![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science: Depressing! Industry and the religious right have allied to produce an anti-science agenda and policies across the board. Political interests converge with the historical moment in science: Modern science requires intensive resources, which means government funding, which conservatives (theoretically) distrust, as well as bureaucratic structure to manage the scientific enterprise. Science is also associated with universities, those hotbeds of liberalism. Further, Republicans’ core experience with scientific evidence comes from the environmental movement, which they distrust; relatedly, in the 1970s, science began attempting to ward off harms rather than fixing things that had already broken, which led to an increase in regulation and in invisibility of results, making it harder for people to appreciate the benefits of prevention.
In what Mooney describes as “a stunning act of self-lobotomy,” Congressional Republicans dismantled the Office of Technology Assessment, an independent source of scientific evaluation that had provided disinterested information, including a second opinion of the executive branch’s conclusions. Supposedly, “free market” science would take up the slack – individual Members would consult with whoever they wanted to. Usually, that’s industry sources.
The terrible result of these trends has been the development of “conservative” science, opposed to “junk” or “liberal” science, creating an appearance of uncertainty which itself is a victory for anti-science because it produces mistrust – if there’s disagreement, science must not be reliable. Mooney chronicles the creation of conservative science think tanks to contest mainstream conclusions. They’re usually industry-funded, and they have a greater impact than their size and fringeness should allow, since journalists love to do point-counterpoint even when the weight of the evidence is POINT-counterpoint.
He plays out these observations by looking at several different political controversies in which science plays a role, including stem cell research, ballistic missile defense, and teaching evolution in school. I say again, depressing! Mooney argues that policymakers should systematically pay more attention to robust scientific consensus than to dissenters. That’s not always right, but it’s the way to bet. He also speaks favorably of President Kennedy who – as counseled by his science advisers – never claimed, as the Bush Administration does, that manned space exploration offered any scientific or technical benefits compared to unmanned. It was just good for the spirit.
Michael Finkel, True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa: The book starts off with a bang. Finkel’s just been fired from the NYT Magazine for falsifying a character in a story he wrote about West African cocoa harvesting. The Editor’s Note is going to run the next day; Finkel has decided to cut off contact with the outside world for a while. Ninety minutes before his self-imposed exile is to begin, he receives a phone call from a reporter. Congratulations, he says, you’re the first to call. The first? Yes, Finkel says, the story isn’t running until Saturday. No, the reporter says, it’s running on Sunday, and I know this because I’m writing it. Wait, says Finkel, what are you talking about? Reporter: What are you talking about? Finkel: The Editor’s Note. Reporter: I’m calling about the murders.
As Finkel’s own distortions were killing his career, there was a man down in Mexico telling everyone he met that he was Michael Finkel, reporter for the New York Times. That man was Christian Longo, one of the FBI’s Most Wanted, suspected in the murder of his wife and three young children. Longo had just been arrested.
Finkel developed an intense relationship with Longo, trying to understand himself as well as what had driven Longo to take his name (not to mention commit the acts of which he was accused, if he had done so). Their relationship was mutually exploitative and acknowledged as such, even as it also became – for Finkel at least – emotionally consuming. The narrative is recursive, repeating and often adding new information to old scenes, which left me torn between annoyance and respect for this as a narrative technique in cutting through the layers of any complex story. Finkel, exposed once as a liar, has an obvious investment in claiming to tell the truth and in compulsive self-disclosure about his thoughts, but this too is a pose, like Longo’s pose of truthfulness to Finkel, though Finkel doesn’t come out and say so.
The book is a quick read, but ultimately I wasn’t satisfied. Longo’s story at trial is obvious to anyone who’s seen a few episodes of Law and Order, and Finkel’s expressed surprise and disgust when it comes out on the stand is hard to credit. Either he was totally bamboozled by this guy, even after hearing the prosecution’s evidence, or he suspected what the story would be a few weeks/chapters earlier but withheld it for dramatic effect. And, in the end, Longo is a horrible human being; Finkel’s bond with him says much about human weakness and the desire for connection, but not much good about Finkel.
