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The Republican War on Science

CBL4

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Chris Mooney has written a book called "The Republican War on Science." It talks about evolution, the environment and stem cells among other topics. I think it will be released this week but he already has a web page about it.

In short, the GOP had unleashed a perfect storm of science politicization and abuse, in the process precipitating a full-fledged crisis over the role of scientific information in political decision-making. Yet this insidious threat—to public health and the environment, but also to good governance, sound leadership, and ultimately knowledge itself—remained obscure to most Americans, veiled by the intricacies of the government regulatory process and the complexities of scientific disputation.

I wanted to tell the full story of how science became a political football in modern American life. And I wanted to make clear the dangerous threat this development poses—to science, to our political system, and even to the Republican Party itself.

Out of this process, with a lot of help from a lot of people, came The Republican War on Science. I think my grandfather would have appreciated the result. I hope that you will, too.
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http://www.waronscience.com/introduction.php

Since I have not read it, I cannot comment on the book but I intend to see him when he speaks in Seattle on September 13th. I am posting this so others might see him elsewhere. I will post my impression then.

CBL
 
They must be losing this war. Scientific advancement continues.

-1 hyperbole on the title
 
Chris Mooney is an excellent science critic. I believe he spent his college days working for CSICOP in some capacity. He was also the lead blogger at _The American Prospect_ when it was actually good.
 
corplinx said:
They must be losing this war. Scientific advancement continues.

-1 hyperbole on the title
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I remember on Slashdot a few years ago when a meme entered the discourse whereby someone challenged in their views would declare the subject "boring."

It seems that the meme has now mutated to "hyperbole."

The indisputable facts, whether they are comfortable for you or not, are that Conservative Republicans -- specifically as a group -- are engaged in a full-frontal assault on the validity of science. They are pushing Intelligent Design / Creationism in place of Evolution. They have attempted to dismiss large swaths of climatological research and the near-unanimous opinion of those who actually study the topic regarding our global climate. They have suppressed some of the more promising lines of biological research in the name of a phony "culture of life."

Scientific education has fallen to such a level that people fall for the most idiotic patent medicine scams (disguised as dietary supplements these days but no less dangerous and no less of a scam than Gilded Age snake oil was), and our Congress intentionally guts and compromises the integrity of the very agency designed to protect us from these con artists.

Public awareness of science has diminished, and considerably, even in the years since I was growing up. 45% of the public swallows the Creationism fraud. Our space program is hanging on by a bare thread.

Yes, science is advancing -- in other nations. The U.S. is being left behind.
 
Let them win the war. All the better for us, who are investing in our own future in science!

Hey, wait a sec! Our dimwit PM is following the US lead and scrapping our science education support and other scientific endeavours willy-nilly. All on the grounds of cost-cutting.

:( :( :( :( :(
 
SlippyToad said:
They have attempted to dismiss large swaths of climatological research and the near-unanimous opinion of those who actually study the topic regarding our global climate.
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I wondered about Bush's Moon & Mars push, but then that is having the side effect of producing a shortfall in NASA's budget, resulting in a number of satellite's to be axed in the proposed budget, including several climate monitoring ones. Coincidence?
 
SlippyToad said:

Yes, science is advancing -- in other nations. The U.S. is being left behind.
Click to expand...

-1 hyperbole

Guess what, South Korea is far ahead of the US in cloning/stemcell research. However, the US is far ahead of India in studying the effects of hormones on bovines. Each culture has mores and taboos that affect its scientific community. The great thing about science is that the inquiring mind lives in every country. The US is making great strides in nanotech and other neat areas of research. I don't see science in general under assault.

Am I sad about some of the Bush admins' choices regarding science? Yes. Was I sad when Clinton shutdown the supercollider? Yes. Every president makes some unpopular decisions regarding scientific progress.
 
corplinx said:
-1 hyperbole

Guess what, South Korea is far ahead of the US in cloning/stemcell research. However, the US is far ahead of India in studying the effects of hormones on bovines. Each culture has mores and taboos that affect its scientific community. The great thing about science is that the inquiring mind lives in every country. The US is making great strides in nanotech and other neat areas of research. I don't see science in general under assault.

Am I sad about some of the Bush admins' choices regarding science? Yes. Was I sad when Clinton shutdown the supercollider? Yes. Every president makes some unpopular decisions regarding scientific progress.
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The Republican Congress killed the supercollider in a 280-141 vote.

