Science, Science Everywhere. And not a drop to drink.

On the occaision that 48 Nobel-prize winning scientists endorsed John Kerry, pointing out the decline in the position of science in our country, I might think that the Bush administration would fight that charge. But they don't. They've apparently conceded that science has no place in their administration, giving a week response
by campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt: : "'Only John Kerry would declare the country to be in scientific decline on a day when the country's first privately funded space trip is successfully completed."

Apparently, they couldn't find anyone who knows the difference between basic science and a technological/economic step forward. A hundred years ago, they would have said "Leave it to John Kerry to say science is in decline when we've just completed the world's largest suspension bridge built by the private sector."

Not mentioned by the campaign spokesman are things like, for example, draconianl immigration policies barring foreign scientists from even setting foot on our soil. Anecdotal example: last summer, I was in New Mexico at a conference on Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs). GRBs are types of super-novae. So, our State Department barred 2 Chinese scientists from coming. Full on, "Sorry, you can't come here for scientific exchange." Why? Who knows? How about xenophobia -- they didn't know what these people might do once they got here, so why take the risk of letting them in? What we do know is that the US never used to bar scientists for exchange. And this might sound like an isolated anecdote, but it is not -- the community is up in arms about how difficult he Bush administration (impossible, in many cases) for foreignors to come to the US to study, to get PhDs -- and stay, enriching our talent pools, or taking their positive connections home, building scientific bridges in a way which helped US science be at the center of it all.