There have been quite a few accusations against the Bush Administration for politically motivated abuse of science. Many of these accusations have merit, but not all. Some charges have been exaggerated. One recent example is PEER's charge that the National Park Service was altering its account of the Grand Canyon's origins to accomodate creationists. Many attacks have also been quite partisan, stressing the failings of the Bush Administration without comparing its abuses to those of other administations, and there has been relatively little consideration of the broader institutional context in which political science abuse occurs. Such examination would not excuse the Bush Administation for its missteps and abuses, but it would faciliate serious discussion of how to reduce science politicization.
The canonical text for those who assail the Bush Administration's abuse of science is The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney. Mooney maintains that the political right is primarily responsible for political science abuse, and lays most of the blame at the feet of corporate lobbyists and religious conservatives. While acknowledging, in passing, that environmental activists and Democratic administrations have engaged in political science abuse of their own, he trains his sights on the Right.
Mooney's book was recently released in an expanded and updated paperback edition. I wrote a review of this edition for Regulation, that is now posted on SSRN. The abstract follows:
Chris Mooney's "Republican War on Science" argues that the political right, and in particular the Bush Administration, are guilty of rampant "political science abuse," defined as "any attempt to inappropriately undermine, alter, or otherwise interfere with the scientific process, or scientific conclusions, for political or ideological reasons." Mooney correctly identifies many example of such abuse by conservative organizations and Republican politicians, but some of his charges are overwrought, if not misleading. Overall the book has three central flaws. First, Mooney has a penchant for characterizing some legitimate science-related policy positions with which he disagrees as "abuses" of science. Second, he exhibits a blind spot to the misuse and politicization of science by those who espouse political agendas with which he agrees. Third and most important, Mooney pays little attention to the larger institutional context that generates political pressures on science. The politicization of science is a real problem, yet lacking any serious consideration of the broader institutional context in which such politicization occurs, Republican War ultimately fails in its diagnosis and prescriptions.The Bush Administration deserves criticism for politicizing and abusing science in many instances. Yet science abuse is not a partisan phenomenon. There is plenty of blame to go around. Even if the Bush Administration's abuses are quantitatively or qualitatively worse than its predecessors — and I am unconvinced on this score — the solution to the problem of political science abuse lies in institutional reform, rather than partisan politics.
UPDATE: One of the best examples of the politicization of science by the "left" — and one of the few that Mooney acknowledges — is the treatment of agricultural biotechnology, and the decision to subject such products to more stringent regulatory review than those developed with other methods. This policy has no scientific basis, as the National Academy of Sciences has stated many times.
Another example would be claims by environmentalist groups that pesticide residues on foods pose a significant cancer risk, a claim which the NAS has also rejected. A third would be seeking endangered species listings for the purpose of halting development. A fourth would be efforts to claim asthma incidence (as opposed to asthma attacks) are related to outdoor air pollution, when there is no data to support such a claim. A fifth would be the EPA's second-hand smoke study, which a federal court found was driven to reach a predetermined result. A sixth would be claims that the "precautionary principle" is a "science-based" approach to risk, when it acutally reflects a normative policy judgment about how to weigh and evaluate risks. A seventh would be the compounded conservatisms that are embedded into many agency risk assessments, such as those conducted for the federal Superfund program. An eighth would be molding "ecosystem management" to satisfy non-scientific normative preferences about how land should be managed. And so on.
Some of these occurred within the Clinton Administration, others were the result of interest group action and occurred at other times. Overall, however, one can only claim the Clinton Administration never abused science for political reasons if one wasn't paying attention. Examples beyond those mentioned above are easy to come by. Here are two from Ronald Bailey:
In 1993, Princeton University physicist William Happer was fired from the Department of Energy because he disagreed with Vice President Al Gore's views on stratospheric ozone depletion. In 1994, President Bill Clinton rejected the finding from the Embryo Research Panel of the National Institutes of Health which declared that the intentional creation of human embryos for genetic research was ethical. Clinton simply banned any federal funding for such research.Others include the witholding of agency analyses so as to prevent their publication at poltiically inconvenient times and the gross misrepresentation of scientific findings by agency officials in speeches and media appearances.
If we are allowed to consider the plaintiffs' bar as a "left" interest — as corporate groups are considered to be on the "right" — then there are many more examples relating to all sorts of "junk science" tort claims, some of which my co-blogger David Bernstein has documented. Then there is the politicization and denigration of science that occurs within academia, such as Paul Gross and Norman Levitt documented in their book Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science.
It is certainly possible that the Bush Administration is worse than prior Democratic Administrations, but I don't think Mooney makes his case because he doesn't seriously examine the most serious charges against prior administrations, nor does he consider the broader institutional context. This does not excuse the Bush Adminsitration at all, but it is relevant if one seriously seeks to address the underlying problem.
If the Bush Administration is worse than prior administrations, there are potential, non-partisan explanations. For instance, I suspect it makes a difference whether Congress is controlled by the opposing party. When it isn't, an administration may act more irresponsibly. Yet if this is the case, it is not because Republicans are in power, but because there is insufficient legislative oversight, and there is no reason to believe that unified Democratic government would behave any better.
