Scientists: Bush Be Gone!

Very few scientists will be shedding tears when the W leaves office, according to a story in Wired. The writer, David Duncan, notes:

In a demonstration of how tough it is to get science funded in the Bush II era, Senate leaders tucked both budget increases into a $156 billion war and veterans' appropriations bill. That measure passed the Senate by a wide enough margin to override a threatened veto from the president. The House didn't include the raise in its version of the bill, but is expected to agree to the increase in conference.

Like so many other things, the task of recovering from Bush's distressing disinterest in science will be left to the next president.

This is an ongoing tug-of-war between Republicans and Democrats and someone, somewhere did a bivariate plot that showed that when Republicans were president, science funding went down and when Democrats were in power, funding for science went up. Not a pretty picture. This is exacerbated by movies like Expelled! which paint scientists as amoral, arrogant louts. Some are, but most are not.