From a reader:
I enjoyed the latest PB&J. I’ve been annoyed with the Chris Mooney “Republican War on Science” meme for a while now, which I suspect will rear its ugly head again in the next few week’s with Al Gore’s new opus, “The Assault on Reason.”
In today’s PB&J, you said that you were confident you could find examples of the left “squelching” science. I can think of two Clinton-era “attacks on science” (or efforts to distort science) that might be of interest, and one big one that pre-dates the Clinton administration, but was clearly driven by the left.
1. The first—classic—example is the senseless attack on Alar on apples, which was fueled by left-wing environmental groups and abetted by 60 Minutes, if memory serves.
http://www.acsh.org/publications/pubID.865/pub_detail.asp
2. Recall from Inconvenient Truth Gore’s heartfelt admiration of his old professor and green mentor, Roger Revelle. The movie left out the fact that Gore’s colleagues (likely with Gore’s acquiescence, if not assistance) demonized Revelle and suggested that he had become senile after his views began to deviate from Gore’s. (This led to a lawsuit, which eventually settled.) Fred Singer has written about this in a book edited by Michael Gough. The relevant chapter is here:
http://media.hoover.org/documents/0817939326_283.pdf
3. More vaguely (I couldn’t find a link in the five minutes I searched), I seem to recall an effort of the Clinton administration to stem second hand smoke (SHS) in the early-to-mid 1990s. The effort was backed with a downright manipulative “meta-study” that carefully selected all of the studies that tended to prove that SHS was harmful, omitted those which did not, and toyed with the margin of error, exposure thresholds, and other statistical metrics in order to “prove” the harmful effects of SHS. Astonishingly, it turned out that if you look exclusively at the studies that tend to prove SHS’s harmful effects, then multiply the harmful effects they found, you come up with the discovery that SHS is, um, really harmful.
If you had the time and inclination, I’ll bet there are other examples too. The breast implant flap would be a good place to start. Food additives are another softball opportunity, because they pit the “pro science” forces of the left against the “pro health” or “pro environment” forces Of course, our friends at CEI (where I interned briefly during the beginning of the Clinton era) would be a good source for more juicy information.
Finally, I’ll note that some of the “Republican War On Science” has nothing to do with science and everything to do with ethical and moral considerations. The administration, for example, has not distorted embryonic stem cell research, or silenced it. The administration does not deny the potential benefits. Bush has said simply that the benefits must be weighed against ethical considerations, which is totally legitimate and does not constitute a “war on science.”
I hope this is helpful.