THE REPUBLICAN WAR ON SCIENCE
When Richard Nixon established the
Council on Environmental Quality in 1969, the idea was to provide the
administration with scientific data and analyses to be used in the development
of environmental policy. The intent was not, so far as anyone can tell, to
enlist lobbyists to alter scientific reports to support a desired policy
outcome.
The council functioned, by and
large, according to its original mandate for three decades. But this past June,
the New York Times reported that Phil Cooney, the head of President
Bush's Council on Environmental Quality and a former oil lobbyist, had doctored
reports on climate change to suggest that the scientific community was
uncertain about the role we humans play in rising global temperatures. Such
doubt-mongering through the editing and suppression of information is but one
of many instances of the Bush administration's attempt to subvert science in
the service of a political agenda.
President Bush may not be the
first to abuse the scientific advisory process, but he certainly is among the
most flagrant. So argues Chris Mooney, who in The Republican War on Science
guides us through the most highly politicized scientific debates of the past 30
years, from stem cell research and creationism in schools to global warming and
regulatory reform. In so doing, he aims to help us grasp how it is that,
through the polygamous marriage of the Republican Party to religious
conservatives and industry lobbyists, "our nation gave rise to a political
movement whose leaders, to put it bluntly, often seem not to care what we in
the 'reality-based community' know about either nature or ourselves."
The rift between the reality and
ideology camps has been widening for decades, but it's fair to say that
President Ronald Reagan set the ball in motion. During his first term, Reagan
called evolution "only a theory," and his vice president, George H.
W. Bush, convened a regulatory reform task force that laid the groundwork for
some of the most disturbing abuses of science in recent history.
More than a decade later, when
Representative Newt Gingrich brought his Contract With America to the halls of
Congress, regulatory reform topped his to-do list, and the now-infamous phrase
"sound science" entered the political debate. The phrase was coined
by tobacco lobbyists who, in an attempt to indemnify themselves against
lawsuits and further regulation, wanted to make it next to impossible to prove
that secondhand smoke was a health hazard. "Sound science," Mooney
explains, has always been used "to describe an agenda that had little to
do with scientific rigor and everything to do with blocking government controls
on industry by raising the burden of scientific proof required to justify
action." Gingrich and other conservatives adopted the phrase to make it
sound like their reforms would improve the scientific process, when in fact
they were designed to paralyze federal agencies by saddling them with extra
assessments and analyses.
Although his reforms didn't pass
while Gingrich ruled the congressional roost, he set the stage for getting the
job done piecemeal. In 2001, the Data Quality Act passed -- "a science
abuser's dream come true," Mooney writes. Now, industry could challenge
not only regulations but also the methodology of scientific studies that could
be used to craft regulations in the future. In effect, the act lets industry
into the regulatory process from the get-go, discrediting any science that
threatens its bottom line and diminishing the prospects of tougher public
safeguards.
It's easy to equate this debate
over the politicization of science with some academic quibble about the next
decimal of pi. But this is a big deal. As we stretch the boundaries of science,
the information our leaders need to create effective policies becomes more
specialized; the questions they must ask are more nuanced and the answers they
receive more complex. Most politicians are not scientists, and so cannot be
expected to apply the physics of missile defense, the biology of stem cells, or
the chemistry of atmospheric greenhouse gases to real-world problems without
knowledgeable analysis and guidance.
Mooney's fluid storytelling and
readable prose make him particularly adept at threading together seemingly
disparate events into a coherent picture of an exceedingly complex phenomenon.
He understands science and how it works, as well as why it's so vulnerable to
politicization below the public radar. Tampering with science threatens not
only the credibility of the scientific endeavor, he asserts, but democracy as a
whole. Talk about a threat to national security.
-- Laura Wright
Article
url: http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/05fal/reviews3.asp