[MLUG - DISCUSSION] 'The Republican War on Science, ' by Chris Mooney, reviewed by John Horgan

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

We should probably put the "politics" tag on replies if this turns into a 
debate.  I am sending this article mostly a list of facts about what has 
been happening in science, and in media coverage of science issues, in the 
US lately.  --Mike

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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/books/review/18horgan.html

N.Y. Times
December 18, 2005

'The Republican War on Science,' by Chris Mooney

Political Science

Review by JOHN HORGAN

Last spring, a magazine asked me to look into a whistleblower case 
involving a United States Fish and Wildlife Service biologist named Andy 
Eller. Eller, a veteran of 18 years with the service, was fired after he 
publicly charged it with failing to protect the Florida panther from 
voracious development. One of the first species listed under the 
Endangered Species Act, the panther haunts southwest Florida's forests, 
which builders are transforming into gated golf communities. After several 
weeks of interviews, I wrote an article that called the service's 
treatment of Eller "shameful" - and emblematic of the Bush 
administration's treatment of scientists who interfere with its 
probusiness agenda.

My editor complained that the piece was too "one-sided"; I needed to show 
more sympathy to Eller's superiors in the Wildlife Service and to the Bush 
administration. I knew what the editor meant: the story I had written 
could be dismissed as just another anti-Bush diatribe; it would be more 
persuasive if it appeared more balanced. On the other hand, the reality 
was one-sided, to a startling degree. An ardent conservationist, Eller had 
dreamed of working for the Wildlife Service since his youth; he collected 
first editions of environmental classics like Rachel Carson's "Silent 
Spring." The officials who fired him based their denial that the panther 
is threatened in part on data provided by a former state wildlife 
scientist who had since become a consultant for developers seeking to 
bulldoze panther habitat. The officials were clearly acting in the spirit 
of their overseer, Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton, a 
property-rights advocate who has questioned the constitutionality of 
aspects of the Endangered Species Act.

This episode makes me more sympathetic than I might otherwise have been to 
"The Republican War on Science" by the journalist Chris Mooney. As the 
title indicates, Mooney's book is a diatribe, from start to finish. The 
prose is often clunky and clichéd, and it suffers from smug, 
preaching-to-the-choir self-righteousness. But Mooney deserves a hearing 
in spite of these flaws, because he addresses a vitally important topic 
and gets it basically right.

Mooney charges George Bush and other conservative Republicans with 
"science abuse," which he defines as "any attempt to inappropriately 
undermine, alter or otherwise interfere with the scientific process, or 
scientific conclusions, for political or ideological reasons."  Science 
abuse is not an exclusively right-wing sin, Mooney acknowledges. He 
condemns Greenpeace for exaggerating the risks of genetically modified 
"Frankenfoods," animal-rights groups for dismissing the medical benefits 
of research on animals and John Kerry for overstating the potential of 
stem cells during his presidential run.

In "politicized fights involving science, it is rare to find liberals 
entirely innocent of abuses," Mooney asserts. "But they are almost never 
as guilty as the Right." By "the Right," Mooney means the powerful 
alliance of conservative Christians - who seek to influence policies on 
abortion, stem cells, sexual conduct and the teaching of evolution - and 
advocates of free enterprise who attempt to minimize regulations that cut 
into corporate profits. The champion of both groups - and the chief 
villain of Mooney's book - is President Bush, whom Mooney accuses of 
having "politicized science to an unprecedented degree."

Some might quibble with "unprecedented." When I starting covering science 
in the early 1980's, Ronald Reagan was pushing for a space-based defense 
against nuclear missiles, called Star Wars, that a chorus of scientists 
dismissed as technically unfeasible. Reagan stalled on acknowledging the 
dangers of acid rain and the buildup of ozone-destroying 
chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere. Warming the hearts of his religious 
fans, Reagan voiced doubts about the theory of evolution, and he urged C. 
Everett Koop, the surgeon general, to investigate whether abortion harms 
women physically and emotionally.  (Koop, though an ardent opponent of 
abortion, refused.) Mooney notes this history but argues that the current 
administration has imposed its will on scientific debates in a more 
systematic fashion, and he cites a slew of cases - including the Florida 
panther affair - to back up his claim.

One simple strategy involves filling federal positions on the basis of 
ideology rather than genuine expertise. Last year, the White House 
expelled the eminent cell biologist Elizabeth Blackburn, a proponent of 
embryonic stem-cell research, from the President's Council on Bioethics 
and installed a political scientist who had once declared, "Every embryo 
for research is someone's blood relative." And in 2002 the administration 
appointed the Kentucky gynecologist and obstetrician W. David Hager to the 
Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee of the Food and Drug 
Administration. Hager has advocated treating premenstrual syndrome with 
Bible readings and has denounced the birth control pill.

In addition to these widely reported incidents, Mooney divulges others of 
which I was unaware. In 2003 the World Health Organization and Food and 
Agricultural Organization (W.H.O./F.A.O.), citing concerns about rising 
levels of obesity-related disease, released a report that recommended 
limits on the intake of fat and sugar. The recommendations reflected the 
consensus of an international coalition of experts. The Sugar Association, 
the Grocery Manufacturers of America and other food industry groups 
attacked the recommendations.

