National Public Radio has a ridiculously biased piece on the Republican presidential candidates and science:
the message is clear — Bachmann believes something other than physical and biological processes drives events on planet Earth.
Perry does too.
At a campaign stop last month, a child asked Perry what he thinks about evolution. He told the boy, "it's a theory out there that has some gaps in it."
At a voter breakfast in New Hampshire, Perry was asked about the overwhelming scientific evidence that shows human actions are a substantial cause of global warming. While he did agree that the climate was changing, he said that it's been changing since the Earth began.
"Scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that manmade global warming is what is causing the climate to change," Perry said.
The article concludes by asserting that this could be "catastrophic" for Republicans. But it cites no polling data on what most Americans believe about these issues. More broadly, the underlying assumption — that skepticism toward particular scientific theories amounts to a wholesale rejections of science — makes me glad that NPR wasn't around at the time of Copernicus's challenge to Ptolemy, or when Einstein was introducing his theory of relativity. It's not that I think either Governor Perry or Congressman Bachmann is the next Einstein or Copernicus, but by the NPR piece's absurd framework, anyone skeptical of an existing scientific theory can be denounced as "anti-science."
