Palin and the fruit fly

Sarah Palin may have alienated herself from the entire basic research community

"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. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not."

"I'm going to be as restrained and measured as I possibly can about this. But this is the most mindless, ignorant, uninformed comment that we have seen from Governor Palin so far, and there's been a lot of competition for that prize."

the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is arguably on a par with the mouse as the founding model organism for the field of genetics.

Palin said in the same speech that "early identification of a cognitive or other disorder, especially autism, can make a life-changing difference".

The discovery, made in Drosophila fruit flies, may lead to advances in understanding autism spectrum disorders