The Ever-Increasing Misuse of Science UPDATED

Chris Mooney's great piece on the role of pseudoscience ideology in the discussion of scientific problems is just out in Columbia Journalism Review. Mooney highlights several particularly eggregious cases in which "moral seriousness" (the new Bush/Kass pseudonym for "neocon-friendliness") trumps rigorous science, e.g. the abortion/breast cancer link. Simultaneously, Art Caplan saw this piece in New York Review of Books on the same book that Mooney is discussing. NYRB also discussed the Union of Concerned Scientists' own manuscript on the same phenomenon.