Sad to report, the Sb/DonorsChoose anti-biology attack ad seems not to have been an isolated incident. My anonymous source discovered another such ad, this one targeted at the brain sciences crowd.
What has become of our sense of scientific unity? Can we pull together despite attacks like the one reproduced below the fold? Does this mean that Karl Rove is actually taking an interest in the sciences?
“She looked at me like I was a rat waiting to be run through a maze. She grabbed her clipboard and started reading me the consent form. But … I couldn’t tell whether she was really interested in me — my mind, my personality, my emotions — or whether she was just auditioning me for her control group.
“If I’m in the room with Science, I don’t want to be the one being studied.”
Are you in the room with someone who’s studying you?
Just say no to psychology and neurosciences.
Ah, I thought it was going to be something like, “In psychology, they still consider ANOVA to be a sophisticated mathematical model.”
Odd that there is only one person who seems to know anything about these attack ads. Not that I’m making any accusations or anything…
Notice also that the broad format of both seems to be the same. They both start with some short quotes from a variety of sources, then a sentence containing the links to the DonorsChoose challenges, a sentence in bold denouncing the science in question, possibly also endorsing a different science.
Obviously, the different sides in this partisan squabble are using the same ad agency — either by chance or by design.
I assume these ads have been “leaked” to me because I’m the resident ethicist. Either that or because I refuse to be cowed when certain powerful ScienceBloggers send emails to our double top-secret email list telling us to keep our yaps shut. Who can say, really?