1. voteforscience
  2. McCain: Wrong on bears.

McCain: Wrong on bears.

By gregladen on September 27, 2008.

It is a shame when a perfectly good research project gets picked up by a vote grubbing elected official to use in a derogatory way in a sound bite. It is embarrassing when we are talking about the presidential election and the candidate is incapable of hitting his mark properly ... mispronouncing the term "paternity."

You all saw this is Fridays debate. Well, hat tip to Virgil, who points us to a piece published in Scientific American last February that looks into McCain's long standing tiff with bear research.

McCain ... hits .. research in speeches on the stump, cracking jokes about bear paternity tests and criminal investigations. "I don't know if it was a paternity issue or criminal, but it was a waste of money," McCain railed ... during a campaign stop in Clawson, Mich. Scientists, however, are not amused: They insist that the study is not only worth every penny but that the $3-million price tag cited in the ad is, in a word, rong.

Well, it's wrong, but it is actually low, not high. But the point is, wrong. McCain is wrong for bear research, so he's wrong for America. The article is here.

Tags
Facts, Stats and Data

More like this

And yet another political roundup
As usual, under the fold.... Quote of The Day: "Do you think what is appealing here? I'll be careful here. This is not about sexual relations... Everybody watching this. This is not what I am talking about. When you see the picture together of John McCain, who is an older man, but he is a kind of…
More antiscience from John McCain: Bear DNA
So there I was last night, in the Twilight Zone between wakefulness and sleep, Late Night With David Letterman on the television, blaring in the background. I was vaguely aware that John McCain was Letterman's guest for the evening and that they were chatting back and forth, Letterman asking the…
Your weekend politics
Annals of McCain - Palin, XLI: how I palled around with terrorists: No one who knows me would ever consider me a domestic terrorist. I am, in fact, a pacifist. You may think that's naive, but it would be a real stretch to consider my pacifism to be the same as terrorism, even if you think it helps…
And yet another political roundup...
Under the fold: Ex-Cheney aide: Bush won't hit Iran: US President George W. Bush will not attack Iran to halt its nuclear weapons program before his term ends in January, David Wurmser, a key national security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney up until last year, has told The Jerusalem Post.…

And, given that Sarah Palin is now in the mix, issues of "paternity" may be best left off the debate docket. I'm just sayin.

It is usually a shame when a perfectly good research study gets picked up by a vote grubbing elected official to utilise in a derogatory way in any sound bite.