We’ve been told conservatives don’t believe in science and that there’s a “Republican war on science.”
But John Tierney, who’s written about science for The New York Times for 25 years and now writes for the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, told me in my latest online video, “The real war on science is the one from the left.”
What about President George W. Bush banning government funding of stem cell research?
“He didn’t stop stem cell research,” Tierney reminds me. “The government wouldn’t fund it. It turned out that it really didn’t matter much.” Private funding continued and, so far, has not discovered much.
Some research on genetically modified foods became taboo because of protests from the left. That may have prevented a second Green Revolution to feed Africa.
Scientists can’t even talk about whether genes affect intelligence without being threatened by the left. Political scientists who continued to investigate the topic are screamed at on college campuses, the way Charles Murray, author of “The Bell Curve,” has been.