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Still Bringing the Science Crazy in NC

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


So you thought the nuttiest thing we did in North Carolina this week was appoint a director of child development and early education who was against … um, early education.

What’s wrong with you: have you never heard of North Carolina before? This is the NEW North Carolina, with a new governor and bulletproof majorities in both houses of the legislature: Carolinians are calling it “The Reign of Error.” The anti-education educator quickly resigned (the anti-education stance appears to have been only the beginning of the crazy; she wondered on Twitter, for example, whether the 2011 earthquake in Japan may have been caused by ultrasonic waves from North Korea or Japan), but relax: our anti-science scientists are on the case.

Our legislators of course most famously made their bones trying to force scientists not to model sea-level rise, though they regained the spotlight only last month, appointing a leader of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) who believes that oil may be a renewable resource and that the science on global warming is unresolved.


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Which brings us right back to global warming. Acting as scientific adviser to the group that led the charge against measuring sea level was one John Droz, who has an MA in solid state science and crusades against things like the belief in climate change and wind energy.

What’s that? You don’t think he has much authority? Then surely you’re part of “the con artist clan” – only one of many epithets he used about the scientific community in an hourlong presentation in front of Carolina legislators and others February 6 that threw a lot of slides around to show that … well, in a general way he asserted that environmentalists are “anti-science agenda promoters,” that environmentalism is a religion, that peer review is a racket, and that … well, more stuff like that. He never actually said “Ignorance is Strength” or “We have always been at war with Eastasia,” but you got the message.

Droz’s slide presentation was called “Science Under Assault,” and you can find a longer version at scienceunderassault.info.

At least the title was right. Sam Pearsall, ecologist and adjunct professor of geography and ecology at UNC-CH, dismissed Droz’s presentation but nonetheless found something to admire: "That was the most remarkable example of propaganda delivered as anti-propaganda I’ve ever seen," he said.

Sue Sturgis, of the Institute for Southern Studies online magazine Facing South, does a masterful job of demonstrating the bias in Droz’s (mostly uncited) sources:

“Among the publications Droz cited to make his case were Whistleblower, the monthly magazine companion of WorldNetDaily, a website that promotes conspiracy theories about topics such as President Obama's citizenship; Quadrant, a conservative Australian magazine that was involved in a scandal over publishing fraudulent science; and the Institute for Creation Research, a Texas outfit that rejects evolution and promotes Biblical creationism and the notion that ‘All things in the universe were created and made by God in the six literal days of the Creation Week.’"

One tiny hopeful sign was that there weren’t all that many legislators at Droz’s presentation (though Sturgis linked to an email DENR head John Skvarla's office forwarded from Droz suggesting people attend).

It’s time for the closing jokes but honestly I’m all out of spirit. North Carolina’s current prosperity has been built on science and education, and the current political leadership has declared war on both. Today, I’m just not finding the funny.

 

Scott Huler was born in 1959 in Cleveland and raised in that city's eastern suburbs. He graduated from Washington University in 1981; he was made a member of Phi Beta Kappa because of the breadth of his studies, and that breadth has been a signature of his writing work. He has written on everything from the death penalty to bikini waxing, from NASCAR racing to the stealth bomber, for such newspapers as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Los Angeles Times and such magazines as ESPN, Backpacker, and Fortune. His award-winning radio work has been heard on "All Things Considered" and "Day to Day" on National Public Radio and on "Marketplace" and "Splendid Table" on American Public Media. He has been a staff writer for the Philadelphia Daily News and the Raleigh News & Observer and a staff reporter and producer for Nashville Public Radio. He was the founding and managing editor of the Nashville City Paper. He has taught at such colleges as Berry College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

His books include Defining the Wind, about the Beaufort Scale of wind force, and No-Man's Lands, about retracing the journey of Odysseus.

His most recent book, On the Grid, was his sixth. His work has been included in such compilations as Appalachian Adventure and in such anthologies as Literary Trails of the North Carolina Piedmont, The Appalachian Trail Reader and Speed: Stories of Survival from Behind the Wheel.

For 2014-2015 Scott is a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, which is funding his work on the Lawson Trek, an effort to retrace the journey of explorer John Lawson through the Carolinas in 1700-1701.

He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with his wife, the writer June Spence, and their two sons.

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