Here's a great example of someone furiously spinning the news to their advantage and getting slapped down for it. As you may have heard, two scientists — an American named James A. Thomson and a Japanese counterpart — recently announced they had developed an embryo-free way to produce genetically matched stem cells. This prompted columnist Charles Krauthammer to proclaim that the debate about embryonic stem cells was over and that George W. Bush had won. By insisting that science curtail the use of embryos in such research, Bush had spurred them on to find an alternative. Wrote Krauthammer, "Rarely has a president — so vilified for a moral stance — been so thoroughly vindicated." The piece, which ran in the Washington Post, was filled with quotes from Thomson that seemed to support all this.
That was last Friday. Today, the Post has a piece by James A. Thomson and a colleague, essentially saying that Krauthammer doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. The rebuttal, co-authored by the guy who was Krauthammer's star witness in support of Bush, says that Bush and Krauthammer were wrong both from a scientific perspective and as a matter of governmental policy. It's about as thorough a smackdown as I've ever seen in any newspaper and it concludes with a plea for Congress to override Bush's veto on the subject.
They should. There's no earthly reason to not pursue embryonic stem cell research other than a bunch of guys like Krauthammer, who don't have a clue about the science involved, have convinced themselves it's a variation on the abortion debate. They think they can't lose on one without losing on the other and they're wrong.