Quality is Job... I Can't Count That High

An article by Fred Reed ("The Geek Shall Inherit") in the April 7 issue of The American Conservative points out that Harvard University (despite its reputation for harboring some of the most monumental poseurs, frauds, and charlatans in the country among the tenured faculty) has some passably smart people as students, especially in science and math. He also points out that the pressure is on from feminists to institute some sort of "gender equity" (read: affirmative action, i.e. quotas) provisions to education in the sciences. (And of course we know what happened to poor old Larry Summers when he merely seemed to suggest that women might, just possibly, have ever-so-slightly lower abilities for math and science than men.) Well, it had to happen sooner or later; professional athletics is the only facet of American life remaining that is not expected to strive for radical egalitarianism (probably because it's also a profit-making business that depends on the free and independent choices of consumers) (and because they'd burn the White House if someone tried to introduce affirmative action into the NBA).

In sum, Reed says "we can't play games" with the sciences, because they are "the basis of America's position in the world". (Actually, the Neocons and Evangelicals are the basis of America's current position in the world, but let that go for now.) Now, while it may be true that we haven't yet started playing hard-core "equal opportunity" games with the sciences (the equivalent of requiring talented ballerinas to wear lead weights around their ankles, as one novelist envisioned), it is most assuredly _not_ true that we don't already play those sorts of games in the applied sciences -- including engineering and government-funded research and development. I think the only agency that has gotten a pass on this over the years is NASA -- but even then, can you say "O-ring", boys and girls? But in general, government science and technology operates under a crushing political burden, by which properly-gathered and analyzed data are constantly being "cooked" to render them more palatable to the political overlords -- and please note that, if you go high enough up the totem pole of any scientific or engineering entity in the government, you will eventually bump into the fat, bloated butt of a politician -- either a born politician, or a scientist or engineer who sold out and became one. There are data that are not permitted to see the light of day because they contradict political correctness, or threaten someone's rice bowl or pork-barrel project, or because they threaten some existing policy or system that someone would prefer be kept in place. There are engineering developments that are quashed for the same reasons; how many horror stories about inferior and malfunctioning weapon systems do we have to read before we realize that making money and not rocking the boat are Jobs One and Two, and that real quality, which translates to readiness, which translates to winning battles and preserving the lives of the troops, is Job... not even on the list. So it really doesn't matter how well we treat our scientists during their ivory tower, growing-up years. Eventually they will come face to face with the reality that politics trumps science, greed trumps quality, and anything they had hopes to contribute to the ultimate welfare of the country has to be filtered through countless layers of political hacks and know-nothings before it comes out the other end, mangled beyond recognition.