On the primacy of doubt in an age of illusory certainty

While reading the news, TPP noted that it is rumored that the President will appoint a non-scientist, someone wholly without scientific credentials to be under secretary of the dept. of agriculture and in charge of a great deal of research.  Nothing good ever comes of such appointments.  The title above comes from a blog recently posted by a fellow Field of Science Blogger at the Curious Wavefunction and for a short time it probably appears at the top of this page.
Many people fail to understand science: some thinking  it's just a body of knowledge with no notion that science is really a way of knowing where being skeptical is a useful and necessary attitude.  TPP studies, when time and money allow, rainforest trees, and he well remembers a Lincolnland legislator wonder aloud what good that did the other citizens of our state. Of course, there's the interconnectedness of nature, which tends to pay very little attention to our semi-arbitrary political boundaries. Basically this was interesting research, poking into the unknown, satisfying a primal urge to explore and exercise a curiosity, and that kept you going, kept you at a difficult pursuit, and it grabbed the attention and stimulated a certain number of students to learn science the only way it can be taught, by doing science, and that is what TPP was hired to do. Not "train students for the workforce of Lincolnland", a dreary prospect of a goal for a university.  Not educate, but train. Sit. Speak. Roll over.  So pop over and give Ash's blog a read.