Another possible argument is that politically motivated science abuse by the Right should be a greater concern because the Republican Party has substantial political power, whereas leftist luddite academics can do little more than contaminate the minds of their most gullible students. This argument is plausible, but it is not the claim Mooney makes in his book (though I have heard him make it in a speech). Mooney's argument is not just that the GOP attacks science (it does), and that this is bad (it is), but also that Democrats and the Left are much better. This is where his argument has the greatest problems. Among other things, I find the argument unconvincing because left-leaning science abuse is quite rampant in certain policy areas, such as environmental protection.
[NOTE: I hit publish before I was finished this update, so if it appears to have changed, it did. I added more examples and fixed some typos.]
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I don't think I am in the minority when I say yes science and politics have always interacted and science is always on the bottom, but under Bush it is much worse.
Its akin to corruption these last 6 or so years there has always been corruption with politics, but it has gotten worse under Bush (maybe historically not the worst ever, but the worst I've known in my short life)
Just an example of the attacks on science (I haven't read the book and tend to stay away from political books that as someone put seem like long editorials drawn out to booklength)
George C Deutsch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Deutsch
"George Carlton Deutsch III was a press officer of the United States space agency NASA. He was appointed to the position by George W. Bush, having previously worked in the Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign "war room." [1]
Deutsch gained notoriety in February 2006, when it was reported he ordered the adjustment of NASA websites mentioning Big Bang include the word "theory" afterwards. His comments in the internal NASA email quoted by the New York Times raised concerns because of its religious overtones. Deutsch wrote,
It is not NASA’s place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator... This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most.
He was also connected with Dr. James Hansen's allegations of censorship of science reporting within NASA. [2]
On February 6, 2006, Rhodes Scholar and Texas A&M alumnus Nick Anthis published on his weblog The Scientific Activist news that Deutsch had lied on his résumé about earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from Texas A&M University in 2003. [3] Deutsch did attend A&M, but left school in 2004 to work for George W. Bush's reelection campaign. Following this revelation, on February 7, 2006, Deutsch resigned from his post at NASA. [4]"
The NYT piece on the censorship of James Hanson
You've piqued my curiosity, what sort of abuses of science have been made by the left and environmental groups?
Shouldn't you be asking to compare examples Clinton's attack on science (which I think is not all that easy to come by, he might have left a sex study in his draw, or was that just a West Wing episode, maybe some drug thing, though those are par for course in politics and my contention is Bush has gone far beyond par) or at least a democratic party controlled congress?
If you want more, look at the reaction to Larry Summers' completely reasonable statement about a POSSIBLE biological component to differences between men and women.
He did institute the national no-call list. When he is searching for his legacy (hopefully from a jail cell), he can proudly point to that.
As a liberal and someone with a significant interest in this area (see my mildly related LR article with Timothy Sandefur), it pains me to say that there are plenty. For a really egregious example in terms of sheer vapidity, see Deepak Chopra's anti-evolutionary ramblings on the Huffington Post. For a really egregious example in terms of real humans injured by stupidity, see the thimerosol vaccination scare. A good source is Seed magazine's collection of science bloggers; they tend to be very up-front about calling out liberal abuses of science, although they're predominantly liberal themselves.
There is, of course, a question about whether liberal administrations have politicized science to the same degree. Mooney argues, and I think pretty convincingly, that they haven't. He's upfront and honest that bad science is a bipartisan thing, and his book does explain why he singles out the GOP. If you're interested, I'm sure he's written more about it on his blog.
More broadly conceived, the Left tends to politicize philosophy, the humanities and the sometimes labeled "soft sciences," moreso than hard sciences. I'm a dabbler and no philosopher, but Marxism in sundry manifestations and "continental philosophy" more broadly can often enough be considered, variously, a truncation, a short circuiting, a circumlocution, etc. of a more thoroughgoing, a more rigorous and more disciplined philosophical discourse.
Among the more renowned instances Pol Pot spent time on the Left Bank during one of its more ideologically intractable period. Uncle Ho, if rather less formally, before him. But those are simply a couple of prominent indexes, a pair who moved on to "greater" things.
Analogous to the silencing of James Hanson would be the silencing of Exxon/Mobil recently.
Well, if by race you mean broad groupings like "black", "white", "Asian", "pacific islander", "American Indian", then yes, it is a social construct. A "black" man from the horn of Africa is probably as genetically different from white man from Norway as he is from another "black" man from southern Africa. American Indians for the most part are incredibly homogeneous (although new evidence is beginning to show that there may have been more than one migration into the Americas and that there are small groups of Indians that are of different genetic groups from the majority group), but are about as genetically removed from Aleuts and other groups of peoples of the far north (but not all) as white Europeans are from the Arabs. So are isolated groups in Europe (the Catalans, the Laps, the Roma) that are considered "white" but actually come from a genetic stock that predates that of most Europeans.
Focus people, we are asking for examples of Democratic controlled governments bending science to justify its policies or appeal to its base (like Bushs' cynical rejection of Federally funded embryonic stem cell research to throw a bone to his conservative Christian pro-life base ). Not theories that were thrown out for political purposes. btw nuclear winter was a perfectly valid theory and Larry Summers' comment was boneheaded stupid.
I have no interest in disputing that people and groups in the "broadly conceived" left-wing have abused science in all kinds of ways. There really is plenty of blame to go around there, though I'd disagree with your particular examples. I was referring specifically to Adler's claim that the Bush administration is no worse than previous administrations on this issue.
