The New York Times‘ Michelle Goldberg writes:
Conservative antipathy to science is nothing new; Republicans have long denied and denigrated the scientific consensus on issues from evolution to stem cell research to climate change. This hostility has several causes, including populist distrust of experts, religious rejection of information that undermines biblical literalism and efforts by giant corporations to evade regulation.
To say that there is a “scientific consensus” on “stem cell research” that conservatives “deny” is to misunderstand — or deliberately misrepresent — the conservative and religious objection to embryonic stem-cell research. There is no conservative with wh0m I am familiar who “denies” or “denigrates” the scientific consensus that stem cells are undifferentiated cells with the potential to transform into cells with more specialized functions. What they “deny” is that humanity has the right to create new human beings, destroy them, and harvest their cells for humanity’s supposed medical or scientific advancement.
If Goldberg balks at that reasoning, fine — but she is objecting to an ethical principle, not a matter of scientific fact that has been “denied” or “denigrated.” If scientists have a “consensus” view on the morality of embryonic stem-cell research, fine. Perhaps car mechanics have a corporate view on fuel-emissions standards. Neither “consensus” tells us much of anything about the underlying moral or political question involved.