Three Days To Go: Speak the Words

One of the rewarding things about publishing The Republican War on Science has been to sit back and watch as the book's title phrase has caught on. Now and then one finds bloggers using the words "Republican war on science" without any attribution--which is fine with me. Meanwhile, "war on science" panels are now popping up at conferences. The phrase hasn't exactly achieved the exalted status of other book titles-turned-expressions like "tipping point," of course. But it has taken on a modest life of its own. Politicians are using it too. For example, at the Yearly Kos science panel in Las Vegas, Wesley Clark referred to the "Republican war on science." And now, the latest acolyte is House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, who authored this post on the Hill Blog about the FDA's latest Plan B move. "The Republican war on science suffered a defeat today when the Food and Drug Administration finally approved Plan B for over-the-counter purchase," Pelosi's entry begins. For what it's worth, I don't entirely agree with Pelosi's point here. I would actually argue that the "war on science" is one reason the FDA came up with the bogus idea of imposing age limits on Plan B's availability in the first place. But I will forgive Pelosi for this minor oversight given the title of her post. The significance of Pelosi's statement goes beyond mere words, of course. That Democrats are adopting this language suggests to me that they think science issues offer a potent means of criticizing the party in power, potentially tying together topics ranging from stem cells to global warming and helping to reinforce the image of a president who's out of touch with the best available information (thus in turn linking the "war on science" to central political issues of the day like Iraq and Katrina). Given that I have become increasingly convinced that certain politicians must pay an actual price at the ballot box for their misuses and abuses of science, I'm certainly not about to discourage this approach. However, I would strongly advise that, while adopting "war on science" language, Democrats cease forthwith using the phrase "sound science," which many of them seem quite addicted to. As I detail in Chapter 6 of the book, that phrase does not mean what some Democrats apparently think it means. And they are shooting themselves in the foot by using it.