The Invention of Lying: Why do conservatives hate science?
June 3, 2011 - The American Prospect
Despite this spring’s ferocious weather, which scientists warn could become more commonplace as the planet warms, climate change denial is en vogue, particularly among congressional Republicans. They claim the science is unsettled, and seek deep cuts in programs that would research and prepare for climate-change.
The GOP’s current attacks on climate science, though, are part of a decades-long narrative that questions scientific authority. In Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes, a professor of history and science studies at the University of California, San Diego, and her co-author Erik M. Conway detail the right-wing’s history of obscuring connections between tobacco smoke and cancer, sulfur dioxide emissions and acid rain, and, currently, fossil fuels and climate change. The Prospect talked with Oreskes about the denial; why tornados, floods, and wildfires should come as little surprise; and how Cold War ideology continues to define political debates — even around climate change.
In your book, you trace the use of scientific doubt as a political strategy in blocking government regulation. What got you interested in the topic?
In the scientific community, you expect there to be a disagreement about scientific matters. If the scientific issues that are being debated require different expertise and different expert communities, then you would not expect the same faces to appear over and over again. When we realized that the same faces were appearing over and over again, whether with tobacco smoke or acid rain, that’s when we smelled a rat. That’s when we realized there’s something else going on other than normal scientific debate.
