Undermining Science: Suppression and Distortion in the Bush Administration / Edition 1

by Seth Shulman

Overview

This vitally important exposé shows how the Bush administration has systematically misled Americans on a wide range of scientific issues affecting public health, foreign policy, and the environment by ignoring, suppressing, manipulating, or even distorting scientific research. It is the first book to focus exclusively on how this explosive issue has played out during the presidency of George W. Bush and the first to comprehensively document his administration's abuses of science. This paperback edition contains a new preface bringing to light the most up-to-date research on these abuses.

Undermining Science covers:

* The Bush administration’s abuse and misuse of science in areas including stem cell research, AIDS prevention, environmental protection, the Iraq war, the teaching of evolution, and global warming;

* The administration’s use of political litmus tests in selecting administrators for science-based agencies and in selecting scientists on federal advisory committees;

* The dangerous consequences of the Bush administration's war on science for the caliber and integrity of the nation's scientific research.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520256262
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	05/07/2008
Edition description:	First Edition, Updated with a New Preface
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Seth Shulman is an award-winning journalist and author who has written for many magazines, including Nature, Smithsonian, the Atlantic, Discover, Rolling Stone, Parade, and Popular Science; and for newspapers including, the Times of London, the Boston Globe, and the Los Angeles Times. He is the author of books including The Threat at Home: Confronting the Toxic Legacy of the U.S. Military.

Table of Contents

Preface to the 2008 Edition     xi
Preface to the First Edition     xvii
Facts Matter     1
"Icing" the Data on Climate Change     16
Doctoring Evidence about Your Health     31
Abstaining from the Truth on Abstinence and AIDS     46
Clear Skies? Healthy Forests?: Understanding Bush's Real Environmental Policy     64
When Good Science Is the Endangered Species     81
Burying More Than Intelligence     94
Stacking the Deck     111
Stem Cells and Monkey Trials     127
Restoring Scientific Integrity     145
Notes     159
Index     191

Editorial Reviews

Reviewing the evidence of how the Bush administration has systematically denied and doctored scientific findings that fail to support its political positions, journalist Shulman adds some new details in this accessible book. Combining thorough research with lucid prose and a sense of mounting outrage, he charges that the president's appointees and advisers are not only threatening the scientific enterprise but also American democracy itself. In human health, for example, he points to censored studies of race-based medical disparities, shows how guidelines on lead regulation have been decided by political appointees with ties to the lead-paint industry and reviews the now-infamous controversies over Plan B birth control and abstinence-only education. He also tells of scientists being questioned about their political beliefs, voting records and support for presidential policies during interviews for committee appointments. Though he cites recent congressional bills supporting scientific integrity, these are only small flickers of hope in a dark partisan landscape. While much of this information has been reported previously, especially in Chris Mooney's 2005 bestseller, The Republican War on Science, Shulman's consolidation of these tales of manipulation, intimidation and deception makes for disquieting reading. (Jan.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Writing at the request of the Union of Concerned Scientists, science journalist Shulman (The Threat at Home: Confronting the Toxic Legacy of the U.S. Military) here describes an extensive effort maintained throughout the George W. Bush administration to block and/or seriously distort the research findings of many government-supported scientists. This suppression campaign evidently extends across a broad range of subjects, including global warming, mercury pollution, sundry medical issues (e.g., stem-cell research), an alleged Iraqi nuclear weapons effort, and environmental lead poisoning. In numerous instances, political appointees with no scientific background have rewritten reports submitted by professional scientists. In other cases, highly credentialed scientists nominated for advisory boards have been rejected on political grounds. Shulman might have strengthened his argument further had he shown how the current administration has differed in this area from previous administrations of both major political parties. Even so, he has produced a convincing and frightening demonstration of the Bush administration's perversion of scientific facts and advice. Recommended. [Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science also investigates this issue.-Ed.]-Jack W. Weigel, Ann Arbor, MI Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal