Courtesy of The Big Story:
At the request of The Associated Press, eight climate and biological scientists graded for scientific accuracy what a dozen top candidates said in debates, interviews and tweets, using a 0 to 100 scale.
To try to eliminate possible bias, the candidates' comments were stripped of names and given randomly generated numbers, so the professors would not know who made each statement they were grading. Also, the scientists who did the grading were chosen by professional scientific societies.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had the highest average score at 94. Three scientists did not assign former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley a score, saying his statements mostly were about policy, which they could not grade, instead of checkable science.
Two used similar reasoning to skip grading New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and one did the same for businesswoman Carly Fiorina. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas had the lowest score, an average of 6. All eight put Cruz at the bottom of the class.
"This individual understands less about science (and climate change) than the average kindergartner," Michael Mann, a Pennsylvania State University meteorology professor, wrote of Cruz's statements. "That sort of ignorance would be dangerous in a doorman, let alone a president."
Well they certainly had not problem pegging Ted Cruz.
The rest of the field rounded out like this:
Martin O'Malley: 91
Bernie Sanders: 87
Jeb!: 64
John Kasich: 47
Rand Paul: 48
Carly Fiorina: 38
Marco Rubio: 21
Donald Trump: 15
Ben Carson: 13
Ted Cruz: 6
Does anybody else find it especially interesting that the three candidates with the lowest scores are at the top of the polls in the GOP race?
Scientists grade presidential candidate's knowledge about climate change. On Ted Cruz:"This individual understands less about science (and climate change) than the average kindergartner."
10:07 AM
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