The Candidates On Science

Back in April, a few of us held out the fantasy that the presidential candidates would have a science debate. Given that they had or would be having dozens of them, including at least two on religion, we thought it seemed reasonable.

HA HA HA HA HA! Welcome to America!

Anyway, here's a good candidate for the second-best thing: Jennifer Ouellette of Cocktail Party Physics has posted a long analysis piece in response to …

... a good friend this weekend (a physicist), who offhandedly asked if I really thought an Obama Administration would be that much better for science than a McCain Administration.

Once upon a time, over at No More Hornets, The Exterminator was grousing about the lack of a science debate during the Democratic primaries, and I argued in the comments that since Obama and Clinton would likely be about on the same page, it'd be better to have the debate during the general. (Yeah, I was dreaming.) I finished up by saying:

You know which party is going to be more aligned with your point of view on the importance of science. McCain, at best, will be slightly less worse than Bush. Either Democrat will be far better.

T. Ex. responded:

That sounds like a faith statement to me. Can you support your certainty with any evidence?

I responded with some.

All this is by way of saying that I could have saved a lot of typing if I'd had a time machine. Jennifer's effort is awesome, so much so that you may want to start by reading the sales pitch introduction for it from her hubby, Sean Carroll. And don't miss the two other links at the end of Sean's post.