'Aggressively Anti-Science'

Two frontrunners for the Republican Party's presidential nomination have taken troubling anti-science stances, Paul Krugman writes in an op-ed at The New York Times. Rick Perry, governor of Texas, has said that evolution is "just a theory" that has "got some gaps in it" and suggests that climate change data has been manipulated by researchers "so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects." The former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney once said that man-made climate change is a serious issue, but now says he thinks it might be happening, but isn't sure it is caused by people — a change in position that Krugman chalks up to Romney playing to the GOP base. "Now, we don't know who will win next year's presidential election. But the odds are that one of these years the world's greatest nation will find itself ruled by a party that is aggressively anti-science, indeed anti-knowledge," Krugman adds. "And, in a time of severe challenges — environmental, economic, and more — that's a terrifying prospect."