The Republican War on Science

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

The Republican War on Science is a 2005 book by Chris C. Mooney, an American journalist who focuses on the politics of science policy. In the book, Mooney discusses the Republican Party leadership's stance on science, and in particular that of the George W. Bush administration, with regard to issues such as global warming, the evolution/creation controversy, bioethics, alternative medicine, pollution, separation of church and state, and the government funding of education, research, and environmental protection. The book argues that the administration regularly distorted and/or suppressed scientific research to further its own political aims.

Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock (of Super Size Me fame) optioned the rights for the book to create a documentary film,[1] but in 2008 announced that he had released the option.[2]

Contents

Reviews [edit]

Keay Davidson writes in The Washington Post that "Mooney's political heart is in the right place" but says "Mooney is like a judge who interprets a law one way to convict his enemies and another way to acquit his friends."[3]

Writing in The New York Times, John Horgan said of the book that the prose was "often clunky and clichéd", but explains that Mooney "addresses a vitally important topic and gets it basically right." Horgan defends the book against another reviewer's criticism, saying "the journalist Keay Davidson faults Mooney for not acknowledging how hard it can be to distinguish good science from bad... But in many of the cases that [Mooney] examines, demarcation is easy, because one side has an a priori commitment to something other than the truth - God or money, to put it bluntly."[4]

Stuart Derbyshire, a senior lecturer at the University of Birmingham School of Psychology, praises Mooney and notes that he explained how Republicans had manipulated the uncertainty in science "to ensure that Congress rarely hears any consensus opinion that may damage a Bush policy." Derbyshire agrees with Mooney's claim that there is Republican "flagrant twisting" of research findings and that it "violates the integrity of science."[5]

Publishing information [edit]

Mooney, Chris (2005). The Republican War on Science. Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-04676-2. 

See also [edit]

References [edit]

  1. ^ "'Science' Scooped Up". Washington Post. December 17, 2005. 
  2. ^ "See Morgan? That’s Why You Should Have Made The Republican War on Science". ScienceBlogs. 
  3. ^ "Research and the Right", The republican war on science reviewed by Keay Davidson, The Washington Post September 18 2005
  4. ^ Horgan, John (18 December 2005). "Political Science". The New York Times. Retrieved 25 May 2010. 
  5. ^ "Bush isn't the only one who's anti-science". Spiked. 28 November 2005. 

External links [edit]


This article about a book on politics of the United States is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Republican_War_on_Science&oldid=546772445"