Nuclear Winter has never and will never be a perfectly valid theory. It's just a badly formed theory, and it doesn't help that all empirical evidence shows otherwise.
That's why in the late eighties it was renamed "Nuclear Autumn" and then faded into obscurity.
Does stirring up irrational fears about genetically modified crops count?
I believe there's a Volokh post around here calling your name. When you say "There is plenty of blame to go around" your rebuttal could benefit from at least one concrete example. Otherwise, you stand on the shoulders of the weak "some people say" argument, which Eugene has rightfully denigrated in the past. I expected to find at least one of these in your SSRN paper, but found nothing (maybe I need more coffee).
I'm having a hard time seeing why it's a flaw that Mooney's book doesn't deal with misuses of science by Democrats. After all, the book deliberately is only about Republican misuses of science. Yes, there is plenty of blame to go around, but this book's whole focus was only part of the blame. I don't see how you can fault an author for not considering topics that were beyond the scope of a book in the first place.
But beyond deflections, if the Left in general were to be addressed then begin with Lysenkoism and proceed from there. It's not exactly a difficult undertaking as others have already noted.
Or, if domestic administrations are to be kept front and center, Larry Summers did come out of the Clinton administration. But further still and more critically, when the broader zeitgeist within academe already willingly conforms to expectations, there's rather less of a need to more formally seek political leverage points in the first place. Thus, as already noted, the Larry Summers example.
This is waaaaay overstated. The science behind the original TTAPS study was quite legitimate. It's ultimate accuracy, like that of all science, is open for discussion.
The past:
Nuclear Winter- A hypothesis regarding a nuclear exchange backed by science (originally, I believe, piqued by interest from observations about Krakatoa). The science has changed over time, as have the pronouncements. *This is how science works.* Currently, the belief (2006 study) is that there would be catastrophic cooling from an exchange of 100 Hiroshima-size weapons (in, say, the subcontinent) that would cause catastrophic cooling. Is this a nuclear winter, or a nuclear autumn?
The current administration:
NASA can't use the word 'big bang'.
The difference? Good faith.
That's fine, keep it narrowly tailored to domestic admins (though I can't help but wonder how you'd disagree with the examples given). Too, it's hardly OT to note related "confluences," impairments, truncations, etc. of the academic/ideology nexus and divide. E.g., in the originating post itself the statement that "Mooney maintains that the political right is primarily responsible for political science abuse ..."
In fact, Sagan (the "S" in TTAPS) tried to later apply this theory to the Kuwaiti Oil Fires after Gulf War I and missed the mark entirely. He letter admitted that this prediction was one of his biggest failures.
Chris Mooney's new book The Republican War on the Balanced Budget correctly identifies some budgetary deficit issues that may have happened while the Republicans were in gevernment, but most of his charges are overwrought, if not misleading. Overall the book has three central flaws. First, Mooney has a penchant for characterizing some legitimate fiscally-based policy positions with which he disagrees as "abuses" of fiscal probity. Second, he exhibits a blind spot to the misuse and politicization of the deficit by those who espouse political agendas with which he agrees. Third and most important, Mooney pays little attention to the larger institutional context that generates political pressures on the Federal deficit. The politicization of the biddgetary process is a real problem, yet lacking any serious consideration of the broader institutional context in which such politicization occurs, Republican War ultimately fails in its diagnosis and prescriptions. The Bush Administration deserves criticism for politicizing and running up the budget deficit in many instances. Yet balanced-budget abuse is not a partisan phenomenon. There is plenty of blame to go around. Even if the Bush Administration's abuses are quantitatively or qualitatively worse than its predecessors -- and I am unconvninced on this score -- the solution to the problem of running up the deficit lies in institutional reform, rather than partisan politics.
Lysenkoism is a bad example - if we're including Stalinism in this example, then we'd have to trawl through the far-right's historical scientific abuses. No one here is including Mengele in "The Republican War on Science." If you have to go that far afield to contribute to the discussion, then you don't have much relevant to say. (Besides, you might pause to consider who Lysenko's heirs are.) Summers is similarly a bad example. He was a Clinton official, but that was long before he famously misrepresented science. And when he was an official, he wasn't responsible for science, as are most of Mooney's examples.
wm13, I agree - some of those are pretty good examples of Democratic administrations letting us down. I think nuclear power is a great example. I don't think it's equivalent--Clinton never appointed a nuclear regulator who believed that prayer is the answer to radioactive waste--but the administrations most focused on clean energy have passed up significant chances to advance nuclear generation.
llamasex: you said: ...but were there scientists saying it was wrong back then that the Democratic congress, Democratic president, or people those groups appointed telling them they weren't allowed to say Nuclear Winter was bogus? I don't know about Nuclear Winter but there are quite a few current Democrats in congress trying to shut-up anti-AGW research. Some of the research *gasp* is even performed by real scientists.
http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/sgr/sgr_2006/index.htm
The anti-scientific bias exists entirely among those who claim that no such risks exist. They're out there with the Alar people.
Oh yeah, let's not forget the alar scare.
Oh yeah, let's not forget the alar scare.
Too, elbowing and sniffing your way in, to declaim about substance and what constitutes the parameters of the discussion is over-ripe.
And I'll raise you an Ann Gorsuch. 'Nuff said.
