The Republican War on Science

by Alan Journet, Conservation Chair, Trail of Tears Group

In a well-publicized response to Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind’s questioning about foreign policy, a White House Aid interjected the criticism that guys like him were mistakenly living “in what we call the reality-based community” which he criticized as the “belie[f] that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” The aide continued his criticism by asserting “That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act we create our own reality.” Although this comment casts considerable and frightening light on many aspects of Bush foreign policy, it also reveals much about the attitude that this White House and the Republican Congress have about science and the role sound science and consensus scientific opinion should play (or not play) in guiding federal policies and procedures.

Most Americans think that government policies dealing with health, safety, and environmental protection should be based on the best available scientific evidence. Some politicians, however, believe that a pre-determined political philosophy should dictate decisions and science should be used as just another weapon in the arsenal for achieving political victory. Unfortunately, as Chris Mooney points out in The Republican War On Science (2005 Basic Books, New York 342 pp) both the Administration of George W. Bush and many Republicans in Congress have rejected the reasonable approach favored by most Americans and have adopted the politicized latter approach.

In the sleeve notes Republican Russell Train, Environmental Protection Agency director under Presidents Nixon and Ford, pointed out that Americans who value intellectual honesty and civility in our national affairs and who care about the nation’s future should read “Mooney’s exposure of the cynical collusion of special business interests with the anti-intellectualism of the religious right…”

Early in the book, Mooney points out that the notion of having a science advisor in the White House was introduced by Republican President Eisenhower, and has been maintained by Presidents of both parties since. He argues, however, that George W. Bush does not follow this pattern enthusiastically. Bush, he argues, is no Republican “moderate” but rather represents the “modern” brand of conservatism—the group known as neo-conservatives. The rise to power of these neo-cons, Mooney suggests, is based on the endorsement of industry which would co-opt “science” to thwart environmental regulations, and the religious right which would co-opt “science” to bolster a moralistic agenda.

The anti-intellectualism central to the Bush approach is characterized by Bush advisor Karl Rove’s sneering definition of a democrat as “someone with a doctorate.” In response to the tendency for environmentalists to rely on the scientific research that emanates from institutions of higher education, the neo-cons frequently find themselves at odds with the consensus judgment of scientific experts. They resort to describing research that produces results they do not like as “junk science” and only laud as “sound science” research that supports them. While Mooney acknowledges that Liberals and the left have to answer for some scientific abuses, he suggests that this represents a drop in the bucket compared to the assault on science of the right. Since science requires a dynamic philosophy that challenges orthodoxy, while conservatism represents a resistance to change, Mooney suggests that there is an inevitable conflict between the two.

One approach industry has taken to counter research that threatens profits by suggesting the need for regulations is to co-opt the scientists. Although, as Mooney points out, there is nothing inherently wrong with industry supporting independent (e.g. university) institutional research, he notes that research on tobacco funded by the tobacco industry was 88.4 times more likely to find no causal relationship between tobacco products and cancer than was independently conducted research. Mooney reports that a pattern exists wherein industry spokespersons promote fringe and quasi-scientific reports that attempt to discredit scientific consensus when it challenges corporate activities. The conservative faith in free enterprise is such, Mooney argues, that they will accept without criticism industry sponsored research while demonizing research and the independent scientists with whom they disagree politically.

In the 1930s, Mooney notes, a quack “scientist” by the name of Trofin Lysenko promoted himself and his absurd genetic views through the Soviet Union’s political corridors without conducting or publishing research. His views were so consistent with and supportive of the politics of Joseph Stalin that Lysenko rose to power and prominence. So powerful was Lysenko and his ideological zeal that he strove with some success to ban genetics. It took Soviet science decades to recover from Lysenko—and to this day Lysenkoism defines the ideological suppression of, or refusal to accept, scientific findings. The current White House and Republican Congress, Mooney argues, are cut from the same cloth as Lysenko and Stalin.

Before exploring how scientific abuse became central to the Republican way of life, Mooney identifies a series of techniques that have been employed in various guises, many of which the alert reader will recognize.

