Science vs. politics: The Bush Administration's twisting of the truth

Thought Mechanics has an excellent post on the Bush Administration's activities at the intersection of science and politics, arguing that policy decisions on such issues as stem-cell research and climate change have been based largely on "flawed, ideologically-driven, and intellectually-dishonest science". Or, to put it in a different (and perhaps more familiar) way, the science has been fixed around the politics. Result: climate change is overstated, just as Iraq has WMDs. But there's more. As T.M. points out, this fixing has also contributed to "the destruction of the public trust surrounding scientific inquiry itself".

Once upon a time, in the not-so-distant past, it was at least assumed that truth, however nebulous in any ultimate sense, could be discovered through scientific inquiry. There may yet be other truths, but science was a good start at trying to figure out the truths of the physical world. That's still true, of course, but the Bush Administration has done its utmost, it seems, to cast doubt on science as it pursues its own faith-based understanding of reality.

(Thanks to CommonSenseDesk for the link.)