I could see something having to do with endangered species counting as valid here (doubly so if ANWAR is involved), but I would put that in the par for the course arena, both sides are playing with the facts there and that is normal politics (the argument is the Bush administration has reached new heights in hitting new lows)
Asthma I haven't heard anything about. So I just don't know
Second hand smoke an assured derail. People say "hurr yeh right smokers didn't know breathing in smoke was bad for them. Idiots trying to sue to make money" then turn around and say breathing in Second hand smoke isn't bad for you. Give ME a break here :).
I don't actually understand #6. :/
with #7 I don't know what compounded conservatisms are involved in superfund estimates.
If true the Gore example seems valid and meets the criteria for Dems warping science.
but "In 1994, President Bill Clinton rejected the finding from the Embryo Research Panel of the National Institutes of Health which declared that the intentional creation of human embryos for genetic research was ethical. Clinton simply banned any federal funding for such research." You seems to be talking about what is ethical here, how anyone can scientifically determine that seems a bit of a stretch
IPCC procedures say
"So the purpose of the three-month delay between the publication of the Summary for Policy-Makers and the release of the actual WG1 is to enable them to make any “necessary” adjustments to the technical report to match the policy summary."
I'm not sure secondhand smoke is a good example, but Kip Viscusi just published an article stating that EPA's extrapolation of considerable risk from secondhand smoke was an extrapolation from eleven studies, ten of which found no statistical significance. That would be a pretty weak use of science if true.
You mean all those lies like the Dalkon Shield makes women infertile, that asbestos causes mesothelioma, that l-tryptophan "nutritional supplements" cause injury, and that tobacco is in any way harmful to smokers?
This is reasonable, even if I disagree in part.
This is also reasonable.
But what did all the studies that "found no statistical significance" find? This is important. If ten studies find "statistical significance" - an arbitrary measure - at the 25% percent level, say, then it is extremely likely that there is an effect.
I think the difference here lies with what kind of "abuse of science" is politically advantageous to the party. For Republican's who are trying to propose a completely different alternative based on religious faith, silencing critics is the most effective form of abuse. To the Democrat's who are trying to increase the power and scope of government, blowing the facts out of proportion, launching a full-blown marketing campaign, and whipping up a scare is the abuse of choice.
Which one is worse? I'd agree that putting science in the hands of the religious right is probably better than putting it in the hands of socialists, but I'm not sure I like either.
There's a thin reed.
"Bush is terrible and the Republicans in Congress have let him get away with it. But it's non-partisan because, maybe, just maybe, a Democratic Administration with a Democratic Congress woud be just as bad. "
OK, Jonathan. Whatever.
Cheese. Larry Summers went from chief economist for the World Bank to Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Dept., and then replaced Robert Rubin, as U.S. Treasury Secretary. It is hard to read historical criticism from someone who cannot recall recent history. If the point is instead, the Clinton did not interfere with economic decisions under summers, perhaps the example is merely that the Left will eat ists own happily to make any point at all.
Race is an interesting issue. The left, as exmplified above, is intent that race be merely a social construct. THis is an especially intersting assertion in the same week that the NAACP has come out strongly for heart medicine that works quite well for Blacks but not so well for Whites. In race blind studies, that is, it only works for a small percentage of the populace. The left, ever vigilant on this issue, has pressured the FDA to block aproval of this drug with its recommendation differentuial treatemtn for different groups...Strangely enough biochemistry and skin color are related.
Leaping to the other side of the fence, leftist environmentalists are always able to recognize that some small population in a single creek with any recognizable difference from any other population, even one it interbreeds with freely, is an endangered species. By this standard, Scots are a different species because of their tendency to red hair.
That is to say, I don't see a single chunk of the left wing adamantly denying the Theory of Gravity in favor of the Theory of Thoreau (May his inconclusive ramblings keep us grounded forever, Amen). Perhaps one might argue that there is a systemic misapplication of statistical research on the effects of gun ownership, but I haven't come across a focused anti-science position that compares to the Evolution nonsense.
So, when asking my original question, I was wondering if I had missed something.
I found this: One distinction between Republican and Democratic abuses of science is that Republicans sometimes seem to be promoting an alternate "theory" to science itself, namely fundamentalist Christianity, while the Democrats have simply claim something was scientifically valid when it was in fact highly questionable. to be a rather enlightening quote. Thank you sir.
Adler's points simply show that political manipulation of science is not unheard of - but no one is making that argument. What Mooney is saying is that this administration has consistently and determinedly orchestrated the use of dubious science to support predetermined political positions. That, I think, is less precedented than Adler would like to believe.
False. How can race be a social construct when we can determine a person’s race with high reliability from his ancestry informative markers (AIMs)? I can take a tissue swab from anyone and send it to DNAPrint Genomics and they will tell me his continent of origin, or in the case of admixtures, the proportions of ancestry due to different races. BTW the markers used do not correspond to morphology. See A DNA Test to Determine Racial Mix, by Nicholas Wade, NYT Oct. 10, 2002.
The work of population geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza also shows that humans can be classified into five major groups of continental origin corresponding to the 5 races. His work, for the most part, predates modern DNA analysis. He gets his continental maps by doing principal component analysis of genetic distance, and the map on the cover of his book, The History and Geography of Human Genes comes from the first two principal components. Other people have used different distance measures and come up with the same results.
