A Return to Science...

With T-minus 15 days until President-elect Obama is scheduled to take office, there has been a flood of how things are going to be different now articles. One addresses a problem near and dear to me, namely the frightening trend of American anti-intellectualism over the last decade or what Thomas Friedman calls the dumb as we want to be mentality, where ignorance and apathy are not only tolerated but indeed celebrated over knowledge and curiosity.

... under the Bush administration, the scientific community has been through some dark days, to say the least. And it hasn't been a simple case of diminishing funding, as is so often the issue in the realm of governmental research. No, Teich says, Obama's remarks at Chu's appointment spoke directly to the problem.

Not many people realize that this attitude has become so pervasive that a literal war on science has been raging in this country, where politics have overridden science for the last 8 years. Hopefully Chu's appointment is just the first in what will become many of counter-offensives in this battle.