In an entertaining and yet unnerving article in the New York Times, Rep Rush Holt (D-New Jersey), formerly assistant director of the Princeton Plasma Physics laboratory laments the state of scientific literacy in the House of Representatives:
There are 435 people in the House, Mr. Holt said, and “420 don’t know much about science and choose not to.” He recalled his exasperation when anthrax spores were discovered in the Capitol in 2001 and colleagues came to him and said, “You are a scientist, you must know about anthrax,” a subject ordinarily missing from the physics curriculum.
“The difference,” he said, “is we would be perfectly happy to pick up a copy of The New England Journal of Medicine and read about the etiology of anthrax… “We know more than our colleagues,” Mr. Holt said, “but not more than they could know.”
