________________________________________________________________________________ / A serious public debate about the validity of astrology? A serious believer \ | in the White House? Two of them? Give me a break. What stifled my laughter | | is that the image fits. Reagan has always exhibited a fey indifference toward | | science. Facts, like numbers, roll off his back. And we've all come to | | accept it. This time it was stargazing that became a serious issue....Not | | that long ago, it was Reagan's support of Creationism....Creationists actually | | got equal time with evolutionists. The public was supposed to be open-minded | | to the claims of paleontologists and fundamentalists, as if the two were | | scientific colleagues....It has been clear for a long time that the president | | is averse to science...In general, these attitudes fall onto friendly American | | turf....But at the outer edges, this skepticism about science easily turns | | into a kind of naive acceptance of nonscience, or even nonsense. The same | | people who doubt experts can also believe any quackery, from the benefits of | | laetrile to eye of newt to the movement of planets. We lose the capacity to | | make rational -- scientific -- judgments. It's all the same. | | -- Ellen Goodman, The Boston Globe Newspaper Company-Washington Post Writers | \ Group / --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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