Journalists assigned to cover the April 25, 2006, debate over hurricanes and global warming in Monterey, California, may have been justifiably confused. The panel - part of the American Meteorological Society’s twenty-seventh meeting on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology - pitted two distinguished scientists convinced that global climate change has already intensified the average hurricane against two other distinguished scientists who question the reliability of the data used to draw this conclusion. Chris Landsea of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a skeptic of any strong link between hurricane strength and climate change, memorably captured the state of scientific uncertainty when he said, “Everyone involved in this panel discussion is searching for the truth, and I want to compliment everyone for doing that.” He continued: “I get along personally with everyone involved and I want to continue that - even if they're wrong.”

The debate over whether and to what extent global warming may be influencing the behavior of the world’s hurricanes is scientifically complex, rife with data issues, and superimposed atop a disciplinary rift between climate scientists and hurricane forecasters as well as a politically charged debate over what, if anything, needs to be done about it. Whatever relationship is ultimately found to exist between hurricanes and climate change, it will inevitably be complex and statistical. Global warming (defined as an average increase in global temperatures) can never be determined to “cause” a specific storm. However, global warming may affect a great many environmental factors that could, in turn, strengthen hurricanes on average and increase their destructive potential.

First, there’s evidence that global warming will make (or has already made) storms stronger for thermodynamic reasons. Furthermore, if global warming increases the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere then hurricanes - which cause heavy precipitation and sometimes massive flooding - may produce more rain; similarly, if global warming causes a significant rise in sea level, destructive hurricanes may penetrate further inland. Based on what we already know about global warming, such changes are considered likely in the coming decades, yet the importance of other factors remains much more obscure. Consider the effect of an El Nino year, characterized by strong warming in the tropical Pacific ocean off the coast of South America: It tends to suppress hurricanes in the North Atlantic but increase them in the Eastern Pacific. So how will global warming alter the frequency and strength of what scientists refer to as the El Nino-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO? At this point the question isn’t settled, although scientists suspect that there will probably be an effect.

Scientific Uncertainty and the Tyranny of the News Peg

What does it all add up to? A true headache even for the most seasoned science reporter. “Journalism isn’t used to these kinds of problems,” remarks Andrew Revkin of the New York Times, who has covered the hurricane-global warming debate. He continues: “The great strength of the global warming argument lies in the balance of the evidence. The closer you bore into specific impacts like hurricanes, however, the more equivocal the science gets.” In the face of such complexity, it may seem tempting to pronounce that an utter mismatch exists in this case between the culture of journalism and the culture of science - that, in other words, meaningful reporting on the hurricane-global warming controversy is doomed from the start. In fact, that would be going too far.

Our examination of hurricane-global warming coverage across the national trend-setting newspapers and major regional papers found several noteworthy articles accurately detailing the complexity of the science. At the same time, however, we found some reporters—sometimes in the context of the same stellar writing—building their stories around emotional conflict between scientists, a tendency that drives the researchers themselves to become quite angry at the media.

In truth, however, scientists’ complaints about journalists stirring up or even exacerbating personal controversies capture only one problem with media coverage of the hurricane-global warming link. A more overarching issue is this: Although journalists have framed the story from three main angles—an emphasis on breaking scientific news (defined by the release of a study at Science or Nature), an emphasis on conflict between scientists (by playing up personal tensions at conferences), and an emphasis on government accountability (the control of media statements made by agency scientists)—in each case they have been far too trapped by what Revkin has called the “tyranny of the news peg.”

Motivated by a need to appear objective and cautious, journalists have tried to tie their coverage too closely to breaking events or controversy, a pattern that can be very ill suited to a complex scientific topic like the hurricane-global warming issue. Unfortunately, such coverage sacrifices key elements that readers need most, especially as the 2006 hurricane season enters its peak months of August and September: Sustained attention, a strong emphasis on scientific context, and then—even in the face of inevitable and undeniable scientific uncertainty—an integrated discussion of policy options.

A Connection to Global Warming?

Hurricanes have struck North America and the Caribbean from time immemorial; in 1502, during his fourth voyage to the New World, Christopher Columbus dodged a hurricane in the Caribbean Sea. The contemporary focusing event for hurricanes in the U.S. came in 1992, when Hurricane Andrew hammered the Bahamas, Florida, and Louisiana, causing an estimated 26.5 billion dollars in damage. Andrew represented something of an anomaly for its era, however; scientists now believe that a “new normal” for hurricane activity in the North Atlantic began in 1995.

Since then, news organizations have turned hurricane season into an annual ritual, with correspondents descending on the Gulf Coast region every August and September. The stakes were raised dramatically in the year 2004, when an unprecedented four storms—Charley, Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne—flattened Florida, costing tens of billion of dollars in insured and uninsured damage. After 2004, few expected that the 2005 North Atlantic season could actually be worse, but of course, it was. A record 28 storms occurred last year, among them monsters like Katrina, Rita, and Wilma, which had the lowest central pressure of any known hurricane in the North Atlantic, a key measure of storm intensity.

Dramatically active North Atlantic hurricane seasons like 2004 and 2005 inevitably trigger speculation about a possible role for global warming—and even before the aforementioned 2005 studies addressed the topic, the theoretical reasons for suspecting an influence were clear. Although many factors affect hurricane strength and the regions in which they occur, scientists have understood since at least the 1950s that hurricanes are fundamentally driven by warm ocean water - that they are, as MIT hurricane expert Kerry Emanuel has put it, “heat engines.”

A hurricane’s inflowing winds draw heat energy from the ocean through the process of evaporation, which locks so-called “latent heat” into molecules of water vapor. At the storm’s eye wall, the moist, warm and spiraling air rises in thick cumulonimbus clouds, fueling a dramatic pressure drop that pulls winds inward still faster along the sea surface. Meanwhile, higher in the atmosphere, the latent heat is released as “sensible heat,” warming the rising air and raising it still higher. In an intensifying hurricane whose central pressure is dropping, stronger inflowing winds trigger still more evaporation, leading to still more rising air, more latent heat release, and so on.

Given these fairly basic processes, many scientists consider it little more than common sense that if you increase the temperature of the ocean (as global warming has not only been predicted but demonstrated to do) then all else being equal, you will also increase the potential intensity that the average hurricane can achieve. (Whether you would increase the total number of storms is a different and more knotty question, and one that scientists have made less progress on.) And in fact, theoretical and computer modeling studies had long suggested that hurricanes would strengthen as global temperatures rose, and that their levels of precipitation would increase.

But the stakes increased considerably in 2005, with the publication of two prominent scientific papers - by MIT’s Kerry Emanuel in Nature and by Peter Webster of the Georgia Institute of Technology and his colleagues in Science - suggesting that this problem wasn’t merely one to be considered with an eye to the future; instead, it had already happened. The two studies triggered strong critical responses from many skeptical scientists, including Chris Landsea and others from the hurricane forecasting community, many of whom questioned the reliability of the historical data that Emanuel and Webster used in order to identify trends.

Framing Responsibility for Hurricane Katrina

Into this miasma wandered journalists, who had far more than complicated technical issues to grapple with. Within days of Katrina’s landfall, a framing contest began to spin the still uncertain science in politically advantageous ways. The Emanuel study came out three weeks before Katrina made landfall; the Webster study eight days before Rita hit. On the one hand, a who’s who of Democratic leaders including Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Jimmy Carter cited the recent scientific findings to warn that global warming had contributed to the hurricane problem, and to push for action on greenhouse gas emissions.

Variations on this message appeared in two September columns by Nicholas Kristof and two editorials at The New York Times, but also in work by columnists at the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post. Skeptics responded by disputing the scientific evidence and insisting that no serious cuts in emissions were required. “There is no relationship between global warming and the frequency and intensity of Atlantic hurricanes. Period,” Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote, rather incautiously, in early September. Others suggested the real focus should be on adapting coastal areas to the likelihood of future disasters. Later would come reports of personal fights between scientists, and allegations of suppression of dissent at government agencies.

Amidst the political rhetoric and opinion-page debate, many of the science reporters we spoke with for this article believed that in the weeks after Katrina their job was to cover the nature of the science, rather than the dramatic framing of policy implications. “It’s all kind of predictable,” said Mike Toner of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “You know which side someone is on, so the only new element in all of this is data, is scientific research.” Andrew Revkin of The New York Times also expressed skepticism about how advocates had been using the hurricane-climate issue: “Environmentalists and some scientists are trying to now frame hurricanes as the key thing. Back in the 1990s it was the burning Amazon, then it was the melting Arctic, and now it’s the stronger hurricane story.”

Most of the coverage by science writers clustered around the September 16 release of the Webster study in Science, though some reports about the Emanuel study in Nature appeared pre-Katrina. The format for spot news was familiar: Describe the main findings of the study as the lead and middle portion of the article; and then connect the work to any previously published findings. In many cases, articles ended with dissenting comments from scientists, but in shorter articles no counter arguments were included. At least partly addressing this weakness, science writers also wrote technical backgrounders, most of which appeared in the second half of September and early October. In these articles, they tried to draw readers away from the immediacy of the events, and to interpret the debate over the emerging science.

Contextualizing Uncertainty

Science writers, however, faced two major challenges. First, they had to counter the widespread (and incorrect) belief that global warming could be said to directly “cause” a single event like Katrina. In a September 24 backgrounder for The New York Times, Andrew Revkin went with this effective description: “The murkiness arises because the relationship between long-term warming of the climate and seas is only perceptible in statistical studies of dozens of storms, not in the origin or fate of any particular storm.”

Unfortunately, in several articles, reporters appeared to actually confuse the issue of how to understand global trends in hurricane intensity with the question of what might have specifically caused individual hurricanes. For example, in an October 22 article for the Boston Globe, Beth Daley opened by describing the Nature and Science studies, but then transitioned into discussing the conditions in the Caribbean that might have contributed to Katrina’s and Rita’s destructive power. At no point in the article, however, did Daley draw a bright line for readers between long term trends in hurricane intensity and the causes of any specific hurricane or its behavior. Later, in Time magazine’s much noted April cover story on global warming, reporter Jeffrey Kluger fell into the same trap, implying a causal relationship between global warming and Tropical Cyclone Larry, a powerful storm that had just struck Australia.

The second challenge involved relaying the disagreement between scientists in a way that improved on the standard “he said, she said” formula. Context is needed when applying this routine; without a careful dose of details, readers will be left with a cloud of unspecified doubt, as sometimes happened in post-Katrina coverage. (In this case, the most extreme examples took the form of reports filed by the major news networks, where the accent on visuals and drama, and the brevity of the reports, made addressing complexity almost impossible.)

