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“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” 
  Upton Sinclair 
Fear is the mother of violence and the enemy of science.

> Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2012 14:08:10 -0400
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: SA Article oct 16, 2012 AntiScience Beliefs Jeopardize US Democracy
> To: [log in to unmask]
> 
> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
> *****************************************************************************
> 
> This is from an article in the current Scientific American, entitled
> Antiscience
> Beliefs Jeopardize U.S. Democracy
> 
> It is hard to know exactly when it became acceptable for U.S. politicians
> to be antiscience. For some two centuries science was a preeminent force in
> American politics, and scientific innovation has been the leading driver of
> U.S. economic growth since World War II. Kids in the 1960s gathered in
> school cafeterias to watch moon launches and landings on televisions
> wheeled in on carts. Breakthroughs in the 1970s and 1980s sparked the
> computer revolution and a new information economy. Advances in biology,
> based on evolutionary theory, created the biotech industry. New research in
> genetics <http://www.scientificamerican.com/topic.cfm?id=genetics> is
> poised to transform the understanding of disease and the practice of
> medicine, agriculture and other fields.
> 
> The Founding Fathers were science enthusiasts. Thomas Jefferson, a lawyer
> and scientist, built the primary justification for the nation's
> independence on the thinking of Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon and John
> Locke—the creators of physics, inductive reasoning and empiricism. He
> called them his “trinity of three greatest men.” If*anyone* can discover
> the truth by using reason and science, Jefferson reasoned, then*no one* is
> naturally closer to the truth than anyone else. Consequently, those in
> positions of authority do not have the right to impose their beliefs on
> other people. The people themselves retain this inalienable right. Based on
> this foundation of science—of knowledge gained by systematic study and
> testing instead of by the assertions of ideology—the argument for a new,
> democratic form of government was self-evident.
> Read on. . .
> 
> martin
> -- 
> –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
> Martin Weiss, PhD
> Senior Scientist
> New York Hall of Science
> mweiss at nyscience.org
> cell   347-460-1858
> desk 718 595 9156
> 
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