Politicians And Science

This is a topic that has been beaten to death by pundits everywhere and I won't add to the discussion. Unfortunately no one seems to remember the scientific method that one (hopefully) learns in school. I think I'm reasonably safe in assuming that it's actually not in politicians best interest to understand science. For example, in my usual scan of the newspapers and blogs, my eye came upon an item in The New York Times The Opinionator column entitled, "Immune to the Facts." Which was linked to a blog entry "McCain and Thimerosol" by Matthew Yglesias at The Atlantic. That linked to a blog called Political Punch on the ABC News web site which had a little more information. It talks about Senator John McCain speaking about autism and vaccines (and I quote from the NYT column):

...there’s strong evidence’ that thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that was once in many childhood vaccines, is responsible for the increased diagnoses of autism in the U.S...

It just gives me a headache when they say things like this, just for effect.

I just realized, after reading another post at Instapundit, that I had forgotten to publish this.