Hitchens critiques anti-science attitudes of McCain and Palin.

Christopher Hitchens is not every American's favorite British guy. For one thing, he is an atheist who has launched lengthy arguments against organized religion. But let's try to put that aside for the moment, and discuss his more recent attack on Palin, and also McCain, due to his conviction that they have repeatedly scorned Science in the course of their campaign.

Read it for yourself if you have the time:

http://www.slate.com/id/2203120/

One of the commentators on Hitchens newest piece calls him "sometimes crazy, sometimes razor sharp".  Taking on Palin for her odd attack on federal use of fruit flies in genetic studies, and McCain for his rant against spending 3 million to study Grizzly bear DNA. Which is that, crazy or razor sharp? Hitchens, a man who respects science, points out that you can't study genetics without little animals with short life spans- bingo, fruit flies. He points out that if you want to study grizzly bears in the rocky mountain states in order to keep them from going extinct, you have to understand the minimum number of them that you have to keep n a population in order to keep them from dying from inbreeding. Yup, that is science. And guess what, it is cheaper to take a fur sample from a barb wire scratch trap, than it is to chase grizzlies around with helicopters and radio collars.

I am with you on this one, Hitchens. I may not agree with you on middle east policies, but it seems sort of self evident that McCain and Palin are playing on the ignorance and mistrust of science of many americans. We are not going to solve our financial problems by getting rid of America's science budget, guys. And you are not going to get Americans to prize science as a career or an element of their educations by mocking it, calling it elitist, calling it silly and a waste of time.