In the middle of the 2004 presidential election campaign a report released by the Union of Concerned Scientists, endorsed by thousands of respected academics, accused the Bush administration of an unprecedented pattern of distortion and censorship of important scientific evidence. In typical fashion, the administration responded only when the UCS report gained media attention, and then only to dismiss it as a partisan attack from the left.
Chris Mooney's book documents in plain and incontrovertible fashion why the UCS report was not only non-partisan truth, but significantly understated the case. The current political abuse of science is only the culmination of a consistent strategy fostered by a "hard right" alliance of corporate and religious conservatives that has gained control of the Republican party since the 1960's.
Corporate attacks on science started with tobacco industry efforts to undermine studies on the health effects of smoking and second-hand smoke. The pattern laid down by the tobacco industry has been consistently followed since: the terms "sound science" and "junk science", meaningless in any scientific sense, originated with tobacco lawsuits and have been parlayed by conservatives into codewords for science that respectively supports or threatens "conservative" ideology.
Mooney categorizes the attacks on science as falling into two main categories. The first of these is an undermining of the processes of science by suppression of information, targeting individual scientists (many of whom work for the government or rely on government grants), or rigging review and advisory committees. The second form these right-wing attacks take is through the communication process to the public after reports are released. This includes "spinning" the science through misrepresentations or distortions, magnifying uncertainty, relying on and promoting fringe scientists and "contrarians", and putting scientific clothing on "values" and ideology.
"Manufacturing uncertainty" was a key to the tobacco industry strategy that has been repeated again and again on issues from global warming to evolution. Finding a token scientist to magnify "contrarian" claims isn't hard: science's health comes from the weathering of constant attacks by those who choose to think differently. But sadly there are also too many scientists willing to distort their own research to conform to the ideologies of funding sources, and a disturbing number of government scientists working for regulatory agencies have been encouraged to alter conclusions of their reports. Mooney notes the sharp distinction in conclusions on the effects of second-hand smoke between industry-funded and independent scientists.
It is one thing to argue and make political decisions based on all the best facts available. That's what we expect our leaders to do. But the right wing attack on science is not satisifed with the facts as they are on the environemnt, biology or medicine. Rather they seek to distort those facts, imposing ideology at an earlier stage, so that decision makers and the public don't even have the truth available to them to make good decisions.
Many of the "contrarian" scientists who have been selected by the Bush administration to sit on major oversight and advisory panels have very little research background at all. Unfortunately, science's ivory tower makes it far too easy to "play scientist" for the public - there are no external credentialing mechanisms that effectively separate real experts from impostors. Tellingly, for these political hacks the arguments change with time as the facts on the ground become increasingly inconvenient to their ideology. Denial of global warming becomes denial of human causation, now morphing into assertion that global warming will be good for us. Creationism becomes "intelligent design".
The broad range of regulatory and scientific areas where the same anti-science tactics have been used forces the conclusion that this is more than separate isolated incidents. Similar issues with failed intelligence on 9-11 and Iraq's WMD, and other apparent efforts to conceal the facts on the ground by the administration imply this pattern of ideological decision making extends far beyond the areas where science is the central source of facts.
There are examples of liberal science abuse too, where individuals are tempted to spin the facts to fit their ideology. Mooney cites a few cases, but the only systematic pattern seems to be one of exaggeration of direct effects and perhaps denial of uncertainty. Of the examples in question, almost all show liberal statements to be much closer to the scientific facts than the right-wing spin on the same issues. Even so, neither side should try to twist science to their benefit, and to his credit Mooney does criticize both.
The book has a few flaws: there are occasional jarring repetitions of previous arguments that suggest chapters were rewritten several times in mid-stream, without reconsidering the book as a whole. Mooney also seems reluctant to state as baldly as possible what's going on here: some people are lying about the facts, and as a result, other people are dying needlessly. Isn't there legal recourse for such fraud, as happened in the case of tobacco?
Mooney makes a number of sensible suggestions beyond legal action: reinstate the congressional Office of Technology Assessment, pass legislation to bar political litmus tests for committees, roll back the "sound science" regulatory reform that has done so much harm. More skepticism and understanding of the processes of science from journalists would be a big help, as would some reforms in the science community itself. But as he also points out, significant change will be impossible in our democracy as long as the current ideologues hold all the strings of power. Getting the information out somehow and persuading the public to vote for moderates instead of ideologues is the most important thing we can do - will it be enough?
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