"A Celebration Of Ignorance"

[MisterP]

10. interestingly as late as ~1996 there was a big role for scientists in the GOP

everyone hit the roof over the telescopist with the naughty shirt, but the Science Wars saw "race realists" running around; even the Kochs tie their chemical training to their Powellite fascism (what are they, Herbert Spencer?)

in fact it was these conservative scientists, with their boundary-policing against "interpretivist" scientists and "holist" disciplines and their long tradition of being whitecoats-for-hire, that are the main driver behind warming denial--they're all Tobacco Institute alums

the Kehoes of this world don't need to hide their reports or cherrypick their data: they just need to say "We need to see the evidence first": what they massage is science itself, its processes: if the fish are downstream from the reactor, you emphasize acute doses; if you're selling Americans on plutonium you note that even just your skin stops the alpha and beta particles; if someone dies at the plant you wait a little before Geigering them at autopsy, after replacing the "faulty" equipment

but several factors reshuffled this situation by 1996: the Tobacco Institute was dissolved and its alums dispersed (to our everlasting grief); Gingrich had permanently reshaped the GOP, absorbing the Dixiecrats; the fundies expanded into the burbs to recoup from the massive televangelist scandals; the Cold War was definitively over and the "rightsizing massacre" put hundreds of thousands of scientists and engineers out of work as military doctrines shifted from 10,000-mile bombers and 310,000-lb payloads to brushfires like Bosnia and Haiti

it's more complicated than "America doesn't like science no more"