On the other hand, one journalist who successfully went beyond the basic “he said, she said” formula was Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post. In covering the Science study, Eilperin searched around for a researcher who appeared to be going through a process of conversion based on the new findings. She turned to Florida International University scientist Hugh Willoughby, who described it as difficult to find any holes in the new study. “Frequently scientific discoveries force people to reassess how they view something,” said Eilperin of her method. “The fact that some of the former skeptics are willing to go on record and say that they might be changing their minds provides readers with a better context for what is going on.”

In September and October, other news beats also picked up on the global warming and hurricane angle. At the Washington Post, for example, stories ran in the local sections about community meetings focused on the potential threat to the Chesapeake Bay area. Across several papers, foreign correspondents covered statements from European officials about the need for immediate U.S. action on global warming, and business writers reported on calls from the insurance industry for a rethinking of coastal development as well as for limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Veteran science writer Cornelia Dean focused in three articles for The New York Times on coastal development. One of these reports mentioned the connection between global warming and rising ocean levels and another made a brief mention of the suggested link to hurricanes, but neither topic comprised a central focus.

But by November 2005, as no new studies emerged from the major journals and the political clamor subsided, science reporters and their colleagues at other news beats found themselves without a convenient news peg. (It wouldn’t be until early 2006 that journalists would turn to conferences or agency allegations as additional coverage opportunities.) As a consequence, with the exception of a handful of articles, the hurricane-climate issue disappeared from the pages of the agenda-setting newspapers, despite its potential significance.

Between August 30 and the end of October 2005, 19 news stories and opinion articles on the topic ran at The New York Times and Washington Post. Yet between November 2005 and August of this year, only 25 total articles have followed, and 6 of these included only incidental mentions based on reviews of TV programs, documentaries, or books. In comparison, during the same period, hundreds of articles have focused on the political dimensions of Katrina related to race, poverty, recovery efforts, and government competence.

Forward Looking Policy Coverage?

After the destruction of New Orleans by a hurricane and the publication of two major studies suggesting that human activities might have made the average hurricane more intense, news organizations needed to integrate the scientific debate with a serious discussion of the possible policy options, even in the face of ongoing scientific uncertainty. Hurricanes could not necessarily be entirely dismissed as random acts of God, or “whims of nature,” as President Bush described them in his address to the nation from New Orleans. Instead, serious scientific evidence, however contested, suggested that the destructive impacts of hurricanes might have a human component, and that that human component would increase over time.

So the obvious question to ask should have been: Is cutting down on greenhouse gases a good way of addressing potentially growing hurricane risks? Or, given that a dramatic concentration of human greenhouse gas emissions are already in the atmosphere, committing us to a significant degree of warming already, do we have no choice but to simply adapt to hurricane risks through measures such as stronger levee and seawall construction, better evacuation routes and building codes, restoration of natural barriers, or perhaps restricting insurance for some coastal areas? These themes were scattered across the bulk of articles filed at the different news beats, but because they remained disconnected and fragmented, readers had little hope of connecting the dots and understanding the relevance of the information. Fragmentation also likely dampened a sense of urgency about the problem.

Perhaps not surprisingly given the limitations in news coverage, the only place where all of these separate factors came together was on opinion pages. For example, Nicholas Kristof, in his two September 2005 columns at The New York Times, and Ronald Brownstein in a column the same month at the Los Angeles Times, both cited the Nature and Science studies to warn that even in the face of scientific uncertainty, policy discussions needed to take place. “It’s nuts to ignore a threat just because its hard to measure,” wrote Kristof in a September 23 column. “We spend about $500 billion a year on a military budget, yet we don’t want to spend peanuts to protect against climate change, which is a greater potential threat than any foreign military power.”

In his column, Brownstein opened by providing background on the scientific debate, but then transitioned into a policy discussion, asserting: “Indeed, the implications are alarming enough that Washington should begin considering them before all the evidence is in.” On coastal development, he quoted MIT’s Emanuel as follows: “Everyone in my field feels strongly that this is the most important question, almost independent of whether there is global warming.” Brownstein then closed by placing the debate on greenhouse gas emissions in the context of the 2005 federal energy bill, from which mandatory industry emissions cuts and improved fuel standards for cars were ultimately dropped.

By e-mail, we asked Kristof about the possibility for more “precautionary” journalism when it came to covering emerging science with large potential implications for society. “There’s a risk that writing about risks in the future will end up being sensationalist or exaggerated,” he wrote from South Africa, where he was on assignment. “But . . . frankly the public is better served by information about future risks that they can do something about than about those that have already played out.”

If columnists could put these angles together last fall, why couldn’t science writers? In combination with tight deadlines and space, science writers’ need to appear objective and cautious in news reporting led to the heavy reliance on the release of a new study to justify filing a story. The perceived scientific uncertainty concerning the relationship between hurricanes and global warming also made science writers cautious about how to judge the newsworthiness of the issue. “The science is not absolutely settled on this question, and that’s what keeps this from being a bigger story,” said Eilperin of the Washington Post. She continued: “There should be a concern that if you get too far out ahead of the science, if you hype up the story and the science, then you misled readers.” But shouldn’t it be possible for journalists to fully describe scientific uncertainty and yet also introduce readers to the kinds of policy considerations that emerge if one takes a precautionary orientation towards the latest research?

Conflicts and Conferences as Front Page News

With objectivity and caution the guiding norms, in early 2006 some science writers turned to coverage of scientific conferences as their next news peg. In these contexts, outside of the normal vetting process and controlled discourse of the scientific journal article, uncertainty as well as personal conflicts can mushroom. “It’s entirely normal that the first time a scientist presents his results is at a conference like this,” said Kerry Emanuel when asked about the matter in Monterey. “You can’t demand published results [at a conference], nor can you tell journalists they can’t come to a conference.”

Valerie Bauerlein’s front page February 2 Wall Street Journal article represents both the perceived good and bad of this type of coverage. Reporting on the American Meteorological Association meetings in Atlanta, Bauerlein’s article opens with a heavy accent on interpersonal conflict between scientists, a tone amplified by the Page One headline: “Cold Front: Hurricane Debate Shatters Civility of Weather Science.” At the conference, wrote Bauerlein, the reasons for the deadly 2005 hurricane season “were almost too hot to handle.” She then turned to criticisms of the Webster study in Science, quoting longtime Colorado State University hurricane specialist William Gray as saying that “Judith Curry [one of Webster’s co-authors] just doesn't know what she’s talking about,” and then quoting Curry with the reaction that Gray suffered from “brain fossilization.”

The use of scientific conferences and meetings as news pegs also appeared at the Houston Chronicle, the Tampa Tribune, the Denver Post, and several smaller papers, but none of these articles came even close to offering the same kind of opening fireworks. More than any other article, it seems clear that Bauerlein’s piece is the one that scientists have in mind when they condemn the media for overemphasizing personal battles rather than seriously covering the science. Hurricane specialist Chris Landsea of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says his main reaction to the Wall Street Journal piece was “sadness.” He continues: “It’s unfortunate that the debate can kind of devolve into that kind of name calling.”

Despite the dramatic headline and opening paragraphs, as a backgrounder, the 2059 word article by Bauerlein went on to provide some of the best insight into the technical dispute. Yet, the Wall Street Journal's decision to highlight personal conflict in the opening and headline to Bauerlein’s article helped to feed a culture of distrust between scientists and journalists. (We contacted Bauerlein to talk to her about the story, but as per Wall Street Journal policy, were referred to her editor for comments.)

Holding Government Agencies Accountable

In addition to personal conflict, journalists found another hook for the hurricane-global warming story, once again tying their coverage to controversy, although this time of an institutional rather than interpersonal nature. They began to cover charges that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had taken a stance of unjustifiable denial of any hurricane-global warming link, and perhaps even had suppressed scientists within the agency who dissented from this perspective. The “government accountability” angle certainly merited coverage, but once again, it created a formula in which journalists could not pay adequate attention to policy options.

The origins of how government accountability became newsworthy traces back to official agency reaction immediately following Katrina. In Senate testimony on September 20, National Hurricane Center director Max Mayfield stated that the current period of intense Atlantic hurricane activity was “not enhanced substantially” by global warming. Then, as the 2005 hurricane season drew to a close, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (of which the hurricane center is part) held a press conference where an agency scientist told reporters that warmer ocean temperatures could be attributed solely to natural climate fluctuations and were “not related to greenhouse warming.” In a press release and in the official agency magazine, NOAA went even further, asserting that the views expressed were a matter of consensus at the agency. In fact, however, no such consensus existed.

Still, the simmering controversy at NOAA did not appear in news coverage until after parallel revelations at the National Aeronautics and Space Agency emerged in early 2006. As first reported by Andrew Revkin in a January 29 article that ran as the lead story in the Sunday edition of The New York Times, NASA’s James Hansen claimed that public affairs officials at the agency had tried to block his ability to make public statements about the urgency of addressing climate change. The prominence of the Times article generated a flurry of follow-up reports at other major media outlets, while setting in motion a series of events that continued to give the story legs.

According to Revkin, when he broke the NASA story, he knew of similar allegations at NOAA, but he could not get a scientist at the agency to go on record—a scenario that he believes quickly changed. “I think after the NASA episode, it emboldened people to go public,” said Revkin. “The Hansen piece uncorked a bottle. It clearly made it easier for a lot of scientists to talk more freely.”

Hansen continued to stir the pot in statements made at a conference in New York, where he claimed he knew NOAA scientists who were afraid to speak out about efforts at information control—comments reported by Juliet Eilperin in a February 11 Washington Post article. With pressure building on NOAA, the stage was set for a February 16 article at The Wall Street Journal by Antonio Regalado and Jim Carlton. The clincher was a Web posting by NOAA administrators in which the agency backed away from the previous year’s statements about the existence a consensus view on hurricanes and global warming. An email followed the same day from the chief administrator to NOAA scientists encouraging them to “speak freely and openly.” Regalado and Carlton included in their story the first on-the-record allegations from NOAA scientists regarding agency efforts to control their statements to the media.

On April 6, Eilperin offered new reporting at the Post, with comments from additional NOAA-affiliated scientists alleging that since 2004 they had been required to clear all press requests with administration officials. In these articles, what had started as a controversy over the emerging science of hurricanes had morphed into a political story about whistle blowers, with an emphasis on the accountability and transparency of government agencies. The accountably frame brings to light important information while allowing journalists to ply their investigative instincts. Nevertheless, reports on the NOAA allegations once again remained disconnected from the context of the science or any discussion of the policy options, only perpetuating a fragmented narrative about the link between hurricanes and global warming and what to do about it.

