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NASA Public-Affairs Appointee Resigns in Disgrace
belmolis writes "George C. Deutsch, who tried to muzzle top NASA climate scientist James Hansen and ordered NASA web designers to add the word 'theory' to every mention of the Big Bang, has resigned. The New York Times reports
that NASA declines to discuss the reasons for his resignation, but that it came the same day that Texas A&M University, from which Deutsch claimed on his resume to have graduated, revealed that he had attended the university but did not complete his degree."
The New York Times reports it today, but as of yesterday, it was the Times that had unquestioningly passed along the falsehood of Deutsch's graduation, and it was the blog Scientific Activist whose investigation revealed he'd left before graduating to work on the Bush reelection campaign. For more on the 24-year-old political appointee's interesting viewpoints, see World O' Crap; on Monday, we covered the anger over his attempts to squelch science -- something that, sadly, Jim Hansen has gotten used to.
Let's recap for those at home keeping score.
MIchael Brown, the guy Bush picked to head FEMA, had no experience doing disaster recovery, having been fired from his previous job as commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Assocation. However, Bush appointed him because he was the roommate of the college roommate of Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's 2000 campaign manager and Brown's predecessor at FEMA.
Next, he nominated to the Supreme Court his personal lawyer Harriet Miers who had absolutely no judicial experience. Luckily she didn't get her "up or down" vote due to a Republican backlash (but probably for the wrong reasons).
And now we find that Bush appointed to NASA a 24-year old journalism major who dropped out of college but had all the qualifications of someone who worked on his campaign. And the guy was censoring real scientists!
This problem of Bush cronyism goes much further than just giving plum jobs to to one's friends. These types of appointments are dangerous to our democracy because they can do real damage (as we saw in Brown's case). The fundamental problem is Bush and his ilk value loyalty more than experience or expertise; they value faith more than facts.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
Look up "cosmic microwave background" on google.
That's probably a good place to start learning about the current state of cosmology. It usually takes more than a decade of dedicated learning to master the topic, so take your time.
There's a lot of compelling evidence for some sort of Big Bang. The universe is clearly expanding: further galaxies show a distinct "red shift", a change in the light coming from that can be measured and shows how fast away they're going. Their distance is estimated by looking for bright, measurably bright objects like nova or supernova and extrapolating their distance from the brightness.
The further away they are, the faster they seem to be going. That hints at some sort of event, roughly 10 billion years ago, that forced them all away and in fact created these objects. That's coupled with a background microwave radiation we'd expect from a universe at about 3 degrees Kelvin, as if the matter that spread out has cooled down to about that average temperature.
Other theories, such as the "Cyclic" theory assume that the universe keeps exploding and contracting, but it's hard to detect enough matter in the universe to allow it to re-contract from gravitation. Or the "Steady-State" theory assumes that the matter, the universe itself somehow keeps regenerating itself over time: some weird quantum ideas describe universes where matter forms from vacuum, but those theories don't predict the actual measurements very well.
So there are 3 common theories: the Big Bang explains the existing evidence well, but leaves people wondering "what happened before" and "what will happen later". Like gravity or light, the basic facts seem well explained, but there are weird details that do require more work to really understand.
"Misrepresentation" is a pretty harsh word. There's a decent description of the Big Bang on NASA's website at http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni/uni_101bb1.html. Do you think this is a misrepresentation?
I can't believe this administration hired some young kid to this position (well, I can but...). Besides the Michael Brown/FEMA disaster, there's this shocking bit (from Al Franken's latest): And then there was Scott Erwin, twenty-one, a former intern for Dick Cheney and Tom DeLay, who didn't need a job because he was still in college. Erwin marveled to the University of Richmond newletter that "in one week I went from chatting on the quad, eating in the Heilman Dining Center and attending ODK [Omicron Delta Kappa] meetings to being briefed in the Pentagon, flying in a C-130 military plane from Kuwait City to Baghdad and living in one of Saddam's many palaces." Erwin soon landed a gig as the top Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) official managing the finances of Iraq's civilian security forces -- fire units, customs, border patrols, and police. What a great job! Almost as much fun as his previous favorite job, which he told the Richmond Times-Dispatch was "my time as an ice cream truck driver." Erwin was one of the six youngsters given control of Iraq's $13 billion budget. ... CPA Inspector General Stuart Bowen concluded that no less than $8.8 billion went unaccounted for ...
Theory - 1. A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.
Hypothesis - 1. A tentative explanation for an observation, phenomenon, or scientific problem that can be tested by further investigation.
There is a definition of "theory" that means what they think it means but that's not the same definition that science uses.
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The further away they are, the faster they seem to be going. That hints at some sort of event, roughly 10 billion years ago, that forced them all away and in fact created these objects. That's coupled with a background microwave radiation we'd expect from a universe at about 3 degrees Kelvin, as if the matter that spread out has cooled down to about that average temperature.
You missed one thing. The rate at which they are traveling seems to be accelerating as well.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Sorry, this is a trend now. Political reliability is evidently the only measure of competence for this administration. I think the inability to find a reliable stooge is why the FDA has been without a Commissioner for the largest fraction of a President's term in the history of the agency, by way of a further example.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
Here's a notable excerpt:
And he's ranked 7 out of 15 for hacktitude.
Oh, PLEASE.
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Michael Crichton is out to make money. He gets money for giving his "daring" speech on the rubber chicken circuit. He gets money on sales of his latest shlock thriller, which has evil grant-hungry climate scientists running weather control machines to terrorize the populace.
Here is what actual climate scientists have to say about the claims in his novel:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74
At CISCOP, Chris Mooney reviews State of Fear:
http://www.csicop.org/doubtandabout/crichton/
A look at the politics behind Crichton's crusade:
http://www.grist.org/advice/books/2005/02/01/robe
Who are your going trust, Crichton or scientists?
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2005/1/20/234126
OK. Maybe you can't trust scientists. How about the opinions of another author? Here is what Gregory Benford has to say:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050121/