don't understand the facts about nuclear waste, but here goes ....
Can nuclear waste not be totally incinerated? I assume if this is possible then it will become carbon that is .... less radioactive?
Alternatively, is there no process that can change the structure of the atoms so they are not radio active anymore?
Yep, looks like belief in the Bible certainly prevents one from make sound decisions.
Talking to oneself ain't good, but so is the lack of line breaks...
On ITER:
Question6, Bush: "a critically important experiment to test the feasibility of nuclear fusion as a source of electricity and hydrogen"
July 13th 2004, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham [energy.gov]: "a critically important experiment to test the feasibility of nuclear fusion as a source of electricity and hydrogen"
Firstly, ITER as a source of hydrogen? I know ITER might spur the hydrogen producers, but then could this equally say ITER would be a source of deuterium (heavy hydrogen) and tritium (heavy-heavy hydrogen). Huh?
Secondly, are these the words of our much loved Mr. Bush or did he just copy and paste some of Spencer Abraham's memos? This looks more like a 'whole party' thing.
Not so. I am Catholic, and fairly well-versed on apologetics.
Vatican II changed nothing of the faith. It was a pastoral council that changed only the expression of liturgy and language used to make the Faith more understandable to the modern world. Nothing of the faith changed.
The Church has always realized that Sacred Scripture is not a science textbook. The Bible is the story of how God relates to man and man's response. Many literary devices are used that seem to be non-sensical in modern English, but are in harmony and make perfect sense when you understand Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek prophetic language.
A perfect example is the whole "Left Behind" group nowadays which states that Christ will come not two times but three. (When He comes back the second, He will only be "in the clouds", so that's not a "real" coming back). What they neglect to notice is that the phraseology of "coming on clouds" in the Bible represents God's judgement. Ergo, when Christ comes back the second time it will be as Judge.
Many things in scripture use Hebrew prophetic language, and you have to understand the culture to understand the message. The Bible was not written outside of its culture as a message only for those 2,000 - 6,000 years later. It had relevance to the people each part was written to at the time, and you have to know the background to get a true sense of what Scripture is saying.
If you are really interested in this, check out a book entitled "Making Sense Out Of Scripture" by Mark Shea.
SYS 64738
What are you going to do if we Americans turn our government into a cheap parody of a democratic process?
We are well on the way with our black-box voting machines toward making our "elections" into an episode of MTv's Real World. A majority of us don't vote, and the rest don't care whether our votes will be counted with any integrity. Both our major party candidates for President are on the record favoring illegal military interventions abroad and the capriciously systematic suppression of civil liberties at home. We are generally represented in Congress by representatives who show open contempt for their constituents interests. We see no reason to hold our President or any of his advisors accountable for the murder, torture and disappearance of captured prisoners in the WarOnTerror(TM). Worst of all, the electorate pretty much regards any criticism of these policies as unpatriotic at best, and perhaps even a majority of them consider it treasonous.
What do we have to do before the rest of the world will wake up and realize that the U.S. is experiencing its second revolution, and the outcome will not be a victory for democratic principles?
(We've not gone quite as far south as Russia, but Bush says he looked into Putin's soul and found a friend... and, no, I don't feel confortable posting this under my real name. Yes, it's that bad now in America.)
For example, in Kerry's answer to question number 6, there is the word "programme". Obviously not written by an American.
The Catholic Church (wow, I never thought I'd hear my self say this).... the Catholic Church has taken a surprisingly liberal view on the sciences recently, and has endured the wrath of the religious right in the United States because of it.
I'm not going to get into the whole abortion debate here, because fundamentally that's a personal decision and religion really should have nothing to do with it at the legislative/judicial level. Nonetheless, the Catholics while still endorsing "God Guided Evolution" (last I checked) also still buy into a number of other apocryphal stories in the Old Testament such as Noah and that guy who got eaten by the whale (Johna?).
What the Church needs to do is step back and say one way or the other "The Bible contains passages which may be metaphorical" or "The Bible should be taken literally at all times." If you're willing to admit the former, you need to be willing to allow the individual to judge what is Metaphorical and what is not for themselves. Obviously the Church has it within her power to take exception to this from time to time through the Pope's power of speaking Ex Cathedra.
