Oh, wait … that violates the precious orthodoxy that crime and poverty are the result of social factors, such as oppression and lack of education.

So much for being pro-science.

You misunderstood what I was saying. My point actually was “What the heck is supposed to be wrong with this kind of research project?”. It's actually something very important to a segment of our country's agricultural economy thought not a large segment of it. But the amount of money wasn't large, either. I wholeheartedly approve of the project and think our government should be supporting more scientific research in a number of fields. An antibiotics researcher was on NPR's Science Friday a week ago and pointed out that the big pharma companies do absolutely no work on antibiotics until other researchers have gotten it to the point of being ready to go to market. All the real research is done by private or government funding and we really are in desperate need of more of it. Yet conservatives continue to push the meme that it is the private sector that is most important to health care. I don't buy it.

Intelligence is important and genetic, and it seems pretty clear that everyone here is as much acknowledging this. Only about 15 to 20 percent of the American population have the genetically heritable cognitive functioning capable of accessing more than 12 years of good, solid classroom education. And, yet, we have this nutty obsession with getting everyone off to college.

What I find amusing is that so many people here who imply that Palin is unintelligent, they are correct, would pitch a hissy fit over similar assessments of individual variances in learning capacity.

Just more hypocrisy.

This: “In ridiculing the very scientific research that would support her “policy,” she was just being a good Republican.”

A fair reading of her policy position indicates she's in favor of strengthening the National Institute of Health genome project.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/guide/fly/

Also referenced in her speech were
Educational choices for special needs children
http://www.mckayscholarship.com/

Fully funding the IDEA which is currently funded at 18% and not the 40% that Congress committed to in 1975. Currently the states/local school districts are forced to allocate funds in order to comply with the law.
http://www.nea.org/lac/idea/ideaposition2.html.

The point she was making was that this could be funded by redirecting some of the $18 billion in congressional earmarks — such as the $211,000 to study the fruit fly in Paris France.

I think that's the essential question. Back in my graduate school days William Proxmire was handing out his Golden Fleece Awards for what he considered to be frivolous gov't projects. Many of them were justly criticized, but one in particular had something to do with the sexual behavior of flatworms. I guess he thought it was hysterically funny, but the criticism caused a furor in the scientific community. Flatworms are another one of those model systems that are commonly used in a variety of research paradigms, both then and now. They also happen to be hermaphroditic, so studying their sexual behavior tells you about the mechanisms of gene expression. And that was the whole point. And it wasn't at all frivolous. In fact, the criticism was so ill-advised and caused such a reaction that an unofficial Flatworm Journal (I think that's what it was called) arose to make fun of it.

I suspect that Sarah Palin picked this earmark to criticize because of its panache. It's got flies and France involved, and it's on a list of frivolous earmarks compiled by
CAGW. So it must be dumb, right? Maybe it is. Then again, maybe it's not. But I'm guessing neither CAGW or Palin possess the expertise to evaluate it.

re-read the post, and then ask yourself, who used what language? because it wasn't the author of this article, michael stickings.

and “her intelligence and understanding wouold [sic] amaze” us? if she actually showed any, hell, i'd be amazed!

i think the point is very simple: by ridiculing, of all things, fruit fly research funding, she has showed a fundamental ignorance of the importance of basic scientific research. do you realize just how vital fruit fly studies are to medicine?

Myers IS exactly right. Wow – sending to mom. She will be appalled.

And – for her information, Alan Garen is the MB&B icon (particularly during the 60s, 70s and 80s) at Yale whose son just happens to be Micah Garen, one of the very few individuals – a photojournalist at that – who was kidnapped in Iraq and got out alive. Micah and I saw each other a few times as kids growing up when the lab had office gatherings etc. and when I heard about the kidnapping, I absolutely felt crushed for his father, again, for whom my mom worked in a fruit fly lab for 14 years.

Maybe Palin would like to talk to Micah's dad about fruit flies and Iraq.

http://digg.com/2008_us_elections/Leaked_Pro_Mc...