A Lethal Mixture: Science and the Radical Right

Filed in Science and Health by on April 23, 2009

Earlier this month Alabama’s à la Rob wrote about a new “textbook” for homeschoolers, Facts, Nor Fear: Teaching Children About The Environment. It’s really not humorous when non-scientists delve into science.

It is valuable as a model of propaganda technique in general, and of anti-regulatory rhetorical strategies in particular. Its method mostly consists of amassing anecdotes, omitting unfriendly evidence (while preaching about respect for “science”), and keeping strict silence about topics that cannot be easily spun. There’s not a peep about toxic or nuclear waste, for instance, or about human health problems stemming from pollution.

This “textbook” is so off the wall that it credited the Bald Eagle’s comeback, not to the banning of DDT, but to “a surge in American patriotism”. This is why children are not allowed to play with matches.

A few weeks later, à la Rob followed up with Hitler, Stlain and Rachel Carson?

Now I find that Aaron Swartz has the back story to a bizarre right-wing version of recent history, in which DDT is good for us, banning it has killed poor little innocents in Africa (via malaria), and Rachel Carson is the moral equivalent of Hitler.

When the Radical Right delves into subjects that are out of their expertise, the results would be laughable if not for the serious misinformation that they pass on: think Teagbagging, Creationism and Global Warming. Now their bashing environmental science. Just another example of why children are told not to run with scissors.

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A Dad, a husband and a data guru

Comments (3)

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  1. Unstable Isotope says:

    The bashing of environmental science is nothing new to Republicans.

    I believe when Crutzen, Rowland and Molina won the Nobel Prize for their work on atmospheric chemistry and formation of the ozone hole, Inhofe denounced them on the floor of the Senate. In fact, the Montreal Protocol is one example of successful world response to a climate issue.

    Last year was the 100th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s birth. These same jokers blocked a resolution honoring her work accusing her of being a mass murderer.

  2. Alarob says:

    Thanks for the notice, but I must offer a correction: The book does NOT credit the Bald Eagle’s comeback to “a surge in American patriotism”; it makes no mention of the subject at all. I was speculating as to how the authors might respond if challenged to explain the eagle’s comeback, and proposed the patriotism theory for them. It was an attempt to satirize their notion of “fact-based education.”

  3. nemski says:

    Boy oh boy, trying to write posts while sitting w/ the boy doing his homework. My bad.