My colleague Mike LaChance recently wrote about Savannah Mandel, a PhD candidate at Virginia Tech and an “outer space anthropologist.”

This budding scientist (and I use this term loosely) thinks that human space exploration is “imperialist.” Mandel’s opinion and her book touting such nonsense are more symptoms of the continuing ideological capture of our scientific institutions.

What is particularly alarming to me was her call for “the inclusion of more social scientists” at NASA and elsewhere. As evidenced by the recent struggles at Boeing, with its airplanes and Starliner, adding anything other than physical science professionals, mathematicians, and engineers is the last thing we need in the aeronautics and space industry.

I have found it very instructive to examine the backgrounds of those being promoted as the next generation of experts. Mandel received a glowing write-up at Physics.org for her work.