The Republican War on Science

Reviews / Votes

"Mooney performs a useful service by researching all the details and interviewing as many of the protagonists as possible. He also enriches the narrative with much historical context, tracing over decades a gradual politicization of science that has culminated in the present farce." The Guardian "Chris Mooney, a liberal investigative journalist, has bravely decided to thwack his way into this jungle of propaganda and lies on our behalf...definitive...disturbing..." Independent on Sunday "Mooney takes several un-related charged debates - on climate change, stem-cell research, whether abortion harms women - and stitches them together to form... a pretty convincing tapestry". The Times "...Chris Mooney argues persuasively that the Bush Administration's hostility to science is not limited to denial of global warming and evolution, but spans the field, from family planning to missile defence. He is particularly illuminating about tactics: the method is not simply to rubbish the experts, but to sow doubt by nurturing a handful of maverick dissenters, so the non-expert public is left wondering who to believe." The Times (Best Science Books of 2005) "Rather than representing an isolated incident, Chris Mooney argues that the "hoax" argument about climate change forms part of a systematic undermining of science on the part of the Bush administration, which connects the teaching of creationism in schools to embryonic stem-cells and child obesity to the depletion of the ozone layers." The Irish Times "a valuable chronicle of Bush's persistent efforts to undermine the authority of science in the interests of his anti-regulatory and anti-abortion agendas." London Review of Books "The book is a well researched guide to the recent history and has to be praised in its original analysis of the tactics used by the new Right to starve the scientific advisory apparatus and in its bringing out the confrontational nature of the attitudes of the Bush Administration and its allies. It should be read by Americans and will be interesting to scientists everywhere. We should be grateful to Chris Mooney for his diligence." Time Higher Education Supplement "The American conservative movement, as Chris Mooney points out in this fiercely anti-Republican book, has brought together two powerful constituencies - big industry and the religious right - both of which have an interest in skewing scientific advice so that it says what they want to hear... (his) case is so appealing, his examples so glaring..." New Statesman"