Science current events, science news articles, research and discoveries.
Top science news articles and science current events stories from the past week.
Science Current Events Resources
Science Current Events and Science News RSS Feeds
Earth, Life and Space Science News and Current Events RSS Feeds.
|
 |
 |
 |
| View Larger Image | The Republican War on Science
by Chris Mooney
| | List Price: | $24.95 |  | | 6 New starting at: | $5.28 | | 10 Used starting at: | $3.40 | | | | | Sales Rank: | 700893 | | Studio: | Basic Books | | | Binding: | Hardcover | | Number Of Pages: | 342 | | Publication Date: | September 09, 2005 | | Publisher: | Basic Books |
| |
FORMATS |
|
EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Science has never been more crucial to deciding the political issues facing the country. Yet science and scientists have less influence with the federal government than at any time since the Eisenhower administration. In the White House and Congress today, findings are reported in a politicized manner; spun or distorted to fit the speaker's agenda; or, when they're too inconvenient, ignored entirely. On a broad array of issues-stem cell research, climate change, missile defense, abstinence education, product safety, environmental regulation, and many others-the Bush administration's positions fly in the face of overwhelming scientific consensus. Federal science agencies, once fiercely independent under both Republican and Democratic presidents, are increasingly staffed by political appointees and fringe theorists who know industry lobbyists and evangelical activists far better than they know the science. This is not unique to the Bush administration, but it is largely a Republican phenomenon, born of a conservative dislike of environmental, health, and safety regulation, and at the extremes, of evolution and legalized abortion. In The Republican War on Science, Chris Mooney ties together the disparate strands of the attack on science into a compelling and frightening account of our government's increasing unwillingness to distinguish between legitimate research and ideologically driven pseudoscience. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 70 reviews)
|
Sobering 
This book may ignite a rage to storm the very gates of heaven. (Except that if you like it you probably don't believe in heaven, being a pinko liberal.) I exaggerate, perhaps, but there is sufficient material to disturb anyone who cares about America and the broader English-speaking world's position as leading scientific societies. Mooney documents an outrageous and systematic campaign to discredit, in effect, science itself wherever it delivers politically or religiously inconvenient findings. For anyone who cares about science's place in society this is required reading. Mooney's findings have been amply echoed elsewhere in popular and professional journals in recent years, so the phenomenon can reasonably be said to be real, but the sheer unshamefacedness of the campaign requires this popularising approach to really bring across.
The phenomenon is not entirely new, of course, and Mooney documents some of the history. However, the intensity and scope of persecution of science is rather unprecedented. Mooney documents the creationist campaign, which is nothing new except in the degree of political support accorded, together with further religiously-motivated interference in stem-cell research and contraception/prophylaxis in respect of AIDS. Further, there are chapters on environmental science documenting interference in assessments of the impact of fishing, logging, mining and especially of the impact and reality of anthropogenic warming. The origins and use of politically-loaded terms such as "junk science" merit careful attention.
June 11, 2008 | |
Must Read!
This is absolutely essential reading for any citizen. It is tragic what is being done to science and civilization by rightwing, narrowminded extremists. The war on science, and culture, and reason, and education, etc., is mindboggling. These people are in an incessant race towards a new Dark Ages. This book is a harsh indictment of their anti-intellectualism and their detrimental policies.
April 24, 2008 | |
Our Scientific Dark Age 
In 1995, Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich fired the first political salvo in the war on science by abolishing the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA). This was an impartial scientific committee that provided scientific consensus on issues brought to them from the political arena. Many of their findings conflicted with the interests of tobacco, energy, pharmaceutical, anti-environmnental, coal and oil lobbies, lobbies that contributed heavily to republican campaigns. With the dissolution of this organization, our lawmakers began to politicize science. The Gingrich campaign reached a new level of low by demanding "sound science" in making public policy. This was doublespeak for allowing every maverick scientist who was friendly to polluting industries or on their payroll, to dispute respected scientific consensus. Now, real science was denigrated as "being PC."
James Inhofe, republican senator from Oklahoma and anti-environmentalist carried on the tradition of the Gingrich revolution and the war on science. His formula is to 1) emphasize a commitment to "sound science;" 2) seize the remaining window of opportunity to challenge and dispute the scientific consensus; and 3) find experts "sympathetic to your view and make them "part of your message." This three-step approach is designed to convince the ignorant that he is for sound science when he is only interested in preventing scientific inquiry or conclusions interfering with his biggest campaign contributors--oil, gas and electric companies.
Through these pretensions of sound science, verbal legerdemain, and the passage of the Data Quality Act, the republican-led Congress has essentially been able to mire any environmental, climate or pollution control or public health bill in years of research and legal wrangling to prevent laws that will stymie the needs of their biggest contributors.
