Speaking of interesting books, this looks like a good one. If
depressing.

Just a firm basis for getting RID of the vile repugnican scum that
destroy our democracy, increase suffering and death on a global scale
and in general seem hell-bent on turning our planet to rubble to sate
the black hole of greed that is a the core of their vile souls. Heh!
Look at that. I made a quasi-religious reference. Maybe I should hit
them up for some faith-based funding....where's my voodoo dolls n
pins?
George M. Carter

**
Science, Vol 310, Issue 5745, 56 , 7 October 2005
SCIENCE AND POLITICS:

Anti-Realism in Government
Naomi Oreskes*

 The Republican War on Science
 by Chris Mooney
 Basic Books, New York, 2005. 338 pp. $24.95, C$32.95. ISBN
0-465-04675-4.

In the mid-1990s, a group of scientists led by Paul Gross and Norman
Levitt made a grand fuss about attacks on science from the "academic
left." Most of these attacks originated in France and were linked to
the philosophical question of how well human-constructed theories can
map onto human-independent reality, an academic anxiety if ever there
was one. But while Gross and his friends engaged in academic
internecine warfare over postmodernist theory, a far more serious
attack on science was building on the political right here in the
United States, with serious consequences beyond the walls of academe.
This attack is the subject of journalist Chris Mooney's The Republican
War on Science.

As Mooney recounts, for two decades, influential
Republicans--initially in Congress and now also in the White House--in
concert with determined allies in private industry and fundamentalist
Christian organizations, have systematically denied, disparaged, and
misrepresented scientific information on topics relevant to public
policy. The list is long: acid rain, global warming, the efficacy of
condoms in preventing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, the
health impacts of excess dietary sugar and fat, the alleged link
between abortion and breast cancer, the status of endangered species,
the efficacy of abstinence-only sex education programs, the
therapeutic potential of adult stem cells, and more.

On these issues, a strange-bedfellows alliance has sought to mislead
both the voting public and elected representatives about the
scientific facts: misrepresenting real debates, exaggerating
uncertainty, interfering with the activities of expert agencies,
trumpeting the views of outlier scientists whose interpretations are
rarely to be found in the refereed literature, and attacking the
integrity of genuine experts (1). In frighteningly Orwellian fashion,
these actions are carried out in the name of "sound science."

Much of this will be familiar to those who read the 2003 report
prepared for California Congressman Henry Waxman, "Politics and
Science in the Bush Administration" (2), or the 2004 report of the
Union of Concerned Scientists, "Scientific Integrity in Policy-making:
An Investigation into the Bush Administration's Misuse of Science"
(3). But Mooney goes further, documenting the roots of these abuses in
the Reagan administration and the Congress of Newt Gingrich.
Historically, Republicans have often been more sympathetic to
scientific elites than populist-oriented Democrats, but the animus
growing over the past 20 years has culminated in the present
administration, which, being unable to control science, seems
determined to undermine it.

Mooney points out that in many cases, the same groups and individuals
have been involved in multiple misinformation campaigns. Consider
global warming and ozone depletion. Two leading deniers of the reality
or severity of anthropogenic global warming--S. Fred Singer and Sallie
Baliunas--previously vociferously denied the link between
chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and depletion of stratospheric ozone.
Although his views lie well outside the mainstream of expert
scientific opinion and it has been a long time since he regularly
published in the refereed literature, Singer has been repeatedly
invited to testify in Congress. Both he and Baliunas have links to the
George C. Marshall Institute, founded in 1984 to defend Ronald
Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative against the majority opinion of
expert physicists that it was ill-conceived. Since then, the institute
has claimed to support "sound science" in public policy while
promoting positions that run against the mainstream of scientific
opinion but are consistent with an uncompromisingly anti-regulatory
ideology. In recent years, it has received funding from ExxonMobil,
presumably not coincidentally linked to its efforts to deny global
warming (4). The plot thickens further. One of the institute's
founders and its current chairman of the board, Robert Jastrow, has
written books promoting intelligent design (5-7). Frederick Seitz, its
chair emeritus, is well known in the scientific community as a past
president of the National Academy of Sciences. Less well known is his
role in the 1980s as a principal adviser to the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco
Company in its support of biomedical research that might cast doubt on
the links between tobacco and cancer (8).

How are denials of global warming, the impact of CFCs on stratospheric
ozone, and the link between tobacco and cancer; support of missile
defense; and advocacy of creationism related? On the face of it,
scarcely. But they all involve the promotion of a right-wing political
agenda, and they all involve grotesque misrepresentations of
scientific evidence. "Doubt is our product" was the slogan of an
internal memorandum from the Brown and Williamson Corporation as it
set out to deny the scientific evidence linking smoking to cancer well
after the epidemiological evidence was clear, and the same strategy
underlines anti-scientific campaigns today (9, 10). The connections
Mooney discusses are crucial, because they provide proof that these
actions are politically and economically motivated, rather than based
on principled scientific worries. The same people are repeatedly
involved in the same obfuscations.

Scientists have traditionally been loath to foray into politics for
fear of politicizing science, but Mooney's book makes it clear that
when sensible people stand on the sidelines, a great deal of nonsense
can be spread. Scientists and scientific societies have tried in
recent years to correct misrepresentations and clarify
misunderstandings, but the efforts have been too few and far between.
Those who would attack science for political gain are organized,
persistent, and well-financed. The Republican War on Science makes
clear that scientists need to do more to present their knowledge to
the rest of society, because there is no shortage of people willing to
misrepresent it.

References and Notes
1. To these activities documented by Mooney, add the harassment of
researchers by punitive demands for documentation of work already
published in peer-reviewed journals. See Donald Kennedy's Editorial,
Science 309, 1301 (26 August 2005).
2.
http://democrats.reform.house.gov/features/politics_and_science/pdfs/pdf_politic
s_and_science_rep.pdf
.
3.
www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/interference/reports-scientific-integrity-in
-policy-making.html.
4. ExxonMobil's contributions to the Marshall Institute are documented
in their annual reports. See
www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=36 or
www.environmentaldefense.org/article.cfm?contentid=3804&CFID=21084385&CFTOKEN=29
888831
.
5. R. Jastrow, God and the Astronomers (Norton, New York, 1978).
6. R. Jastrow, The Enchanted Loom: The Mind in the Universe (Simon and
Schuster, New York, 1981).
7. www.godandscience.org/love/sld014.html .  
8. S. A. Glantz, J. Slade, L. A. Bero, P. Hanauer, D. E. Barnes, Eds.,
The Cigarette Papers (Univ. California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1996).
9. D. Michaels, Sci. Am. 292, 96 (June 2005).
10. On the misrepresentation of science in legal and regulatory
settings, see also Am. J. Public Health (Suppl.) 95, S1-S150 (2005).

10.1126/science.1115765