Scientists boycott Louisiana

Wow, nice to see scientists showing some spine. Now as you may know, the governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, is a thoroughly misguided, anti-evolution republican (what else?) politician. (Both his voting against the stimulus and the legislation that he signed into law that will allow for "supplemental materials" that "provoke debate" in science classes are topics that deserve their own detailed post, but that comes later).

But now, The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology has decided to back out of their annual conference, which was slated to be held in New Orleans, as a result of this legislation. That's a lot of money that the city and the state can ill-afford to lose. Though the city is taking the punishment for some pretty backward political thinking (you should read the comments section in the nola article to see how people in the area think. It's illuminating), the protest is great, in my opinion. Not that science should be political - it shouldn't - but when we are up against a systematic program to undermine a very basic tenet of Biology for no real reason other that religious bigotry, the least we can do is let our voices be heard.