Group Fights Politicizing Science and Engineering

smooth wombat writes, "Several prominent scientists said yesterday that they had formed an organization dedicated to electing politicians 'who respect evidence and understand the importance of using scientific and engineering advice in making public policy.' The group will be a 527 organization and will focus its efforts on races in which science plays a part." From the article: "In what it described as a Bill of Rights for scientists and engineers, the group said that researchers who receive federal funds should be free to discuss their work publicly, and that appointments to federal scientific advisory committees should be based on scientific qualifications, not political beliefs. It said the government should not support science education programs that 'include concepts that are derived from ideology,' an apparent reference to creationism and its ideological cousin, intelligent design."

Comments

They want us to use facts? Based in reality?

[CokeBear]

The facts have a well known liberal bias. We can't have bias in science, therefore we should ignore the facts (and also disregard reality, since we know reality to have a liberal bias as well)

we already have one: moveon.org

[krell]

We already have an entirely non-partisan and truthful 527 organization. Ever hear of moveon.org?

*ouch*

[crumbz]

I'll volunteer to head the Kansas chapter. Just provide me with body armor, 24-7 security and an anonymous remailer.

Re:The Sad Fact of the Matter

[sedyn]

"Often times, I got a canned response of something crazy like, "John Kerry is for abortion. Bush is against it. If my mother had had me aborted, I wouldn't be here and that's why I'm voting for Bush."

That is the best arguement yet in favour of Kerry.

Spending karma

[UbuntuDupe]

Is this group going to teach politicians that, unlike the equivalent with the theory of gravity, you can't validate climatological theories by making 1000 copies of the earth, altering emissions for some of them, waiting a thousand years, and then running a regression, and that its certainty is to that extent weaker?

Re:The Sad Fact of the Matter

[feepness]

At the end of the day, the people voting are not scientifically founded. If they were, I wouldn't have to put up with commercials for The War at Home on TV

And at the end of the day, if you were more technically founded you wouldn't have to put up with commercials at all... ;)

also the

[n0nsensical]

best argument yet in favor of abortion.

Re:The Sad Fact of the Matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it wrong to use fetuses in stem cell research for the good of American society because it would killing an innocent life and yet it's ok to kill 30,000 innocent Iraqi civilians for the good of American society?

Don't you just love double standards?

Actually, it's more like I hate waste. Perhaps we can use 30,000 innocent Iraqi civilians for stem cell research.