More on the nation-weakening folly of the Bush Administration’s relentless drive to erode America’s scientific pre-eminence, by measures such as keeping foreign graduate students out of this country. Now, the Weakener-in-Chief’s war on science and scientists has reached the point where prominent scholars from other countries can’t get a visa to come here temporarily for conferences:
A leading world science body denounced tougher U.S. visa policies on Thursday after its Indian-born president said he failed to get permission to enter the country on charges he was hiding information that could be used for chemical weapons.Professor Goverdhan Mehta, 62, an internationally recognized organic chemist, invited to a conference by the University of Florida, has denied the charges and said he was rejected because he could not recall details of research he did 40 years ago. …
Mehta, a former head of the Indian Institute of Science who has taught in the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Japan, said the [U.S.] consulate accused him of hiding information that could possibly be used for chemical weapons when he could not give details of his doctoral thesis.
“I did my Ph.D 40 years ago,” he told the Deccan Herald in Bangalore, the southern Indian high-tech center where he lives. “I told them I did not remember the topic. Science has progressed and changed completely since then.”
Forty years. Sounds about right. Wasn’t that the age of the barrels of supposed WMD that Bush and Rove were creaming over for a couple of news cycles back in the days when the WMD hunt in Iraq was still on?
