Advisor At The Center Of Storm Over BushCo "Science" - NYT

[hatrack]

EDIT

"But to a degree not seen in previous administrations, a wide range of influential scientists — even many who say they like Dr. Marburger personally and respect him professionally — express dismay at White House science policy.

"I think this is as bad as it's ever been," said Wolfgang H. K. Panofsky, a retired Stanford physicist who has advised the government on science and national security since the Eisenhower administration. "This is an extremely serious issue. I believe it is true that there is such a thing as objective scientific reality, and if you ignore that or try to misrepresent it in formulating policy, you do so at peril to the country."

Other experts have been blunter. In a recent interview on National Public Radio, Dr. Howard Gardner, a cognitive psychologist at Harvard, said, "I actually feel very sorry for Marburger, because I think he probably is enough of a scientist to realize that he basically has become a prostitute." Later, in an interview with The New York Times, Dr. Gardner said he had made the reference but added, "I wish I'd used it as a verb rather than as a noun."

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An intent graying physicist and woodworking enthusiast who once built an entire harpsichord from scratch, Dr. Marburger, 63, is so unassuming that he routinely melted into the backdrop at announcements of scientific discoveries while working at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton on Long Island. He was director of the laboratory before moving to Washington in October 2001. But just as in the now-you-see-it, now-you-don't world of quantum phenomena that Dr. Marburger, who is also director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, has spent much of his life studying, appearances may be beside the point. Widely believed to be excluded from the president's inner circle — he surprised many people by declaring soon after his nomination that he was a lifelong Democrat — Dr. Marburger is said by White House officials to have Mr. Bush's ear on all important technical matters. The president who is supposedly so antagonistic to science enjoys Dr. Marburger's explanatory style, the officials say."

EDIT

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/30/science/30ADVI.html

Oh, by the way, he doesn't report to Bush - instead he reports to Andrew Card.

[NJCher]

1. how conveeeeenient for bushco

The president who is supposedly so antagonistic to science enjoys Dr. Marburger's explanatory style, the officials say."

So Marburger has the remarkable ability of being able to dumb himself down. Enough for even Dumbya.

And the fact that he's a Democrat must be enormously useful to bushco.

Marburger must be the smartest "useful idiot" in all of America.


Cher