Inconvenient Science | The New Ledger

One of the largest dead-horse memes of the last eight years was the “Republican war on science,” so much so that President Obama made a point of saying that with his inauguration, “the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over.” Animated primarily by the Bush administration’s policy positions on funding for two key areas — stem cells and global warming — it’s a descriptive term that becomes laughable upon closer inspection. Just five years after Vice Presidential nominee John Edwards claimed that “when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve will get up out of that wheelchair and walk again,” the president’s stem cell policy has been thoroughly vindicated, and is now so obviously the correct decision that Obama’s much-heralded path may be even more restrictive on research funding. And incidents like Alan Carlin’s show that when it comes to the environment, this has never been about involving the broadest range of intelligent, non-partisan voices on science, but instead driving a consistent public relations meme to the people, tolerating no dissent.