Science, Policy, and Objectivity

The absence of an ideal narrative on hurricanes and global warming emerges from a complexity of reasons. With tight deadlines and many competing issues surrounding not only Katrina, but global warming generally, there never appeared to be enough time or space to move beyond the tyranny of the news peg. Moreover, the need for science writers to appear cautious and objective also limited the types of assertions they could make, which in turn hindered their ability to shift towards a discussion of policy options. Whereas columnists like Nicholas Kristof and Ronald Brownstein had license to write in the face of scientific uncertainty about the bigger picture, science writers needed credentialed experts to go on record emphasizing the need for a policy focus. For whatever reason, even though out-of-office political leaders like Al Gore and spokespeople for major environmental groups kept pushing this theme, they never gained standing as sources in news coverage. Science writers made oblique references to these political claims, but generally used them to set up their “just the scientific facts” backgrounders.

In the future, however, this just isn’t going to be good enough. Over the next decade or more, explaining the possible strategies for coping with intense hurricanes even in the face of uncertainty about the ways and extent to which hurricanes might be changing will pose a major challenge for news organizations. Reporters must strive to show the public not only the science in all of its complexity, but also to open a window on why addressing the problem matters and the choices the nation faces over how to do that. This will require balancing the desire to appear objective against the need for precautionary and forward-looking coverage - coverage that helps set the agenda for how we think about the possible effects of global warming. It will also require getting beyond the tyranny of relying on major new studies, personality conflicts, or overt political conflict as the primary means of defining what counts as newsworthy.

And just in time: Outside of the media spotlight, a vigorous discussion has already begun between scientists and policy analysts about the extent to which the emerging science on hurricanes and global warming does or does not justify an attempt to limit greenhouse gas emissions or adopt other precautionary policy measures. On the one hand, University of Colorado political scientist Roger Pielke, Jr. and his colleagues argue that by far the most important factors influencing our susceptibility to hurricanes are “growing population and wealth in exposed coastal locations.” When viewed in comparison with the urgent need to address this societally-induced vulnerability, they maintain that the question of whether or not hurricanes might themselves be growing stronger is quickly overshadowed in significance. On the other hand, in an article in the May issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, a group of leading climate scientists and hurricane experts claim that the balance of the evidence already suggests a human impact on hurricanes, and urge a more precautionary approach to policy.

Both sides of this debate worry about the vulnerability of coastal areas, but then the question becomes, Will they become even more vulnerable due to global warming, and if so, what should we do about it? These issues, while of massive importance, are routinely ignored by policymakers; for example, New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin has stated that “Katrina is the standard” when it comes to rebuilding the city’s levees, even though the more extreme global warming scenarios suggest that this could be woefully inadequate in the long term.

Responsibility for effectively covering these emerging policy questions should not rest solely with journalists. For example, Pielke suggests that improving coverage will require a rethinking of the role of scientists as communicators. “Scientists need to say why research about this is of public interest,” argues Pielke. “If the scientists being interviewed, and the journalists don’t include the policy context, it’s a little bit of a Rorschach test for the public, and it gets mapped on to the underlying ideological debate.” He points to a recent report by the British Royal Society that recommends that science journals, when releasing an important new study, also simultaneously publish a separate, peer-reviewed article that outlines the policy relevance of the work. When covering the release of future scientific studies, if journalists could simultaneously turn to authoritative, peer-reviewed assertions about what might be done in the policy realm, it might make it easier for them to move beyond a “just the science” approach.

Indeed, in late July a group of ten climate scientists and hurricane experts including Kerry Emanuel, Chris Landsea, Max Mayfield, Judith Curry, and Peter Webster issued a joint statement calling attention to the immediate policy implications of the hurricane problem. The group observed that although they currently disagree over whether hurricanes have measurably intensified due to global warming, that ongoing scientific debate should not distract from addressing the immediate problem of population growth and development in coastal regions. “We are optimistic that continued research will eventually resolve much of the current controversy over the effect of climate change on hurricanes. But the more urgent problem of our lemming-like march to the sea requires immediate and sustained attention,” wrote the group. “We call upon leaders of government and industry to undertake a comprehensive evaluation of building practices, and insurance, land use, and disaster relief policies that currently serve to promote an ever-increasing vulnerability to hurricanes.” The statement was covered by Andrew Revkin on July 25 as part of his paper’s weekly Science Times section, but to date, it has yet to be picked up by other major media outlets.

In sum, science writers continue to worry about how the issue of hurricanes and global warming is being used politically, and many also assert that caution demands the publication of more research before they can move ahead on the story. These are all legitimate concerns, and the pressure exerted by both editors and media watchdogs to not “take sides” is real. Yet given their specialization and experience, science writers are perhaps uniquely qualified to shield themselves from allegations of bias, and to interpret the policy implications of the subjects they're covering for readers. As long as they ground their stories in thorough, fair-minded reporting and do not stray into unsupported speculation or unnecessary argumentation, these journalists could provide a true public service. Such changes in how journalists and scientists negotiate what counts as news could mean that, when the next big storm hits, we have a chance to bring the policy questions into sharper focus. Otherwise, the public will be left with an all-too-familiar repeating narrative of conflict and doubt.

In another sense, though, Jones’ ruling is revolutionary. We live in a time when the findings of science themselves increasingly seem to be politically determined—when Democrat “science” is pitted against Republican “science” on issues ranging from evolution to global warming. By contrast, Jones’ opinion strikes a blow for the proposition that when it comes to matters of science, there aren’t necessarily two sides to every story.

Over the course of a lengthy trial, Jones looked closely at the scientific merits of “intelligent design"—the contention that Darwinian evolution cannot explain the biological complexity of living organisms, and that instead some form of intelligence must have created them. And in the end, the judge found ID utterly vacuous. “[ID] cannot be adjudged a valid, accepted scientific theory,” Jones wrote, “as it has failed to publish in peer-reviewed journals, engage in research and testing, and gain acceptance in the scientific community.”

ID critics have been making these same observations for years; so have leading American scientific societies. Meanwhile, investigative reporters and scholars studying the ID movement have demonstrated that it is, indeed, simply creationism reincarnated—all religion and no science. On the intellectual merits, ID was dead a long time ago. But before Judge Jones came along, it’s astonishing how hard it was to get that acknowledged, unequivocally, in public discussion of the issue.

Up until the Dover trial, well-funded ID proponents based at Seattle’s Discovery Institute had waged a successful media campaign to sow public doubts about evolution, and to convince Americans that a true scientific “controversy” existed over Darwin’s theory. And thanks in part to the conventions of television news, editorial pages, and political reporting—all of which require that “equal time” be allotted to different views in an ongoing political controversy—they were succeeding.

For example, a national survey conducted this spring by Ohio State University professor Matthew Nisbet in collaboration with the Survey Research Institute at Cornell University found serious public confusion about the scientific basis for “intelligent design.” A slight majority of adult Americans (56.3 percent) agreed that evolution is supported by an overwhelming body of scientific evidence, but a very sizeable proportion (44.2 percent) incorrectly thought the same of ID.

Ritualistically “balanced” news media coverage may not be the sole cause of such confusion, but it’s can hardly have helped. Consider just one of many examples of how journalists, in their quest for “objectivity,” have lent undue credibility to ID. The York Dispatch, one of two papers covering the evolution battle in Dover, Pennyslvania, repeatedly summarized the two sides of the “debate” thusly: “Intelligent design theory attributes the origin of life to an intelligent being. It counters the theory of evolution, which says that people evolved from less complex beings.” Here we witness the reductio ad absurdum of journalistic “balance.” Despite staggering scientific consensus in favor of evolution—and ample documentation of the religious inspiration behind the “intelligent design” movement—evolution and ID were paired together by the Dispatch as two competing “theories.”

Judge Jones took a thoroughly different approach, actually bothering to weigh the merits of competing arguments. He inquired whether an explanation that inherently appeals to the supernatural—as “intelligent design” does—can be scientific, and found that it cannot. He searched for published evidence in scientific journals supporting the contentions of the ID movement—and couldn’t find it. And in his final opinion, he was anything but “balanced.”

We have seen this pattern before. During the early 1980s, the evolution trial McLean v. Arkansas pitted defenders of evolutionary science against so-called “scientific creationists”—the precursors of today’s ID proponents. Today, few take the claims of “scientific creationism,” such as the notion that the earth is only a few thousand years old, very seriously. At the time, however, proponents of “creation science” were treated very seriously by members of the national media covering the trial. According to a later analysis of the coverage by media scholars, reporters generally tried to create a “balance” between the scientific-sounding claims of the “scientific” creationists and the arguments of evolutionary scientists.

But in the McLean decision, judge William Overton did no such thing. Rather, the judge carefully investigated whether “creation science” fit the norms of science at all—and found that it did not. Overton therefore concluded that the attempt by the state of Arkansas to include “creation science” in science classes was a transparent attempt to advance a sectarian religious perspective, as barred by the First Amendment. Now, Judge Jones is following in Overton’s footsteps very closely. In his decision, Jones cites the McLean case repeatedly.

If there’s an underlying moral to be derived from Judge Jones’ decision, then, it may be this. It’s very easy to attack well-established science through a propaganda campaign aimed at the media and the public. That’s precisely what “intelligent design” proponents have done—and they're hardly alone in this. However, it’s much more difficult for a PR attack on established science to survive the scrutiny of a serious, independent judge.

That hardly means that courts are more qualified than scientists to determine the validity of evolutionary theory, or other scientific findings. But in their investigative rigor, their commitment to evidence, and their unhesitating willingness to decide arguments on their merits, courts certainly have much more in common with the scientific process than many of today’s major media journalists do. The fact that today Judge Jones has become America’s leading arbiter of what counts as science certainly underscores his own intellectual seriousness. But it also exposes the failure of other gatekeepers.

It was a serious fear, but I decided to overcome it, for two reasons. First, Bethell’s book is already getting plenty of attention. It’s selling well, and one prominent conservative outlet, the Heritage Foundation, has even sponsored an event to promote it. And second, precisely because of its misleading content, the publication of Bethell’s book represents a highly significant development that’s well worth remarking upon. The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science takes what is already a well-documented war on scientific knowledge from the political right in this country to a new level of intensity. In the process, it flushes out into the open the anti-science sentiments that are unfortunately nourished by all too many conservative Republicans today (although rarely by the party’s moderates).

Indeed, in some sense Bethell’s book provides a useful service. It offers, in one place, a nice catalogue of all the discredited arguments that are ritualistically used to undermine evolution, global warming, and much else that’s well established in modern science. Rather hilariously, if you look closely at the book’s cover image on Amazon.com you will see the tagline “Liberals have hijacked science for long enough. Now it’s our turn.” “Our turn” to “hijack science,” presumably. This revealing slogan has been changed for the final paperback version of the book—which now reads, “Liberals have hijacked science for long enough. It’s time to set the record straight"—but the Freudian slip remains memorialized on the Internet.

