Bush vs. Science

“Is the Bush administration anti-science?” asks Daniel Smith in The New York Times Magazine.  

When Donald Kennedy, a biologist and editor of the eminent journal Science, was asked what had led so many American scientists to feel that George W. Bush’s administration is anti-science, he isolated a familiar pair of culprits: climate change and stem cells. These represent, he said, “two solid issues in which there is a real difference between a strong consensus in the science community and the response of the administration to that consensus.”

Smith cites a number of other scientists and advocates who are fed up with the right’s distortions of and interference with science, including Chris C. Mooney, author of the new book The Republican War on Science (watch for a Grist Q&A with Mooney coming up soon). But Smith also gives a fair bit of space to presidential science adviser John Marburger, who continues to defend the admin’s record. Guess which side makes a stronger case.