Posted on 02/08/2006 8:33:55 AM PST by MurryMom
George C. Deutsch, the young presidential appointee at NASA who told public affairs workers to limit reporters' access to a top climate scientist and told a Web designer to add the word "theory" at every mention of the Big Bang, resigned yesterday, agency officials said.
Mr. Deutsch's resignation came on the same day that officials at Texas A&M University confirmed that he did not graduate from there, as his résumé on file at the agency asserted.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The buck stops with Bush.
Did you vote for the micro manager Gore in 2000?
Deutsch, was discovered and forced out so what's your problem? Then again, see post 123. This IS from the NY Slimes. Maybe there are some facts missing.
What more do you have to know than scientific theories must be falsifiable (which is why Creationism is not a "scientific theory" but is a common-usage "theory") - there's no magic that a scientific theory explains scientific observations - you must not know many creationists.
Just seeing where (if at all) you would draw the line on this new-fangled "science" requirement for non-science NASA jobs. As for "never" using the AP Style manual, why then was this already on the NASA web page (from 1997 no less - who was Vice-President at the time?):
"The Big Bang Theory
Representation of the universe according to inflationary cosmology.
The Big Bang Theory is the dominant scientific theory about the origin of the universe. According to the big bang, the universe was created sometime between 10 billion and 20 billion years ago from a cosmic explosion that hurled matter and in all directions.
In 1927, the Belgian priest Georges Lemaître was the first to propose that the universe began with the explosion of a primeval atom. His proposal came after observing the red shift in distant nebulas by astronomers to a model of the universe based on relativity. Years later, Edwin Hubble found experimental evidence to help justify Lemaître's theory. He found that distant galaxies in every direction are going away from us with speeds proportional to their distance.
The big bang was initially suggested because it explains why distant galaxies are traveling away from us at great speeds. The theory also predicts the existence of cosmic background radiation (the glow left over from the explosion itself). The Big Bang Theory received its strongest confirmation when this radiation was discovered in 1964 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, who later won the Nobel Prize for this discovery.
Although the Big Bang Theory is widely accepted, it probably will never be proved; consequentially, leaving a number of tough, unanswered questions.
Updated December 2, 1997. Contacts"
http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy/universe/b_bang.html
No. Did you?
Deutsch, was discovered and forced out so what's your problem
So your theory is, it's OK to appoint unqualified frauds, as long as someone catches them? Bizarre.
Then again, see post 123.
He resigned immediately the story broke.
It is curious. But if you're sliming Bush, there's no need to fact check I guess. Just sling that s**t and see how much sticks.
As per post 123, are you certain he's a fraud? You believe every NY Times story? And don't you find it interesting that a denizen from DU posted this? I think I'll wait until all the facts are known.
Exactly. We don't even know he was a Presidential appointee, as claimed by the NY Slimes.
Lemme think ... where have I seen that kind of demented behavior before?
Do you have a copy of the AP Style manual? Someone above wants that reference quoted.
Are you a betting man?
MurryMom: "Another resume-padding Republican hits the dust."
Howlin: "At least we get rid of ours; you try to elect yours president."
Reality 101:
Google Results 1 - 10 of about 425 for nasa politicized ozone hole discovery
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=nasa+politicized+ozone+hole+discovery+&btnG=Google+Search
Excerpts from two items:
[1] "...NASA in recent years has seen environmental projects as potential cash cows. It has fought with other agencies--through its Mission to Planet Earth, a project to study Earth's ecology--for jurisdiction over satellites to monitor the environment.
Typical of its tactics, in February 1992 it made screaming headlines with its announcement that a huge ozone hole could be in the process of opening over the Northern Hemisphere. In fine print the data were skimpy at best. Still, the agency got the politically correct headlines as its funding was being debated. There were few headlines months later when no ozone hole developed. ..." ~ CATO
http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:gWcDdYSIUjkJ:www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb105-37.html+nasa+politicized+ozone+hole+discovery+&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1
[2] Harmful politicization of Science by William Happer
http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:FlLm-ZhuvAcJ:www.hoover.org/publications/books/fulltext/polscience/27.pdf+nasa+politicized+ozone+hole+discovery+&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=4
[Huge Snip]
False biology prevailed for forty years in the Soviet Union because Lysenko gained dictatorial control. His type of control dependent upon prison, exile, and bulletis not possible in democratic societies, but the control of research funding enables those in political favor to restrict research that might undermine political opinions and positions.
For instance, when I was the Director of Energy Research of the Department of Energy in the early 1990s I was amazed that the great bulk of federal funds for environmental studies from the DOE, NASA, EPA, and other federal agencies flowed into research programs that reinforced a message of imminent doom: humanity and planet earth devastated by global warming, pestilence, famine, and flood.
