The War on Science

My friend Chris Mooney is the author of the new book The Republican War on Science, recently reviewed in The New York Times (Firewall) and optioned by "Super Size Me" director Morgan Spurlock (WaPo Link). A "war" incidentally which paved the way for my recent promotion to front page status and yet one I deeply wish did not exist.

I had a chance to sit down with Chris, virtually, and ask him about the latest twists and turns in the ongoing conflict between science and politics. He paints an interesting--and alarming--picture. Q & A on the flip.

DarkSyde (DS): Chris, I understand you're from New Orleans: How are your friends and family doing? What kind of feedback are you getting about the recovery effort?

Chris Mooney (CM): I'm heading home for the holidays on December 20th. It's a unique kind of hell there, something my mother should never have to live through at her age. She had the misfortune of living in Lakeview. So she lost her home entirely--it's a mold overgrown wreck--and now she has to wait on the insurance companies to pay her so that she can then in turn pay off the mortgage on the destroyed house. Until that happens, she can't even be left with nothing yet.

Worst of all is the uncertainty: No one knows what their future will be like, or when they will know, or if they will ever know.

DS: Wow, I'm really sorry to hear that and I sincerely wish her the best. Speaking of your background, how did you get into writing about the intersection between science and politics in the first place? It seems like a pretty narrow field for a journalist.

CM: It's just narrow enough that you can write a book in this area that covers a lot of ground and unifies a number of different subjects. But it's just broad enough that after you finish that book, there's still much to explore.

I stumbled upon this field both out of personal interest and because of my particular career path. I've always loved science, and studied its history and philosophy in college. I especially focused on evolution. But I wanted to be a writer, not a researcher, and started out my journalistic career covering politics for The American Prospect. There, I gradually gravitated towards the science-y subjects like cloning and bioethics.

After I cut loose and went freelance, I tried doing some more straight science writing. And then, in mid 2003, I caught wind of the growing number of Bush administration science scandals: over global warming, stem cells, and much else. Here was a subject that was uniquely suited to the hybrid science-and-politics writer I had become. I pounced.

DS: The book title specifically singles out Republican interference with objective science as opposed to The Political War on science or the Democratic War on science. Why so?

CM: Because at least at the present moment in American history, the Republicans are by far the worst offenders. I mean, it isn't even close. Do the Democrats deny plate tectonics or the germ theory of disease? No--but many Republicans are compelled, by their allegiance to the conservative Christian base, to undermine and denigrate evolution, the foundational theory of modern biology.

And this gets to the other way that I explain the title. If it's "politicization of science" that we're worried about, then we need to offer a political explanation for why this phenomenon is happening. And that's what I've done. Science, I say, is being misused and attacked repeatedly by Republican politicians and political appointees, and there's a clear reason for that. In almost all of the major cases that we know of, the attacks on science are clearly traceable to an attempt to appease the Republican political base--either corporate interests on the one hand, or Christian conservatives on the other.

Because of this political dynamic, which is unique to the GOP, "The Republican War on Science" is by far the most accurate title I could have come up with for the book. Of course, I realize that it's also the most controversial. But I think a lot of my readers appreciate that I'm not shying away from explaining what's really going on.

DS: What would you say the biggest threat is to the general public from ideologically driven pseudo-science?

CM: The big picture is this: I fear that policymaking in this country will increasingly become divorced from actual, reliable information about reality. This could ultimately undermine our democracy itself. Remember, most of our elected leaders aren't scientists, which means that they simply must rely upon expertise from others that they themselves do not possess. So if the channels of communication between politicians and scientific experts get corrupted enough, the process of decision-making will be crippled--and disastrous decisions could result.

DS: Obviously any politician would like to claim the mantle of scientific credibility for their agenda and many have done so of every political persuasion. What is the qualitative difference in your opinion between political meddling in objective science in the last few years vs. similar efforts prior to that time?

CM: You're right--this sort of monkey business has always gone on to some extent. But now the political right has elevated it to the level of a finely honed strategy. Industry, for example, can turn to sympathetic think tanks and a few scientific outliers who attack mainstream scientific conclusions in areas like climate change. These think tanks didn't always exist--they're a product, by and large, of the past thirty years, and they allow conservatives to do an end-run around research being conducted in the nation's universities (which the right denounces for being too "liberal").

Meanwhile, religious conservatives have also come up with their own "scientists," to whom they turn to counter mainstream conclusions on issues ranging from sex education to the viability of embryonic stem cell research. A lot of these folks also hang their hats at conservative think tanks and advocacy groups.

