Some time ago, I conducted an interview with Florida Rep. Cliff Stearns, a Republican and staunch member of the religious right. At the time, Stearns was proposing a law to jail any scientist who attempted to make a human embryo through cloning. He opposed cloning and embryonic stem-cell research, he said, because clones would not have "tentacles" like you and me and we'd wind up with "categories of people who didn't have these tentacles, so there might be superior and inferior people. If you met them and knew they were cloned, how would you deal with them?"
OK, so maybe you can't blame Stearns for concocting an Ed Wood plot point. He's no scientist, and besides, he provides comic relief. But how funny is it that President George W. Bush recently endorsed the teaching of "intelligent design" as an alternative to the theory of evolution?
Not very, especially because Bush's comments about deus ex machina versus book learnin' are not just a goofy one-off. They are, as science writer Chris Mooney so brilliantly shows, part of The Republican War on Science. (Here let me declare that Mooney and I share a publisher, Basic Books, and let me also declare that my book for Basic sold so few copies I can honestly say I am not being influenced by money.)
It's not news that the reign of Bush fils has been marked by an antagonism toward science and scientists unlike any since 1954, when Robert Oppenheimer had his security clearance revoked and Linus Pauling had his passport pulled. The many times this administration and its supporters have fudged or even lied about scientists and scientific research are well-known. Global warming, stem cells, cloning, sex, land use, pollution and missile defense come to mind.
The real value of Mooney's book rests with his behind-the-scenes exposure of the groups, the personalities and the tactics used to craft the assault on science and how this assault has been used as a potent political weapon.
Mooney begins by outlining the dangers posed by creating a mistrust of science and admitting to a few caveats. For example, "Republican war" is something of a misnomer. It's not really the Republicans -- as a whole party -- who have made war on science. It's the odd, far-right coalition of Christian fundamentalists, CEOs and anti-eco zealots who have come to dominate the party's electoral politics. There was a time when trust-busting environmentalist Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican.
Second, the left has engaged in its share of science voodoo. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Greenpeace, for example, will say and do just about anything to win their ideological wars. Remember "Frankenfoods"? But the right makes the left look like ham-fisted amateurs.
"By 2002, Exxon/Mobil was donating over a million dollars annually to policy groups and think tanks that battle against the scientific mainstream on global warming," writes Mooney, "including the George C. Marshall Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Frontiers of Freedom, the Heartland Institute, the website TechCentralStation.com and many others. Whenever a major new development occurs in climate science, these groups kick into high dudgeon, nit-picking and debunking state-of-the-art science in online commentaries, reports, press releases and newspaper op-ed pieces. As a case in point, consider the late 2004 release of the Arctic Impact Assessment: The Marshall Institute promptly challenged the report's science; and then (Oklahoma Sen. James) Inhofe, in issuing his own challenge, cited the Marshall Institute."
Mooney is especially masterful at showing how the right has co-opted language to sow doubt about research in the minds of the rest of us. Phrases like "junk science" and "sound science" are creations of the right in its effort to "swift boat" research it doesn't like.
There is a lot of inside-the-wonk-brain material in Mooney's book, and the players and groups can seem to run together, but don't let this put you off. This is the way policy is made in our country, and fights within seemingly obscure committees buried deep in government departments can change the way the world works for good or ill. Mooney has already done the grunt work for you, piling each example onto the next like so many layers of paint until you wind up with a fascinating and devastating portrait of cynical manipulation.
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Brian Alexander is the author of Rapture: How Biotech Became the New Religion.
