Thog's Science Masterclass #12

[realthog]

Sarah Palin knows a scam when she sees one:

Where does a lot of that earmark money end up anyway? […] You've heard about some of these pet projects, they really don't make a whole lot of sense, and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.

Fruit flies? Gregor Mendel? Ring a bell, anyone?

I came across this new piece of Palin dimwittery at the blog Adaptive Complexity, which linked me to a 2005 paper in Science by Stanley Fields and Mark Johnston, "Whither Model Organism Research?" This starts:

Almost everything we know about the fundamental properties of living cells—how they grow and divide, how they express their genetic information, and how they use and store energy—has come from the study of model organisms. These simple creatures traditionally include the bacterium Escherichia coli and its bacteriophage viruses, bakers’ yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, and the mouse Mus musculus, each a representative of the diversity of life.

As one might expect. P.Z. Myers, that waspish champion of rationalism, has something piquant to say on the matter in his Pharyngula blog:

This idiot woman, this blind, shortsighted ignoramus, this pretentious clod, mocks basic research and the international research community. You damn well better believe that there is research going on in animal models — what does she expect, that scientists should mutagenize human mothers and chop up baby brains for this work? — and countries like France and Germany and England and Canada and China and India and others are all respected participants in these efforts.

Yes, scientists work on fruit flies. Some of the most powerful tools in genetics and molecular biology are available in fruit flies, and these are animals that are particularly amenable to experimentation. Molecular genetics has revealed that humans share key molecules, the basic developmental toolkit, with all other animals, thanks to our shared evolutionary heritage (something else the wackaloon from Wasilla denies), and that we can use these other organisms to probe the fundamental mechanisms that underlie core processes in the formation of the nervous system — precisely the phenomena Palin claims are so important.

This is where the Republican party has ended up: supporting an ignorant buffoon who believes in the End Times and speaking in tongues while deriding some of the best and most successful strategies for scientific research. In this next election, we've got to choose between the 21st century rationalism and Dark Age inanity. It ought to be an easy choice.

He's right: it ought to be . . . were it not for the fact that the baying mobs who cheer Palin's every last wink and flirt and call "Off with his head!" at mention of Obama's "Arab" name know even less about basic science than they do about common decency. As I noted elsewhere, McCain, clearly as ignorant as Palin (or dishonestly operating on the principle that his supporters are), is attacking Obama's vote for a "wasteful" $3 million earmark to pay for a planetarium projector. Of course, $3 million could pay for Sarah Palin's campaign wardrobe a whole whopping 20 times over . . . so you really have a choice between educating hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of children (and adults) or buying a mountain of clothing and accoutrements for a narcissist so lacking in said education that she believes humans and dinosaurs coexisted . . . and has obviously never heard of the humble fruit fly's role in the study of genetics.

Or perhaps you have the choice between the $3 million planetarium projector and a tiny fraction of 1 per cent of the cost of one of those stupid weapons of mass destruction McCain himself regards as a perfectly sensible expenditure: after all, who wouldn't think it essential to be able to wreak horrendous carnage on Third World civilian populations on whim?

Me, I'd like to vote for the planetarium, please . . . and the fruit fly research.