Power of the Blogosphere

A rather interesting thing as happened.

There’s was a guy named George C. Deutsch, appointed by George W. Bush, to work with NASA’s public affairs office.

There has been an enormous amount of controversy among scientists, for the perception that he and others in that capacity tried to limit the access by the press to scientists working on global warming. See story.

What’s interesting is that George C. Deutsch claimed to have recently graduated from Texas A&M. People were already mad at the guy for his role these controversies, when a blogger did a little research and uncovered that while had attended A&M, he had never graduated.

All these quickly spread throughout the blogosphere, and within a day, he’s been fired. Seems that he did indeed claim to be a college graduate on his resume when he got the job.

While I find it very interesting the speed and lethalness with which blogging can bring things to light, I find it more interesting (and troubling) that a 24 year old PR guy can get inside a big scientific agency like NASA, and start trying to make science match political goals… He shouldn’t have had his job in the first place.

One of the top scientists who was making the charges of censorship, James Hansen, stated it best when he said,

The foundation of a democracy is an informed public, which obviously means an honestly informed public. That’s the big issue here.