In what Mooney describes as “a stunning act of self-lobotomy,” Congressional Republicans dismantled the Office of Technology Assessment, an independent source of scientific evaluation that had provided disinterested information, including a second opinion of the executive branch’s conclusions. Supposedly, “free market” science would take up the slack – individual Members would consult with whoever they wanted to. Usually, that’s industry sources.
The terrible result of these trends has been the development of “conservative” science, opposed to “junk” or “liberal” science, creating an appearance of uncertainty which itself is a victory for anti-science because it produces mistrust – if there’s disagreement, science must not be reliable. Mooney chronicles the creation of conservative science think tanks to contest mainstream conclusions. They’re usually industry-funded, and they have a greater impact than their size and fringeness should allow, since journalists love to do point-counterpoint even when the weight of the evidence is POINT-counterpoint.
He plays out these observations by looking at several different political controversies in which science plays a role, including stem cell research, ballistic missile defense, and teaching evolution in school. I say again, depressing! Mooney argues that policymakers should systematically pay more attention to robust scientific consensus than to dissenters. That’s not always right, but it’s the way to bet. He also speaks favorably of President Kennedy who – as counseled by his science advisers – never claimed, as the Bush Administration does, that manned space exploration offered any scientific or technical benefits compared to unmanned. It was just good for the spirit.
Michael Finkel, True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa: The book starts off with a bang. Finkel’s just been fired from the NYT Magazine for falsifying a character in a story he wrote about West African cocoa harvesting. The Editor’s Note is going to run the next day; Finkel has decided to cut off contact with the outside world for a while. Ninety minutes before his self-imposed exile is to begin, he receives a phone call from a reporter. Congratulations, he says, you’re the first to call. The first? Yes, Finkel says, the story isn’t running until Saturday. No, the reporter says, it’s running on Sunday, and I know this because I’m writing it. Wait, says Finkel, what are you talking about? Reporter: What are you talking about? Finkel: The Editor’s Note. Reporter: I’m calling about the murders.
As Finkel’s own distortions were killing his career, there was a man down in Mexico telling everyone he met that he was Michael Finkel, reporter for the New York Times. That man was Christian Longo, one of the FBI’s Most Wanted, suspected in the murder of his wife and three young children. Longo had just been arrested.
Finkel developed an intense relationship with Longo, trying to understand himself as well as what had driven Longo to take his name (not to mention commit the acts of which he was accused, if he had done so). Their relationship was mutually exploitative and acknowledged as such, even as it also became – for Finkel at least – emotionally consuming. The narrative is recursive, repeating and often adding new information to old scenes, which left me torn between annoyance and respect for this as a narrative technique in cutting through the layers of any complex story. Finkel, exposed once as a liar, has an obvious investment in claiming to tell the truth and in compulsive self-disclosure about his thoughts, but this too is a pose, like Longo’s pose of truthfulness to Finkel, though Finkel doesn’t come out and say so.
The book is a quick read, but ultimately I wasn’t satisfied. Longo’s story at trial is obvious to anyone who’s seen a few episodes of Law and Order, and Finkel’s expressed surprise and disgust when it comes out on the stand is hard to credit. Either he was totally bamboozled by this guy, even after hearing the prosecution’s evidence, or he suspected what the story would be a few weeks/chapters earlier but withheld it for dramatic effect. And, in the end, Longo is a horrible human being; Finkel’s bond with him says much about human weakness and the desire for connection, but not much good about Finkel.
Tags:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
I hate this country
These crazies really do want to turn back the clock in every way. The worst are no different than the people who tortured Galileo into retracting his sun centered universe conclusion. I read an article recently by one of the fundamentalist leaders saying that blacks were better off under slavery. At least the zealots actually believe the shit they spew. I think a lot of the republican politicians know these people are nuts, but are willing to go along with and hurt the world for money and power.