In addition, apparently Mr. Kennedy became addicted to heroin at age 30 and spent time in rehabilitation, hardly a youthful indiscretion. What kind of message does that send?

I think Carl is playing it right. I’m a politicized democrat, and worked for local and national democrats in my home in NJ (Dick Zimmer’s state; my local candidate, Linda Stender, lost).

There is a bit of a parallel to my professional life. I teach at a medical school. I don’t wear buttons at work or do anything partisan. (It may be illegal; I didn’t check). I simply felt that in my professional life it was inappropriate for me to bring my partisan beliefs forward. If asked, I would be perfectly willing to talk about particular policies or ideas, but I felt it was both inappropriate and pragmatically bad for me to put my beliefs forward.

There is an interesting parallel with Barak Obama. I greatly enjoyed a series of articles that came out this summer on Barak Obama’s style as a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago. Apparently, as a teacher, he never stated his belief. Rather, he laid ideas on the table, filled in facts and precedents, and played devil’s advocate. He was also considered a great teacher. It was not that Obama played it down the middle. It was fairly clear, generally what his personal beliefs were, he did not state them. Importantly, by playing it this way, he gave students the freedom to present their own beliefs, and not to try to please the teacher. While this does not directly parallel Carl’s role as a science writer, I think its relevant.

Finally, there is the family bond. I don’t think Carl owes his reading public an examination of his relationship with his father. Some things are personal. I am fascinated by his father being a smart, eastern-educated moderate republican. I don’t personally know anyone of this breed, and I’d love to know what’s going on in their minds. But this is personal.

Below is what I submitted to the Obama on-line suggestion box, which is currently the most discussed item on scienceblogs.com. I would hope Mr. Zimmer would give it his fair consideration and if he agrees with the scientists blogging over there as well as me, use his leverage with the media to insure RFK Jr. gets a proper public and private vetting prior to nomination. Here was my statement:

I believe nominating RFK Jr. for any science-centric position is a huge mistake. RFK can be an effective polemicist, but he does not understand and respect scientific methodology.

RFK promotes the notion that thimerosal in vaccines causes autism though there is no evidence of such. He extends his disrespect for proper scientific methodology by promoting conspiracy theories of such which have already been discredited. He claimed in public that global warming caused Hurricane Katrina.

After 14 years of the GOP attacking both scientific methodology and its findings; President Obama needs science-centric political positions filled with people that not only have the executive skills to administrate the duties of their cabinet, but to also provide leadership to America by educating the public on what good science actually is.

See here for evidence of RFK’s scientific incompetence; raw data of RFK himself speaking to these issues is embedded in the below link: http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/11/say_it_aint_so_barack_say_you_aint_serio.php

Best.
Shubhendu

Some candidates are clearly better than others when it comes to science policy. If you’re called biased for pointing out the obvious, so be it, but not pointing out the obvious leads to laypeople getting the idea that there is no clear choice. If the science people aren’t going to talk about science and politics, who will? politicians?

That’s partly why the world is so screwed up. People are so scared to look biased and to give people a hard splash of reality that issues as important as these don’t get discussed, and people then lack the facts to make informed decisions.