Goliath does fall. Last week, the New York Times and the Washington Post reported that James Hansen, a senior scientist at NASA, had been stifled in his attempts to report recent climate changes. Well, it turned out that a 24-year-old presidential appointee by the name of George Deutsch was one of the public affairs officers who had been doing the stifling.

Here's where it gets odd. It was widely reported that George Deutsch graduated from Texas A&M University in 2003 with a BA in journalism. If you were at TAMU, his name may sound familiar because he wrote for The Battalion. Despite his young age, Deutsch was definitely starting to throw his weight around:

In October, for example, George Deutsch, a presidential appointee in NASA headquarters, told a Web designer working for the agency to add the word "theory" after every mention of the Big Bang, according to an e-mail message from Mr. Deutsch that another NASA employee forwarded to The Times.

One is tempted to think that his use of the word "theory" is that of the colloquial usage in "just a theory" (which does not carry the same meaning). But that could probably be forgiven, if not for a longer history of stifling scientific communication:

George Deutsch, a recently appointed public affairs officer at NASA headquarters, rejected a request from a producer at National Public Radio to interview Dr. Hansen, said Leslie McCarthy, a public affairs officer responsible for the Goddard Institute.

Citing handwritten notes taken during the conversation, Ms. McCarthy said Mr. Deutsch called N.P.R. "the most liberal" media outlet in the country. She said that in that call and others, Mr. Deutsch said his job was "to make the president look good" and that as a White House appointee that might be Mr. Deutsch's priority.

But she added: "I'm a career civil servant and Jim Hansen is a scientist. That's not our job. That's not our mission. [Deutsch's] inference was that Hansen was disloyal."

This 24-year-old journalism major is making decisions on which media outlets get to interview senior scientists at NASA? Are you kidding me? Do the names Harriet Myers or Michael Brown come to mind? Really, this whole thing reeks of Lysenko.

It gets better, actually. Nick Anthis, also a Texas A&M University alumn of 2005, found out that George Deutsch never really graduated from TAMU like he stated on his résumé. Nick was just two years after me in the biochemistry department at TAMU. He is currently living in Oxford, England, on a Rhodes Scholarship, where he writes his blog, The Scientific Activist. What's incredible is that he gets a hat-tip from today's New York Times:

Mr. Deutsch's educational record was first challenged on Monday by Nick Anthis, who graduated from Texas A&M last year with a biochemistry degree and has been writing a Web log on science policy, scientificactivist.blogspot.com.

After Mr. Anthis read about the problems at NASA, he said in an interview: "It seemed like political figures had really overstepped the line. I was just going to write some commentary on this when somebody tipped me off that George Deutsch might not have graduated."

This just goes to show that no matter how big or powerful Goliath is, there are many Davids. And these Davids are persistent.

Good job, Nick.

UPDATE: George Deutsch goes public with a radio interview on WTAW. Meanwhile, Ed Brayton notes some rather amusing inconsistencies in Deutsch's explanations.