‘A "black" man from the horn of Africa is probably as genetically different from white man from Norway as he is from another "black" man from southern Africa.’
Absolutely false. For example the Duffy null allele (FY*0) has a frequency of almost 100% in sub-Saharan Africans, but hardly occurs at all in other races. See also Risch Categorization of humans in biomedical research: genes, race and disease.
BTW Cavalli-Sforza in an effort to protect his career and his funding has inserted some boilerplate into his books saying "The classification into races has proved to be a futile exercise"; and that "The idea of race in the human species serves no purpose." No one familiar with his work and possessing an ounce of sense is fooled by this subterfuge. He has spent his whole career identifying races and the very cover of his books stands as a contradiction to the absurd notion that he thinks race is a mere social construct.
As Surgeon General she was in a substantial position to influence giovernment policy, and made some of the scientifically nuttiest suggestions ever to issue from that pulpit. If memory serves, she was only, and finally, canned after suggesting that masturbation be taught (the mind boggles at the thought of how) as a form of safe sex.
You rapidly switch here from "race" to continent of origin. I never said that there weren't genetic markers that would identify an individuals continent of origin, just that a term like "black" was meaningless from a genetic perspective. "Black" Africans are the most genetically diverse peoples on the face of the earth. To lump them into one race is a pointless exercise.
Justin's ad hominem on Viscusi is just an example of the liberal attack on science, I would suppose. Instead of examining his objective and readily falsifiable or verifiable claims for their truth, he dismissed them because of the source. Which is the opposite of what science means.
But so what? Unless you've been living under a rock for the past couple decades you know that lots of wannabe revolutionaries are attracted to the left (the trappings of the 60s draw them) and they do stupid things. Just the same way you know lots of crazy, male chauvinist, racists and religious fanatics like to support the GOP. Bringing up what some Berkeley wackos do in response to a criticism of Bush's attitude to science makes about as much sense as responding to the Monica Lewinsky scandal by finding some republican voting trailer trash who buggered his sister.
Sure I can understand posting/commenting on some of what the crazy leftists do just because it's amusing or because it epitomizes the sort of stupidity you detest. I do the same thing myself but it's nothing more than venting whether I criticize idiotic born against Christians or crazy senior citizens in trees. However, the constant refrain on VC about the sins of the left makes it clear that this is much more than poking fun at the extremists on the other side. Sure their are idiots on the left, and a fair number of them make a lot of noise but this spectre of THE LEFT as some monolithic conspiracy of idiocy makes as much sense as the view in Berkeley of the right as some conspiracy of evil businessmen and repressive fundamentalists who are engaged in some bond villain style plot to control world oil and use their power to oppress women and minorities.
It seems to me a fair number of people on the VC are justifying their conservative positions to themselves by contrasting conservatives with some unrealistic idea of a massive leftist conspiracy of idiocy. I guess I can understand the temptation if it is an emotional reaction to the horrible behavior (by republican or democrat standards) of the Bush admin but I'm afraid it is more dangerous. It almost seems like the *real* argument here is 'the other guys really suck so we have to be right'.
Look left and right are just ways to divide up the world. We could do it into authoritarian and libertarian, religious and secular, luddite or technologist, puritanical or hedonistic or a hundred other ways. The fact that some people who fall onto the left side of one distinction have some stupid ideas about science has as much bearing on the danger of the Bush admin as the fact that some of the people condemning Clinton for Lewinsky had the ridiculous notion that all oral sex was bad had on the morality of Clinton's actions.
The net effect of these contentless accusations is just to create emotional furor and support while obstructing the real issues. It is a great ploy to use if you are a political candidate or operative but has no place in a reasoned debate. Worse if you buy into these emotional ploys you screw yourself over. Your political power comes from your willingness to switch to voting for the other guy if you don't like what your guy does, the more you work yourself up about how bad the other side is the more power you give away.
The fact that you can pick out some vague other side who is worse is NEVER a good argument and ALWAYS an obstruction to a worthwhile discussion. When it gets down to deciding which of several people to vote for go ahead and compare those people but there is absolutely no purpose served in arguing about which of two vaguely defined groups is 'better'.
In other words, you picked precisely the wrong post for your rant.
And this stuff has had real world consequences! For example, No Nukes led to increased dependency on oil and coal. DDT hysteria has caused untold millions of deaths from malaria. "Franken-foods" hysteria has delayed the release of food crop strains that could alleviate malnutrition for millions.
Then, of course, there is AIDS. Anyone remember "heterosexual AIDS"? The politicization of AIDS grossly distorted the flow of research dollars into various disorders. Throughout most of the 80's and 90's vast sums of money were lavished on AIDS research at the expense of much, much more common diseases. Same with breast cancer-- do you realize that roughly 10x the dollars are spent on breast cancer per case than prostate cancer? Despite the fact that deaths from prostate cancer and breast cancer are roughly the same? Ask Bill Bixby or Frank Zappa how they feel about that.
Then there is the beautiful example of breast implants. Dow Corning went bankrupt, people lost their pensions, their lives works over that little fiasco. All for what?? Completely politicized junk science that was 100% wrong. Why isn't that seen as an Enron style scandal? Trial lawyers made tens (hundreds?) of millions of dollars peddling that nonsense, and put thousands of people out of work. Did anyone in the media care?
