Monday, April 8, 2013

Zack Kopplin Defends Science

I watched Real Time with Bill Maher a few days ago and was delighted to see a young student named Zack Kopplin defending science. This clip has been making the rounds under various titles such a "snail logic" and "you are not a scientist." You know that it hit home when even the Intelligent Design Creationists are blogging about it [Non-Scientist Says, "You're Not a Scientist"].

The ignorant conservatives refer to a grant on snail sex as an example of waste. The grant, Genomic Consequences of Asexuality, has John Logsdon as one of the co-principle investigators. We know John through his blog, Sex, Genes, and Evolution, and because he was a post-doc with Ford Doolittle. We also know that the evolution of sex is a serious problem and that New Zealand snails are an excellent model organism for testing many theories.

The thing that puzzles me is why conservative pundits like Steve Moore have any credibility at all. None of their arguments many any sense. If even a young student like Zack Kopplin can shoot them down then why do these ideas keep coming up in the US Congress?