I was particularly disturbed by the ridiculous claims by then-Senator Al Gore that recent NASA studies had shown that there was an ozone hole over Kennebunkport.” I remember reacting angrily to a briefing by Mr. Gore’s political ally, Bob Watson of NASA, when he used the same words, an “ozone hole over Kennebunkport,” to brief high-level members of the Bush administration in the West Wing of the White House.
After the election of Bill Clinton and Al Gore in the fall of 1992, I was soon the only “holdover” from the previous Bush administration in the Departmentof Energy. There I worked with the new Secretary of Energy, Hazel O’Leary, to defend basic science in the Department of Energy. Although most political appointees are replaced after the White House changes hands in a presidential election, it is not unusual for those occupying scientific posts to remain for some time in a new administration. However, after a few months, Secretary O’Leary called me in to say that I was unacceptable to Al Gore and his environmental advisers, and that I would have to be replaced. She was apologetic and gracious during this discussion, and she did not elaborate on the exact reasons for Gore’s instructions.
The modern Greek poet Constantine Cavafy wrote a poem, Things Ended,” which is worth rememberingas we contemplate our supposedly dying planet:
"Possessed by fear and suspicion, mind agitated, eyes alarmed, we desperately invent ways out, plan how to avoid the inevitable danger that threatens us so terribly. Yet we’re mistaken, that’s not the danger ahead: the information was false (or we didn’t hear it, or didn’t get it right). Another disaster, one we never imagined, suddenly, violently, descends upon us, and finding us unpreparedthere’s no time left sweeps us away." C. P. Cavafy, Collected Poems, edited by George Savidis (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992).
Summary
Politicized science is an inevitable part of the human condition, but society must strive to control it. Although history shows that politicized science does much more damage in totalitarian societies than in democracies, even democracies are sometimes stampeded into doing very foolish and damaging things. The Kyoto Treaty, based on assertions that mankind’s generation of carbon dioxide will cause global warming, is an example of such a foolish and damaging thing.
The effects of the Kyoto Treaty, if the treaty is enacted, are likely to be more like those of Prohibition, than Lysenko’s biology. The demonizations of rum and carbon dioxide have much in common. In 1920, the U.S. Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. This amendment, which prohibited the manufacture, sale, or transport of alcoholic beverages, was intended to rid the country of the accidents, disease,and violence associated with those beverages. It didn’t.
It began a disastrous era that helped organized crime to flourish as never before and nourished contempt for the law that has not entirely dissipated today.
In 1933, the Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment, the only time in history that an amendment to the U.S. Constitution has been repealed. Demonization of anything is hard to combat,since it is so easy to join the supposed high ground of virtue, while scorning those who go through the painstaking effort of looking at the facts for themselves.
This was why it was so hard to stop the bandwagon of prohibitionor Lysenko’s biology.
The same human motives that cause other problems in our lives also drive extreme politicized science. As the examples here show, a common motive is the love of power and domination. This was clearly one of the most important motives for Lysenko. There is no surer way to build a powerful bureaucratic empire in a democracy than to promote a supposed peril and then staff up a huge organization to combat it.
The intoxication of fame and glory is an important motive, especially for the scientists themselves. What bliss to be a sainted savior of the planet, to be the provider of agricultural abundance as communism dumps capitalism into the dustbin of history, or to be a new Prometheus, bringing the fire of cold fusion to desperate humanity!
Greed is often a motive. The University of Utah was transfixed by the untold dollars they thought would flow to the inventors of cold fusion. The Enron Corporation, a politically correct darling of many environmental advocacy groups, was a stalwart supporter of the Kyoto Treaty to limit carbon dioxide emissions. Enron envisaged huge profits from the trading of emission rights.
Moreover, Enron’s holdings of natural gas, the fossil fuel that emits the least carbon dioxide per BTU of combustion energy, would also greatly increase in value as the constraints of the Kyoto Treaty began to hurt the coal industry.
One can go down the list of deadly sins of almost any religion, and most can be found in politicized science.
This should come as no surprise, since scientists are as fallible as anyone else in their personal lives.
We recall that the first biblical mention of science (from “knowing” in Latin) occurs in the story of Eve’s temptation by the Serpent, “Eritis sicut Deus, scientes bonum et malum; Thou shalt be as God, knowing good and evil.” Science has always been associated with good and evil, and it will always be a struggle to be sure that the good prevails." ~
That really is curious. For all we know, the "requirements" could be something innocuous and foolish such as he was required to write a 1000 word final paper and it only had 999 words.
First of all, it's not that darn hard to check resumes. There are companies that do that for you. Jeesh!
Second, Who hired Craig Livingstone?
Don't have a problem with some nitwit apple polisher and liar getting the boot.
I'm a non-betting Grandma and the Times has a history of lying.
Close only counts in horseshoes and grenades!
The NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal is awarded for notably outstanding leadership which has had a pronounced effect upon the aerospace technological or administrative programs of NASA. 1978 George C. Deutsch
http://tinyurl.com/93scj
( at the lower end of the page)
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