Curious, George

In his post, OFS and Other Maladies, Duane refers to a "twerp" at NASA trying to restrain actual scientists from publishing research information. The said twerp's name is George Deutsch, and it has recently been bandied far and wide across the science-blog universe. Deutsch was the NASA source responsible for trying to silence Dr. James E. Hansen's, NASA's top climate scientist and longtime director of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, statements during an off-reservation lecture on global warming. Hansen was threatened with "dire consequences" if he didn't obey the PR directives, and the public affairs staff was directed to henceforth review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.

Is George Deutsch a scientist? Just who is this guy? Deutsch is a 24 year old Public Affairs Officer for NASA, who spent the summer of 2004 working in The Other George's reelection campaign. Ah!! we all chorus, as light bulbs go off over our heads. Yes, Deutsch was a presidential appointee to his position at NASA. And it seems to have gone to his head in a very big way. After Deutsch turned down an NPR request for an interview with Hansen, Leslie McCarthy, a public affairs officer responsible for the Goddard Institute, said Deutsch had called NPR the "most liberal media outlet in the country" and that " his job was "to make the president look good" and that as a White House appointee that might be Mr. Deutsch's priority.

Mr. Deutsch is also the scientific genius responsible for disseminating the directive to NASA scientists to add the word "theory" to every mention of the "Big Bang" when working on documents and presentations on the subject.

The Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion," Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, "It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator."

It continued: "This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most." (NYT article, Feb. 4)

But! the most delightful morsel on Mr. Deutsch, pet presidential appointee to a position where he assumed just way too much authority, is this: not only does he not know a single damn thing about science, he is evidently not even a college graduate! His NASA resumé represents him as a Journalism grad from Texas A & M. However, Nick Anthis, the Scientific Activist blogger, and himself an A & M graduate, did some digging and sleuthing at the old alma mater; and discovered that George Deutsch left A & M (without graduating) for the Really Big Bang of presidential campaigning - AND NEVER CAME BACK.

Anthis feels fairly outraged about this, as might you and I, saying in his post on the subject:

The idea that NASA let a 24-year-old journalism major, with no experience in science or technology, other than writing a few articles about video games, determine what scientists were able to communicate to the public was pretty bad. The fact that he was censoring scientific information on global warming and the big bang made things more interesting, especially since he was a political appointee doing this to prevent challenges to the Bush administration’s policies. But now, finding out that he did not even graduate from Texas A&M, and may not have graduated from college at all, is absolutely outrageous. George Deutsch, as I wrote before, needs to be removed from this post immediately.

Is this what Neil calls political hackery, or is this an altogether new genre with as yet no established title? Should we look even further back in Deutsch's family tree and see if there are any big Republican donors or corporate sponsors there? Does one summer of doodling around in the campaign warrant this sort of power? And if so, WTF else is going on?