The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney. 

2/5 rating. 

Book #121 of 2019. Read October 16, 2019.

I was deeply disappointed by this book. As a person who sees the blatant disregard so often for science by Republicans in our government, I was expecting to read a well-thought-through way to counteract this and get back to a more scientific look at how to help the people in our world. Instead, this was 260 pages of the abuses of science by the right. I read it saying, “yep, but how do we fix this?” 

The book is written quite scathingly (which I will admit might sometimes be deserved for these transgressions), and overall was just a waste of time when I could have been reading something that actually helps someone. My takeaway: Science rocks, but don’t politicize it, sometimes, the truth hurts…and you don’t need to read this book.

Quotes:

“A 1998 analysis of over one hundred review articles on the health risks of secondhand smoke, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that the odds of an article reaching a ‘not harmful’ conclusion were ‘88.4 times higher’ if its authors had tobacco industry affiliations. In many cases, the study noted, the authors had not disclosed their funding sources.”

“With its lawyers often funding and directing research, Big Tobacco pumped considerable resources into sowing public doubts about scientific studies showing risks from active smoking. The technique, which has been dubbed ‘manufacturing uncertainty,’ finds perhaps its best articulation in this oft-quoted passage from a circa 1969 Brown & Williamson document: ‘Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the “body of fact” that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.’”

“Passed overwhelmingly by Congress in 1973 and signed by Richard Nixon, the Endangered Species Act was deliberately written to be tougher than two previous laws that had failed to curb extinctions. The new legislation embodied an activist desire to prevent the loss of any more species. As a report of the House Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries put it at the time: ‘Who knows, or can say, what potential cures for cancer or other scourges, present or future, may lie locked up in the structure of plants which may yet be discovered, much less analyzed?…Sheer self-interest impels us to be cautious.’”

“As an account of the origin of life, ID doesn’t have any meat to it. It doesn’t provide any details that scientists might confirm or refute through future experimentation. And most crucially of all, it doesn’t explain anything or predict anything, a key requirement for successful scientific theories. As three of Meyer’s scientific critics have noted, ‘”An unknown intelligent designer did something, somewhere, somehow, for no apparent reason” is not a model.’”

“As a report from the National Academy of Sciences put it in 1995, ‘well-implemented needle exchange programs can be effective in preventing the spread of HIV and do not increase the use of illegal drugs.’”

IG Link.