The War On Science Funding

What happened to the GOP? Fo sho they are the party of "no", but now they are becoming the party of lies, untruths and deception. The war on science, and in this case science funding, has been going on for a while but it is in recent years, with the Christianization of the GOP, that the battle for research funding has become a war.

In these dire economic times politicians justly want to pinch pennies, after all good people are unemployed and families are struggling. But when the propaganda machine is rolled out and voters are deceived, then that is lame-o pants. Recently Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) made the claim that half a million dollars of tax payer money has been spent on shrimps on a treadmill. It would be totally bad...if it were true. The lie is that scientists spent money exercising shrimp, the truth is that shrimp on a treadmill is only part of the research and that the half a million dollars was spent on legitimate research.

Biologist Lou Burnett, "...and it suggests that much money was spent on seeing how long a shrimp can run on a treadmill, which was totally out of context." But voters wouldn't know that coming from the senator.

Another example from the Traditional Values Coalition (why do they always have names like that) claims that researchers spent 9.4 million to study, get ready for this...penis size. OK(?). The reality is that researchers were investigating sexually transmitted disease and no tax payer dollars were spent. Unfortunately once a group makes a statement like that the damage is already done.

The average voter doesn't have the time, or energy or even the want to investigate claims like this. Politics is learned through sound bites, one liners and emotion. The sad reality of it is that people do not even know why they know something (epistemology). They just hear a sound bite and think "yea, those scientists are wasting my money," or "Them dam immigrants are stealing jobs from good red blooded Americans (as if the average American would work in the fields. Right).

I used to have respect for the old school republicans. I was down for agreeing to disagree, but not anymore. When the GOP got hijacked by evangelical Christianity the battle emerged in the science classroom (evolution v  intelligent design), the history classroom (American exceptionalism and founding fathers) and now the battle to fund science.

There is a war going on peeps and we can't lose this one.

* NPR Shrimp on a treadmill.