I just finished reading Palmer and Pringle's column on Palin's cavalier dismissal of research on fruit flies. Both are rather mystified by the use of this particular item by Palin:

Who wrote this speech? Was he or she as ignorant as Palin about the central role that fruit flies have played in the last century of biomedical research? Or was this a calculated slight to science and scientists -- a coded way of saying, "We don't care what you know or what you think"? We find it odd that, of all the examples of dubious expenditures of public funds, the speechwriters alighted on this one.

Herein may lie the answer: Death by Bush and Fruit Flies