Evolution No Longer Eligible For Federal Funding!!!!

OK, this is f***ing unbelievable.

In one of those quiet, behind-closed-doors-moments, right wing extremists in the White House have secretly removed Evolution, the single organizing principle of biology, as a graduate study program eligible for Federal funding.

Evolutionary biology has vanished from the list of acceptable fields of study for recipients of a federal education grant for low-income college students.

The omission is inadvertent, said Katherine McLane, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, which administers the grants. "There is no explanation for it being left off the list," Ms. McLane said. "It has always been an eligible major."

Another spokeswoman, Samara Yudof, said evolutionary biology would be restored to the list, but as of last night it was still missing.

Cowards, a link, and more to make you pissed on the flip.

Choke gasp..

If a major is not on the list, students in that major cannot get grants unless they declare another major, said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. Mr. Nassirian said students seeking the grants went first to their college registrar, who determined whether they were full-time students majoring in an eligible field.

oy.  Can you believe what a waste of time this whole rigamarol is>

Though references to evolution appear in listings of other fields of biological study, the evolutionary biology sub-subsection is missing from a list of "fields of study" on the National Smart Grant list -- there is an empty space between line 26.1302 (marine biology and biological oceanography) and line 26.1304 (aquatic biology/limnology).

Students cannot simply list something else on an application form, said Mr. Nassirian of the registrars' association. "Your declared major maps to a CIP code," he said.

Mr. Nassirian said people at the Education Department had described the omission as "a clerical mistake." But it is "odd," he said, because applying the subject codes "is a fairly mechanical task. It is not supposed to be the subject of any kind of deliberation."

"I am not at all certain that the omission of this particular major is unintentional," he added. "But I have to take them at their word."

Scientists who knew about the omission also said they found the clerical explanation unconvincing, given the furor over challenges by the religious right to the teaching of evolution in public schools. "It's just awfully coincidental," said Steven W. Rissing, an evolutionary biologist at Ohio State University.

Jeremy Gunn, who directs the Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief at the American Civil Liberties Union, said that if the change was not immediately reversed "we will certainly pursue this."

In the continuing march backwards, the Bushco War on Science continues to embarrass all Americans and further challenge the validity of actual experts in biology.

Why so quiet? Why behind closed doors?

Because wingnuts are not interested in discussion. Because they would lose the arguments in open discussion, like all Bush doctrines, they aren't openly debted- just attacked.

Cowards

Link here:

http://www.nytimes.com/...