Here is an article–a hatchet job, really–against private groups, industry, scientists and typical individuals who understand that global warming is hardly a settled issue. The article is by Sharon Begley, who writes about science for Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal. What the article doesn’t tell you is that when Sharon Begley writes about science, she generally has the long knives out for conservatives (and the pom-poms out for her own pet causes).

In previous articles, she has taken gratuitous swipes at conservative positions and scientific studies that appear to affirm conservative ideas. A 1990 article of hers was recognized by the far-left Population Institute. In a May article, she decides that studies of abstinence education are pretty much Kabuki from the conservative think tanks. Then there’s simple sloppy thinking on display, as in this article in which she pretty much dismisses the entire field of evolutionary psychology on the basis of what she read in one book (swallowing whole the theories of one person even as she scrutinizes the details of methods of those with whom she obviously disagrees).

Having said all that, let me also say that from what I can find, Sharon Begley is overall a talented writer and a smart person, and most of her writing avoids the ideological in favor of giving clear explanations of scientific topics to the layman. (Here’s a nice essay about the Riemann hypothesis, for instance.) But that doesn’t excuse her advocacy in articles presented as unbiased news. She ought to stop that, or label her opinions as opinions.

Politics and science should be related only to the extent that science–real and settled science–ought to influence those few public polices that have to do with applied science. The current liberal meme is that conservatives are anti-science. (See this link for excerpts here of her shilling for that.) Begley is just carrying water for her ideological colleagues. She is propagandizing, not informing, and that’s a shame.

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