Undermining Science: Suppression and Distortion in the Bush Administration

Seth Shulman's "Undermining Science: Supression and Distortion in the BushAdministration" undertakes a critical review of the approach that the George W. Bush administration took toward dealing with policy issues raised in the world of science. In essence, he argues that Bush's science policy was predicated on what was good for big business, his base for campaign donations, or reflected in his evangelical Christian religious beliefs. Accordingly, Shulman's core areas of investigation involve many of the hot button issues where science and religion met during the Bush administration: severely restricting stem cell research, professing abstinence only sexual education, reducing EPA regulations to relax pressure on corporations, relentlessly championing an anti-abortion stance, denying global warming to defeat the need for carbon reduction regulations, the age of the Earth and evolution, and a host of other issues. As a journalist, Seth Shulman offers lucid prose and a great sense of storytelling. He build a progressing sense of tension as a succession of events take place in the Bush administration's concerted effort to subjugate the quest for scientific truth to the political agenda of business and the evangelical right. In the process Shulman argues that this threat to scientific integrity also represents a threat to America's democratic institutions. The stories are not unknown, to be sure, but all of them spring from a set of priorities that aimed toward specific ideological objectives. While there are endnotes in this book, "Undermining Science" is largely a work of journalism rather than a work of scholarship. This is a disquieting book, and written as it was at the end of the Bush administration does not offer much sense of hope. Shulman sees the situation as inextricably partisan and not at all easily resolved.