One of the more entertaining of Obama's campaign promises was his oft-repeated vow to "Restore Science to Its Rightful Place":
How is his administration doing so far? It has failed to strengthen protections for endangered species, appointed officials with long records of suppressing politically inconvenient science, ignored new evidence-based recommendations for breast-cancer screening, failed to remove all restrictions from embryonic stem-cell science and ignored decades of research in a politically motivated effort to prevent nuclear waste from being stored at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
Dude... why so harsh? I can't think of a single public servant who has done more to increase public awareness of the Dunning-Kruger Effect:
ERROL MORRIS: Knowing what you don’t know? Is this supposedly the hallmark of an intelligent person?
DAVID DUNNING: That’s absolutely right. It’s knowing that there are things you don’t know that you don’t know. [4] Donald Rumsfeld gave this speech about “unknown unknowns.” It goes something like this: “There are things we know we know about terrorism. There are things we know we don’t know. And there are things that are unknown unknowns. We don’t know that we don’t know.” He got a lot of grief for that. And I thought, “That’s the smartest and most modest thing I’ve heard in a year.”
Give Barack his due: when it comes to increasing public awareness of the value of scientific inquiry, he walks the walk. Thank God the Smart Folks are back in charge:
"I think I'm a better speech writer than my speech writers," [Obama] reportedly told an aide in 2008. "I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I'll tell you right now that I'm . . . a better political director than my political director."
And unlike the ignorant and arrogant BusHitler administration, they're humble, too.
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