Alarm! Alarm! Critical thinking spotted in vicinity of threatened Pop Science Kludge

British physicist David Tyler muses, "Is critical thinking subversive to science?

The instinctive reaction of most people to this question is "Of course not! Without critical thinking, science is dead!" So when one of the leading science journals carries a report on the Louisiana bill promoting the development of "critical thinking skills" describing it as an "attack [. . .] on the teaching of evolution and mainstream scientific thought on global warming and other topics" - it is time to reflect on the reasons why.

It is indeed. And unfortunately, the answer isn't too hard to figure out.

As science morphs into a faux religion for tax-funded Bo-Bos (bourgeois bohemians, in David Brooks's immortal phrase), the Bo-Bos' witless neuroses become Unassailable.

So, whether the current freakout is the Big Bazooms theory of evolution or the "You Gonna Fry! You Gonna Die!" theory of climate change, the Bo-Bos do insist on being taken Seriously.

And they do NOT want critical thinking applied to the nonsense they have already charged.