And speaking of trial lawyers, wow... don't get me started. Do you have all night to read this post?
My point is this-- the political left and the Democratic Party has politicized plenty of scientific issues, and that had very real, and some very harsh consequences for many people. If you want to hyperventilate about the verbiage found in the Grand Canyon pamphlets go ahead. I just remind you that there are people dying from mosquito-borne diseases right now that don't have to.
I think the emphasis on particular examples of bad science is really missing the point. Sure these make for the good headlines to criticize Bush's science policy but disagreeing with or overriding particular scientific results is nothing new or particularly troubling. It would be better if presidents never put politics over getting the right policy but their is nothing special about ignoring what your science advisors says about an ABM device than their is in ignoring what your economic advisors say about raising the minimum wage. Yah Bush ignores a lot of science advice but as far as I'm concerned that's just another example among many of his bad policies and poor management style (too little dissent).
The serious worry about the Bush admin and republicans in general in relation to science is much harder to put in a headline but much more worrying. Ignoring/disagreeing with science will just make you look stupid but the danger bush presents to science policy is his attempts to corrupt fundamental parts of the process. It is a death of a thousand cuts many of them not published as any sort of order but just a chilling effect that you better be careful about what you say if you don't want trouble. Sure we hear about things like the earth scientists suddenly needing to get prior approval before publishing any controversial studies but that is only evidence of a subtle but very dangerous attitude that it's okay to put pressure on scientists to get the results you want.
Ignoring the scientists is one thing appointing biased unqualified individuals (lead board) or putting subtle pressure on scientists to get the right result is a whole different ball game. In fact subtle pressure is far more dangerous and effective than a flat rule censoring them which would put people's backs up. Just like corruption in your society political interference in science is the sort of thing which could prove very difficult to undo. Of course I don't have many flashy examples but this is the sense I get from the scientists who have written on the atmosphere the Bush admin is pushing.
--
anym_Avery,
This is bad science how? Can you cite me scientific studies showing that teaching masturbation leads to bad effects? I certainly know the sciences backs up the idea that masturbation is less likely to cause pregnancy or disease then sex. The truth is you just don't like the idea and think it's dumb but it has nothing to do with the relationship of the Clinton admin to science.
Anyway what we want isn't a democrat doing something stupid but a Dem undermining the scientific process itself.
--
Also on this whole race as construct thing I don't think anyone believes it in the really stupid literal way. Obviously people realize that skin color is heritable and certain sorts of heritage correlate with different skin colors and different sorts of diseases. The race is a social construct bit is an exaggerated and slightly confused way to try to say that the genetic differences within the 'races' is very large compared to the variation between the races. In other words it is just a way of saying that race isn't destiny and that it is the social way we react to race that causes many of the apparent differences.
Then there's something more recent, involving a similar issue and similar species. Enviros howled when the Cactus Ferruginous Pygmy Owl was taken off the endangered species list:
Breast Cancer and Abortion:
The available evidence does not support a link between breast cancer and abortion. Contrast that with this:
Federal Court Decision on EPA Second hand smoke report
Those with an ideological bend will tend to believe that one of the examples represents a risk while the other doesn't. One may wonder why all the studies tend to have a relative risk above 1, reasoning that, there must be an effect if all the studies tend to be above one. This could easily be accounted for in publishing bias. If one does a study that does not produce the expected results it is usually not published. A study on second hand smoke that produced a relative risk of 0.85 would most likely not get published. The authors might surmise that their results didn't make sense and attribute it to some methodological error. It is not just politics that is creating problems for science. In fact, I would argue, it is the nature of science publishing that opens the door to political abuse. There is a bias toward only publishing when the results are positive (support the hypothesis). You would be hard pressed to find published studies that come up empty. Negative results, in spite of being important to the advancement of science, have been discounted in the publish or perish world we live in. This is unfortunate as we learn as much from the experiments that fail (perhaps more) then we do from the experiments that don't.
I applaud the even-handedness of your post; however, these two statements jump out because you don't support them.
Claiming the Bush administration has abused science in "many instances" and that many of the allegations of such "have merit," kind of demands that you at least give an impression of what are the many abuses.
You may be assuming we have read Mooney's book.
Anyway, thanks for at least pointing out that all administrations have their partisan agendas and political pandering problems. I would argue, however, that unless you provide some context against which to judge the above statements, the Bush administration has been the least agregious administration in this arena.
Again, thank you.
I applaud the even-handedness of your post; however, these two statements jump out because you don't support them.
Claiming the Bush administration has abused science in "many instances" and that many of the allegations of such "have merit," kind of demands that you at least give an impression of what are the many abuses.
You may be assuming we have read Mooney's book.
Anyway, thanks for at least pointing out that all administrations have their partisan agendas and political pandering problems. I would argue, however, that unless you provide some context against which to judge the above statements, the Bush administration has been the least agregious administration in this arena.
Again, thank you.
"You rapidly switch here from "race" to continent of origin. I never said that there weren't genetic markers that would identify an individuals continent of origin, …"
Race and continent of origin are essentially synonymous. Who do you think lives, and has always lived in sub-Saharan Africa? How do you think the federal government defines being “black?” Answer: it’s based on the continent of origin.