William R. Steiger, an official in the Department of Health and Human 
Services, then wrote to W.H.O.'s director general to complain about the 
dietary report. Echoing the criticism of the industry groups, Steiger 
questioned the W.H.O. report's linkage of obesity and other disorders to 
foods containing high levels of sugar and fat, and he suggested that the 
report should have placed more emphasis on "personal responsibility." 
Steiger later informed the W.H.O. that henceforth only scientists approved 
by his office would be allowed to serve on the organization's committees.

In similar fashion, the Bush administration has sought to control the 
debate over climate change, biodiversity, contraception, drug abuse, air 
and water pollution, missile defense and other issues that bear on the 
welfare of humans and the rest of nature. What galls Mooney most is that 
administration officials and other conservative Republicans claim that 
they are guided by reason and respect for "sound science," whereas their 
opponents are ideologues peddling "junk science."

In the most original section of his book, Mooney credits "Big Tobacco" 
with inventing and refining this Orwellian tactic. After the surgeon 
general's office released its landmark 1964 report linking smoking to 
cancer and other diseases, the tobacco industry sought to discredit the 
report with its own experts and studies. "Doubt is our product," declared 
a 1969 Brown & Williamson memo spelling out the strategy, "since it is the 
best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the mind of 
the general public."

After the E.P.A. released a report on the dangers of secondhand smoke in 
1992, the Tobacco Institute berated the agency for preferring "political 
correctness over sound science." Within a year Philip Morris helped to 
create a group called The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (Tassc), 
which challenged the risks not only of secondhand smoke but also of 
pesticides, dioxin and other industrial chemicals. (The executive director 
of Tassc in the late 1990's was Steven Milloy, who now "debunks" global 
warming and other environmental threats in the Foxnews.com column "Junk 
Science.") Newt Gingrich and other Republicans soon started invoking 
"sound science" and "junk science" while criticizing government 
regulations.

A veteran tobacco lobbyist also played a role in the Data Quality Act, 
which Mooney calls "a science abuser's dream come true." Jim Tozzi, who 
served in the Office of Management and Budget before becoming a consultant 
for Philip Morris and other companies, helped draft the legislation and 
slip it into a massive appropriations bill signed into law in 2000, late 
in the Clinton administration. The act, which raises the standard for 
scientific evidence justifying federal regulations, is designed to induce 
what one critic calls "paralysis by analysis."  While the law does not 
exclusively serve business interests (for example, Andy Eller successfully 
used it to challenge the Fish and Wildlife Service's policies on panther 
habitat), they have been its main beneficiaries. Already it has been 
employed by loggers, herbicide makers, manufacturers of asbestos brakes 
and other companies to challenge unwelcome regulations.

Mooney, who grew up in New Orleans, seems particularly incensed when he 
addresses the issue of global warming. He notes that Bush officials have 
repeatedly ignored or altered reports by the National Academy of Sciences, 
the E.P.A. and other groups tying global warming to fossil fuel emissions. 
Mooney devotes nearly a whole chapter to denouncing Senator Daniel Inhofe 
of Oklahoma, a Republican and chairman of the Committee on Environment and 
Public Works, who once said human-induced global warming might be "the 
greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." Republicans' 
"refusal to consider mainstream scientific opinion fuels an atmosphere of 
policy gridlock that could cost our children dearly," declares Mooney, who 
finished his book before Hurricane Katrina. I can only imagine how he 
feels now. Mooney implicates the news media in this crisis. Too often, he 
says, reporters covering scientific debates give fringe views equal weight 
in a misguided attempt to achieve "balance."

To back up this claim, Mooney cites a study of coverage of global warming 
in four major newspapers, including this one, from 1988 to 2002. The study 
concluded that more than 50 percent of the stories gave "roughly equal 
attention" to both sides of the debate, even though by 1995 most 
climatologists accepted human-induced global warming as highly probable. 
Mooney notes that one prominent doubter and sometime Bush administration 
adviser on climate change, the M.I.T.  meteorologist Richard Lindzen, is a 
smoker who has also questioned the evidence linking smoking and lung 
cancer.

Mooney's critique has understandably annoyed some of his colleagues.  In a 
review in The Washington Post, the journalist Keay Davidson faults Mooney 
for not acknowledging how hard it can be to distinguish good science from 
bad. Philosophers call this the "demarcation problem." Demarcation can 
indeed be difficult, especially if all the scientists involved are trying 
in good faith to get at the truth, and Mooney does occasionally imply that 
demarcation consists simply of checking scientists' party affiliations. 
But in many of the cases that he examines, demarcation is easy, because 
one side has an a priori commitment to something other than the truth - 
God or money, to put it bluntly.

Conservative complaints about federally financed "junk science" may 
ultimately prove self-fulfilling. Government scientists - and those who 
receive federal funds - may toe the party line to avoid being punished 
like the whistleblower Andy Eller (who was rehired last June after he sued 
for wrongful termination). Increasingly, competent scientists will avoid 
public service, degrading the quality of advice to policy makers and the 
public still further. Together, these trends threaten "not just our public 
health and the environment," Mooney warns, "but the very integrity of 
American democracy, which relies heavily on scientific and technical 
expertise to function." If this assessment sounds one-sided, so is the 
reality that it describes.

John Horgan is director of the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens 
Institute of Technology. His latest book is "Rational Mysticism."


Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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