1. Undermining the process of science involves two confusions. The first is demanding of science that which it cannot provide while criticizing scientists for not providing it. This deals with “proof” in the sense of absolute certainty. The scientific process is undoubtedly the best method we have for helping us learn how the world around us works—what rules, regularities, natural laws and cause-effect relationships govern the physical world. However, even the best science cannot offer more than evidence that supports or denies hypotheses; there can always be a new study conducted somewhere that denies a hypothesis long supported. When there is a vast amount of evidence, a scientific consensus develops—but absolute certainty is not the result. The second confusion concerns misuse of the scientific term “theory.” In everyday language we often use theory as a synonym for opinion or hypothesis. In science, however, such as in “Atomic Theory” or “Evolutionary Theory” the term is used to describe a broad framework of related ideas which has been well tested, and has not been falsified. While theories are not facts, they certainly represent scientific consensus. When Creationists, for example, assault Evolution as “merely a theory” they are using the term in the everyday sense, not in the scientific sense, which, of course, is how scientists use it.
2. Suppression involves quashing or re-writing scientific reports that challenge political ideology. While the Reagan White House was guilty of this in connection with a report of its own Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Bush Administration has suppressed global climate change assessments.
3. Targeting individual scientists occurs when government scientists are precluded from reporting their findings in the scientific literature or at scientific conferences. Since communication of results is central to the scientific process and the progress of scientists in their discipline, this undermines the process of science and discourages research.
4. Rigging the process occurs when appointments to science advisory committees are based on political views rather than expertise. The Bush Administration has employed this technique time and again to the benefit of industries and at the cost of human and environmental health.
5. Errors and misrepresentations occur when a politician deliberately takes the results of science and misstates the results or the conclusions which flow from them. When George Bush asserted there existed more than 60 embryonic stem cell lines as justification for his policy on stem cell research, he was perpetrating exactly this abuse of science.
6. Magnifying uncertainty is a well-used technique that involves focusing on the fact that no “proof” exists (see item 1) when the scientific consensus is, in reality, as near unanimity as is possible.
7. Relying on the fringe is a technique closely allied to (6); it involves publicizing or calling to testify before Congress the one or two obscure scientists who hold opinions contrary to the scientific consensus. These are often the same suspects each time—coming from a conservative foundation or institution funded by corporations with their own clear political agenda.
8. Ginning up contrary science takes (7) a step further by actually funding scientists to undertake activities that challenge consensus. The tobacco industry, for example, paid scientists to write letters challenging published scientific research.
9. Dressing up values in scientific clothing is a cunning strategy that involves confusing the public into thinking a decision is based on sound science when the scientific advice has actually been ignored. In order to appease pro-life religious conservatives, the Bush Administration ignored the 23:4 recommendation of an advisory panel that over-the-counter sales of a morning after pill should be allowed. In order to justify this rejection, the FDA conjured up the need for more data (a common ploy to avoid action) of a kind not relevant to the question and never before required.

But how and why, the critical reader might wonder, did abuse of science become the hallmark of only one party? Mooney briefly explores this history. Republican President Richard Nixon, he suggests, may not have cared too much about clean air and water personally, but he knew which way the wind of public opinion was blowing; thus it was this Republican stalwart who created the Environmental Protection Agency, signed the Endangered Species Act, and the Clean Air and Clean Water Act. At that time, current Republican for Environmental Protection member Russell Train was welcomed into the mainstream of Republicanism; today Train and other moderate Republicans are endangered species themselves in the Party. Referring to the Ford Presidency, Train recalled how in his role as EPA Director he was allowed to make decisions on the basis of the best available scientific information without fear of having decisions trumped or countermanded by White House politics. In marked contrast, the Bush White House forced edits into a 2003 EPA climate change report; Bush advisors rejected current consensus and replaced it with White House ideology.

Mooney traces the lure of scientific abuse within the Republican Party back to the 1970s and 1980s when the party was taken over by an ideological merger between business interests and religious conservatives. This period stands in marked contrast to the 1940s when President Roosevelt urged scientists who had aided in the war effort to continue to contribute benefits in time of peace. As a result, Government investment in university research blossomed—and continued to blossom as the Soviet Sputnik launch of 1957 convinced Republican President Eisenhower to establish within the White House the President’s Science Advisory Council and appoint the first White House Science Advisor. Democratic President Kennedy continued the support of science, establishing the White House Office of Science and Technology. Interestingly, a level of honesty developed between the scientists and Kennedy as a result of which the President acknowledged that manned space flight was intrinsically less likely to produce scientific advances than unmanned spaceflight. Mooney notes that Kennedy never promoted his Apollo mission to the moon on the basis of its scientific merits. What Kennedy avoided was what we see all too often these days—politicians dressing up their ideological policies in scientific garb.
The warm relations between conservative politicians and the intellectual scientific community soured as Republican Barry Goldwater based a Presidential bid on a deep distrust of the Eastern establishment, the elite media, and universities; in his campaign anti-intellectualism and anti-communism were joined. It was out of the failure of the Goldwater campaign that modern conservatism was born. When conservatives coalesced, as Mooney relates, the brought together: “under the same broad umbrella worldly pro-business conservatives and cultural traditionalists fed up with hippies, feminism, and gay rights, and incensed by Roe vs Wade and the Supreme Court’s banning of school prayer.”

