There's a very interesting, lengthy editorial about politics and science in the journal Cell by Paul Nurse, the president of Rockefeller University. Nurse articulates the scientific community's standard complaint about levels of research funding, but also goes much farther, dealing with the "intelligent design" issue as well as other political attacks on science. I particularly appreciated Nurse's stand on ID and the National Institutes of Health:
When the NIH Director, Dr. Elias Zerhouni, was asked by Science magazine whether he was personally concerned about the Intelligent Design movement taking off in schools, he said, "I am very concerned about it. And I don't think it's a good direction." But in the same interview when asked why NIH had not been very visible in the debate over Intelligent Design, his response was "Why should it? Why do you think NIH should be visible in that debate?" One answer is that if ...
