The current issue of Newsweek includes a column by Robert J. Samuelson that aids and abets the commission of a crime. The crime is assault and the victim is Science.
This is not an exercise in clever wordplay. Science plays a fundamental role in modern society. Our lives literally depend on it. To discredit Science is to endanger the practice of medicine, the safety of our food and water, and the technological progress that took us from the Dark Ages to the Space Age in half a millenium.
Sadly, we have come to expect theocrats, religiofascists and political hucksters to play this dangerous game. When nationally recognized award-winning journalists with prominent positions in the Traditional Media do the same, it gives me shudders.
The journalist in question is Robert J. Samuelson. The specific piece referenced here is a screed in the current Newsweek that attacks the previous issue's cover story, a thorough, well-researche expose of what science writer Sharon Begley dubbed the "denial machine" on global warming.
At this point, let me offer props to two previous diarists who first raised this issue on this site:
Mary and A Siegel. (A Siegel also does a superb job of cataloging Samuelson's history of journalistic sins in this regard.)
In this case, Samuelson engages in a classic exercise in sophistry in an effort to discredit the Begley article. Because he cannot attack the factual accuracy of Begley's story, he erects a straw man and proceeds to tear it down.
I will leave it to others to argue the factual errors and logical leaps of Samuelson's contention that CO2 emissions are an insolvable problem. My point is that Samuelson's column would be totally misleading even if 100 percent true. The original article does not address whether or not we can achieve sharp reductions in carbon emissions. It is focused solely on the deliberate attempts by corporate interests to create an impression of scientific debate where none actually exists.
Sound familiar? It certainly does to me. But then, I live in Kansas, where I have lived the reality that ensues when people turn the scientific method, which should be above politics, into a political football. Today, rhetorical assaults on science are all the rage. Create a "scientific controversy" out of whole cloth where none actually exists, just so you can score a political point or fatten your wallet.
Here is why this is so serious: The assault on Science by the Right is not just another political tactic. It exacts a toll in blood and death. To say "hey, it's just politics" in this case is like a drunk driver who killed a whole family saying "hey, it was just a couple of beers."
There are consequences here. The price we pay for the assault on Science is frighteningly high: children in science classrooms being taught superstition instead of evolution, bridges collapsing from Minnesota to China, cures for deadly and cruelly crippling diseases left undiscovered, and mass extinctions that threaten the food chain/web on which we all depend for survival.
Sleep well tonight, Mr. Samuelson. But should you start to feel a bit sickly, don't worry. We'll send over our best Shaman with a bag full of fresh leeches to fix you right up.
Being the most unapologetically unethical person in the room does not make you avant-garde. -- Hunter