Day: <span>November 29, 2017</span>

Trump fails to connect with science and Nobel scientists

 

If you still are able to tolerate childishness in high office or see nothing wrong with the dumbing down of America, you may want to stop reading now. Otherwise, here goes.

I recently learned, courtesy of The New York Times, that President Trump recently broke with another presidential tradition. He didn’t invite the latest American winners of Nobel prizes to the White House. The winners of this year’s Nobels in physics, chemistry, economics and physiology, all Americans, were instead honored at the Swedish Embassy in Washington.

The White House claimed the president’s travel schedule as an excuse. But who knows? As the Times article suggested, maybe the president “isn’t big on research’s value to society.” He, after all, continues to deny the science behind climate change and has advocated budgetary and tax policies to undermine public education.

The Nobel winners apparently weren’t upset at being dissed by the White House.

Biophysicist Joachim Frank, the Nobel laureate in chemistry, said he was “relieved” at not having to visit with Trump. Referring to the other winners, he was quoted, “I strongly believe that as thinking, intelligent people, they will have a similar attitude as I.”

Richard Thaler won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science. According to the newspaper article, the Nobel committee said Thaler’s research into human behavior explored “the consequences of limited rationality, social preferences and lack of self-control.”

Almost sounds as if it were a thesis on the Tweeter-in-Chief.

Dear Nobel winners, Mr. Trump has all the brains he needs