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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.
I'd just read the article below before seeing this as well.
86 Evangelical Leaders Join to Fight Global Warming
Could this actually mean that well intentioned christians are actually beginning to crawl out from under the thumb of the right-wing extremists like Dobson, Robertson, Bush, etc?
I know this is only a small beginning and may be offering false hope, but at least its better than the complete lack of any hope for American socieity I'd been feeling recently.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
This guy was able to hold a prominent position in the government? Only a day ago we were discussing how this guy was trying to influence NASA's output for a political end and now we find that the people who put him in the job weren't smart enough to do a background check. If you've ever been in poltics this is Lesson #1. Before you put someone in front of a camera to represent you, you make sure of their job credientials.
It's bad enough that a 24 year old was trying to tell NASA what to do but he never even graduated college. Whoever gave him that job should be fired along with him.
On a more personal note, Serves you right you dozy eejit.
Let's start with the President! *ducks*
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Every time I hear someone say, "But it's only a theory, not a fact" I cringe and then immediately ask them if they have a problem with the Theory of Electromagnetism or the Theory of General Relativity since they too are "just theories" and not facts. The usual response is a blank stare as their mind tries to not assplode from having to defend such a ridiculous statement.
You're in good company. Lord Macaulay in his 1841 speech to parliament on the issue of copyright extension had to deal with exactly this misunderstanding of what a "theory" is:
My honourable and learned friend talks very contemptuously of those who are led away by the theory that monopoly makes things dear. That monopoly makes things dear is certainly a theory, as all the great truths which have been established by the experience of all ages and nations, and which are taken for granted in all reasonings, may be said to be theories. It is a theory in the same sense in which it is a theory that day and night follow each other, that lead is heavier than water, that bread nourishes, that arsenic poisons, that alcohol intoxicates.
Always happy to plug one of my favorite writers. Macaulay's riposte probably works better than yours because he uses more homely examples.
If I had to put the missing point in a nutshell, I'd do it this way: in science, not all theories are true, but all truths are theories. Of course it's a bit of an overstatement, in that one can certainly talk about an individual fact in isolation. But as soon as you try to connect facts, you have a theory.
Of course religion has its theories as well, which are called "doctrines". For example you have the doctrine of original sin, and the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, which I believe any fundamentalist should be familiar with. These are, within a certain scope "testable", in the sense they can be compared to scriptural sources. The difference between a doctrine and a theory is the ultimate test, the foundation upon which all other tests reside.
In religion, this is mystical experience. The Christian experiences the Bible as a manifestation of God's grace and love, and therefore accepts it as authoritative. In science the foundation is sensory experience.
The reason then that many thoughtful religious people reject fundamentalism is that by confusing science and religion, you are in a sense denying grace itself. Fundamentalism is often mixed up with mystical movements like pentacostalism; indeed many individuals are both. But these are inconsistent. Fundamentalism is a form of pseudo-rationalism.
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Deutsch is only a minor (and obvious) part of a larger problem with the NASA public-affairs branch.
But he represents a more fundamental problem: the way we govern our country is broken. Given that, it's not surprising that the government is dysfunctional in the realm of space science. It's dsyfunctional period.
Look, the guy's 24 years old and he gets a political appointment? Now prove to me this country isn't being run by an aristocracy. It used to be connected people got their kids internships, or made congressional pages. They didn't get them policy level poliltical appointments.
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You know -- at an agency like NASA which presumably has a large number of career scientists who have spent decades in their field (some of whom have spent over a decade on a single project like Stardust) -- a 24-year old, politically appointed, non-college graduate who tries to put Bush's political spin on science doesn't deserve anything better than kid. And, in fact, probably deserves worse.
A grossly underqualified person with no real world experience telling people many years his senior and way more qualified they need to call the Big Bang a theory (and whatever else he did) doesn't deserve anything but contempt and scorn.
Compared to what can only be called 'elder statesmen' of science, this guy is a kid. In this sense, 'kid' is used in the diminutive to refer to someone who is new to a field and doesn't have a lot of experience.
Heck, rookie quarterbacks get referred to as 'kid', even if they're in their early 20's.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.