BREAKING NEWS: George Deutsch Did Not Graduate From Texas A & M University

Through my own investigations I have just discovered that George Deutsch, the Bush political appointee at the heart of administration efforts to censor NASA scientists (most notably to prevent James Hansen from speaking out about global warming), did not actually graduate from Texas A&M University. This should come as a surprise, since the media has implied otherwise, with even The New York Times describing the 24-year-old NASA public affairs officer, as “a 2003 journalism graduate of Texas A&M.” Although Deutsch did attend Texas A&M University, where he majored in journalism and was scheduled to graduate in 2003, he left in 2004 without a degree, a revelation that I was tipped off to by one of his former coworkers at A&M's student newspaper The Battalion. I later confirmed this discovery through the records department of the Texas A&M University Association of Former Students.

Deutsch’s former coworker informed me that in the summer of 2004, when Deutsch was the Opinion Editor for The Battalion, he was offered a position in George W. Bush’s presidential reelection campaign. The position was apparently too good to turn down, so Deutsch not only left his editorial post, but he also left A&M completely. Deutsch's coworker was not aware of him returning to A&M to complete his education. I investigated this further, and through the Association of Former Students, I learned that George Deutsch never graduated from Texas A&M, and the last record of him was from June 9, 2004, when he withdrew.

At this point, while I am unaware of whether Deutsch graduated from college at all, it is clear that he did not graduate from A&M, and he may have intentionally misled people to believe that he did. The idea that NASA let a 24-year-old journalism major, with no experience in science or technology, other than writing a few articles about video games, determine what scientists were able to communicate to the public was pretty bad. The fact that he was censoring scientific information on global warming and the big bang made things more interesting, especially since he was a political appointee doing this to prevent challenges to the Bush administration’s policies. But now, finding out that he did not even graduate from Texas A&M, and may not have graduated from college at all, is absolutely outrageous. George Deutsch, as I wrote before, needs to be removed from this post immediately.

The Bush administration and the Republican Party can give lip service to science all they like, but when they show such a flagrant disregard for scientific integrity by placing someone, whose only qualification is having worked on the Bush campaign, in such an important position, everything else they say is meaningless.