"Black" Africans are the most genetically diverse peoples on the face of the earth. To lump them into one race is a pointless exercise.
How is it pointless? As Ricsh points out risk factors for disease vary with race. People whose origins are from sub-Saharan Africa-- people we call “black” have different responses to certain medications than people who are not black. Let’s be clear, race is more than skin pigment. For example it would be difficult to distinguish whites from Asians on skin pigment alone. It’s easy with genetic markers, or a more detailed morphology than complexion.
The reason sub-Saharan Africans are so genetically diverse is all the other races are derived from a single group that left Africa approximately 50,000 years ago. But that large diversity simply means that they form a large cluster. It does not mean that cluster overlaps the other genetic clusters. A large within cluster distance does not mean the between cluster distances are small.
Clearly, this is because breasts are much more interesting to study than prostates.
“What seems to be clear to me is that you can identify a group by social and historical factors, call it a race, figure out what genetic material all or most of the members of that race have in common, and then say that there's a genetic component to race.”
It should not be clear to you because that’s not the case. The genetic markers used to identify race are not part of the genes or their control regions that play any part in appearance or behavior. Obviously these markers are indirectly correlated with the genes that do control appearance and behavior, but as yet we do not understand the connection.
“If we selected the most important genetic differences throughout humanity and then classified people according to them, we'd get nothing like the racial groups we now have.”
That’s simply not true. If you took the time to understand some population genetics and evolutionary biology you would not make such a statement. The racial clusters come from a principal component analysis (or similar statistical technique) of genetic distances.
“So if you want to insist on calling race a biological category, I think you have to admit that it's an extremely insignificant category genetically speaking.”
How is it insignificant when the different racial groups have different responses to drugs, different risk factors for disease, different IQs and differences in other important characteristics? The different human races are similar to different dog breeds. Dogs are one species in that all dogs can mate and produce fertile offspring. But no one confuses a Great Dane with a Beagle.
“If races are biological categories on that basis, then we might as well treat them as social categories, since social determinants are far more important in shaping the categories to be what they are.”
But they’re not, that’s the whole point. While the markers might come from “junk DNA,” they are still correlated with the DNA that has control significant biological attributes. Do you think it’s simply a coincidence that the clusters that come from the so-called “junk DNA” match the continental origins of the different races?
Paul Ehrlich. The Population Bomb. &etc.
"the battle to feed all of humanity is over... In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now."
"India couldn't possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980"
Paul Ehrlich, 1968
And this guy keeps winning awards from lefty societies.
On what planet is the protection of embryos on the leftist agenda?
Yes. When Bush "sins" against science, a few verbs and nouns get switched around in a press release.
When the Left "sins" against science, corporations go bankrupt, progress grinds to a halt, huge sums of money are wasted on symbolic gestures, and millions of lives get jeopardized.
Hmmm. I wish I were kidding. Literally millions of people have died because DDT was needlessly and foolishly banned. Millions more are at risk from starvation/malnutrition that could be addressed with genetically modified crops.
Genetically modified crops are not some far off, speculative, stemcell-ish product-- they exist here, now. Yellow rice (vitamin A enriched) could save the eyesight of hundreds of thousands of people.
Now, no doubt someone is going to throw out the stem cell research argument. To this I can only point out once more that Bush's opposition to embryonic stem cell research is not a scientific position. It is a moral position. You may agree or disagree with him, but you can't condemn him as unscientific, or for politicizing science. Why? Because the question of whether or not it is "acceptable" to experiment on human embryos (or whether or not embryos qualify as human) is not a question that science can answer. Bush is not saying that stem cell research is too dangerous, or won't work, or shows that Democrats are "bad people," or greedy. That would be politicizing it. In fact, I don't recall him making any kind of political hay out of the stem cell issue. Yes, certain Republicans agree with him on the issue, but what does that prove? He's supposed to take a stance that absolutely no Republicans agree with?
The Administration, backed by majorities in both houses of Congress, had every opportunity to address some of institutional problems relating to science that Jonathan has correctly mentioned, such as the problems with overly conservative and inconsistent risk calculations that Stephen Breyer noted in his book "Breaking the Vicious Circle". That they chose instead to set aside their previously professed principles to use this precious opportunity for narrow partisan purposes, to reward themselves and corporate supporters with long-unseen levels of pork-barrel spending and misuse of legislative and regulatory authority, aggrandize power to the executive, trample our civil liberties and to lead the country into unnecessary, unwarranted, stragically counter-counterproductive, poorly planned and executed and fabulously expensive wars is both undeniable and unforgiveable.
When the President, Cheney and the rest of their team took office, a virtual iron curtain descended on the White House, the "truth" was viewed as a political construct - with the undisclosed end justifying every means - and the public's right to know essentially suspended. The so-called "war on science" that Mooney addresses is just one small and indicative piece of this wholly tawdry and in many ways criminal affair, which leaves out the single biggest example, which was the mendacity, obfuscation and deliberate refusal to collect important but inconvenient information that brought us the Iraq war.
Yes, Democrats are politicians too, and have also misgoverned, both with private lucre aforethought and through thick-skulled and self-righteous but self-serving "good intentions". But never as famously and disastrously as this Administration and its compliant Congress.
Nice try, Jonathan. If you were sincerely interested in good government, why don't you start by tearing this Administration to shreds? Is is only by examining how things have gone really, really wrong that we can figure out how to try to fix things.