Edited to add:
"Then, when this gargantuan project, the Superconductor Supercollider, the largest basic science project in world history, was well underway, Congress abruptly pulled the plug, killed the project and voted another billion dollars just to close it down. That left some two thousand particle physicists high, dry and unemployed on a forlorn plain outside of Dallas … the sole residue of their miscarried quest for the Higgs boson was a hole in Texas. An enormous, abandoned hole. It’s still there.”"
http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0405-6/wouk.html

"“On October 27, 1993, when the SSC project was 20% finished, two billion dollars had already been spent, and 14.7 miles of the 54 mile oval tunnel to house the machine was already dug, the Congress of the United States voted to terminate the project. Fifteen thousand physicists, engineers, technicians, contractors, and support workers, the vanguard of the most important project in particle physics, found themselves unemployed, in many cases unemployable in their chosen professions.” Cramer, who also authored the book Einstein’s Bridge (since wormholes, until the 1960s, were called Einstein-Rosen Bridges), says “The SSC was to be a great technological leap forward, bringing liquid-helium-temperature superconductivity and ultra-high field magnetism to new levels of engineering accomplishment, seeding the advance of technology in such areas as nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, electric power transmission, high-speed computing, and efficient energy storage.”
http://news.thomasnet.com/IMT/archives/2005/03/superconductivi.html
 
Mark said:
The Republican Congress killed the supercollider in a 280-141 vote.
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Funny, I don't remember the GOP having the congress in 1993. Funny too, neither does the historical record remember this.
 
There are those on the right who want to frame the debate as Us vs. Them. Divide and concur. Of course there are plenty of those on the left that would love to aid them. Polarization can work for both sides. The Republican party is not monolithic but that fact doesn't suit the agenda of the left so they paint the party with a broad brush. So you are either against the Republicans or you are a part of the war on science.
 
corplinx said:
Funny, I don't remember the GOP having the congress in 1993. Funny too, neither does the historical record remember this.
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Shhhh..... these are just facts and don't suit the agenda.
 
corplinx said:
Funny, I don't remember the GOP having the congress in 1993. Funny too, neither does the historical record remember this.
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I'll have to check...but in any case, the "no" votes on the supercollider were by a Republican majority.


Your attempt to dump it on Clinton was disengenuous at best. He had nothing to do with it.
 
RandFan said:
Shhhh..... these are just facts and don't suit the agenda.
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You mean like saying Clinton cancelled the Supercollider? He didn't.

And, again, it was defeated by a Republican majority.
 
Mark said:

Your attempt to dump it on Clinton was disengenuous at best. He had nothing to do with it.
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The supercollider was part of the Clinton cutbacks on government spending. Mind you, it was part of a larger bill of budget cuts so nobody other than the original committee probably voted specifically for cutting the supercollider.

I'm not sure why you think I am "dumping it" on Clinton. President's make judgement calls and at the time the supercollider was a huge chunk of change. He had made promises to work on balancing the budget. I don't agree with the decision to axe the supercollider, but don't keep an axe handy to grind on it.
 
corplinx said:
The supercollider was part of the Clinton cutbacks on government spending. Mind you, it was part of a larger bill of budget cuts so nobody other than the original committee probably voted specifically for cutting the supercollider.

I'm not sure why you think I am "dumping it" on Clinton. President's make judgement calls and at the time the supercollider was a huge chunk of change. He had made promises to work on balancing the budget. I don't agree with the decision to axe the supercollider, but don't keep an axe handy to grind on it.
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Congress and the Senate voted to kill funding for the the Supercollider. There was no line item veto in 1993 (it went into effect in 1997, if memory serves). He had nothing to do with it...unless you are suggesting he should have held up the entire federal budget over that one issue.
 
Mark said:
And, again, it was defeated by a Republican majority.
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In 1993? How is that possible? Or did you just get your dates wrong? If so then fine.
 
RandFan said:
In 1993? How is that possible? Or did you just get your dates wrong? If so then fine.
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I am not being clear (my bad). More Republicans voted to kill it than did Democrats.

I will readily concede that members of both parties voted against it (idiots), but according to the articles I have found, more Republicans did so than Democrats.

The Dems did have an overall majority in both houses until 1994, so I suppose you can make the argument that they could have used their majority to save it if they really wanted to. They are hardly blameless, and I didn't mean to imply they were.

Nevertheless, a majority of Republicans defeated it; and Clinton had nothing to do with it.
 
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