I finally received my copy of Chris Mooney’s new book, The Republican War on Science. Chris is a longtime blogger at The Intersection, now also blogging at ScienceGate. I guess you can figure out from the title what the book is about. Here’s what Neal Lane says on the back cover:
A careful reading of this well-researched and richly referenced work should remove any doubt that, at the highest levels of government, ideology is being advanced in the name of science, at great disservice to the American people.
Lane was the White House Science Advisor under Clinton, as well as former director of the National Science Foundation, so he knows what he’s talking about.
I’ll wait until I’ve actually read the book to offer any opinions. The funny thing to me was a few months ago, when I was told that I’d be receiving a complimentary media-review copy of the book. I figured it must have been some kind of mistake; I’m not the media, I’m a highly-trained expert to whom the media comes when they want deep insights into the important cosmological issues of the day. But no, apparently I am now the media (or at least part of it), thanks to this blogging thing. I feel tawdry somehow, but I suppose one gets used to it. (Some of my best friends are in the media.)
Hi Sean!
Are other science bloggers (like PZ Myers for example) considered “members of media” too? Or are you the vanguard of a new breed? (I would think that this would put people like Dennis Overbye out of a job in the long run…for better or for worse.)
By the way, you spelled “receive” wrongly in the same article, in the exact same way (i and e interchanged)….
You bawdy strumpet, you!
In my new incarnation as a media personality, I scorn conventional spelling rules. Thanks for pointing it out.
I think that other science bloggers are also media now. And I think Dennis’s job is perfectly secure.
Ha! I left out “twice” in my last sentence. Hoisted with my own petard, whee.
Actually you were “hoist by”, not “hoisted with”. The inevitable comeuppance of the spelling scold.
Could we keep our Politics out of Science, Please!
What is it that motivates people to do this? Is it the addiction to public grant money that exists in the Universities these days?
What ever happend to the good old Sciencific Method of falsifying hypothesis by empirical evidence? Why does it seem that consensus opinion has replaced it?
Hi Sean!
Hmmm. I’ve always thought that both “hoist by” and “hoist with” are accepted forms of usage for this idiom (the Merriam-Webster dictionary went with “with”). But well, comeuppance it was. My brain was telling me to stop being a snob yet I couldn’t resist such temptations. I blame Chicago.
Why should being a journalist or a member of the media be shameful? It wasn’t always this way. All the President’s Men — those guys were cool. For a time, I wanted to be a reporter.
But not now: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/columnists/orl-edpparker07080705aug07,0,3500062.column
I go on the road for ten weeks, return, and there is a whole new website, new graphics, great posts, and now a discussion of which preposition is most effectively used with respect to being blown up in some manner. cool— btw, i always prefered using “on” in that phrase as it more accurately reflects the position of myself in relation to my petard.
It is silly that we suffer from an administration that makes every effort to politicize scientific process, scrubbing facts in favor of their own opinions. Indeed, it is all the worse given this administration’s inability to think correctly about pretty much anything.
Media freebies! Welcome to club, Sean. Soon you will be buried under a pile of self-help guides, memoirs of pre-revolutionary Iran, and general relativity textbooks. Oh wait, I forgot… you never did send me a copy of your book.
I have Mooney’s book too – it looks good.
Stephen, rel #6, you could check this other post. Science is used as a modern guru, so it is not rare that politics enters game.
The French used pétard, “a loud discharge of intestinal gas,” for a kind of infernal engine for blasting through the gates of a city. “To be hoist by one’s own petard,” a now proverbial phrase apparently originating with Shakespeare’s Hamlet (around 1604) not long after the word entered English (around 1598), means “to blow oneself up with one’s own bomb, be undone by one’s own devices.” The French noun pet, “fart,” developed regularly from the Latin noun pditum, from the Indo-European root *pezd-, “fart.”
Alejandro, re#11, That referenced post makes my point!
Science has become some mysterious Oracle that a layman has no chance to understand and any questioning of it becomes an act of heresy.
To add to this debacle is to want it to continue and get worse. Is this not counter to the critisms of the Republican meedling? Any use of science to act as a political cudgel is wrong and should be condemned. At least in my humble opinion.
BTW, who is the “David” in the movie?
As this article from the New York Times shows, scientists had better understand the level of political power that’s being concentrated on attacking legitimate scientific theories:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/21/national/21evolve.html?ei=5094&en=88f0b94e7eb26357&hp=&ex=1124596800&adxnnl=1&partner=homepage&adxnnlx=1124562734-AM7Ge0FKzctl6jageEWVcg
The science community can not afford to avoid the reality that a socially conservative alliance of academicians, such as Stephen Meyer, with some familiarity with science, but no real credentials as scientists who have focused on evolutionary biology, are pushing an argument that finds some appeal with an electorate that does not understand the scientific method. The “intelligent design” folks cannot be ignored as a force because they have received some hefty political and financial backing. And, in a world where advertising affects so many people and odd, superstitious beliefs retain too much of a foothold, a well-funded campaign on behalf of “intelligent design” and other pet conservative scientific projects could score gains in the long run by allowing an advertising blitz of “public service” type spots that push this agenda and undermine pure scientific research.
Stephen. I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at, but I really don’t know what you mean by keeping politics out of science. Scientists aren’t looking to claim they have more correct ideas than others when it comes to the economy, to Iraq, to military policy in general, or any number of other political areas. We are interested, engaged, intelligent, educated individuals who will speak out and make our opinions known, but you should just see us as that, not as authorities.
However, whenever a political or social body seeks to misrepresent, outright lie about, undermine or attack science, we are most certainly going to speak out, and I think, as authorities, we should be listened to. The question of evolution is the classic example here. Politicians, religious extremists, or even just well-meaning but undereducated members of the public can yell as much as they like that they don’t believe in evolution, but that doesn’t change the fact that evolution is established science. Scientists would be remiss if we didn’t challenge this assault on knowledge. There are many other examples, particularly under this administration.
It is just wrong to expect us to ignore attempts to roll back decades of scientific advances and to replace them with ideology.
I guess David Albert, check wikipedia.
It is not new argument (see e.g. the final words of Galileo in B. Bretch play, which regretly I have not here at hand to type down) that science supports the modern state not only as providers of technology but also as providers of misticism, of ethernal Truth. This role was naturally exerted by Church(es), and the History of Church shows that politicians kept always an interest on controlling the ideas emanating from Church. Pehaps what we see now is the same phenomena, attempts to control the ideas emanating from science.
Some neuronal firing tells me that the book of Ursula K Le Guin “The Dispossessed” should have a place in this discussion, but I am unable to assign one.
Science is already involved in politics, beause Dick Cheney is actually an evil robot.
Certainly, the War on Drugs rates at least an Honorable Mention in the War on Science category. Drugs are banned and dispensed on political or financial grounds, not as a result of reasoned public policy. The results have been a disaster.
Using a sort of pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo that Lysenko might have whispered in Stalin’s ear, the Drug Warriors prestidigitize 50 billion dollars a year into full prisons and repeated scandals about prescribed drugs that kill the user.
And with the money to be made from more sophisticated testing, the whole situation bids fair to get worse before it gets better.
The bright side, of course, would be the striking improvement in the ‘bloodlines’ of marijuana plants, achieved, in most cases, without the expensive apparatus of a university laboratory.
Whether other disciplines would similarly benefit from a thriving black market remains to be seen.
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