The cover of National Geographic magazine’s March 2015 issue is framed in my home office. The image of a staged moon landing, and five short sentences challenging common known facts serve as the backdrop for an ominous title: “The War on Science.” In the excellent article “The Age of Disbelief,” Joel Achenbach and photographer Richard Barnes quote geophysicist Marcia McNutt, now president of the National Academies of Sciences, who said, “scientific thinking has to be taught and sometimes it is not taught well,” and that struck a chord.
