It is gratifying to find the Tribune editorial board capable of an objective analysis of the deer overpopulation problem in the Chicago area.
Though I am a physicist by training, not a population biologist, I have analyzed the information regarding this problem from a scientific perspective, have consulted with the Du Page County Forest Preserve District and found its deer management program to be based solely on accepted scientific principles and extensively peer-reviewed.
In a society that asks, indeed obligates, the citizenry to determine the value of such programs as deer population management, development of safe, efficient, non-polluting forms of fission and fusion energy and the scientific, intellectual and technological merit of the now-defunct superconducting supercollider, we must improve the scientific literacy and appreciation of society as a whole.
In this we, as scientists, have failed. We have failed to educate and inform the general public, at all levels, of the beauty, value and importance of science. Until we begin to do this better, we as a society will undoubtedly continue making ill-informed decisions and will jeopardize our future intellectual harvest.
