Remember the story the other day about a 24 year old journalism graduate named George Deutsche who didn't know what the word "theory" meant and was telling the scientists at NASA what they can and can't say on the website? As it turns out, he wasn't even a journalism graduate. Texas A & M confirmed that he did not graduate from there, meaning he faked his resume to get the job. Washington is now abuzz with anticipation at the inevitable announcement of his nomination as director of FEMA. Here's my favorite line in the article:
Repeated calls and e-mail messages to Mr. Deutsch on Tuesday were not answered.
Color me surprised.
More like this
Feb 5: Welcome Farkers! Feel free to look around.
Andy Revkin is confirming a report, which originated on a blog, that NASA's now-notorious George Deutsch did not actually gra
There's no longer any reason to feel sorry for this George Deutsch character. I had figured he might be a young guy in way over his head, and therefore worthy of our forgiveness or even sympathy. Well, forget it.
Physicists are ontological detectives. We think of scientists as wholly rational, open to all possible arguments.
The next interesting question, Ed, is whether this clown was recommended to the Bush Admin by the Discovery Institute.
:)
That a total twit like this guy could ever have been appointed to a position with any control over scientific content whatever is, I hope, not what Bush had in mind when he talked about supporting science in his SOTU address.
Just when you might think the blogsphere is more impotent than one hopes, a young Englishman, Nick Anthis was the person who did the digging into Deutsch's background. Bravo to science bloggers everywhere!!!!!
http://scientificactivist.blogspot.com/2006/02/breaking-news-george-deu…
my bad.. he is a young Texan who is one of those dangerous Rhodes Scholars. He went to school at Texas A&M, actually graduating with highest honors in bio-chem. Still big cheers.
Nick's URL is in the NYT article, on Altercation, Slashdot, AmericaBlog, and many science blogs. He's been getting about 4000 hits per HOUR! I feel so happy for him and proud of a fellow blogger getting this done in a matter of two days or so.
Presumably, like the rest of us, he filled out an application for federal employment somewhere along the way. Those always contain perjury language at the signature block, by which signature the applicant attests to the veracity of his claims in the application. Falsification is a crime. A felony, actually, by 18 USC 1001.
UPDATE: flunky claims he is right, and Hansen is biased and political.
"George C. Deutsch, the young NASA press aide who resigned on Tuesday in the center of a storm over his efforts to keep the agency's top climate scientist from speaking publicly about global warming, defended himself today in his first public interviews.
Speaking to a Texas radio station and then briefly to The New York Times, Mr. Deutsch said the scientist, James E. Hansen, exaggerated the threat of warming."
http://nytimes.com/2006/02/10/science/10nasa.html?hp&ex=1139547600&en=2…