The Blessing of Amazon.com Reviews

If an alien from Mars arrived on Earth, visited the United States, and wanted to understand the issues that exist at the intersection of politics and science in this country, he, she, or it would have a problem. You see, there are two popular books out that have garnered significant public attention and that purport to address this topic. Unfortunately, they come from diametrically opposed perspectives, and reach irreconcilably different conclusions. One book, as you may have guessed, is my own, The Republican War on Science. The other is Tom Bethell's Politically Incorrect Guide to Science. In essence, I argue that there's a serious science abuse problem from the political right and especially the Bush administration. Bethell, meanwhile, says the problem is coming from the left. For him, global warming is little more than a hoax, evolution is nonsense (though he offers no replacement hypothesis), and even AIDS in Africa ...