Forget leadership in physics. With the way things are going we will be lucky to get classes that teach Darwin. Bigotry from the Christian Right is one of the biggest threats facing science today!!!
To confuse "science" with the feral gummint's squandering of the confiscated wealth of America's [Of the world's, that is] most creative, innovative, industrious and productive Men, is but to measure how far we have travelled down fasciSSocialism's dead-end track!
And that don't take no [Feral and/or any other gummint doled] "scientist" to figger!
And as for the bigotted remarks in one of your posts about the "Christian Right" and Charley Darwin and his theories, it don't take no great intellect, neither, to note that, in all of its recorded history, Mankind has never seen such scientific, productive, industrious, innovative, creativity, musical and every other form of artistic expression -- and every other and/or every other kind of progress -- than it witnessed when this Christian Nation was unequivocal about its Christianity.
And "scientists" either done book larned the kids down the village school or worked for private employers, who either witnessed their progress and measured their usefulness -- or sacked them!
I'm not convinced that the issue with evolution is as critical as the things we can do directly with science like space exploration, enticing students into engineering, and research like this. I realize the "scientific method" is an important concern for you, but biology and genetics research "in the present" is just as interesting as the study of origins, if not more. I'm just trying to point out that not so much is lost just because some fundamentalist Christians want to undermine an objective scientific approach to the origin of the species.
It sounds as though you are a bigot your-self!
Science did not produce freedoms and human rights as mentioned in our constitutions. It was produced from the moral and religious convictions of a majority who were in consensus regarding Judeo Christian beliefs and values. Our "creator" has "endowed" us with rights, not the sciences!
Indeed, without a prevailing sense of Judeo Christian morality in Western Societies from the middle ages to the early 20th century, the modern sciences that have given us so much would never developed.
Science and scientific Lysenko type politicians(who try to use science to destroy Christian influence in America) need to remember that modern science was rooted early in western Judeo Christian consensus and science practitioners run the risk of loss of inspiration....like a river cut off from its source...or a nose cut off to spite one's face!
Science has never created a Bill of Rights; only an A priori
thirst for liberty in the American soul has done so...a thirst that can never be measured, objectively quantified and studied with rigid methodology. The American system is based on true Tautology, a nonfalsifiable arguement in which it is believed that Almighty God rules the affairs of men...raising some nations up while pulling others down!
So I ask you...who are the true bigots?