The voice of science is being stifled in the Bush administration, with fewer scientists heard in policy discussions and money for research and advanced training being cut, according to panelists at a national science meeting.
Speakers at the national meeting of the American Association for Advancement of Science expressed concern Sunday that some scientists in key federal agencies are being ignored or even pressured to change study conclusions that don't support policy positions. The speakers also said that Bush's proposed 2005 federal budget is slashing spending for basic research and reducing investments in education designed to produce the nation's future scientists. And there also was concern that increased restrictions and requirements for obtaining visas is diminishing the flow to the U.S. of foreign-born science students who have long been a major part of the American research community.
The Age of Aquarius is filled with mythic and faith based orientations to realities that are now trying to kill the wonder of scientific thought. Destroy logic and reason at all costs seems to be the motto of the crazed conservative constituency. Ridding the nation of scientific thinking empowers the "believers" to speak out, since their claims to substantive phenomenological constructs rely on information that is at best specious and most likely ficticious. Dumbing down the science increases the rising up of dogma. Orthodoxy trumps skepticism, fundamentalism replaces mathematics, evangelicalism overwhelms reason---a new stew of zealots burning witches and destroying the remnants of manichean wonder. The war is engaged. The battle lines are forming.
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