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Editorials
Science, by amateurs : Editorials : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisScience, by amateurs
| 8/30/2012
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We expect candidates for office, especially national office, to have economic policies. The government sets or eliminates so many regulations affecting our taxes, interest rates, loans, and operating procedures that we need to know what candidates plan to do about the economy if they are elected.
We also expect that candidates will express their moral views. They can range from extremely liberal to extremely conservative. We can agree or disagree with those views, but we should know what they feel before we vote.
But, we don't understand why people who have law degrees and economics degrees and backgrounds as state legislators feel they can express scientific "truths" with no scientific data to back them up.
Glaciers are melting, the planet is experiencing weather extremes as predicted, and scientists worldwide- including some teaching at conservative universities- agree global warming is happening. Yet, we hear from politicians that it's merely their opponents' "excuse" for environmental policies, even if those policies were put in place decades ago by officials from their own party.
Science proved evolution decades ago, yet supposedly intelligent people running for office feel the need to talk to particular groups of their constituents about the dinosaurs and cavemen who lived next to each other.
And now we have Congressman Todd Akin spouting more "science" regarding whether women can become pregnant after being raped. He claimed, "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."
Even ignoring the question of what constitutes a "legitimate" rape, Akin is in trouble. He wouldn't need to go any farther than a pregnant rape victim or any gynecologist living in his Congressional district to have that disproved. Instead we have a man with an engineering degree twisting medical and scientific truths to make a moral point regarding funding for abortion.
Say you're pro choice. Say you're pro life. You're entitled to that opinion. Just don't twist science to fit that opinion.
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