The Null Device

American Anti-Scientists

A set of parodic postage stamps commemorating American anti-scientists; a more timely response to this:
While standing in line at the post office, I saw this new series of stamps devoted to American scientists...which is kind of ironic considering how our sciences are now under attack from all corners: from evangelicals to pharmaceutical marketing, educational declines, and funding cuts. It's like singing "Happy Birthday" to a man as he's being taken away on a gurney.

There are 3 comments on "American Anti-Scientists":

Posted by: Ms .45 http://jovialfellow.blogspot.com/ Thu Sep 1 12:05:47 2005

Good call, but maybe read Who Rules in Science? by James Robert Brown, who points out that William Jennings Bryan was at least motivated by social justice ideals, in direct opposition to "social Darwinists" who thought eugenics was just the shit. Here's a review by Alan Sokal - http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:lhwM-PirUdUJ:www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/review_of_brown_doublespace.pdf+who+rules+in+science&hl=en&client=firefox-a - who funnily enough features prominently in the book, and you can read an excerpt at the publisher's website. http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/BROWHO.html

Posted by: acb http://dev.null.org Thu Sep 1 12:31:50 2005

Yes, I think they should have had a few others, like the ExxonMobil-funded climate-change deniers, for example, or the smoking-does-not-cause-cancer lobby.

Posted by: acb http://dev.null.org Thu Sep 1 14:44:29 2005

Besides which, whatever his political ideals may have been, Bryan was still a Creationist, and thus by definition anti-science. And the Scopes monkey trial was not about eugenics but about the teaching of evolution.