And sure enough, there’s plenty of science hijacking in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science. Take the chapter on global warming. The excellent science and statistics blogger Tim Lambert has proposed a game called ”global warming skeptic bingo,” in which all of the various discredited arguments that are repeatedly used to undermine the consensus view of human-caused climate change are arranged in a series of squares. Well, by my count Bethell manages to fill 9 out of 16 bingo squares with claims like the following: “Environmentalists not so long ago believed the earth was cooling"; and “satellite measurements of atmospheric temperatures do not agree with…surface readings.”

A closer look at the latter charge suggests that Bethell isn’t really interested in what science shows, but rather in compiling scientific-sounding arguments to bolster a political conclusion. Over the summer, several papers came out in Science showing that contrary to previous assertions, there does not appear to be any significant discrepancy between measurements of surface temperatures and of atmospheric temperatures—both more or less show the warming predicted by climate models. In other sections, Bethell’s book covers developments at least up to September of 2005, but it makes no reference to these publications, which undercut his claim that surface and atmospheric temperature readings are at odds.

Bethell’s attacks on evolution follow a similar pattern. Although I'm unaware of any online “anti-evolutionist bingo” games, if they existed many of Bethell’s arguments would no doubt be included. Indeed, Bethell has been attacking evolution for nearly 30 years; in a prominent 1976 Harper’s article he declared evolution to be “on the verge of collapse.” The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science employs many of the same arguments that Bethell made back then, such as the claim that the concept of natural selection amounts to a “tautology” and simply reflects a social philosophy prevalent during the intensely competitive and capitalistic Victorian era of Darwin’s time. Such arguments were ably debunked by Stephen Jay Gould in 1976, and they're no stronger now than they were then.

More generally, it is difficult to trust Bethell’s factual assertions about the lack of evidence for evolution (his is a purely negative argument) because he often misrepresents his sources. For instance, Bethell quotes the famed philosopher of science Karl Popper calling the concept of natural selection “almost tautological,” but does not inform readers that Popper later changed his mind about this. Similarly, he quotes a paper from Science to question the concept of bat evolution. In fact, the paper cited is about bat evolution, and seeks to explain how it may have occurred.

On other issues, Bethell is equally unreliable. In his discussion of the need to resume using DDT to prevent malaria in Africa, he fails to note that many mosquitoes have developed a resistance to the chemical, reducing its effectiveness (perhaps because such an admission would bolster the case for evolution). In debunking concerns about decreasing biodiversity, meanwhile, Bethell even has the gall to suggest that human beings may not be causing species extinctions: “Even in modern times, it is not possible definitively to attribute any given extinction to human activity.” On this point, I'd rather trust the National Academy of Sciences, which stated in 1995: “Species extinctions have occurred since life has been on earth, but human activities are causing the loss of biological diversity at an accelerating rate. The current rate of extinctions is among the highest in the entire fossil record, and many scientists consider it to have reached crisis proportions.”

Some of Bethell’s more general science policy arguments are almost as problematic. For instance, there’s his concept of a “priesthood of science,” an elite caste of scientific leaders whose words are taken as gospel and whose received wisdom never challenged. Alas, this mythic priesthood does not exist. The scientific process is inherently a contentious and antagonistic one, in which vast incentives exist for scientists to publish research that undermines what everyone thought was known and well established. In essence, the scientific process represents the institutionalization of doubt and skepticism. It is nothing like a priesthood.

Bethell also nourishes the misguided notion that journalists, when reporting on science, ought to act like Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein did when covering Watergate: They should be exposing bad science and looking for evidence of wrongdoing and scandal. This is fundamentally wrongheaded. It is within the scientific process itself that challenges to the veracity or accuracy of scientific work should be lodged, not in less critically equipped media venues. Bethell’s misleading book shows exactly why it’s a bad idea to turn non-expert journalists loose to evaluate scientific claims according to their own whimsy. That’s not to say that journalists reporting on science shouldn’t think critically themselves. But they should also understand and appreciate the strengths of the scientific process.

Finally, Bethell sneers at scientific “consensus,” noting that even if 99 percent of experts in a field accept a given theory, that doesn't make it automatically true. But this fact notwithstanding, consensus plays an important role in the scientific process. It is how our knowledge progresses. Scientific conclusions are eternally subject to revision, but when consensus develops, it is based upon repeated testing and retesting of an idea or theory—and that’s hardly something to be taken lightly. In fact, when it comes to pressing matters of public policy where decisions depend upon a clear understanding of the underlying science (such as global warming), we ignore scientific consensus positions at our own peril.

All of these arguments made by Bethell—the scientific ones as well as the science-policy oriented ones—are very problematic. But what’s most disturbing about The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science book is not the lack of scientific accuracy or its poor arguments. Rather, it’s the overall message that it preaches to conservative readers—in essence the following: “Don't trust the nation’s scientific community, they're a bunch of politicized liberals who are hooked on government funding.”

In making such an argument so brazenly, and with such zest, I believe that Bethell takes the “war on science” to a new level. Consider that in, 2004 when many of the nation’s leading scientists criticized the Bush administration for misuses and distortions of scientific information, the administration’s response was not to attack science itself or the individual scientists. Rather, the administration claimed to have the best interests of science at heart, and simply disagreed about the facts.

That veneer of respect for science is gone in Bethell’s book, which reeks of a deep distrust of science as it is currently conducted, and the nation’s scientific community generally. The book’s back cover calls scientists “white-coated, lab-cloistered purveyors of political correctness"—as if there is no merit to what they do, no process that ensures the testing of results to determine their durability and robustness. A radical disdain for the scientific establishment, and especially its dependence on government funding, is rampant in the book. And the scorn spreads to encompass the government’s own science-centered agencies as well; at one point Bethell even suggests that we may not need the Environmental Protection Agency.

Overall, then, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science is a very saddening and depressing read. While they have undoubtedly made mistakes, and certainly nourish individual biases just like all the rest of us, scientists in universities and in government have generally worked very hard and have—thanks to the scientific process—come up with a great deal of important and relevant knowledge. But along comes someone like Bethell and, in a book that’s likely to be read by a lot of people, radically distorts and undermines their conclusions and findings, while whipping up resentment of the scientific community among rank-and-file political conservatives. That Bethell is finding such a ready audience underscores the severe threat to the role of science in modern American life and, most importantly, in political decision-making.

Scores of “nonfiction” books, pseudo-documentaries, movies, and television programs notwithstanding, there is no good evidence to support claims that scores of Americans are regularly being kidnapped from their beds at night by alien beings. That’s the conclusion anyone applying a rigorous scientific methodology to such claims must reach—and it’s the conclusion of Harvard researcher Susan Clancy, who has studied alleged “abductees” in detail. But in her humane and funny memoir Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens (Harvard University Press, 2005), Clancy doesn't simply pose as another debunker. Discounting the factual validity of abduction claims is, for her, just the first step in a deeper and much more meaningful inquiry—the attempt to understand how it’s possible for ordinary people to actually believe something so outlandish in the first place. It’s here that Clancy not only demystifies a baffling cultural phenomenon, but also delivers insights into human nature itself.

Clancy got into studying this subject in an unexpected way. She started out researching whether it’s possible to entirely repress traumatic memories of childhood sexual abuse, and then “recover” those memories later through hypnosis—or alternatively, whether hypnosis itself might be generating a raft of false memories. The area was a “minefield” at the time, with widespread (and undocumented) allegations of satanic ritual abuse and sex-rings at day care centers proliferating in the national media. “Nursery schools were being shut down and teachers imprisoned because, after lengthy and suggestive questioning, children were describing bizarre episodes of abuse, some involving flying clowns and broomsticks and the killing of large animals,” writes Clancy, in her characteristically witty way.

As this passage suggests, Clancy and her Harvard mentors were firmly in the “skeptic” camp regarding such claims. But after Clancy published research examining whether women claiming recovered memories of sexual abuse were more susceptible to creating false memories in the lab, she was promptly labeled a “friend of pedophiles everywhere.” In such an incredibly politicized atmosphere, Clancy soon hit upon a “safer” way of testing false memory creation: Studying people whose memories couldn’t possibly reflect events that actually happened, as a kind of control group. Enter the alien abductees.

Crank and media calls aside, Clancy’s ad seeking research subjects—"Have you been abducted by aliens?” it read—netted some real people who suspected they had been. One “abductee” got Clancy in with a tight-knit group of fellow believers, opening the door for her to visit with them at a resort and conduct a large number of interviews. Hanging out with the wildly colorful abductees—one of whom paints quasi-pornographic alien pictures, another of whom is a “channeler"—she also met Budd Hopkins, a popular writer (and hypnosis practitioner) who has promoted dubious abduction stories. Clancy was not impressed by the crowd. “It was clear that Occam’s Razor, the principle of parsimony that underlies all scientific theory making, did not come naturally to these people,” she editorializes—sentiments she aired to the abductees one night after two drinks, only to find them completely ignored.

Still, Clancy was struck by how normal her subjects were—except for that business about the spaceships, the sexual molestation, the hybrid babies, and so forth. And so she begins to weave her explanation of how otherwise sane people could come to accept abduction accounts, and even believe that they themselves have been spirited away.

In Clancy’s account, a number of separate factors help set the stage for a transition into full-fledged abductee-hood. The first is the phenomenon of sleep paralysis, the widely prevalent but little understood condition in which REM sleep—the phase in which most dreaming occurs—simply malfunctions. Our bodies are paralyzed while we undergo REM sleep, and for good reason (lest we act out our dreams and injure ourselves). But in some small number of cases we can actually start to wake up before paralysis wears off, and yet still remain in a dreaming state.

What results is hallucination, often of some extremely scary stuff. In sleep paralysis you wake up in bed, feel paralyzed, and tend to sense a terrifying presence in your room. Sometimes you see something; sometimes you hear noises or even feel electrical shocks throughout your body. From alien abductee accounts, it is quite clear that many of these individuals have not only experienced sleep paralysis, but hallucinated terrifying alien visitations.

But sleep paralysis, alone, cannot fully explain how to grow an ordinary everyday American into an “abductee.” Clancy herself has experienced sleep paralysis (so has this reviewer), but neither of us claim that aliens dropped by our beds one night for a little light probing. The next step in the initiation into abductee-hood comes when the individual who has experienced a bout of sleep paralysis goes searching for an explanation of what happened—an internally satisfying way of rationalizing a shocking experience.

At this point the abductee-in-training may be rescued by someone who can explain sleep paralysis. Or, he or she may instead fall prey to the “cultural script” of alien abduction, a narrative that is extremely prevalent in the national media and consciousness, and constantly being reinforced. In a helpful chapter, Clancy delves into explaining where this script comes from, showing that mass abduction claims have always come after media treatments of alleged abductions, whether in movies, pseudo-documentaries, or “nonfiction” books. It’s a case study in the power of suggestion at work.

