Well, the allegations that the Bush administration had been muzzling park employees from telling tourists the true age of the Grand Canyon have been proven to be false. The first indications that these claims were at the very least dubious were provided by Rick Moran of the certifiably sane Right Wing Nuthouse (scroll down the linked post until you reach Moran’s update), and were confirmed by the indefatigable Michael Shermer, skeptic extraordinaire. So we conservatives can rest easy now, right? This casts a shadow of doubt over all those claims of a “Republican/Bush War on Science”, and we can now safely dismiss them as mere ideological jousting, correct?

Alas, no. This case cannot and should not be ignored, because there are a lot of lessons to be learned from it. We should be asking ourselves: how did such a false claim gain such credibility in the first place, even among people trained to be skeptical? Many of us here at Darwin Central readily accepted these allegations at face value. It’s one thing for liberals who are already predisposed to devour any anti-Bush innuendo to embrace them, but why did a coterie of rational-minded conservatives also think them to be true? (see here).

It all has to do with the sorry state that the Republican party and conservatism find themselves in, and for that, we only have ourselves to blame. From the very beginning, the Bush administration has damaged its credibility with the scientific community when it failed to immediately appoint a science advisor upon taking office, and failed to include science among its domestic policies, and this relationship has only gone downhill as it has stood accused of ignoring, misrepresenting and cherry-picking science for its own ends. That’s nothing new; all governments have done so in spite of widespread criticism, but regardless of whether or not this administration has really been as bad as all the incendiary tomes and reports claim, the ill-advised actions of the Administration combined with the ideological derangement of its opponents have made for a lethal combination. Most relevant of these abuses to this particular case is probably that of George C. Deutch, who had never even graduated college, much less received an inkling of a science education, yet was given a prized spot at NASA where he proceeded to force the re-writing of scientific documents to conform to his biblical-literalist and anti-environmental views. Unlike the Grand Canyon case, the Deutch fiasco was genuine, and in light of it, it made PEER’s claims of the re-writing of the Grand Canyon’s age seem all too convincing.

But it’s not just Bush’s fault. Conservatives in general have let too many genuine anti-science types infilitrate the Republican party, and position themselves as representatives of the mainstream-creationists, global warming deniers, and the like- and the silent majority have been too silent, and not done enough to counteract them. Those of us who have tried to do so have frequently found ourselves shouted down by uninformed zealots who throw a tantrum when you tell them that creationism is not conservatism, and are insistent that it become an official plank of the party platform. Even more depressing is the way in which so many conservative blogs readily embrace the anti-evolution agenda, and so many high-profile conservative magazines and publishing outlets give space to the scientifically-illiterate musings of Tom Bethell, Ann Coulter and the like. As a result, the Left has found a new front to attack us on. When a small but loud contingent of the scientific illiterates within the Republican party are making all that noise, they can point to them, and tar and feather the entire party as being willingly ignorant, and trying to suppress all science. You will therefore be forgiven if you assume that science is the exclusive domain of the left, and that conservatives are all a bunch of know-nothings when it comes to science.

Of course, it’s all a fallacy. The so-called “reality based community” is just as prone to irrationality and anti-scientific thought as its counterparts on the other side of the political spectrum. Stupidity knows no bounds, or any party affiliation. At the same time, the present situation has allowed for fabrications or misinterpretations like the Grand Canyon case to gain a credibility they otherwise would not have, because there have been so many prior instances of the mishandling of science by the current administration, and so many creationist pseudoscientists and biblical literalists posing as the face of the Republican party, that it becomes difficult NOT to accept them at face value.

And there you have the whole raison d’etre for this site. We here at Darwin Central hope to be thoroughly consistent when it comes to the use of the scientific method; indeed, most of us arrived at our conservatism through its application to our everyday life. We also hope that through our website, falsehoods like the Grand Canyon case properly get cast aside as futile attempts to muddy the scientific and political waters, and to help further separate fact from fantasy. Conservatives who visit us will hopefully come away with a greater appreciation for the importance of science and scientific literacy, if they don’t already, while liberals might come away with some of their illusions and preconceptions dispelled. And we hope everyone comes away a little more informed about science, the political process, and our culture as a whole.