The Republican War on Science
"Science has never been more crucial than it is today to understanding the political issues facing the country; yet science and scientists have less influence with the federal government than at any time since Richard Nixon fired his science advisers. In the White House and Congress, research 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, 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 who know industry lobbyists and evangelical activists far better than they know the science." "This is not purely a Bush Administration phenomenon, but it is largely a Republican phenomenon, born of a conservative dislike of environmental, health and safety regulation, and 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 preference for ideologically driven pseudoscience over legitimate research."--Jacket.
Stats for nerds
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What Hacker News says
- Most scientists do work that's not at all related to what the public knows about and talk about their work in ways that no one else can understand.
Yeah, because no field has jargon and standard methods that require a small amount of prior knowledge to understand... We use a ton of confusing and sometimes overlapping jargon in the computer industry, simplify complex systems using metaphors that are not really correct (e.g. the internet is a series of tubes...), and will often give vague answers to people who are not in the industry. It is not because we have anything to hide, but because we do not have the time or energy to give someone an introductory course on how computers work just to answer a simple question. If you had the time to learn and the necessary educational background you could in fact learn when they are working on and understand what they are saying without too much effort. Most of the public is too busy, too lazy, or too stupid to do this.
As far as scientists being "chased" from the republican party, start with The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney, move on to Unscientific America by the same author, The Great Derangement by Matt Tiabbi, or Idiot America by Charles Pierce. Skim through Merchants of Doubt or Doubt is their Product to see some of the links to various corporate think tanks. The evidence is clear, maybe you should check some of it out.
- This is yet another long, distorted tirade by Senator James Inhofe -- and a year old, too!
It would take hours to debunk every logical fallacy and twisted fact that Inhofe uses to justify his silly views; for brevity, let me recommend the book "The Republican War on Science" for a good overview of the level of intellectual dishonesty that Inhofe embraces.
- I don't know if you can really separate the two. The question may literally have meant something different 20 years ago.
If you ask a Democrat whether they trust in science, they can't help but take into account the perception that Republicans are anti-science. That was a thing 20 years ago: the book *The Republican War on Science" was published in 2005. But since then climate change has become a more prominent issue, and COVID denial has more recently become a huge issue. Republicans have loudly denounced some scientific communities -- climate change, evolution, covid, research into gender and sexuality -- and Democrats perceive that as an objection to science in general.
The expression "science is real" has started to appear on liberal-leaning posters and yard signs and such. They wouldn't say that if they didn't think that there was somebody who denied that science was real.
So I'd argue that the big change is less about their perception of science and scientists, and more about their perception of Republicans.
- If anyone is qualified to speak about politics and science denial, it would be Chris Mooney.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Republican_War_on_Science
Yes, he has examined science denial on the left as well.
As for his examples, he regularly writes on climate change denial, and it's also the most prominent example of what he's talking about.
Edit: corrected obvious typo
