Guardian UK: Palin and the fruit fly .......... w/great reader comments

[marmar]

Palin and the fruit fly
How the vice-presidential candidate became a laughing-stock among scientists

Adam Rutherford
guardian.co.uk, Monday October 27 2008


Although science hasn't featured prominently in the US election, Sarah Palin may have alienated herself from the entire basic research community. In her first policy speech last Friday, she called for the federal government to fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and focused on alerting people to the misspent money of Congress. Here's what she said:

"You've heard about some of these pet projects, they really don't make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not."

Watch: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/27/sarahpalin-genetics-fruit-flies


It's difficult to know where to start with this breathtakingly stupid comment. It is possible that she is referring to a specific research project about fruit flies that are a pestilence on olive trees, but bear in mind her folksy smug delivery, which says to me: "Look how ridiculous basic research is." Richard Wolffe, the senior White House correspondent for Newsweek, commented on this, with a generous prefix:

"I'm going to be as restrained and measured as I possibly can about this. But this is the most mindless, ignorant, uninformed comment that we have seen from Governor Palin so far, and there's been a lot of competition for that prize."

I concur. It is genuinely impossible to comprehend the importance of the humble black-bellied sugar lover to humankind. With only four chromosomes but having a version of something like 75% of disease-causing human genes, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is arguably on a par with the mouse as the founding model organism for the field of genetics.

Why do we study this particular irritating fly for humankind's benefit? Well, because we can. Many of the pathways from gene to disease in humans can be easily reproduced in flies, or are similar enough to be incredibly useful models for understanding how diseases evolve. That's how we learn to treat them. Practically, the fruit fly has a lifespan of around four weeks, meaning that we can examine and generate thousands of specimens in a research heartbeat. We can and do experiment on humans, but with great practical difficulty, even in the rare occasions when ethical concerns permit such experiments. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/27/sarahpalin-genetics-fruit-flies


.....and check out the reader comments after the story....

ambivabloke
Oct 27 08, 9:05pm (about 4 hours ago)
Fruit flies are more beneficial to the world than hockey lady.

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Clip | Link pretzelberg
Oct 27 08, 9:11pm (about 4 hours ago)
I admit I did not know the benefits of fruit fly research to humankind - but I like to think I'd at least have read up on the subject before making that kind of comment in that kind of position and context.

"in Paris, France."

It never ceases to amaze me why Americans need to add this "suffix". The same applies to London, Berlin, Rome etc.

I don't have the impression that it's in order to make the distinction from tinpot towns with the same names in Texas etc.

Either way: she's talking about US spending - so why bring up the French?

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Clip | Link Benjine
Oct 27 08, 9:11pm (about 4 hours ago)
Sarah Apalin = Fruit Cake

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Clip | Link GreenLake
Oct 27 08, 9:15pm (about 4 hours ago)
Christopher Hitchens has a similar piece in today's Slate.com in which he also highlights John McCain's muddleheaded attacks on research into bear DNA.

We should point out, of course, that this assault on science is hardly new and was raised to something approaching an artform by Still President Bush.

Also worth noting that the US has over 300 Nobel prize laureates and that more than 60 living recipents of nobel prizes for science have endorsed Barack Obama for President. Not hard ot see why.

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Clip | Link Roosterbooster198
Oct 27 08, 9:23pm (about 4 hours ago)
She'll win the presidency in 2012 or 2016. Just watch. And God help us all when that happens. Hopefully by then America will have sunk so far into decay that she won't matter that much.

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Clip | Link FractionMan
Oct 27 08, 9:25pm (about 4 hours ago)
Wow, she is so dumb i think she may actually deserve Bush's mantle

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Clip | Link epeeist
Oct 27 08, 9:25pm (about 4 hours ago)
McCain is little better. He can't tell the difference between a planetarium and an overhead projector - http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/10/08/mccains-planetariophobia/

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Clip | Link pointythings
Oct 27 08, 9:25pm (about 4 hours ago)
Give fruit flies the vote, I say.

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Clip | Link Rabidmongol
Oct 27 08, 9:28pm (about 4 hours ago)
Was she talking about research into fruit flies themselves or research in genetics via fruit flies? It's not clear.

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Clip | Link Daftasitmayseem
Oct 27 08, 9:31pm (about 4 hours ago)
Cripes. She sounds more daft than I am.

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Clip | Link roastygoodness
Oct 27 08, 9:49pm (about 4 hours ago)
"How the vice-presidential candidate became a laughing-stock among scientists"

In fairness, she already was a laughing stock among scientists, for the same reason she's a laughing stock with everyone else.

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Clip | Link wacobloke
Oct 27 08, 9:50pm (about 4 hours ago)
Setting aside the mental picture of a wandering university sojourner who finally acquired a journalism degree and was then a talking-head sports news reader pontificating about anything in the realm of science, she knew who she was talking to--similarly scientifically ill-educated and deficient Republicans teeming with resentment and spoiling for a feel-good portion and dose of sarcasm.

Maybe a modern-day version of the Biblical vision of the blind leading the halt and lame, that, but without the underlying goodness.

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Clip | Link WhataWonderfulWorld
Oct 27 08, 9:50pm (about 4 hours ago)
If Jesus Christ were alive today, he could very well be weeping.

Yeah, "I kid you not" .... her folksy smug delivery, indeed.

Hockey mom -- go home!

[LynnTheDem]

1. The entire world thinks we're all as dumb as the rightwingnuts.

It's fucking embarrassing.

[Canuckistanian]

2. "Give fruit flies the vote, I say"

:rofl: