Candidates on Science

I listened with interest to the NPR story about science-related positions of Obama and McCain. Listen to the podcast at that link as the text differs.

Now, you can search scienceblogs, or just all blogs, or for instance, DailyKos diaries and learn about details of the two candidates' stands on science, and will then see how wonderfully deceptive was the McCain representative on this show. But he betrayed himself by using one particular word:

Holtz-Eakin says McCain's time in the Senate has made him comfortable with scientists who may have politically unwelcome views. "He [McCain] has always felt that sound science is a foundation of good public policy," he said. "He believes deeply that the science should be the science. Legislators can then learn from that science, and go forward and deliver good public policies."

That word is "sound", as in "sound science". Everyone who has read Chris Mooney's book "The Republican War On Science" knows that this phrase is one of the typical Republican Orwellian concoctions, a phrase that means opposite from what the unatuned listener thinks it means:

Oh well. Instead, the frame of Kuo's article is that "No one, however, is sure what 'sound science' means." Wrong, wrong, wrong: It is a term that has been strategically introduced into the discourse by the right, and it means something very specific to conservatives. If that's accurate--and my analysis is very thorough--then a journalist should say it plainly, instead of pretending that no one knows what the phrase means and then relying upon quotes from people like myself to give "opinions" as to what it might mean.

Granted, there's one piece of news in Kuo's piece that I found useful: Apparently Republican pollster Frank Luntz has a book coming out in which he recommends the use of the term "sound science" to his flock...which is my point exactly, and which provides still more evidence that Kuo could have used to show that this is a term embraced on the political right.

Never, ever believe that a Republican uses English words with the same meanings as normal people use.