Although “flying saucer” tales go back much farther, alien abduction as an American cultural phenomenon appears to have begun in the 1960s, thanks to the popular TV series The Outer Limits, which in turn appears to have influenced “abductees” Betty and Barney Hill (who made their claims in 1964). The Hills’ story became a “media sensation,” touching off a wave of copycat abductee accounts. From there, it was a short step to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Whitley Streiber’s bestseller Communion, and any number of pseudo-documentaries on the Sci-Fi Channel. In an amusing passage, Clancy notes that thanks to the cultural diffusion of the alien abduction narrative, even her graduate students in Nicaragua (where she’s currently a visiting professor at the Central American Institute for Business Administration) know that aliens snatch humans from their beds in order to experiment and “make babies with you.”

But sleep paralysis and the abduction “script” don’t adequately explain how so many Americans can have such wacky beliefs. Clancy has to go further, because abductees themselves do. In their quest to understand what has befallen them—and often already suspecting alien abduction—many go out and get themselves hypnotized, whereupon they proceed to “remember” much more detail about their alleged visitors.

The trouble is, hypnosis isn’t a reliable way of recovering memories. Rather, it’s a great way of getting false memories planted by a suggestive hypnotist or therapist, who may already be a believer in alien abduction and asking leading questions. These false memories seem extraordinarily real; indeed, Clancy and colleagues have found that in recalling their traumatic “experiences,” alien abductees feel powerful emotions not unlike those of war veterans.

And it’s not just hypnosis that prompts false abduction claims. It’s also the people being hypnotized. Clancy’s research shows that alleged alien abductees are more likely than the general population to be fantasy prone; i.e., they have “fertile imaginations, day-dream a lot, and report very rich visual imagery.” Such characteristics make abductees unusually susceptible to hypnotic suggestion. Meanwhile, and relatedly, abductees are also more prone to create false memories to begin with. Shown a list of words—"sour,” “candy,” “sugar,” “bitter"—they were more likely than other subjects to falsely remember that a related word ("sweet”) had also been on the list.

By this point in Abducted, Clancy has woven together an impressive array of interlocking factors—sleep paralysis, the cultural script of alien abduction, hypnosis, fantasy proneness, a proclivity to create false memories—that have considerable explanatory power when it comes to accounting for the phenomenon of alien “abduction” in modern America. But she still isn’t satisfied. For as she notes in a crucial passage,

...this analysis is still insufficient for an understanding of the phenomenon. As the abductees themselves would say, “If you’re telling me it didn’t happen to me, that I made it up, why in God’s name would I want to?”

Why indeed? After all, being abducted by aliens doesn't sound like a very pleasant experience. First, you’re attacked by monsters in your bedroom at night. You're terrified as they pin you down and stick needles in your abdomen, or painfully extract semen from your testes, or stick metal tubes up your nose and puncture your brain cavity. Not to mention the molestation. At one point, albeit briefly, Clancy entertains the notion that the abductees who make all this stuff up might be closet masochists.

But she quickly dispenses with it, because it turns out there’s a very obvious reason why abductees would want to make all this stuff up. They're getting something very profound out of it. It’s not just media attention; it’s spiritual payoff. Some subjects even told Clancy that being abducted was the best thing that had ever happened in their lives; as one puts it:

The journey has enabled me to discover my place in the universe. I had felt abandoned, reduced to nothing but a sperm sample. Yet today I feel a tremendous expansiveness. In my total aloneness, I have discovered a oneness with the beings.

What are abductees getting from their experiences? Why, human meaning, of course. The sense that there are alien beings out there who, despite violating any number of ethical rules governing human subject experimentation, nevertheless somehow have our best interests at heart. Beings who are wiser, have greater powers, are beneficent caretakers over the human race, and help a select few of us understand how we all fit into the big cosmic picture. Beings who are, in short, our modern day version of angels. As Clancy summarizes, in what is surely the most important passage in the book:

The abductees taught me that people go through life trying on belief systems for size. Some of these belief systems speak to powerful emotional needs that have little to do with science—the need to feel less alone in the world, the desire to have special powers or abilities, the longing to know that there is something out there, something more important than you that’s watching over you. Belief in alien abduction is not just bad science. It’s not just an explanation for misfortune and a way to avoid taking responsibility for personal problems. For many people, belief in alien abductions gratifies spiritual hungers. It reassures them about their place in the universe and their own significance.

Or as Clancy finishes the book: “Being abducted by aliens may be a baptism into the new religion of our technological age.”

Unlike many a scientist, Clancy is funny and knows how to write. She also knows when to let the “abductees” speak for themselves, so that we can understand who they really are. At one moment, for instance, she lets us overhear a cell phone conversation in which an outraged “abductee” is denouncing Clancy for suggesting that sleep paralysis may explain his experience: “I wasn’t sleeping. I was taken. I was violated, ripped apart—literally, figuratively, metaphorically, whatever you want to call it. Does she know what that’s like? Fuck her! I'm out of here!” Clancy also lets us understand how sadly, pathetically human the abductees are, as in the case of one individual who described “the anal probe that fell out, was analyzed by a lab, and declared to be a hemorrhoid because ‘they were afraid of the truth.'”

And yet despite these profound virtues, Susan Clancy’s Abducted seems hardly fated to enjoy the literary success of credulous pro-alien abduction bestsellers, like Whitley Streiber’s Communion. I have become a cheerleader for the book in my own small way, and have begun to track its fate on Amazon.com; but so far, despite my recommendations to “buy, buy, buy,” it does not seem to have entered the top 1,000 books overall. Clancy was lucky enough to win a favorable review in The New York Times, but the review appeared two months before the book itself did—a cruel trick to play on an author from the standpoint of sales. Of course, Clancy has also been published by a university press: Harvard’s books are very scholarly and credible, but university presses rarely place the same emphasis on sales that more commercial publishing houses do.

The fact that Abducted isn’t apparently being more widely read is tragic, because it is a truly rare book, one that simultaneously succeeds as science, as personal narrative, and as social commentary. As skeptics, as defenders of science, and hopefully as champions of nonfiction publishing, we have a duty to spread the word about Abducted—to make our society more aware of the explanation for the alien abduction phenomenon, but also to make it more aware of Susan Clancy.

All of this activity has been triggered by repeated charges that the Bush administration has reached a new low in its willingness to twist and undermine scientific information to suit desired policy objectives. Such accusations have a four year history, stretching from early concerns over whether the administration would even name a science adviser, through 2001 debates over stem cells and global warming, past reports complied by members of Congress denouncing the administration’s meddling with science going on at federal agencies and the composition of scientific advisory committees, and up to a landmark moment—a February 2004 statement by the Union of Concerned Scientists (and assorted scientific community superstars) that denounced the Bush administration for unprecedented and systematic abuses and misuses of science.

However, the story doesn't end there. If anything, it has gathered momentum since the pivotal UCS statement, as new anecdotes and examples have repeatedly popped up suggesting that the Bush administration hasn't learned the error of its ways. Whistleblowers from branches of government ranging from the Climate Change Science Program to the Bureau of Land Management have come forward with stories of cynical informational meddling that have made the front pages of papers ranging from The New York Times to The Los Angeles Times. Meanwhile, the UCS and PEER have begun to survey scientists within federal agencies — so far they've tackled the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service —to determine whether they think political players are meddling with scientific information. Scores of surveys have now come back with answers in the affirmative.

Perhaps most important of all in focusing attention on the issue of “scientific integrity” have been the climate change fiascos in the run up to the G8 summit. Shortly before President Bush departed for Gleneagles, Scotland, whistleblower Rick Piltz dropped a bomb with his revelations, reported on in The New York Times, that a political appointee at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (who had formerly worked at the American Petroleum Institute) had taken a metaphorical red pen to government climate science reports and inserted language that had the effect of magnifying uncertainty about various conclusions. A media frenzy began as this same individual—Philip Cooney—then resigned and promptly went to work at ExxonMobil, now perhaps the leading corporation encouraging skepticism about the ongoing climate crisis.

All of these events have had a cumulative effect, making it virtually impossible to take seriously the ongoing denials from the White House that anything unusual is going on. Those denials do, of course, persist; with each new revelation comes a dutiful response: “there’s nothing out of the ordinary here"; “this is a typical interagency review process"; “the debate here is really over policy, not science"; and so forth. But such replies don’t hold up very well when you consider that the critics of the administration are themselves current or former government agency scientists who know very well what an “interagency review process” is and nevertheless insist that such processes have been corrupted in this administration. Even if we concede that some of these whistleblowers may have an ax to grind, we're nevertheless left with a huge horde of disgruntled government scientists who can’t possibly all be wrong.

Where does that leave us? Assuming—as I think we must given all of the evidence—that something alarming is happening here at the interface between science and politics, it’s worth asking why exactly that might be so. My conclusion is that what we're seeing is the result of a certain type of constituency-driven politics, in which federal agencies get staffed with Republican political appointees who know very well who their friends are and are willing to listen to them on matters of science. So business interests get their “scientific” arguments privileged at agencies that are supposed to be protecting endangered species and the environment, even as religious conservative interests get their “science” humored at agencies dedicated to public health and even, to some extent, medical research.

We don’t have to postulate a nefarious conspiracy, then, to explain the war on science that has manifested itself during the Bush administration. We need only point to an army of political appointees in government agencies who are going about their jobs the only way they know how—i.e., talking a lot to their industry or religious right allies and frequently rewarding their lobbying attempts in scientific areas. In short, it’s a politico-scientific spoils system. And as this particular spoils system proceeds to allocate rewards, it simultaneously undermines, cheapens, and compromises federal agencies as reliable, public-oriented sources of scientific analysis and information.

But if we're looking at a government-wide problem based on staffing and a culture that has developed within federal agencies, that suggests it won’t be easily solved. In fact, the damage done could long outlast the Bush administration, because the integrity of the federal government will have been compromised and because taxpayer-funded agencies may not recover quickly (or at all) from the traumas they've been put through. Here’s where the political abuse of science becomes a core issue for the nation’s future: The crisis promises to leave Americans with a less reliable, less effective, less professional, and ultimately less respectable government. The consequences will be felt in a wide range of areas, ranging from public health to the environment.

In conclusion, then, “scientific integrity” emerged virtually out of nowhere as a central issue under the Bush administration, and has since transmogrified into a broad-scale concern about good governance and the effectiveness and integrity of agencies funded by the public purse. The standard way to address concerns about good government is to initiate reform, and momentum has now begun to build in support of precisely that outcome, at least among Democrats in Congress. (Though there are prominent exceptions, most GOP representatives remain unwilling to seriously investigate or criticize the Bush administration.) In the meantime, however, political science abuse shows no sign of going away. And already, the wounds it has inflicted will take a very, very long time to heal.

