I’m joking, of course. The esteemed science mag runs an article in its January 2009 issue slamming John McCain and Sarah Palin, but with a serious purpose: pointing out that many of those oh-so-hilarious earmarks that the GOP ticket brought up as illustrations of congressional waste — “We spent $3 million to study the DNA of bears in Montana. I don’t know if that was a criminal issue or a paternal issue,” said John McCain, repeatedly — were actually examples of valuable scientific projects.
The DNA work on grizzlies that McCain mentioned was actually fairly standard stuff mandated by the Endangered Species Act. Scientists have to do DNA studies to track population fluctuations, which are important when an animal is, you know, endangered. The “overhead projector at a planetarium in Chicago, Illinois” that McCain mocked in a debate with Obama was, in reality, a replacement for the Adler Planetarium’s star-projection system in its historic Sky Theater, the first planetarium theater in the Western Hemisphere. A statement from the planetarium after the debate said pointedly that the earmark request, which was not funded, was “not an overhead projector.” And finally, the “fruit-fly research in Paris, France” that Sarah Palin dumped on during the campaign was actually $211,000 in funds that helped French researchers figure out ways to protect American crops from dangerous pests.
This is just the latest phase in the Republican war on science. We have some recommendations on how Obama can bring this long, stupid saga to a close.