Still, were the Church to view things in this way it would set a powerful precedent for the rest of the world and might just allow some of the Authoritarian Theocratic States (like the USA) to accomplish something in the sciences.
Obviously there are portions of the Bible that are important. That whole "love they neighbor" thing can make for a pretty decent place to live. But you can buy into that without agreeing with the bit about Adam living to be 900 or so.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
Then you haven't done enough homework.
The model that supports global warming is seriously flawed. The only people that support global warming in the scientific community are those whose grants are based upon it. Gee, I wonder why.
You want to seriously look into how the Global warming scam is being played, check out www.junkscience.com They have a lot of information over there that just might open your eyes.
I think you've got a good point here, but that you're being unnecessarily confrontational and that your point risks being lost in that.
Allow me to paraphrase:
Religion and Science are mutually exclusive because Science is built around the Scientific Process. Through this process of hypothesis and conclusion a theory can be disproved and shown to be wrong. Observable evidence from the physical world can be applied to a conjecture about the physical world and can be used to show that conjecture as true or false.
Religion does not have what are called "falsifiable" hypotheses. In other words, Religion puts forth explanations for which no evidence can be collected.
A Scientific Statement is one like "This ball drops to the floor because of a force called gravity which acts on all things."
A Religious Statement is one like "This ball drops to the floor because the Gods want it to and they reach out and pull it to the floor."
I can collect evidence for or against the Gravity hypothesis. We can argue over it and come to a meaningful conclusion. The Gods hypothesis is unfalsifiable because no matter what evidence I bring to the table you can say "The Gods didn't want your ball to fall" and that's the end of the discussion.
As elegant as science is, and as helpful as it has been to the world around us, it has no room for things like morality.
That's a bit misleading. It's not that Science doesn't have room for morality; it's that Science doesn't address the issue. I'm sure that somewhere someone has compiled a sociological study of what behaviors are required of the individual in a utopian society. These could be considered a scientific moral code if you wanted to think of them that way. Religion fuses moral judgments with an attempt to explain the world. These are better separated. If you have thoughts on how a person should treat another person or thing, those thoughts are your own. There is nothing unscientific about your willingness to live by those beliefs or to encourage others to live by them. We can even scientifically demonstrate which beliefs make the people around you happy and angry and by extension which are more suited to the social community we live in (a Scientific pursuit). What we can't do is say that behavior X is desirable because a deity requires it. Morality is about how you interact with yourself and your world. If you don't want to eat pork, fine, don't eat pork. Don't tell me it's because God doesn't like pork though. Even God's gotta have a reason not to like bacon.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
Dubya's reckless defecit spending has made the Canadian dollar strong again. If he gets to screw up the American economy for another fours years, Canadian may finally have a stronger dollar the US again! Mmmm, I can't wait to buy a cheap IPod. A vote for Dubya is a vote for all non-Americans (unless yer skin ain't white and yer sitting on a lot of oil).
I have been paying close attention to science policy since the Nixon years. Every administration, Republican and Democrat has had serious problems with its science policy, but in my opinion, and in the opinion of many of us old enough to have been there, there has never been an adminstration where Science was so badly distorted for ideological reasons. From climate change to missile defense to abortion to environmental toxins to the teaching of evolution, the Bush administration has made science subordinate to its ideological positions.
As others in this thread have noted, the actual printed responses in the Nature article are mostly unhelpful canned PR blurbs (and it is a scary sign of ideological polarization to see Nature, the world's most prestigious general scientific journal, described as "far left"), but it is important not to lose sight of the fact that this is not just politics as usual. There are plenty of conservatives and Republicans who are friends of good science, but there is nothing conservative about the Bush administration in this regard: they are radicals, in favor of science only when it supports their ideology.
This is terribly dangerous. To paraphrase the great physicist, Richard Feynman, (whom I first heard make statements like this when I was a student at Caltech): For any technological society to succeed, sound science must take precendence over ideological conviction, because nature cannot be fooled. In my opinion, the Bush administration's failure to understand this concept presents a grave danger to our country and to the world.
So my point was, that a lot of scientists seems to disregard the "rules" of science anyway - like not dismissing a thoery without evidence, and not accepting a theory as face (i.e. evolution - taught as fact in schools).
