Later On

Linda points out a very good response to Palin’s anti-fruit-fly-studies moment. Kevin Berger writes in Salon:

Sarah Palin, the Republican nominee for vice president of the United States, does not appear to know as much about science as a smart 5th grader. Perhaps you have heard this. On Oct. 24, during a policy speech in Pittsburgh, she went after that darn “earmark money” again.

“You guys have heard some of the examples of where those dollars go,” the fun Alaska governor said to the guys in the audience, acknowledging their media savvy about Congress members, who sometimes acquire public money for frivolous projects. “You’ve heard about the bridges. And some of these pet projects. They really don’t make a whole lot of sense.”

A troubled look crossed her face. “And sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good, things like …” she grinned, shaking her head side to side, her voice rising to a facetious pitch “… fruit fly research in Paris, France.” Feeling in tune with the guys in her audience, she added, “I kid you not.”

From the point of view of the confident governor, who reportedly once remarked that “dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time,” contradicting 200 years of paleontology, you can see how spending public money to study fruit flies seems so dumb.

It’s difficult to know what Palin cared about during the 5th grade. But had she been curious about science, she could have learned that the humble fruit fly has the most fabled pedigree in biology. Following Mendel and his famous peas, major discoveries in genetics — that genes are aligned on chromosomes; that chromosomes determine gender — have come from the fruit fly.

One could recommend that Palin…

read Jonathan Weiner’s wonderful book, “Time, Love, Memory,” about the scientists who pioneered the studies of the insect known as drosophila. Or maybe she should just hop on the Web site of the great San Francisco science museum for kids, the Exploratorium, to read about the fruit flies’ starring role in genetics. Either way, she would learn that many of the human genes that have been implicated in birth defects and serious diseases have counterparts in the insects.

To scientists, fruit flies are ideal subjects because they have a short life cycle and breed like, well, flies. In a matter of weeks, biologists can determine how flies with defective genes behave, giving them a good indication of how a gene therapy may be designed. As many scientists have pointed out since Palin heartlessly mocked the insect, fruit fly research has been key in understanding autism, a subject about which Palin perpetually broadcasts her interest, as she has an autistic nephew.

There’s another serious side to Palin’s swat at fruit fly research. The French study that she says is doing no public good is no doubt a reference to money secured by Mike Thompson, a Democratic congressman in California’s Napa Valley, which was highlighted by the Citizens Against Government Waste as one of its top “oinkers” of 2008. The money is being used to fund research into the olive fruit fly.

In April, when Thompson won the dubious achievement, he responded: “The olive fruit fly has infested thousands of California olive groves and is the single largest threat to the U.S. olive and olive oil industries.” He explained that the U.S. Department of Agriculture will employ a portion ($211,000) of the $750,000 award for research in France. “This USDA research facility is located in France because Mediterranean countries like France have dealt with the olive fruit fly for decades, while California has only been exposed since the late 1990s,” he said. …

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