Rewriting Science

I missed a news story (not widely circulated) that the Bush administration is preventing employees from telling the geological age of the Grand Canyon to visitors for fear of offending religious fundamentalists. Fortunately Gary Trudeau didn't miss it, but makes it look like a joke.



I mean who could believe that someing so stupid is actually true? At least the National Park Service hasn't changed its website to call the age of the Grand Canyon 'controversy.' Very few people understand the amount of time that is spent studying, collecting data, comparing work of different scientists in order to arrive at a scientific conclusion.

Science is hard and requires a lot of work to arrive at a theory and you almost never call science `a fact' because evidence could arrive tomorrow which upends everything you know. Science has already discarded the theory that there was a biblical flood and the age of the earth is 6000 years old because that disagrees with observable data (if the age of the Earth is 6000 years old then we should see X. We do not see X, therefore the age of the Earth is not 6000 years old). To have all of that work discarded because it does not agree with the biblical myth is obscene.

I can understand why park service agents don't want to disobey though. A christian fundamentalist is likely to become violent if you say something that disrupts its world view.