Dan Vergano poses this question in the title of his USA today column.
Science enjoys the best and the worst of times today, celebrated as the secret sauce behind economic growth, but embattled in high-profile areas such as climate change, stem cells and evolution.
"Science is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, our environment, and our quality of life than it has ever been before," said President Obama, in April at the National Academy of Sciences.
At the same time, Obama noted, federal funding of physics and related sciences has fallen by nearly half since the 1980's, U.S. schools trail in math and science versus Japan, England, South Korea and others. "And we have watched as scientific integrity has been undermined and scientific research politicized in an effort to advance predetermined ideological agendas," he said. Vergano discusses our book Unscientific America
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They argue that the science ...
