Um, some conservatives DO dispute E=mc^2

A few times on my Facebook news feed, I’ve noticed a graphic with a photo of astrophysicist and (awesome) science popularizer Neil deGrasse Tyson and this quotation of him (emphasis and ellipsis in original):

Climate change has taken on political dimensions… That’s odd because I don’t see people choosing sides over \(E=mc^2\) or other fundamental facts of science!

It appears that Dr. Tyson has not checked out Conservapedia, a right-wing competitor to Wikiepdia. (I certainly don’t blame him for this—he’s got to have much better things to do than read a web site full of stupid garbage.) Conservapedia takes issue with relativity overall, and says of \(E=mc^2\) (emphasis in original):

Political pressure, however, has since made it impossible for anyone pursuing an academic career in science to even question the validity of this nonsensical equation. Simply put, \(E=mc^2\) is liberal claptrap.

(The whole \(E=mc^2\) Conservapedia article is actually pretty funny. My wife, who is a physicist, thought it was a joke.)

Conservapedia is a project of Andrew Schlafly, son of prominent conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly. Indeed, you can see from my link above (adorned with rel="nofollow", of course!) that the most recent edit to the \(E=mc^2\) article was by Mr. Schlafly himself.