The Politically Incorrect Science Fair

Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "Science fairs have reached new levels of intensity, and students are turning to trendy topics like stem-cell research and intelligent design to get a leg up, the Wall Street Journal reports. 'Serene Chen says she might not be at Harvard now were it not for her application essay, which described her fetal-stem-cell research on the characteristics of Down syndrome. "If you say you studied something like 'random molecule,' it's obscure, but when you say 'stem cells,' people really perk up," says Ms. Chen, 20, now a sophomore. ... Of a 2002 project involving marijuana muffins for pain management in Santa Cruz, Calif., Mission Hill Middle School science teacher Sherri Kilkenny says, "It got all this attention, but it was very average at best." '"

Comments

Political Correction

[Doc Ruby]

How is Intelligent Design "politically incorrect"? It's fake science, factually incorrect witchdoctorate mumbo-jumbo. It is correct only politically, as dumb politicians legislate science to pander to even dumber hicks swilling their snake oil.

When NASA's publishing is controlled by lying, dropout Bush propagandists, then the Big Bang is politically incorrect. But then, since Bush thinks backing Uncle (and Aunt) Toms and shortchanging African AIDS projects makes Republicans the only politicians fit to talk politics at Coretta Scott King's funeral, I guess that "politically correct" now means "politically correct". Just like the "liberal media" refers to the corporate media, which propagates such newspeak.

Since it's politically incorrect to insist that "War is Peace", and politically incorrect to demand that Freedom is Slavery, my science project: Ignorance is Strength.

Re:Political Correction

[Doc Ruby]

Intelligent Creationism Design offers more scientific intuition for aliens creating human life than it does for metaphysical "designers". Until there's some evidence of any of that, teaching that modern organisms are "too complex" to have evolved, when evolution has been documented in fast-reproducing species, is factually incorrect. ID is sciencey, it's not science. That's known as "science fiction".

You can argue for your religious myths in your church, or in a religion class, or here on Slashdot (though you've exhausted my interest). Keep the superstition out of the science class, and stop molesting my nation's kids. We've got enough trouble with Scientology's spokesmodels. We don't need more junk science turning our kids into ChrisTaliban.