Sarah palin somehow manages to make to the headlines for various reasons, on 24th October the Republican nominee for Vice President attacked scientific research done on fruit flies ,in a speech about her running mate John McCain’s policies on children with disabilities (you can read here)).Sarah Palin condemned “earmarks”, which are congressional mandates to spend money on specific projects.

“You’ve heard about some of these pet projects, they really don’t make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good,” Palin said. “Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.”

The use of word “fruit fly” obviously makes one think that she is in fact referring to famous model organism Drosophila melanogaster ,as the word fruit fly is almost now a synonym to Drosophila in biology world. I think one has to be careful with the use of words or else it will be cardinal error as it was in the case ,which didn’t go well with majority of scientific world.Later it became clear that Palin was in fact was mentioning about a particular earmark pertaining to agriculture research involving olive fruit flies. The only earmark which connects fruit flies and France is the project involving Bactrocera oleae (Olive fruit fly) being done in Montpellier, 750 kilometers south of Paris.In the speech it sounded that the US taxpayers money is being used to fund a study of fruit flies in Paris, France. This work mentioned in the speech is being done in U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) laboratory near Montpellier, may help protect California olive trees from a serious pest. This earmark is for the European Biological Control Laboratory (EBCL), administered by USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS), which studies ways to control invasive species in the United States by using their natural enemies.

California was free of any olive pests till olive fruit fly entered Los Angeles in 1998 and today its a huge economic problem.Most growers now protect their crops with insecticides. Releasing a natural enemy might provide an alternative and this what exactlt is being done in lab by ARS entomologist Kim Hoelmer in Montpellier.

“This kind of stuff always drives me nuts,”It’s a total lack of understanding of the importance of research.”– Kim Hoelmer

So far the research work was successful in identifying at least six natural enemies of B. oleae ,including one parasitic wasp from southern Africa called Psyttalia lounsburyi was able to control populations efficiently and important thing is that it attacks only the olive fruit fly.According to Hoelmer,the reason for performing the research in France for the fact that ,it is important to be able to study them over the long term in their native habitats–in the olive fruit fly’s case, the Mediterranean region and Africa.

I originally set out to make the point that anyone whose science education was so poor that they did not recognize fruit flies as very important models for basic study, is unfit for public office. In reality Palin has attacked research that is very practical, and carried out in an appropriate location.–Steve- From Steve-Marg.blogspot

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