Suicide by Pseudoscience (Wired)

[BlueEyedSon]

VIEW|sterling

The Union of Concerned Scientists in a February report pointed out something the science press has known for years: The Bush administration has no respect for science. Ideologues prefer to make up the laws of nature as they go.

Presidential science adviser John Marburger complained that the UCS's account sounded like a "conspiracy theory report." That's because it is one. As the report amply documents, the Bush administration has systematically manipulated scientific inquiry into climate change, forest management, lead and mercury contamination, and a host of other issues. Even as Marburger addressed his critics, the administration purged two advocates of stem-cell research from the President's Council on Bioethics.

When politicians dictate science, government becomes entangled in its own deceptions, and eventually the social order decays in a compost of lies. Society, having abandoned the scientific method, loses its empirical referent, and truth becomes relative. This is a serious affliction known as Lysenkoism.

Trofim Lysenko was Joseph Stalin's top stooge in Soviet agricultural science, a field that was mercilessly politicized by fanatics. His specialty was inventing nutty schemes - things like stimulating the evolution of trees by overcrowding them to get them to cooperate, as though they were communist minions. This totalitarian huckster spent his whole career promising exciting results and bringing about only disaster. But the party never judged itself on results, so he always got a free pass.

Politics without objective, honest measurement of results is a deadly short circuit. It means living a life of sterile claptrap, lacquering over failure after intellectual failure with thickening layers of partisan abuse. Charlatans like Lysenko can't clarify serious, grown-up problems that they themselves don't understand.


More: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.06/view.html?pg=4?tw=wn_tophead_3

[struggle4progress]

1. Another reason * and his lying gang of SOBs should go.

[Miss Authoritiva]

2. Stifling the Enlightenment (Part 2)

Funny thing is that science is big business. One way or another, this manipulation will adversely affect key industries in the United States, and we'll only wind up importing technology and products from other countries. Even the U.S. Department of Defense has outsourced contracts (to Sweden) involving human embryonic stem cell research for developing treatments for neurotoxin exposure.

Something similar happened during the Reagan administration with HIV/AIDS research. The Reaganites were happy with the idea of AIDS as a biblical plague against homosexuals, until French researchers became the first to identify the virus and got a huge head start on developing diagnostic tests. The Centers for Disease Control and Big Pharma went nuts and finally convinced the Reagan people that, yes indeed, there was going to be big money in AIDS research.

Stifling wastes time and costs lives -- oh, and money.