State of Smear

[MagusYanam]

Damn, and I thought Timeline was an ugly work of banal pop fiction. Apparently, I hadn't heard the half...

http://www.csicop.org/doubtandabout/crichton/

Normally I don't hang with CSICOP, but this article was by Washington Post contributor Chris Mooney, who is definitely a better judge of bull (and a more intellectually honest writer) than most of CSICOP.

Now, global warming's a bit out of my field (My summer job's in evolutionary biology), but I'm no stranger to the scientific method, as Michael Crichton seems to be. Even those few short passages from State of Fear were enough to make me gag - it's another example of how honest scientists and intellectuals are being reviled by popular culture in general, and the right wing in particular. Should we treat State of Fear like The DaVinci Code was treated by the Catholics, or is there a better response to this kind of bulls--t?

All I know is, Crichton will be the third to go in the revolution, right after Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly...