When I got wind of this, I was too heated to say anything about it.
I still am honestly, because other than her claiming abortion clinic bombers aren’t terrorists, this is the most willfully ignorant thing Sarah Palin has ever said… probably in her life.
Tell me something… if someone is a supposed advocate for a field (i.e. Special Needs) shouldn’t that someone have some fucking idea about the research that takes place in it? Just curious…
You know what? No snarky comments tonight… we’ll just skip to the good stuff.
“Sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not“
Sarah Palin during her recent policy speech…
Now, before I get to the obvious idiocy of that remark, it should be noted the hot librarian was specifically referring to olive fruit fly research. And of course, it is very ‘American’ to throw in subtle digs at France any chance you get which is why she made the statement above with her usual sarcasm.
Except for one thing… that research she scoffed at isn’t bullshit at all.
“The Olive Fruit Fly has infested thousands of California olive groves and is the single largest threat to the U.S. olive and olive oil industries,” he said. “I secured $748,000 for olive fruit fly research and irradiation in the (fiscal year 2008) appropriations bill for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA will use some of that funding for their research facility in France. This USDA research facility is located in France because Mediterranean countries like France have dealt with the Olive Fruit Fly for decades, while California has only been exposed since the late 1990s. This is not uncommon; the USDA has several international research facilities throughout the world, including Australia, China and Argentina.”
House Representative Mike Thompson of California
Sure… olives (for martinis) and olive oil is totally an elitist thing. But farming is big business in California and with all of those elitists out there, I’m guessing olive farming is big business too. So if silly research in France (though I’m of the mind there’s no such thing as silly scientific research) is helping keep some Americans in business, I say godspeed.
Moreover, anyone who’s ever picked up a science book knows the fruit fly is basically God’s gift to the science world. Over 75,000 different projects have used the Drosophila fruit fly for testing. It has lead to or aided in discoveries in the fields of gender mapping, chromosomal studies, molecular biology and even… autism.
Yeah… those silly little fruit flies are used to research the very field Mrs. Palin is a supposed advocate of. Perhaps she should have oh I don’t know… looked that up before she decided to mock the honestly important work done in Paris or fruit fly research in general.
In fact, there was interesting research done in North Carolina just last year regards to her supposed pet project.
“Neurons, or nerve cells, communicate with each other through contact points called synapses. When these connections are damaged, communication breaks down, causing the messages that would normally help our feet push our bike pedals or our mind locate our car keys to fall short.
Now scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have shown that a protein called neurexin is required for these nerve cell connections to form and function correctly.
The discovery, made in Drosophila fruit flies may lead to advances in understanding autism spectrum disorders, as recently, human neurexins have been identified as a genetic risk factor for autism.“
Interesting…
So even if you were to make the argument she was talking about the specific case about research in France, her crack reaked of an anti-intellectualism that has become vogue recently in a country that is rapidly falling behind in science.
I didn’t know how bad it had gotten until I kept reading about people who genuinely believed the (temporarily shut down) Hadron Collider was going to create a black hole large enough to collapse the Earth.
Seriously… this fight against science simply has to end.
