Another week, another Palin-bashing piece by Slate's Christopher Hitchens. Last week, Palin was a Manchurian candidate; for round two, she's an anti-science, creationist troglodyte. Hitchens builds his case like any great mason, brick by brick. Exhibit A:
...at a speech in Pittsburgh, Gov. Sarah Palin denounced wasteful expenditure on fruit-fly research, adding for good xenophobic and anti-elitist measure that some of this research took place "in Paris, France" and winding up with a folksy "I kid you not."
Hitchens goes on to note that 75 years ago Thomas Hunt Morgan won a Nobel Prize for his research in fruit flies and that there are plenty of reasons to still study them today. He doesn't provide any word on whether Morgan's research was government funded, but since Morgan's work goes back decades prior to his Nobel, presumably Hitchens supports another 100 years of fruit fly research to be placed on the tax payer's tab.
That aside, Hitchens might have missed Palin's larger point. It wasn't the research itself, but how the money was awarded (through earmarks) which was problematic. As Yuval Levin points out:
It’s worth pointing out that the particular spark that set off this latest Slate witch-burning was Palin’s criticism of a $211,000 earmark from Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA) for a French study of fruit flies that damage olive groves—a criticism that came in the midst of a larger speech about the need for, among other things, more support for scientific research. The idea that opposing science-funding-by-earmark (i.e. in circumvention of the rigorous peer review process for federal R&D funds) is somehow anti-science is beyond absurd, and the notion that criticizing this earmark means Palin opposes or is ignorant of any use of fruit flies in scientific research is just unserious.
Hitchens seems to acknowledge that Palin's comments were really about earmarks when he gives his second example:
In this case, it could be argued, Palin was not just being a fool in her own right but was following a demagogic lead set by the man who appointed her as his running mate. Sen. John McCain has made repeated use of an anti-waste and anti-pork ad (several times repeated and elaborated in his increasingly witless speeches) in which the expenditure of $3 million to study the DNA of grizzly bears in Montana was derided as "unbelievable." As an excellent article in the Feb. 8, 2008, Scientific American pointed out, there is no way to enforce the Endangered Species Act without getting some sort of estimate of numbers, and the best way of tracking and tracing the elusive grizzly is by setting up barbed-wire hair-snagging stations that painlessly take samples from the bears as they lumber by and then running the DNA samples through a laboratory.
This example is more substantive. McCain's clear point is to criticize earmarks, but he does so by attacking the need for this research. However, the title of Hitchens' piece is:
Sarah Palin's War On Science
The GOP ticket's appalling contempt for knowledge and learning.
Under Hitchens' logic, an unwillingness to fund any and all proposed research projects with public dollars is contempt for knowledge and a "War on Science." Levin's point still stands that it would seem scientists rather than politicians might make better decisions about which projects to fund in a finite budget.
Hitchens next goes into Palin's supposed creationism:
...she is known to favor the teaching of creationism in schools (smuggling this crazy idea through customs in the innocent disguise of "teaching the argument," as if there was an argument), and so it is at least probable that she believes all creatures from humans to fruit flies were created just as they are now.
Hitchens speculates that Palin's own creationist beliefs are "probable." That means he can't find a recorded quote that she's a creationist. All he's got is one comment where she said if creationism comes up in the classroom, you can teach the argument. This is hardly a "war on science."
Global warming gets a brief mention:
Gov. Palin also says that she doesn't think humans are responsible for global warming; again, one would like to ask her whether, like some of her co-religionists, she is a "premillenial dispensationalist"—in other words, someone who believes that there is no point in protecting and preserving the natural world, since the end of days will soon be upon us.
Hitchens accuses Palin's religious beliefs of undermining her scientific thinking. The only evidence he has are the statements of other religious people. This line of argument will get you nowhere. Furthermore, if you want a fairly illuminating view on how the environmental movement is damaging science by politicizing it, Michael Chrichton gave a speech on the subject in 2003. If you believe the debate on global warming is over, be aware that global warming alarmists make that claim not due to any scientific certainty, but because they would prefer not to have a debate. Has anyone ever seen a global warming debate? They are a truly endangered species, almost never observed because the alarmists tend to lose.
If you doubt this premise, ask yourself two questions:
- How many times have you seen Al Gore talk about global warming?
- How many times have you seen Al Gore debate global warming?
The hysteria over global warming and the ensuing politicization of science has done more to damage science than anything Palin's "probable" belief in creationism has done.
Hitchens goes into more criticisms of Palin's religious beliefs and the church she used to attend, and ends with this:
This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just "people of faith" but theocratic bullies. On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and stupidity.
Hitchens would prefer to vote for the presidential candidate whose church for 20 years preached that the government created the HIV virus to kill blacks. The Constitution can only be protected by the candidate who views it as fundamentally flawed.