You claim the bible is inconsistent with itself, yet provide no reliable evidence to back this up.
I believe that many things which science would claim as proving the bible wrong are by no means difinitive.
Walk with me a while:
So you see, there's nothing that science will show me that will remove my faith in God, because I know he's real.. I do know he, being God, knows a little bit more about how things work than we do.. so I'll trust him first.
Given the relatively amounts of money spent in science, all of Kerry's proposals could probably be paid for by simply rolling back half of Bush's massive defense spending increase.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Wow. Thank you. Worth pointing out that there's even a link to the video. Worth watching really, especially because they don't edit Bush into soundbites - they let him ramble (until he fails to answer the question). Bush really didn't like being interrupted whenever he ran off track - he wanted to use it as a platform to give speeches.
For those who can't see the video, there's the transcript.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Huh, I have no idea what you're trying to say so I'm going to just hold on to my ideas...
/ Funny moderations in a LONG time! It's like watching ping-pong.
All kidding aside, this is very interesting. I'll have to read up on this aspect of things because so many times it get's bogged down into what is happening on Slashdot with this subject. I haven't seen so many Troll/Insightfull/Flamebait/Interesting/Overrated
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Mod me as a troll, but it seems to me that this should be listed under Politics rather than Science. The fact that most of the comments are about Bush vs. Kerry *Politics*, rather than anything about science.
And I posit that in a perfect economic system, all my needs would be taken care of by magical singing rainbow ponies.
Who is going to decide who qualifies as 'outgoing, well-versed, and apolitical scholars, with advanced degrees'? You? Big Brother? The Council of Guardians?
Democracy is a bad system, but it is the best.
What bullshit. Religion and science can mix perfectly. If they wouldn't, why are so many of the great scientists of the past religious? They don't bite each other since they focus on different things. Its only when you let one dictate the other when things go wrong.
You make the flaw of assuming that all forms of supply and demand affected by taxes are highly elastic. The fact of the matter is, people cannot live without transferring capital. Expecting an exponential increase in the transfer of capital is exceptionally naive.
I believe that this country would benefit greatly from massive tax reform. However, I also believe that tax policy is too crude of a tool to reliably control the economy. The effects of policies this broad are too subtle to predict and even after the fact, attributing changes in the economy to specific policies is an intellectual fraud.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
I'm still not seeing the problem. Real scientists - as opposed to politically militant pseudoscientists - all acknowledge that creationism along with evolution are equally indisputable, as are more incredible theories such as astrogenisis. One also has to remember that creationism as depicted in Genesis does not outline the specific rise of life on our planet, nor does it rule out evolution as a post-creation process, nor does it rule out evolution as a mechanism of creation. All Bush has said according to the hacked-up quotes in this slate article is that he supports the teaching of creationism in schools should the local community want it. The part about morality - I don't even know how that is relevant to the issue of creationism.
I'm more interested on why people assume that it has to be creationism OR evolution. But then, the same people who hold that view are want to be oppositional for whatever reason, which is one of the driving forces behind Anti-Bushisms.
As for Bush's "radical religious beliefs", you need to get a new cliche. Most theologans agree Bush is far from a "radical", he is actually quite centrist. I think you confuse radicalism for integrity; most people who share Bush's beliefs aren't willing to risk any form of conflict to see them enacted.
None had an industrial spin. I guess it's 'gauche' to talk about using science to make ourselves more successful in industry.
1) What will you do to help make American students interested in math & science again?
2) What will you do to help entrepeneurs wanting to start companies that apply science? Our economy has become such that only hugely profitable 'googles' are worth starting anymore.
3) Do you recognize that we're becoming a nation that does little but sell, market and consume products designed and built by others? How long do you think this can continue?
4) Why are we simultaneously becoming politically similar to China, in locking people into state dependence, and economically unlike China by creating a climate where designing and building things is a losing battle given taxes, entitlements, regulations and a useless, pampered, lawsuit-hungry, unqualified workforce coming out of politically-correct, declining, anti-science, anti-God and anti-industry schools?
Does it hurt to hear them lying? Was this the only world you had?
And even though the tax rate is lower the exponential increase in the amount of capital moved more than makes up for the reducion in the tax rate. And as such the income of the government increases.
