It has been interesting to see the bizarre controversies erupting over La Clair’s (dunno him) total synthesis of hexacyclinol versus Scott Rychnovsky’s computer simulated NMR spectra (Prehaps not ChemDraw NMR?)… you can read it in SO much more detail at Tenderblog and, for an even closer look at the synthesis, at Totally Synthetic. I ain’t goin there, besides I think this Xenobe Research Institute is just a Scientology cover to find a drug that will make Tom Cruise tall enough to ride Splash Mountain at Disneyland with his daughter fiancé. I mean… aside from Alexander Shulgin who the hell uses a P.O. box in a publication?

Then there’s Derek Lowe kicking up shit about (un)Intelligent Design in this post. It’s interesting, and confounding, that people with any scientific background at all would consider ID in any way scientific. What’s wrong with just a belief? It’s a horrible ruse to get “Christian” values into classrooms, Science Classrooms, of which a few radical Christians appear to identify as a threat.
Crazy ol' Hubbard

So, for this post, I give you a picture of my favorite “scientist” L. Ron Hubbard, of whom all this controversy surrounding bizarre claims of miraculous solo 32 step brilliant syntheses and complete and total pseudoscience remind me. Indeed, if anything should be taught in high school science courses it’s this nut’s religion. For whatever reason it appears to be perfectly reasonable to accept the testimony of a science fiction author when making public policy these days (apparently with no regard as to how shitty of a writer he is) so, why not just let this dude’s work hit it?