The White House has also made its contribution in many ways to misinform and mislead the public. This occurred early in 2001 when Bush lied about the number of viable stem cells for research. Official reports on global warming, for instance, have been redacted, changes ordered to make decisive conclusions equivocal ones, and even have environmental studies on the impact of carbon emissions written by a former oil executive. The White House also barred scientists from the Department of Health and Human Services from consulting with the World Health Organization without prior political approval.
The White House had been drifting in this direction for years with Ronald Reagan insisting on Star Wars even though shooting down missiles in space with other missiles was as likely as a man in Boston shooting the cigarette out of the mouth of a man in New York. Bush Sr. continued his "evolution" to the right with a pro-life stance, and his belief in a thousand points of light.
Under a republican banner, the Christian right having lost two landmark cases where they failed to keep evolution out of the classroom, and failed to get creationism in the classroom, created a marketing miracle with restyling the latter in a new package of intelligent design. Attempting to influence a scientifically ignorant public with fallacious claims of unexplained missing links, and evolution's lack of certainty, they have made inroads with the more intellectually gullible and naïve. To bolster their cause, they have enlisted a few "contrarian" scientists who have carried their guidon, but have failed to publish their stance in any peer-reviewed journal.
The Christian right has also promoted very flawed studies that supposedly revealed that adult stem cells are as viable as embryonic ones for research, that abortion was linked to breast cancer and psychosis, that condom use was ineffective against sexually-transmitted disease, and that abstinence-centered programs were the most successful sex education programs. They have even gone so far as to lobby against over-the-counter sale of the "day after" pill even though the drug works by blocking ovulation rather than interfering with implantation.
The author's counter-offensive on the republican war on science is devastating. His writing is lucid and well organized. He interviewed scores of people in preparation for writing this book. His facts are verifiable, and he has answers to every obfuscating argument the republicans, the White House, and the Christian Right can hurl. He is able to make dry topics interesting, and this book is a cornerstone for those looking for scientific answers to misleading "science."
Mooney concludes that science must be elevated to what it once was. OTA or an organization just like it should be reinstituted and reinvigorated. The presidential science advisor, relegated to insignificance, as a toady for the Bush administration, should be also elevated to its former level of prestige. A press should be more concerned with getting a scientific story right than worrying if they are giving equal time or space to those who would advocate the world is flat. An enlightened public should send the science imposters and their legislators packing back to private life.
This is rousing and informative. It tells us how to avoid an American Scientific Dark Age.
October 25, 2007 | |
Necessary read for scientists and concerned citizens...
I found this book quite dense with information and reports (even with updates in the second, paperback edition) from the embattled grounds of science policy and decision-making in the United States... It's very well written and in particular I'd say the author has done an excellent job to also line up all his references and sources, both on paper and in person, which is fundamental in a sweeping work of social journalism like this. It reads fluently, but due to the amount of ideas and specific cases reported it takes quite some attention...
What I liked most is that, from the countless specific examples of science abuse and trampling by the present political leadership in America, Mooney is able to let a broader picture emerge.. He doesn't spare any details about his trees, but leaves a wide clearing open to never lose sight of the forest. And the forest is a worrying one to say the least!
The Republican party ruling the country right now has dangerously mingled with political conservatives on one hand and religious moralists/fundamentalists on the other over the last decades. In trying to push forward their economic and moralistic agendas, these people have adopted a seriously undemocratic, immoral, and I'd say in general just plain reckless stance to ignore scientific advisory panels and experts who might help to formulate informed policies about several issues, from environmental management to public health to education... If you want a good example of the blinding ideologies they follow in their crusades, nothing better than giving a look at the idiotic rant (should I call it a review?) by one FC Robertson below. Stands as large as a monument to tell the whole story!
It's dangerous for the future of a country that its government willfully choose to ignore technical and factual data on many important issues and simply persevere in its partisan policies. And it's important that the public be informed in an exhaustive way of what has been going on for many years now... Mooney failed to observe, in his last and brilliant chapter on possible countermeasures, that public education not only in science, but more generally in basic thinking, is just as important as winning political wars to stop this trend. The media flood us daily with the latest inanities about Britney Spears, but they're easily duped into misreporting actual scientific controversies! They often fail big time in informing citizens correctly... And citizens don't have the slightest chance to recognize information biases or just plain absurdities, since they don't even know where to start to think independently. An ignorant public opinion (when there's any opinion at all!) in the hands of dishonest politicians means that a society cannot be called democratic. And how this is happening in the US today, but most likely not just there (we have our own European examples!), is masterfully explained in this little, important book.
September 15, 2007 | |
An extremely well-done book ...
This is an amazing work that documents a decades-long effort to undercut a facts-based, reality-based, science respecting approach to public policy decisions.
What is sad is that, at the end of the day, despite the title, I would find it hard to believe that the majority of Republicans truly endorse the implications of this war ...
Mooney's excellent work truly opened my eyes ... sadly, the title will probably keep too many from even opening its cover.
September 06, 2007 | |
SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
| |
|
|
|
|
