Weird Science, or, the Continuing Curious Case of Mr. Deutsch

An update on the NASA flap I posted yesterday--George Deutsch, one of the presidential appointees to NASA's public affairs department (and the one apparently feared that the Big Bang theory left no room for an intelligent designer of the cosmos)--resigned.

NASA officials would not comment on Mr. Deutsch's departure, thought it's possible that reports confirming Deutsch lied on his resume (he did not, in fact, graduate from Texas A&M) helped move him out the door.

The puzzling thing is that NASA apparently declined to conduct a cursory examination into Mr. Deutsch's history--they did not even bother to verify that he graduated. Presidential backing or not, it's strange that such a young man with limited professional experience and no science background whatsoever was allowed to join the agency's ranks. Granted, having the President of the United States recommend you for a job is probably a pretty powerful thing. But it's not like there isn't precedent when it comes to presidential appointees being woefully out of their depth: Michael Brown, former head of FEMA, got the same "thumbs up" from Bush and slid right into the top slot at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The more I see of the business world, the more I'm convinced that it really is all about who you know.