And thus the increases in federal income tax revenue that happened in the 80's under Reagan and the 00's under Bush. Except that neither happened--tax rates were lowered, and tax revenues--surprise!--lowered also. Read about it at Wikipedia.
There are some arguments for supply-side economics, but no (or incredibly few) serious economists believe that reducing marginal tax rates increases tax revenue. It might reduce tax revenue less than one would expect, but it doesn't increase revenue.
Luke 16:13 ring a bell?
Christianity, to a Christian, necessarily and by default, means more than science or anything else. If there truly are "many" scientists out there who profess to believe in the unverifiable specific-case mysticism of the collection of books assembled by the Council in Nicea called The Bible, then you can be sure which worldview is dominant.
But regardless, one thing's for certain: "the set of people" is not what's appearing in these threads, and you're the one committing a fallacy of conflation. "People" hold contradictory opinions (for instance: Christians. Ha ha). But there can be no disputing that the core components of Christianity - even to the historiocity of Jesus - do not hold up to scientific scrutiny. Because of this, it's reasonable to assume that anyone seriously interested in using science as a tool for understanding the universe (rather than, for instance, using it as a tool to justify extant irrational beliefs) would have no need for Christianity, which is not only incompatible as far as dogma and verifiability go, but also seeks to serve the same purpose.
P.S. - Bush is a hard-core statist and is very much enamored with your personal tax dollars, and the mainstream basis for disagreement with him is his announced motive for restricting stem cell research - Christian morality - rather than any argument about acceptable government use of tax dollars.
I do hear it in the popular media, and the implication is there in many campaign speeches (not pointing at Kerry). The biggest talk, though, is from Joe Schmukatelli. A large number of people have the impression that this stuff would be a cure-all if only Bush would let scientists work on it, and this is simply not true. It's not even true that the research isn't done. The guys across the hall that I mentioned have literally ten times the money we have. And we're a very well-funded lab.
Maybe I hear more because people around me know I'm in the field, so perhaps my experience is skewed. But I do get that exact impression (ES==Fountain of Youth) from the general populace.
The problem is not that scientists are overblowing their claims. The problem is that when newspapers & TV report on research, they leave out a lot of the qualifiers that we throw in. It's a problem that we have had in science for a long, long time. It's not a conspiracy or anything, it's just that reporters use hyperbole a bit too much in order to make the story more interesting. And this gives the wrong impression.
Very few people listen to scientists, most listen to journalists. Very few people read JBC, or even know what it is. Some people at least know what Cell is, more have perhaps read a Xeroxed commentary article from Nature. Most people don't even get their science from Scientific American or even Popular Science. They get it from the WSJ, the NYT and the local news. And I have not yet seen a report in the popular media that doesn't blow discoveries way out of proportion.
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
Well, for the record, I'm a moral absolutist and a deontologist (and a Christian). The nature of the relationship between religion and morality is such if you follow a religion then you also follow a system or morality, but not vice versa. It's totally possible for their to be atheistic moral absolutists. So your question is an inclusive-or rather than an exclusive-or. The answer would be that I imagine God would rather that people believe in Him but either if they believe in him or they follow a system or morals then they should act in good ways.
... than you think you do.
Most of us don't come out and say: "nice to meet you; there is no god".
I'd bet a lot of people who you know, who are morally "normal", are atheists and you just haven't realized it.
I am an athiest and independant of that, I realize that the world works better when:
You treat others as you would like to be treated...
Nothing that does no harm can be wrong...
and a few other guidlines.
So I try to live that way. In my experience, most athiest are of a similar mind.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
To bring this back to the original topic, another part of the distortion of science by the current administration is the deliberate use of a false dichotomy between science and religion as a calculated wedge issue to whip up the evangelical base. Again, this is not a simple partisan assertion. Neither Bush senior nor Bush junior's Republican challenger, John McCain, did this sort of thing. This is a specific criticism of the current Bush administration and its terrible distortion of science.
As it happens, I have over the past several years been giving a cycle of lay-led sermons in my church on the connections between my field (biomedical science) and spirituality. Interested parties can get them from my
http://homepage.mac.com/colgrove
In the "sermons" folder. My next sermon is coming up October 3rd (on "Death"), and you are all welcome
http://www.tparkerchurch.org/
Well, reading at -1 can prove so entertaining sometimes. Bush has kind of admitted that he finds black people annoying, though. In late April, 2002 - I don't remember the exact date, though it was initially published in a Brazilian newspaper on the 28th - Bush turned to Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and asked:
"Do you have blacks, too?"
