Science, Society, and So-Called Socialist Plants
Lawmakers who see science as a challenge to their authority seek to cripple it. The consequences could be devastating.
Some societal changes are sudden, while others creep up more slowly. On the surface, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) recent decision to allow the agricultural industry to keep using chlorpyrifos — a controversial pesticide linked to neurological problems in children — doesn’t seem shocking. After all, the story of big chemical companies locked in battle with environmental scientists is one as old as modern America. But if you look closer, you might see the signs of a much larger shift.
The battle over chlorpyrifos was won with a new tactic. Instead of attacking individual studies, like tobacco companies battling cancer research in the 1970s, the supporters of chlorpyrifos were helped by politicians who quietly reset the rules of science.
The seeds of this change were planted more than a year ago when Trump’s EPA proposed a far-reaching transparency policy. Under the agency’s new guidelines, scientists must publish the raw, non-anonymized data used in their research. The catch is that in long-term human studies, this raw data includes the medical history of hundreds of people — details that scientists have…