These are difficult times for the skeptic community, with the mainstream media pandering to religion and the paranormal as never before. Much of the trend seems inspired by the phenomenal success of Mel Gibson’s recent R-Rated bloodfest for the big screen (otherwise known as “The Passion of the Christ”), not to mention Christian right preacher Tim LaHaye’s bestselling Left Behind novels. Now, TV network executives want in on the sanctimonious action, and have grown obsessed with creating shows—both in fictional and documentary format—that shill for religion and the paranormal.

In recent months, ABC and Peter Jennings have paid homage to UFO myths, while other networks have served up brain rotting delectations such as NBC’s “Medium,” a series about a crime-solving psychic that was allegedly inspired by “the real-life story of research medium Allison Dubois.” CBS, meanwhile, recently canceled a Wednesday night installment of “60 Minutes” and plans to replace it with, among other things, “a series in which Jennifer Love Hewitt talks to dead people.” We can only expect more of this sort of programming in the near future.

The influx of paranormalist schlock has, understandably, outraged skeptics. And certainly, this sort of programming isn’t making Americans any smarter. But at the same time—and if only to stay sane—it may be wise to view recent developments with some equanimity, or even humor. After all, in their interminable quest for higher ratings and dumber programming, the networks run a high risk of seriously embarrassing themselves in front of their audiences. Indeed, they've already begun to do so.

This realization came to me as I tuned in for one of the many groaners airing these days on primetime, a May 18 NBC Dateline special entitled “The Mystery of Miracles,” anchored by Stone Phillips. Nestled just before NBC’s “Revelations"—a fictional show that also exploits paranormal fixations, in this case about end times—the program was clearly a low-budget presentation meant to cash in, yet again, on the American public’s insatiable appetite for television programs that promote religion and spiritualism. By the end of the show, however, I didn’t feel so much depressed as amused. With “Miracles,” NBC had clearly gone off the deep end, and not even my two viewing companions (neither one a self-identifying skeptic) could refrain from laughing out loud at the program.

“Miracles” focused on a trip by a group of U.S. Catholic tourists to a Bosnian site called Medjugorje, a kind of Las Vegas for miracle-hunters, and just as exploitive. But despite ample miracle-mongering at this site, Dateline NBC failed to produce a single claim that was even modestly convincing. Instead, virtually every anecdote backfired in a way that left my friends and I on the verge of giggles. Consider a few examples from the program:

The Perspiring Statuary. Early on in the program, the Medjugorje tourists visit a bronze statue of Jesus, quickly proclaiming a miracle because the statute is—gasp—wet. “The statue on the grounds of the town’s main church is oozing liquid,” intones Stone Phillips. “Residents say the inexplicable dripping has been going on for the last four years.” The viewer is never explicitly told what kind of substance the “liquid” actually is (although on screen it looked like simple water). Instead, we hear the following from one of the American pilgrims: “This is really a piece of heaven you can touch, you can put your hand on.” If seeing a wet statue is all it takes to produce a “miracle” in the minds of these tourists, then we're clearly in for a rough ride—and sure enough, “Miracles” only goes downhill from there.

The Miraculous Misdiagnosis. Before too long we encounter Artie Boyle, a Massachusetts resident who visited Medjugorje after being diagnosed with “what appeared to be a very aggressive and potentially life-threatening cancer,” one for which his doctor had scheduled “drastic surgery.” But when Boyle was touched by one of Medjugorje’s famed religious “visionaries,” he claims to have experienced a miracle, which included “a sudden rush of Christian faith” as well as “a sudden sharp pain in his chest.”

So, was Boyle miraculously healed? Um, not exactly. When Boyle went home to Massachusetts, his doctors did indeed cancel the scheduled surgery—but not because of any divine intervention. Instead, after re-diagnosing their patient, they realized that Boyle actually suffered from “a rare, slow-growing form of cancer,” which hadn’t spread yet. But Boyle still suffered from cancer. He had not been cured, merely re-diagnosed. At least as far as I’m concerned, there’s a big difference between doctor fallibility and divine intervention.

God Lights Up Another Cigarette. Still, Boyle fared far better in Medjugorje than another American tourist centrally featured in Dateline’s “Miracles” program: 65 year old Cathy Myers, a smoker for 45 years and, not surprisingly, a victim of emphysema. According to Dateline, Myers decided to visit Medjugorje because a friend had allegedly experienced a “medical cure” there, and Myers hoped for the same for herself—namely, that the visit would miraculously help her quit smoking.

“Miracles” then proceeds to dramatize Cathy’s symbolic, emphysema-impaired struggle to climb Medjugorje’s main mountain, described in the program as “a steep, treacherous journey, devoid of paths and strewn with jagged rocks.” But don’t be too impressed by these alleged obstacles. The program also shows us young children making the hike, and later we learn that another American tourist reached the top in a mere two and a half hours.

Poor Cathy, however, can’t make the climb the first day because of her emphysema. (No divine intervention helps her along.) The next day, she tries again and finally succeeds, but the grueling “pilgrimage” hardly results in a miraculous payoff. Instead, we learn at the end of the program that despite the inspiration of Medjugorje, Cathy fails to quit smoking, her nicotine addition ultimately proving much more powerful than God. Hardly surprising, and definitely not miraculous.

Our Lady of Prompt (And We Do Mean Prompt) Succor. But “Miracles” still has not reached its low point. That only arrives when the show interviews Ivan Dragicevic, a Medjugorje “visionary” who claims—get this—to be visited every day by the Virgin Mary at precisely the same time: 6:40 pm. That is, unless Dragicevic decides the plan needs to change, in which case the mother of Christ promptly re-jiggers her own schedule. Let’s go to the transcript:

PHILLIPS: At 6:40 every evening.
Mr. DRAGICEVIC: That’s right.
PHILLIPS: Every single day...
Mr. DRAGICEVIC: Every single day.
PHILLIPS: ...she comes to you.
Mr. DRAGICEVIC: Yes. And we speak every single day.
PHILLIPS: You don’t have to be in Medjugorje?
Mr. DRAGICEVIC: Absolutely no.
PHILLIPS: Whether it’s here in America or in...
Mr. DRAGICEVIC: Australia an—it doesn't matter for this.
PHILLIPS: (Voiceover) But when DATELINE interviewed Ivan, he told us the appointed hour would change. Sitting down with us so late in the day was apparently cutting it too close for heavenly comfort. Instead of 6:40, he said the Virgin Mary had agreed to come back later, at 10 PM.
PHILLIPS: So like any good mother, she’s flexible when she needs to be.
Mr. DRAGICEVIC: Yes. Yes.

(No mention in the program is made of how the Virgin Mary handles changing time zones.)

Dragicevic’s claims about a Virgin Mother guided by a stopwatch represent an affront not only to common sense, but also to serious religious belief, which is cheapened by the notion of divine forces constantly intervening in everyday life. Indeed, more sophisticated religious thinkers like Bishop John Shelby Spong, interviewed towards the end of “Miracles,” realize that if God truly acted in this way, then we would immediately be forced to ask why He allows so many tragedies to take place without intervention. In short, you might say that uncritical belief in miracles itself poses a powerful threat to the validity of faith.

Spong’s voice of reason, however, is the rare exception in “Miracles,” which tosses miracle claim after miracle claim before its audience without even an ounce of skepticism. The show even relates the tale of the so-called ”holy toast“: A piece of moldy cheese and bread was recently auctioned on eBay because of an alleged resemblance to the Virgin Mary. And it sold for $ 28,000. That’s how low phony miracle claims can go—and NBC has shown ample willingness to make the descent into ridiculousness right along with them.

The hypothesis that sleep paralysis could play this large explanatory role isn’t necessarily new. But the publication of high caliber scientific studies on alien abductees, strongly supportive of that hypothesis, marks a highly important departure. All in all, the newly accumulated evidence suggests that skeptics may even wish to consider launching a public education campaign to explain more broadly what sleep paralysis is and how it happens. Executed properly, such a campaign might counter the current tendency among many individuals to assume that their relatively harmless sleep-related hallucinations actually reflect paranormal encounters. The campaign would also promote critical thinking about which explanation for sleep-related claims of paranormal incursions—a mundane one or a supernatural one—better suits the evidence.

Sleep paralysis occurs in 30% of the general population. In it you wake up in bed, feel paralyzed, and tend to sense a terrifying presence in your room. Sometimes you see something; sometimes you hear noises or even feel electrical shocks throughout your body. I have personally seen a small humanoid during one occasion of sleep paralysis; during another, more recent one, I saw what looked like a dog in my room. Others see ghosts, vampires—whatever they have in their minds or are particularly afraid of. Deceased relatives and loved ones are particularly good candidates for showing up during bouts of sleep paralysis.

But what’s really happening here, according to Harvard psychologists Richard McNally and Susan Clancy, is nothing out of the ordinary. Rather, REM sleep—the phase of sleep in which most dreaming occurs—is simply malfunctioning. In a phone conversation McNally even likened the situation to getting a case of the hiccups.

Our bodies are paralyzed while we undergo REM sleep, and for good reason (lest we act out our dreams and injure ourselves). But in some small number of cases we can actually start to wake up before paralysis wears off, and yet still remain in a dreaming state. What results is hallucination, often of some extremely scary stuff. It appears that humans have always experienced sleep paralysis and sought to explain it, resulting in well known stories of incubi and succubi—demons thought to sexually attack people in their sleep—as well as related tales from other eras and cultures.

The emphasis on sleep paralysis emerged from a program of research that McNally and Clancy had originally undertaken to study women claiming to have recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse. The work got extended into alleged alien “abductees” to solve a scientific puzzle. Although the researchers had already found that women who recovered abuse memories were more likely to exhibit “memory distortion,” that in itself didn’t prove their alleged memories never happened. After all, real life traumatic abuse experiences might themselves trigger distorted memory. So for comparison, Clancy and McNally hit on the idea of studying memory distortion “in people who report recovered memories of traumatic events that seem unlikely to have occurred: abduction by space aliens.”

Since then they have reported that alien “abductees” are more prone to exhibit “false recall and recognition,” and scored higher than other individuals on scales designed to detect fantasy proneness and the tendency to believe in “unconventional phenomena.” Based upon such evidence—which strongly hints that alien abductees are more likely than other people to make up false experiences—in a phone interview McNally proposed a “recipe” for alien abduction claims, involving five separate “ingredients.”

First, McNally explained, abductees tend to hold a wide range of New Age beliefs, such as an interest in astral projection and crystals. “They're not a bunch of straitlaced Republican wall street bankers,” McNally says. The second ingredient, he continues, is fantasy proneness, the features of which include “having a rich fantasy life, showing high hypnotic susceptibility, claiming psychic abilities and healing powers, reporting out-of-body experiences and vivid or ‘waking’ dreams, having apparitional experiences and religious visions, and exhibiting automatic writing.”