Bush's overwhelming and jaw-dropping ignorance is clearly evident here...alongside many of his other statements.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
About half way down the page is a is a section titled Head to Head Bush vs Kerry where they both got a chance to answer fifteen science related questions. I found this part to be the most interesting as you get to hear their answers in their own words instead of the usual "iffy" synopsis about what they think from some talking head with an axe to grind that never took a science class in his life.
As an example of this in the stem cell section at the top of the page the editors say:
"
research...Scientists have been frustrated by this rule for three years..
They say that it is slowing progress in stem-cell research,..."
While in the q and a section Bush says:
"I am committed to pursuing stem-cell research without crossing a
fundamental line and I am the first president to provide federal funding
for human embryonic stem-cell research.
government invested $25million in embryonic stem-cell research and
nearly $191 million in adult stem-cell research. My administration
is also creating a national embryonic stem-cell bank . These efforts
are providing a boost to research while not providing taxpayer funding
that would sanction or encourage further destruction of human embryos.
My policy makes it possible for federally funded researchers to explore
the potential of embryonic stem-cells, while respecting the ethical and
moral implications associated with this research."
Not really the same thing at all.
I really hate that about our news. They tell us their version of what someone said instead of just quoting them in context so that we can see what they really said.
Most of the time I am convinced that our so called "objective news reporting" is anything but. Don't these people believe in the integraty of the news anymore?. Aren't reporters taught to be fair, objective, and complete anymore? It used to be that a reporters integrity and accuracy was his most valuable asset. People would talk to reporters like Walter Cronkite because they knew the man would report the facts as they happened without trying to put his own spin on things.
Anyway what does the
I think that it would be an interesting read.
Every wrong attempt discarded is a step forward - T. Edison
The US House of Representatives' Committee on Government Reform has compiled a list of the W. Bush Administration's attacks on the scientific community on their Politics and Science website.
...]
In addition, the social psychological community has been feeling the government burn recently because the US House of Representatives passed a vocal vote on 9/9/04 to block future funding of two currently approved NIH and NIMH grants (Click here for that article). This creates an unsettling precedent allowing governing bodies to trump the peer review process. [Sigh
As opposed to Kerry, who tries to affiliate himself with the Catholic Church to garner votes,
Gee, he's only a life-long Catholic. He doesn't need to "try to affiliate himself", he's been well-affiliated with the Catholic Church for decades.
only to be told by the Church itself to buzz off.
A few right-wing cranks in the Church hierarchy are trying to score some political points over abortion. Notice how they don't say anything about pro-choice Republican politicians. Notice how they don't say anything about pro-death penalty Republican politicians.
And unless the Pope has come down on high and said Kerry needs to "buzz off:, the Church itself hasn't said anything.
I have not RTFA, so take this for what it's worth. It pisses me off that the federal government has anything at all to say about scientific advancement. Usually, we're not even arguing about advancing science, we're arguing about having access to Other People's Money (OPM) to spend on our research. Granted the occasional government ban on this or that specific area of research is something to debate, but being able to steal (by proxy) somebody's money to further your research isn't something I care to hear any candidate talk much about.
Well, all I can really do is pull the lever for Badnarik.
It looks like Science, the -other- premier research journal also gave questionnaires to the candidates. Their responses are available here.
Some of the responses are copied-and-pasted, but the Science questionnaire also covers issues like Creationism, NSF funding, and their "top three priorities in science and technology," which the Nature article doesn't cover.
I found their top 3 priorities in science and technology particularly interesting:
Bush: ensure every American as access to affordable broadband by 2007, perform next-generation hydrogen research, and recruit science and technology to combat terrorism
Kerry: restore and sustain preeminence of American science and technology, ensure Americans prepared for jobs of future, and ensure that his administration's decisions are informed by the best possible science and technology advice
The UK has this, it's called Question Time or Parliamentary Questions (PQs) Note also that the questions and answered are published in book form.
Something we could well copy from them, although I admit that it's highly unlikely under the current adminstration.