Oh, and as for Jonathan's example of Democratic "absue of science", excuse me for failing to understand how a decision by Clinton not to ask for federal funding for a line of research that a panel found to be "ethical" is an abuse either of science or ethics. It was simply a political decision, based on ethics and relative priorities, about where taxpayer dollars should be spent, and a decision that probably displeased many of his supporters but satisified a number of constituencies on the right.
1. In its self-understanding modern science claims that it can show us what we can do. Modern science therefore does not claim to provide complete answers on what we should do. So, as others here have pointed out, efforts by Clinton and Bush to defund or even suppress research on human embryos and stem cells cannot be regarded as politicization any more (or any less) then efforts to fund or promote such research.
2. We cannot listen just to scientists about what scientific research is worthwhile because we have other priorities too, and on the relative merits of these scientists ass such do not have much useful to say. Does having a Ph.D. in molecular biology really help you to decide whether to spend an extra $50,000,000 on cancer research or on bribes to Pakistani tribesmen to help win them over to betraying Osama Bin Laden?
3. Just because what a scientist says is true, doesn't mean we are better off for hearing it.
4. Since scientists don't always get things right, it seems unlikely (a priori) and is in fact false (as demonstrated by research in the history of science) that the political control of the conduct of scientific research could produce only mistakes. If you don't believe me, go read Feyerabend. But do so only if you are willing to read him with an open mind.
So in sum, what some call the politicization of science, I, with Feyerabend, call the democratic control of science. Does the democratic control of science sometimes cause the promulgation of errors? Certainly. But the democratic control of foreign policy also produces errors, but that is not in itself a sufficient reason to give it up.
Whether or not science makes mistakes is besides the point. The question is whether we should expect the probability of error to be higher when influenced by politicians.
Now it's been awhile since I read Feyerabend (and excerpts at that) but I'm surprised to hear him talking about political control of science in the way that is relevent to you. Of course science is ultimately political in the sense that scientists themselves are political and politics does much to determine the consensus view but this isn't the same as saying that we would be just as good if we had politicians as in non-scientists get involved. If Feyerabend actually says the later is good (and not just in a setting goals sort of way) I would be very curious to hear why he thinks so.
To be clear I assume when you are suggesting the political control of science to be a good thing you mean political involvement in the actual conduct of the research not merely the setting of goals and priorities. While I personally would rather trust a randomly selected scientist to be president than an elected politician these decisions do need to be made by people whose field of view is much broader than that of the working scientist. Your point is well put that the practicing biologist is not the person to weigh the pros and cons of science or foreign diplomacy.
If you just meant the other point I agree that this sort of political involvement is likely important but that doesn't mean that some sorts of involvement are not improper.
Economics is not a science. First of all. Second, whether or not to raise the minimum wage is a normative issue. I think that Adler makes a valid point when he writes:
"A sixth would be claims that the 'precautionary principle' is a 'science-based' approach to risk, when it acutally reflects a normative policy judgment about how to weigh and evaluate risks."
Liberals who pretend that the precautionary principle is not normative are like economists who think maximizing based on a particular definition of social welfare is not normative. Both are wrong.
Why, yes, Elliott, I can: Wendy Murphy. And as of this week, she has a government sponsor, the CDC.
Dunno what that tells us about Bush rightwing meddling in science, though somehow if the original claim (women who claim rape never lie) were presented to a random group who were asked whether it is a leftist or rightist concept, I doubt 'rightist' would win.
There's a misconception that an ad hominen attack is never permissible. However, I was responding to an ab hominen position - that second hand smoke is not bad for you BECAUSE KIP VICUSI SAYS IT ISN'T. In that situation, when one does not have the time or inclination to properly refute the argument behind the ab hominen position, an ad hominen attack is perfectly appropriate.
How are the Democrats attacking science on this? You'd first of all have to prove that economics is a science, and then you'd second have to prove that economic research disproves your argument. Once you get past high-school level Econ 101 "supply and demand"/"marginal utility" economics based on false premises, and into the realm of empirical economics, studies have uniformly either been neutral to, or supportive of, increased minimum wages, at least in developed nations, and particularly the United States.
The Center for Disease Control funded research designed to promote gun control, and promoted the whole "guns as a public health issue" meme.
See "Guns and Public Health: Epidemic of Violence or Pandemic of Propaganda" and Guns in the Medical Literature: A Failure of Peer Review" for details. This was a systematic effort to create factoids (or falseoids) to promote a political agenda.
Adler's original post at the top also mentions the firing of William Happer for dissenting from Al Gore's beliefs.
I am sorry I was not more clear on this point.
JHA
JHA
See the last page, starting at Science, politics, and the media
Guess what, DDT wasn't "needlessly and foolishly banned". While the toxicity of DDT to humans may be minimal, the effects of DDT, due to its persistence and bioaccumulative effect, on the top of the food chain was devastating. It was wiping out birds of prey through weakening their shells. The banning of area application of DDT is absolutely necessary. The use of spot application inside dwellings or infusion of mosquito netting with DDT is another matter. Of course if the pharmaceutical industry had spent a tenth of the money on new anti-malarials that they spend on developing erectile dysfunction drugs, maybe the application of pesticides wouldn't be necessary at all.