The successful environmental and consumer protection movement of the late 60s and early 70s drove the business community to counter-attack. That the rules promulgated by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Health and Safety Administration were founded on scientific justification prompted industry to mount a counter-offensive of producing their own contrary science designed to block regulations. One of the pivotal events of the 1960s, the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, provoked an onslaught of counter-charges and contrary P.R. from the chemical industry designed to undermine the scientific basis of that influential publication. Even though industry’s goal of spreading the notion that Carson’s thesis was based on mysticism rather than legitimate science was successful, the President’s Science Advisory Committee of JFK largely vindicated Carson’s book and the science upon which it was based.

Though generally paying little attention to Washington happenings prior to the 1970s, the wave of regulations drew the attention of the business community. Spurred by the likes of later Nixon Supreme Court nominee Lewis Powell and reformed Trotskyite turned neo-conservative William Kristol advised business leaders to “mobilize to ensure their own survival” corporations became more interested in influencing public debate. As a result, conservative foundations and “think tanks” such as the American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation were established to enlist right-leaning thinkers and provide expertise on issues of relevance to business. Their goal was to undermine the findings of social scientists and university scholars with the ideology of the conservative political agenda. These entities have been highly successful and are with us today plying the same trade with budgets in the tens of millions of dollars.

As Mooney then depicts, the final marriage of big business and the religious right occurred with the election of Ronald Reagan. This is exemplified in Reagan’s failure, in deference to the religious conservatives, to acknowledge or speak out on AIDS until 1987. Surgeon General Everett C. Koop was even forbidden from mentioning AIDS during Reagan’s first term. As Reagan considered eliminating the presidential science advisor, Budget Director David Stockman reported of scientific advice, “We know what we want to do, and they’ll only give us contrary advice.” The practice of presidential ignoring or avoiding scientific advice was nurtured well during the Reagan era. This allowed Reagan to endorse Creationism and the Star Wars program (sanitized under the title Strategic Defense Initiative), and promote the notion that abortions have serious health consequences for women, even though none of these ideas enjoyed scientific support.

Although the first President Bush elevated his science adviser to the position of assistant to the president, and is remembered largely as a friend of science, a critical turning point for the worse occurred when Newt Gingrich and his Republican Revolution overtook congress and, in its desire to avoid receiving informed scientific advice, immediately dismantled the congressional Office of Technology Assessment.

Over the nine subsequent chapters, Mooney explores the following examples of how Republican and Bush Administration abuses of science have transpired:

Chapter 5 addresses the politicization of science during the Gingrich Congress.

Chapter 6 addresses the transformation of sound science into junk science during the Gingrich era.

Chapter 7 addresses the promotion of ‘Luntzspeak’ (the principle or recruiting fringe scientists to challenge scientific conclusions) to combat scientific consensus when such consensus threatens neo-conservative ideology.

Chapter 8 addresses the demand for certainty where none is possible to combat scientific consensus when it is aligning against neo-conservative ideological principles.

Chapter 9 addresses the vilification of reasonable scientists and their opinions.

Chapter 10 addresses promoting the rejection of best available scientific evidence.

Chapter 11 addresses how Creation Science has undermined science and science education.

Chapter 12 addresses the attack against stem-cell research as a sop to the religious right.

Chapter 13 addresses how junk and pseudo-science have fed the stifling sex agenda of the religious right.

Chapter 14 addresses how the Bush presidency has conducted a constant war against science, scientific consensus, and the role of scientific evidence in informing public debate and government policy.

Anyone in the environmental or conservation movement who wishes to gain a better understanding of how the current Republicans in Washington are undermining science in the service of their political agenda would be well-served by exploring this analysis.