Another unscientific method

To follow-up on the last post here: Politics is creating ever-more creative definitions of science. Yesterday's Boston Globe had this story:

Reading First aims to help young children read through scientifically proven programs, and the department considers it a jewel of No Child Left Behind, Bush's education law. ... In one e-mail, the director told a staff member to come down hard on a company he did not support, according to the report released yesterday by the department's inspector general.

``They are trying to crash our party and we need to beat the [expletive deleted] out of them in front of all the other would-be party crashers who are standing on the front lawn waiting to see how we welcome these dirtbags," the program director wrote, the report says.

(Note: First paragraph actually came later in the story)

To quote our fearless leader:

I believe the results of focusing our attention and energy on teaching children to read and having an education system that's responsive to the child and to the parents, as opposed to mired in a system that refuses to change, will make America what we want it to be — a more literate country and a hopefuller country. (January 2001)

Or, more directly: "Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?"