And then, the assertions of all these "scientists"--people who may be Ph.D.s but are often outliers--get parroted in the conservative media, and sometimes in the mainstream media (which is constantly snowed by this "science" appropriating tactic). What I like to say, then, is that the right has built up an infrastructure for misusing and abusing science that didn't exist before. And that's a central reason for the crisis that we're currently facing.

DS: Can you explain how this works in practice?

CM: Sure. Take the current wave of attacks on evolution, which are occurring under the auspices of the "intelligent design" crowd. This is a religio-political movement that cloaks itself in the guise of science, and it's centrally based at a think tank--Seattle's Discovery Institute. They are doing an end-run around pretty much every university-based biology department in the country. Yet of course, the movement has its cheerleaders in the conservative press, and even the mainstream press often fails to explain what I've just told you--that "intelligent design" is fundamentally religious, supernatural speculation. Not science.

DS: On Embryonic Stem Cell research, you wrote that "Bush went on national television and announced to Americans ... a policy based on science fiction," and that his nationally televised speech "counts as one of the most flagrant purely scientific deceptions ever perpetrated by a U.S. president on an unsuspecting public." Can you sum up in a paragraph or two how you came to those conclusions?

CM: Well, I reviewed the public record, looked into the science, conducted interviews with scientists and other experts. In this case, the facts were very clear cut. Bush told the American public a number--"more than 60" embryonic stem cell lines would be available for federally funded research, he said--that was completely unsupportable. In fact, we now know that there were never "more than 60" lines; Bush had confused cell "lines" with much less well-developed stem cell "derivations," which may never develop into lines. Even the most cursory scientific vetting would have caught this error.

Now, some try to exonerate the president by suggesting that he may have simply made an innocent mistake. Even if that that's true, I don't think it's tolerable for the president of the United States to make such a basic error when announcing a policy to the nation--a policy he had allegedly agonized and fretted over for months. Moreover, this "more than 60" number that Bush cited was crucial to selling the stem cell policy to the American public. But when it was undermined, did the president withdraw or alter the policy? No, of course not.

DS: Climate modeling is one of the most complex fields imaginable in science and thus one I would think handily lends itself to the tactics of misinformation, conflation, and deception. In your research on Global Warming, were you able to determine if a scientific consensus does exist on the impact, if any, human activity is having? And if so, what is that consensus?

CM: First, just a quick point of clarification. Climate modeling--the use of sophisticated computer models to try to project what the climate may be like in the future--is just one sub-sector of climate research. But all of the different strands of research in this field--modeling studies, observational studies, research into historical climate, and so forth--now support some central conclusions. First, human beings are triggering the greenhouse effect through their emissions of heat-trapping gases. Second, temperatures are already rising from this phenomenon. And finally, real-world impacts--particularly the melting of the Arctic--are quickly becoming apparent.

This is what all the published science says. Those who are countering it rarely do so in the published literature, where the consensus conclusion has now been tested and retested repeatedly. Rather, they cobble together scientific-sounding arguments--"temperatures aren't rising in the lower atmosphere," to give just one example--that are extremely misleading, but that you'd need a Ph.D. to debunk properly. (For a debunking of this particular claim, see here: Real Climate: Et Tu LT?) Through this strategy, they've been very successful when it comes to misleading policymakers, the media, and the public.

DS: And tell us about how the misuse of science plays out in a very different area--on reproductive health issues like Plan B emergency contraception ("the morning after pill")?

CM: Well, now we're hopping over into the religious right's realm of scientific "expertise." But many aspects of the phenomenon are the same. Religious conservatives, too, misuse science in order to concoct arguments that they then use to support their moralistic agenda--in this case, restricting abortion and changing Americans' sexual behavior.

Take the Plan B issue. Here is a drug that has been overwhelmingly shown to be safe and effective. The Food and Drug Administration's scientific advisers voted 23-4 that it should be made available to women over the counter, since time is of the essence if you want to take this particular drug in order to prevent unwanted pregnancy. The FDA's staff agreed.

For any other drug, such consensus would be more than enough to ensure over-the-counter approval. And yet instead, the FDA upended its entire scientific and regulatory process--kicking the decision upstairs and coming up with a phony scientific rationale for why "more data" would be needed before the drug could be approved.

As it turns out, this dubious "data" argument--which posed no problem for the overwhelming majority of members on FDA's scientific advisory committee--appears to have come from one of the religious right's favorite scientists, an individual named W. David Hager, who had been put on the committee by the Bush administration. So it turns out that this case study precisely demonstrates how the political misuse of science works in practice. Bogus arguments get generated by special interests, and then they're used by political actors as a justification for flying in the face of scientific consensus.

DS: Intelligent Design Creationism (IDC) gets a lot of attention and it's an issue I'm involved with, but what is the actual threat from IDC in the case they prevail? It seems to me that compared to pollution or climate, the success of IDC just doesn't have the same kind of capacity to affect the public welfare.

