Chris C. Mooney Quotes

Today this country is also home to a populace that, to an alarming extent, ignores scientific advances or outright rejects scientific principles.

We have learned from encounters with such ventures as 'creation science,' which purportedly refutes the theory of evolution, that we must be sceptical when nonscientist advocates offer purported analyses of scientific data to reinforce conclusions that they have already reached on nonscientific grounds.

But if we care about science and believe that it should play a crucial role in decisions about our future, we must steadfastly oppose further political gains by the modern Right. This political movement has patently demonstrated that it will not defend the integrity of science in any case in which science runs afoul of its core political constituencies. In so doing, it has ceded any right to govern a technologically advanced and sophisticated nation.

Journalists should treat fringe scientific claims with considerable skepticism and find out what major peer-reviewed papers or assessments have to say about them. Moreover, they should adhere to the principle that the more outlandish or dramatic the claim, the more skepticism it warrants.

Policymaking by ideology requires that reality be set aside; it can be maintained only by moving towards ever more authoritarian forms of governance.

In a famous October 2004 New York Times article on the Bush administration, journalist Ron Suskind described his encounter with a “senior adviser” to the president:
The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now and when we act, we create our own reality.”

When politicians use bad science to justify themselves, rather than good science to make up their minds, we can safely assume that wrongheaded and even disastrous decisions lie ahead.

Such flagrant misrepresentation goes far beyond mere dishonesty. It demonstrates a gross disregard for the welfare of the American public, whom Bush represents, and for the population of the entire globe, whose fate depends in large measure on the behavior of the American behemoth.

From acid rain to global climate change, from “creation science” to “intelligent design,” conservatives had been meddling with science for years, largely on behalf of their pro-industry and religiously conservative supporters.

To be sure, the intelligent design movement does not claim an animus against science. Science abusers never do. Rather, the movement seeks to redefine the very nature of science to serve its objectives.

As three of Meyer’s scientific critics have noted, “‘An unknown intelligent designer did something, somewhere, somehow, for no apparent reason’ is not a model.”

To be sure, it remains up to policymakers to decide whether the economic costs of such preventative measures outweigh the benefits. But that key question isn’t even being properly debated. Instead, climate change has become an issue on which conservatives have elected to fight over science at least as much as over economics, relying on stunning distortions and a shocking disregard for both expertise and the most reputable sources of scientific assessment and analysis.
If this situation is maddening, it is also tragic. There may be no other issue today where a corruption of the necessary relationship between science and political decision-making has more potentially disastrous consequences. And together, James Inhofe and the Bush administration have made that corruption systematic and complete. Not only do they strive to prevent the public from understanding the gravity of the climate situation, but in sowing confusion and uncertainty, they help prevent us from doing anything about it. And this—this—is what the Right calls “rational, science-based thinking and policy-making.”

But when they don’t like what science has to tell them, those wielding political power of the have another option besides running away from the truth: suppression.

You can't prove what's going to happen in the future," explains Naomi Oreskes, who has written extensively on the uses of modeling. "But that doesn't mean you don't have a rational basis for action.

Healthy skepticism is an essential and treasured feature of scientific analysis," Gibbons added. "But willful distortion of evidence has no place at the table of scientific inquiry.