At this point, while I am unaware of whether Deutsch graduated from college at all, it is clear that he did not graduate from A&M, and he may have intentionally misled people to believe that he did. 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.
(Via Beyond the Beyond.)
I suppose I really shouldn't be surprised by this sort of thing anymore.
1 comment:
Unfortunately, the non-mainstream field has its own share of fake IDs and credentials.
Take for example poster "Dan Smythe," a Hoagland gadfly on the anomalies.net forum which briefly hosted Richard Hoagland starting in 2001 for a short while until an acrimonious break-up. "Smythe" tried to persuade people that he had NASA connections, and his claims grew increasingly more grandiose until he tired of the game.
Then there's the fellow claiming giant machines in the rings of Saturn, "Dr." Norman Bergrun. His doctorate came from an outfit who seem to be willing to pass them out like after-dinner mints if you pay them the appropriate sum.
That said, the consequences for abusing the public trust are far more serious when it happens at NASA, rather than in the usual haunts of Internet trolls.
Carol Maltby
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