they blinded me with science

Emptypockets over at The Next Hurrah has a great post about the "mad scientist" frame employed by opposers of stem-cell research and detruthers¹ mendacitaters [thanks, expat] of climate change and evolution, including a three-step plan for fighting the meme.

I'm in, but I don't know how much hope I hold out that the Great Unwashed can be educated about science. We're already too far down the road that will eventually divide our species into tall, intelligent, creatives and the short, stupid goblins.² To a depressingly large number of people, much of the technology that makes our lives possible is already magic. And magic is either white or black, right? In the neo-Manichaeanism of George Bush's America, the moral indifference of science is as far beyond the ken of most citizens as recombinant DNA.

spacedark

¹ Anybody have a better word with this meaning: "debunkers of something that isn't bunk"?

² Having applied emptypocket's standards to the report I cite, I employ it as a metaphor only.