McNally’s third ingredient is awareness of the “cultural narrative of alien abduction"—which of course characterizes anyone who watches enough TV. Knowledge of this script inevitably plants it in the mind as something that can be drawn on later. The fourth ingredient, McNally continues, is the occurrence of sleep paralysis and its attendant hallucinations. And finally, the fifth ingredient in the making of an alien “abductee” is that most go to therapists who then hypnotize them and ask “inadvertently leading questions. And then they ‘remember,'” McNally says. This is often where the most salacious aspects of abduction accounts emerge, such as claims of sexual molestation and hybrid breeding programs conducted by the aliens.

All in all, according to McNally, these five factors working together can successfully explain why “individuals who are sincere and not psychotic could genuinely believe they were abducted by aliens.” That’s no small achievement. One successful mark of a scientific hypothesis or theory, after all, lies in its capacity to provide a plausible explanatory framework that can account for an observed phenomenon—the phenomenon in this case being the prevalence of alien abduction claims. And without a doubt, the explanation offered by McNally and Clancy enjoys much more plausibility and credibility than the notion that the alleged alien abductions actually happened.

That’s not to say that this powerful explanatory framework will convince abductees themselves to back away from their accounts. These individuals seem deeply wedded to their beliefs, according to McNally; it’s almost as though abduction claims fulfill a deep spiritual purpose in their lives. Perhaps those who cling to these views could never be convinced to relinquish them. Still, a very positive social benefit could be gained if more people generally understood what sleep paralysis is and how it contributes to widespread “paranormal” experiences. It’s even conceivable that a lot of grief and fear could be averted.

And there’s more at stake here than simply the esoteric group of alien “abductees.” In addition to abduction claims, sleep paralysis also seems likely to account for a wide range of alleged late-night ghost sightings. Moreover, as cultural notions shift over time, we can expect that the apparitions hallucinated during sleep paralysis will also shift their identities in relation to societal and media cues. When that happens—and reports begin to emerge on the next group of nighttime invaders—skeptics will have a powerful counter-explanation at the ready.

Literature relied upon:

• Clancy, S.A., McNally, R.J., Schacter, D.L., Lenzenweger, M.F., & Pitman, R.K. (2002). Memory distortion in people reporting abduction by aliens. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 111, 455—461.
• McNally, R. J., Lasko, N. B., Clancy, S. A., Macklin, M. L., Pitman, R. K., & Orr, S. P. (2004). Psychophysiologic responding during script-driven imagery in people reporting abduction by space aliens. Psychological Science, 15, 493-497.
• McNally, R. J., & Clancy, S. A (2005). Sleep paralysis, sexual abuse, and space alien abduction. Transcultural Psychiatry, Vol 42(1): 113—122.

"Seeing is Believing” begins, in true mystery-mongering fashion, with a quick opening montage presenting various firsthand UFO stories. Soon Jennings appears, telling us that millions of Americans believe this stuff (ABC’s apparent justification for devoting its energies to UFOs at a time when soldiers are dying in Iraq and Social Security is on the chopping block). Before long we're introduced to UFO radio guru Art Bell and—in a pattern that will recur throughout the program—witness an artist’s rendition of Bell’s alleged encounter with a big triangular alien spaceship.

After these atmospherics, Jennings and ABC feature one of the case studies they're apparently banking on—the story of the “Phoenix Lights.” “There have been UFO sightings with hundreds, even thousands of witnesses,” Jennings says, pointing to the night of March 13, 1997, when many Phoenix and other Arizona residents reported observing mysterious lights in the sky. “Seeing is Believing” speaks with numerous eyewitnesses who claim not just to have seen the lights, but even to have spotted the UFO behind them. “I don’t know anything that can go that slow,” one opines.

Only then do we hear from “outspoken skeptic” James McGaha, director of the Grasslands Observatory in Arizona and a CSICOP scientific consultant. “These are clearly flares,” says McGaha of the lights. But after interviewing McGaha, the special flips back to the eyewitnesses again—who, unsurprisingly, reject McGaha’s critique. “I know what I saw,” says one. “I would testify in a court of law,” says another. Jennings then throws up his hands. “Seeing is believing,” is his “balanced” conclusion.

Jennings isn’t breaking any new ground here. Other journalists covering the “Phoenix Lights” have been far more exacting, actually bothering to weigh the evidence and determine whether there’s any basis for a non-mundane interpretation of the phenomenon. For a colorful and suitably skeptical account of one such investigation, see here. Jennings and ABC, however, don’t seem willing to alienate UFO fans too early on in their program.

Soon “Seeing is Believing” launches into a history of UFO sightings in America, going back to the first “flying saucer” tales and putting special emphasis on claims by various pilot eyewitnesses to have seen odd objects while in the air. No skeptics speak during this phase of the show; rather, the stories are all treated as implicitly credible. “There was no critique of the pilot thing at all, and guess what, they interviewed me for over an hour about pilots,” McGaha told me after watching the program. “A lot of people say that pilots can’t make mistakes. I’m a pilot with thousands of hours of flying time. I have seen pilots personally make mistakes in formation with me.”

Up to this point in the program, it’s fair to say “Seeing is Believing” represents a true nightmare for skeptics. But then something shifts, subtly at first. The change begins when Jennings takes a step back and examines the fundamental reason that skeptics and believers disagree about UFO claims. “At issue was the nature of the evidence,” Jennings says. “Mainstream scientists categorically reject eyewitness testimony For scientists, seeing is not believing.”

Then before we know it, we're off with Seth Shostak and Jill Tartar of the SETI Institute, who are devoted to actual scientific investigation of whether intelligent life exist elsewhere and fully admit they've detected no convincing evidence thus far. “If we claim something, there will be data to back it up,” Tartar refreshingly explains.

The wonders continue when suddenly, if only for a brief segment, Jennings moves entirely into the skeptics camp, debunking the well known myth of the Roswell, New Mexico crash (for Skeptical Inquirer's account see here). “It didn’t matter that there wasn’t a shred of evidence sixty five percent of Americans said they believed the [Roswell] story,” says Jennings. “Seeing is Believing” leaves us with little doubt that the official explanation is correct: A top-secret Project Mogul surveillance balloon, not an alien spacecraft, crashed on “Mac” Brazel’s ranch on that legendary summer day in 1947. Nevertheless, notes Jennings, Roswell “true believers” continue to debunk and reject the government’s explanations. “They cling to a myth,” he says.

At this point in the show, a critical viewer—who has seen some UFO claims treated in a “balanced” fashion, some presented entirely uncritically, and some debunked—can be permitted the following question. Where does Jennings get off simultaneously bashing the Roswell story and yet taking all the other schlock so seriously?

The clear answer is that his (and ABC’s) skepticism is carefully calibrated and selective. In virtually every case of a UFO claim save the Roswell story—and that includes painful to watch alien abduction stories, which follow later in the show—Jennings plays it lax and detached. At best, he lets us hear from “both sides"—even if, as is quite apparent in some cases, the claims are totally outlandish. ("The beings measured three feet eleven,” says one alleged alien abductee who apparently managed, while lying in bed paralyzed, to get out his tape measure.)

In short, Jennings and ABC want it both ways. On the one hand, they clearly desire a production that will cash in on public enthusiasm for UFO claims, without debunking them too vigorously (lest believers be dismayed). But at the same time, they don’t want to seem overly credulous, lest their very worldly New York City journalistic peers buy them spacesuits for Christmas. And so they wink at us, as if to let on that they know some of this stuff is just plain hooey—while simultaneously leaving the door open to the notion that there just might be a huge government conspiracy to suppress UFO visitations after all.

Alas, selective skepticism has its costs—journalistic and otherwise. As a case study, consider how one skeptical expert approached by the show, James McGaha, wound up being used.

When a representative of the show originally approached him, it concerned a program to be called “Life in the Universe,” which would touch on a number of areas including UFOs but hardly seemed to make them the central focus. But by the time he was interviewed, McGaha relates, “They did not seem very interested in SETI, astrobiology or science in any way, just UFO’s.”

Maybe the producers changed their course before interviewing McGaha. Or maybe they knew all along how the program would turn out. But the result is the same: ABC uses McGaha in its documentary to provide low dose skepticism, without allowing his subversive critiques to undermine its quasi-journalistic project too thoroughly.

The result is entertaining television, but “Seeing is Believing” suffers from a serious lack of intellectual consistency. If we adhere to rigid standards of evidence and actually place the burden of proof on those who make stunning UFO claims, then no current story holds up any better than the Roswell tale. But through the use of selective skepticism, journalistic “balance,” and haphazard suspension of disbelief, ABC and Peter Jennings manage to keep the sense of “mystery’ alive. In light of the difficulty of positively proving any existing UFO claim, that’s probably the most they could possibly accomplish.

Michael Crichton’s latest book, State of Fear, is a novel in name only. More accurately described, it’s a work of thinly disguised political commentary, in which a wildly implausible plot—eco-terrorists supplant Al Qaeda as the leading global menace, unveiling dastardly weather modification schemes to convince the public of a nonexistent global warming threat—serves as an excuse for a string of Socratic-style dialogues about climate science. Since Crichton’s characters repeatedly find themselves jetting across the globe to stop the latest eco-terrorist menace (blowing off parts of Antarctica, unleashing a tsunami, and so on), they have plenty of time in transit to question the reality of human caused global warming. The plot contrivance of a pending climate change lawsuit—abandoned once its proponents realize they don’t have a case—provides yet another didactic opportunity for the author. When the legal team cross-examines one of our heroes about climate science, Crichton seizes the chance to insert temperature trend diagrams and copious footnotes into the text.

All of these “educational” dialogues take the same format: A smart-guy character, holding forth in technical banter bearing little resemblance to spoken English, runs rings around a character who holds misguided beliefs that he or she cannot defend with reference to the scientific literature. These erroneous beliefs all hinge on the notion that the earth is warming significantly, that this has resulted at least in part from human activities, and that the consequences have begun to make themselves felt and could grow quite severe over time—a robust mainstream scientific view, although apparently not one shared by Crichton. Hilariously, at the end of his book Crichton states: “A novel such as State of Fear, in which so many divergent views are expressed, may lead the reader to wonder where, exactly, the author stands on these issues.” As if it wasn’t obvious.

Crichton’s central smart guy is Richard John Kenner, a scientist who heads the fictional MIT Center for Risk Analysis while doubling as a secret agent who likes to bring lawyers and hot babes along on his adventures. Kenner seems a composite of Richard Lindzen, the famed MIT prof and global warming “skeptic,” John Graham, who headed the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis before joining the Bush administration (see here for a previous column about what Graham has been up to), and Vin Diesel. In essence, Kenner’s character serves as a vessel into which Crichton can pour his agenda-driven reading of the scientific evidence. Here’s an example of how Kenner talks:

There are one hundred sixty thousand glaciers in the world, Ted. About sixty-seven thousand have been inventoried but only a few have been studied with care. There is mass balance data extending five years or more for only seventy-nine glaciers in the entire world. So, how can you say they're all melting?

