>The administration's stem-cell stand is just one of many examples,
>from climate change to abstinence-only sex-education programs, in
>which the White House has made policies that defy widely accepted
>scientific opinion. Why this administration feels unbound by the
>consensus of academic scientists can be gleaned, in part, from a
>telling anecdote in Nicholas Lemann's recent New Yorker profile of
>Karl Rove. When asked by Lemann to define a Democrat, Bush's chief
>political strategist replied, "Somebody with a doctorate." Lemann
>noted, "This he said with perhaps the suggestion of a smirk."
>Fundamentally, much of today's GOP, like Rove, seems to smirkingly
>equate academics, including scientists, with liberals.