Michael Bloomberg addressed the graduating class of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine with a speech in which he criticizes people who dispute scientific results on ideological grounds – evolution, stem cell research, global warming, etc – and urges graduates to remember that their job is to use the sceince they learned to help people. It's nice to see a politician use such blunt language to call out ideologues who try to obfuscate the issues involved to promulgate their agendas. A nice quote:
And it boggles the mind that nearly two centuries after Darwin, and 80 years after John Scopes was put on trial, this country is still debating the validity of evolution. In Kansas, Mississippi, and elsewhere, school districts are now proposing to teach "intelligent design" – which is really just creationism by another name – in science classes alongside evolution. Think about it! This not only devalues science, it cheapens theology. As well as condemning these students to an inferior education, it ultimately hurts their professional opportunities.
Hopkins' motto is Veritas vos liberabit – "the truth shall set you free" – not that "you shall be free to set the truth!"
For reasons I'll update in another blog post, I can't link to anything directly so I'll just provide the url:
http://www.nyc.gov/cgi-bin/misc/pfprinter.cgi?action=print&sitename=OM
This is the printer-friendly version 'cuz the real URL is way too long.