Try reading that aloud, and then ask yourself whether real people, even real scientists, speak this way. Though perhaps intended to make Kenner seem smart, such language only makes him seem fake.

Nevertheless, Kenner excels at getting equally fictitious lawyers and Hollywood celebrities to see the error of their ways. But for some reason, Crichton never has his mouthpiece argue against another scientist who reads the evidence on climate change differently and can cite literature to back his or her view as well. In our world—the real world—you can find a small army of these. I have interviewed many of them, heard others lecture, and met still more at conferences. In Crichton’s universe, however, they seem not to exist.

Crichton’s scientific footnotes—which he promises “are real"—similarly misrepresent reality. In the text of State of Fear as well as in its 20 pages of citations, Crichton glosses over a high profile 2001 National Academy of Sciences report entitled Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Key Questions, which opens with the following passage:

Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise. Temperatures are, in fact, rising. The changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule out that some significant part of these changes is also a reflection of natural variability. Human-induced warming and associated sea level rises are expected to continue through the 21st century. Secondary effects are suggested by computer model simulations and basic physical reasoning. These include increases in rainfall rates and increased susceptibility of semi-arid regions to drought. The impacts of these changes will be critically dependent on the magnitude of the warming and the rate with which it occurs.

The mention of “human-induced warming and associated sea level rises” is particularly interesting, because Crichton seeks to debunk concerns about rising sea levels. Crichton’s footnotes also exclude statements by the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union, which broadly agree with NAS. No wonder real life climate experts, of the sort that Crichton excommunicates from his “novel,” have scathingly critiqued his depiction of their field and the level of understanding it has achieved.

As these examples suggest, Crichton’s skewed reading of the scientific literature leads him into an utter abandonment of literary verisimilitude. For this author, at least, bad science fuels bad fiction. Nowhere does that shortcoming become more apparent than in Crichton’s inability to capture human character. His environmentalists are total creeps, and not just that. They're nefarious schemers, who won’t even stop at mass murder to achieve their greater goals. As one eco-terrorist puts it, shortly before Kenner silences him with a bullet: “Casualties are inevitable in accomplishing social change. History tells us that.”

Sorry, but I've hung out with plenty of environmental activists (although no eco-terrorists), and they're just not as Crichton describes them. They have many flaws—naïve idealism, political impotence perhaps—but they're not cold-blooded killers. They would never dream of causing the types of disasters they're pledged to work against. In Crichton’s fictional universe, however, global warming concerns are all made up. Therefore, environmentalists must transform into outright evildoers—how else to account for their real life behavior? Crichton should have realized, from the unreality of his characters, that he'd been tugged in the wrong direction.

The author’s depictions of journalists have similar flaws. In State of Fear, reporters exist solely as environmentalist lapdogs. Crichton makes this plain in a scene in which his characters find themselves watching a newscast:

They cut to a younger man, apparently the weatherman. “Thanks, Terry. Hi, everybody. If you’re a longtime resident of the Grand Canyon State, you've probably noticed that our weather is changing, and scientists have confirmed that what’s behind it is our old culprit, global warming. Today’s flash flood is just one example of the trouble ahead—more extreme weather conditions, like floods and tornadoes and droughts—all as a result of global warming.”
Sanjong nudged Evans, and handed him a sheet of paper. It was a printout of a press release from the NERF [an environmental group] website. Sanjong pointed to the text: “scientists agree there will be trouble ahead: more extreme weather events, like floods and tornadoes and droughts, all as a result of global warming.”
Evans said, “This guy’s just reading a press release?”
“That’s how they do it, these days,” Kenner said. “They don’t even bother to change a phrase here and there. They just read the copy outright. And of course, what he’s saying is not true.”

In fact, no self-respecting journalist would take an environmentalist press release and copy it verbatim. Members of the mainstream national media do view environmental groups as self-interested, and check their claims with independent scientists. What Crichton can’t admit, or can’t stand, is that in reality these scientists often agree with the environmental groups.

In State of Fear, however, Crichton is God, and his views become the book’s laws of nature. That’s never more apparent than in Crichton’s numerous “conversion” scenes, in which characters who had previously believed in the dogma of global warming suddenly see the light. At one point in the novel, two such figures confide in one another following a legal cross examination:

“I mean, when I gave those answers, I wasn’t saying what I really think. I'm, uh “I’m asking some—I'm changing my mind about a lot of this stuff.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” he said, speaking softly. “Those graphs of temperature, for instance. They raise obvious questions about the validity of global warming.”
She nodded slowly. Looking at him closely.
He said, “You, too?”
She continued to nod.

Let’s face it: Such writing is pure porn for global warming deniers, in much the same way that fictional accounts of UFO abduction skeptics converting into true believers titillate UFO fans.

In the end, State of Fear bears little resemblance to Crichton’s most successful sci-fi thrillers, like Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain. Instead, it’s far more reminiscent of Disclosure, Crichton’s perverse attempt to address the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace by focusing on a case in which a woman harasses a man, rather than vice-versa. Similarly, in State of Fear the specter of a vast environmentalist conspiracy—a problem even less significant than sexual harassment of men by their female superiors—gets trumpeted while real concerns (climate change, for instance) get scoffed at. By the book’s end, one can only ask: What planet is Michael Crichton living on? Because this one is clearly getting warmer.

Students will be made aware of gaps/problems in Darwin’s Theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design. Note: Origins of life will not be taught.

Both sides in the interminable dispute over the teaching of evolution in our nation’s public schools agree that this language appears to represent the first time that any state or locality has specifically mandated the teaching of “intelligent design,” or ID, alongside evolution. In fact, the Dover Area has gone farther than even ID proponents at Seattle’s Discovery Institute recommend, and could well face a First Amendment lawsuit as a consequence.

The focus of the evolution battle now shifts to Dover, for obvious reasons. But developments in Pennsylvania merely represent the leading front in the ever-expanding fight over the teaching of evolution today. Thanks largely to the growing influence of the Intelligent Design movement, we seem on the verge of a flare-up not seen since the “creation science” conflagration of the 1970s and 1980s.

According to the National Center for Science Education, which tracks interferences with the teaching of evolution in public schools, from 2001 to 2003 a staggering forty U.S. states saw some type of anti-evolutionist activity at either the state or local level. The challenges have taken an array of forms: calls for textbook disclaimers; school board curriculum mandates and lesson plans; and proposed laws and legislative resolutions. They have come from ID proponents and more traditional creationists alike.

Some anti-evolutionist forays have fit the rubric of the ID movement’s ”teach the controversy” strategy, a clever gambit that seeks to have students learn about the evidence “for and against” evolutionary theory and/or to “critically analyze” it. A few sallies have gone even farther, as the Dover Area did, actually seeking to require equal time for “intelligent design” alongside evolution in classes. In 2003, for instance, the Michigan state legislature entertained legislation that would have required the state’s Board of Education to alter its science curriculum to include the concept of “intelligent design of a Creator” whenever evolution is mentioned. Similarly, in 2004 Missouri’s legislature considered two bills mandating “equal time” for ID in science classes. None of these bills passed, but they represent the most radical initiatives undertaken by the modern wave of anti-evolutionists.

Here’s why mandates to teach ID alongside evolution count as such a gutsy move for Darwin deniers. In the famed 1987 case Edwards v. Aguillard, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law requiring the teaching of “creation science” alongside evolution, ruling that it represented an establishment of religion in violation of the First Amendment. Given that the Supremes have already invalidated the “equal time” approach with respect to “creation science,” it’s easy to imagine courts automatically applying this precedent to ID. Pro-evolution lawyers would merely have to demonstrate that ID, just like “creation science” before it, has religious motivations and no scientific credibility—in short, that it’s just a new form of creationism. Not hard to do.

But attempted interferences with evolution in other states have taken a more subtle, less in-your-face form, following the Discovery Institute’s “teach the controversy” agenda (explicitly tailored to get around Edwards v. Aguillard). And without a doubt, “teach the controversy” has been most successful in the state of Ohio.

In 2002, after a long fight, Ohio’s state board of education adopted science standards stating that students should learn how scientists “continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory"—a clear example of “teach the controversy” lingo. Even though it singles out the theory of evolution for special scrutiny, this phrasing may at first seem innocuous, or at least tolerable. But when the board of education acted on the language in 2004, by adopting a “Critical Analysis of Evolution” lesson plan recommended to teachers, the true intent became apparent.

Clearly based on Discovery Institute fellow Jonathan Wells’ book Icons of Evolution, the controversial lesson plan presents an array of scientific-sounding critiques of various aspects of evolutionary theory. The trouble is, these critiques repeatedly misrepresent the state of scientific knowledge so as to cast unwarranted doubts on the theory of evolution. Scientists overwhelmingly opposed the lesson plan; even the National Academy of Sciences got involved. But the board wouldn’t budge, and it seems likely that at least some Ohio teachers are teaching from the lesson plan today or will in the future.

Other “teach the controversy” initiatives by anti-evolutionists have succeeded, or nearly succeeded, in Georgia’s Cobb County, in Darby, Montana, and a number of other states. We can certainly expect more. But the Ohio incident most helpfully illustrates why “teach the controversy” approaches may be more difficult for evolution defenders to counter in courts of law.

The controversial Ohio lesson plan, in its final form, does not in any way introduce students to intelligent design. But it does provide an array of critiques of evolution that have little scientific basis but derive from the ID movement’s literature, and especially Wells’ Icons of Evolution. An earlier draft of the lesson plan even directed students to visit anti-evolutionist websites. But the final version omits both references to Icons and the offending web links.

If evolution defenders want to win in a First Amendment lawsuit over this lesson plan, they could have an uphill battle ahead of them. That’s because in court, the pro-evolution side would have to demonstrate that even though the final lesson plan does not explicitly introduce students to ID, it nevertheless represents an attempt to advance religion.

In order to establish this connection, textual comparisons between the lesson plan and ID literature would be required, so as to show a firm link between the final document and ID proponents at the Discovery Institute. The religious motives of the Ohio Board of Education would also have to be demonstrated (the court might also examine those of the ID movement more generally). Documenting the scientific errors in the lesson plan would count as a necessary, but not sufficient, legal feat. If the lesson plan doesn't teach good science, courts can be reasonably expected to inquire what its true purpose is. But the First Amendment doesn't bar the teaching of bad science, only the government’s advancement of religion.

Recently, I participated in an off-the-record discussion with a group of pro-evolution strategists who were discussing precisely these issues. From that experience, I'm confident that evolution defenders can win both “equal time” cases over ID and “teach the controversy” cases. But I'm equally confident that the latter type of lawsuit presents far more complexities than the former. Let’s hope First Amendment lawyers on our side are watching what’s happening across the country right now. We're witnessing a gathering storm.