Category Archives: science and politics

Sarah Palin disses MY fruit fly

By Michael Eisen | Published: October 26, 2008

As I’m sure many of you have now heard, Sarah Palin delivered her first official “policy speech” in which she pressed for Congress to fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). To enable Congress to fund this without increasing spending, she returned to McCain-Palin’s favorite enemy – the earmark. And, following recent M-P […]

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Well, at least someone asked about evolution

By Michael Eisen | Published: September 24, 2008

Barack Obama’s answers to 18 science questions posed by Nature were just published (John McCain declined to answer, although Nature answered many of these questions from his public statements). These questions were much more pointed and science-related than the ones posed by Science Debate 2008. For example, they asked: Many scientists are bitter about what […]

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Contest: If you could ask a single science question at the real presidential debate

By Michael Eisen | Published: September 16, 2008

What would it be? I am so disappointed in the much hyped Science Debate 2008. As I said before, I read the questions before the answers and found them to be really lame. And the answers to these overly general and often unsciency questions were predictably uninteresting. The candidates support science! Yay! But did anyone […]

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Science Debate 2008 questions are really lame

By Michael Eisen | Published: September 15, 2008

Most of you have probably heard about Science Debate 2008, an effort “to restore science and innovation to America’s political dialogue” by having the candidates discuss pressing issues in science. Since Obama and McCain won’t have an actual debate, the organizers of this effort have posed 14 questions (culled from 3,400 submissions from the community). […]

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Fight Intelligent Design – Publish in PLoS!

By Michael Eisen | Published: December 22, 2005

I wrote this Op-Ed in response to the ongoing battles in Kansas, Georgia and Pennsylvania over ‘intelligent design’. The NYT, LAT, Washington Post and the SF Chronicle turned it down. Time to start a blog! Now that a federal judge in Pennsylvania has ruled that intelligent design has no place in the classroom, the scientists […]

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