CM: I understand where you're coming from--but just consider that misinforming a generation of American schoolchildren about the fundamentals of biology will also negatively affect the public welfare. We will have a dumber society overall, and we will surely damage our international scientific competitiveness in the long run. And this in an era when advances in biology, and biotech, are promising to transform all aspects of society. We run the risk of falling behind.

DS: Can you talk a bit about the Clear Skies Act of 2003 or mercury specifically?

CM: Sure. It's just another area where science--and the regulatory process as well--have been corrupted. In this case, industry and its allies in think tanks and Congress make two separate scientific arguments, both quite dubious and misleading. The first is claiming that mercury in fish isn't very dangerous. The second is claiming that U.S. industry isn't responsible for a significant amount of domestic mercury pollution.

I debunk both arguments in the book--but I also show how this stuff filters into the sympathetic conservative media. For example, the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page had the gall to write that "there is no credible science showing America faces any health threat at all from current fish consumption." As far as I can tell, they based their information on a single conservative think tank.

DS: We had some concern about ozone depletion from CFC's a few years ago. The government acted, there was international cooperation, substitutes were developed, and the problem appears at least under control now. And through all that industry didn't suffer, in fact with all the replacement of existing gear and substances, jobs were created and money was made. They profited from the process and the public was better off! It seems to me industry would make more money if charged to develop novel technologies and/or methods that mitigated the risks, and had those new methods mandated by the government via regulation.

CM: In a lot of cases that's true--and forward-thinking people in industry are well aware of it. But remember, it took a while for companies like DuPont to come around on the ozone issue. At first, they employed a tried and true strategy--attack the science. There were plenty of ozone contrarians and "skeptics" making the rounds. Ultimately, of course, we got past this stage in the ozone debate, thank goodness. But not before the problem had gotten considerably worse.

DS: Is that ozone experience not applicable to Global Warming or mercury emissions, is it an instant gratification issue, or does industry just not give a shit? What's their thinking on that as far as you can tell?

CM: It depends upon what company you're talking about. Not every fossil fuel company is equivalent to ExxonMobil when it comes to challenging climate science. But the ExxonMobils of the world still have massive influence--especially with our current government.

Eventually, I believe, attacking the science that demonstrates the risk of climate change will come to be viewed in much the same way as attacking the science that demonstrates the risks of smoking. When that happens, I suspect that the strategy will simply wither away. But we're not there yet.

DS: I remember when you were writing this thing you barely came up for air. Now that you have a little bit more freedom, what's next for you?

I wish I could say that I actually am up for air now. Interest in the book continues to rise, and I am giving speeches and interviews about it regularly. There will be a paperback coming out next year. Morgan Spurlock just optioned it, as you may have read. I think I am going to be talking about this subject for a long time.

Meanwhile, I do also want to get started on another book project. I have another idea in mind, and it involves science and politics once again. I can tell you that much. But at this point the idea is relatively undeveloped and may fall through, so I'm afraid I can't announce anything to you yet.

DemFromCt:  How have you been received in the science community... Polemicist, muckraker, pamphleteer, champion, etc.?

CM: I'm happy to say that a lot of scientists have welcomed my work. I think one reason the book has gotten so much attention right now is that scientists are very worried at the moment. They're disturbed by the way the Bush administration treats science; and at the same time, they're watching anti-evolutionism sweeping the country at the state level. Sometimes it seems like the values of the Enlightenment itself are in jeopardy.

My hope is that my book will help mobilize scientists--and their defenders--to fight back against political misuses of science, and to do a better job of explaining the knowledge that we have to the public. When you think about it, it's truly amazing how much we know--how much we've learned from science. But now we've got to solve the problem of translating that knowledge for the rest of society--politicians most of all.

DS: To wrap up, what course of action can readers take to help out in general or specific cases? Are their orgs you'd recommend they contact to learn more about whichever issue draws their interest or a single one that addresses them all? Is there an online watchdog group which links legislators to scientific/political legislation they sponsor or endorse?

CM: First, let me say that we need more organizations operating in this area. For example, tentative discussions have begun about whether to create a Science PAC. That would, presumably, be an explicitly political organization, but we also need more groups that work on public understanding of science, which is a crucial aspect of this picture.

The currently existing groups that do great work in this area include the Union of Concerned Scientists, which really blew the whistle on the Bush administration's misuses of science, and the National Center for Science Education, which fights to defend the teaching of evolution. There are many others as well that I might mention--but that's certainly a start. Check them out.

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Chris Mooney is Washington correspondent for Seed magazine. To see more of his work or contact him, visit his weblog at Chris Mooney.com.