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Spending the Public’s Money: It’s a Tough Job

Seeking relief from the demands of geschaeft, The Washington Times reported recently, senior officials at the National Science Foundation routinely spend a great deal of their time (and our money) visiting pornographic sites on the Internet.

Just possibly, I suspect, they spend all of their time on stress relief and none on the public’s business, stress relief so striking as to cancel its cause entirely.

“The problems at the National Science Foundation (NSF) were so pervasive,” the Times reported, “they swamped the agency’s inspector general and forced the internal watchdog to cut back on its primary mission of investigating grant fraud and recovering misspent tax dollars.”


These are points that might be kept in mind the next time senior members of the scientific establishment appear in public, their begging bowl clasped firmly in hand, and a suppliant froth just crusting on their lips.

They are points to keep in mind, as well, the next time the NSF issues some solemn and idiotic diktat about Darwin’s theory of evolution and its enthusiastic endorsement by the scientific community.

A scientific mandarin may spend his time wandering around the Internet corridors of Sophie’s House of Pleasure, or he may spend his time trying to think of something intelligent to say.
It is remarkably difficult to do both.

David Berlinski

Writer, Thinker, Raconteur, and Senior Fellow, Discovery Institute
David Berlinski received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University and was later a postdoctoral fellow in mathematics and molecular biology at Columbia University. He is currently a Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. Dr. Berlinski has authored works on systems analysis, differential topology, theoretical biology, analytic philosophy, and the philosophy of mathematics, as well as three novels. He has also taught philosophy, mathematics and English at such universities as Stanford, Rutgers, the City University of New York and the Universite de Paris. In addition, he has held research fellowships at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria and the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques (IHES) in France.

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