Shooting for the Crescent Moon

During his inaugural address, our new President, Barack Obama, promised to "restore science to its rightful place." Never mind that, under his predecessor, George W. Bush, there was no evidence that science ever slipped from the vernerated position that it has always held in the United States. Everyone understood that this was a shot at Bush's ethical position that unborn life is precious and worth protecting as well as his reticence to sacrifice the United States' economy on the altar of global warming alarmism that has subsequently been shown to rely on poorly conducted and blatantly political "science". Still, if, as Keith Olbermann claims, Obama "is one of the 1000 smartest people in the country" (which demonstrates, once again, that Olbermann is either one of the great satirists in history or totally bat-guano nuts), one would have to anticipate an exciting new path for scientific enquiry and progress from this administration.

And sure enough, this week we found that our Scientist-in-chief has forged a new path for the sciences through no less than the agency that, with the possible exception of the Manhattan Project (and I won't even go there), is the verysymbol of American scientific prowess and innovation - the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). At the end of June this year, the director of NASA, Charles Bolden, in an interview with Al Jazeera stated that President Obama had outlined his priorities for NASA:

"When I became the NASA administrator -- or before I became the NASA administrator -- [Obama] charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering,"

(If you receive your news solely from the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party, you may be excused from not hearing this story, as it has not been mentioned once in the Washington Post, New York Times, or on ABC, NBC, or CBS newscast.)

So, I guess that this means that this President feels that the "rightful place" of science is to raise the self-esteem of Muslims. Maybe President Obama should educate us on the historic contributions of Islam to science and math, because whatever they may have once been, there has not been much contribution lately. In a 2006 article in the journalNature, Jim Al-Khalili states that:

Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) nations spend 0.34% of their GDP on scientific research, compared to the global average of 2.36%

Scientists, engineers, and technicians make up less than 1% of the population in Muslim countries, compared to about 4% worldwide and 14% in developed countries

Less than 1% of the world's academic papers come from Muslim nations

The entire "Arab world" publishes fewer academic papers than Harvard University researchers alone.

Indeed, Islam has been traditionally skeptical, if not overtly hostile to science. Much of the glowing rhetoric we heard concerning Islamic achievement in math and sciences in President Obama's Cairo speech was flat-out wrong. Even in the minority of those cases where the putative achievement didn't occur elsewhere (e.g. - the compass was invented in China, long before Mohammed was a twinkle in his daddy's eye), they were often achieved by Jewish or Christian Arabs in the face of active hostility from Islam. It seems that the Great Redistributor is not merely content with the redistribution of wealth, but now is intent on redistributing achievement, as well.

Maybe we should impress on the Muslim world that a religious establishment that forbids women to have any place in academia deserves not to feel so good about their contributions, however inflated those may be.

"Restoring science to its rightful place" is just another example of the flowery rhetoric of a vapid President for whom no low is too low to stoop if it will advance his liberal agenda.

I still recall the excitement and awe that I, as well as the entire nation, felt upon watching Neil Armstrong step onto the moon. It is a sad statement that this proud agency's "foremost" priority is no longer the exploration of the final frontier, but is, instead, to raise the self-esteem of the slow kid in the classroom.