In May Mary Ellen Tiffany Gilder, a medical student in Albany, New York, published in this space a devastating critique of Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, drawing on public research. Ms Gilder, a daughter of Discovery Senior Fellow George Gilder, is saluted for her global warming analysis in Steve Forbes' lead column in the new Forbes magazine (September 3 issue: "Fantasy Fears").
The line of Forbes' I like the best: "Scientists who arrive at an opposing conclusion (from Gore's) are ostracized and often denied grants. Universities won't hire them or, if they are already tenured, will make sure they don't get promoted." Any scientific critic of Darwinian theory can sympathize!
You can read or re-read Mary Ellen ("Melly") Gilder's original paper--"Good News, Mr. Gore, the Apocalypse Has Been Postponed"--on our site.
One motivation for writing the paper apparently was Melly's conviction that exaggerated or wrong scientific analyses could wind up hurting the world's poor, as happened with DDT studies relative to malaria forty years ago. Ms. Gilder's medical training and deep Christian faith has propelled her into medical missionary work in South East Asia in recent years, some of it in dangerous territory.
Not only is Melly Gilder intent on serving the needy and neglected, this lovely young woman clearly has the same kind of talent and trained writing skills as her father, George--and her mother, Cornelia Brooke Gilder, a distinguished historic preservationist who champions the remarkable built environment of the Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts.