The Curious Science of Sarah Palin
Ria Misra
Contributor
Posted:
12/11/09
"I've always believed that policy should be based on sound science, not politics," wrote Sarah Palin in her much-maligned op-ed piece on climate change in the Washington Post this week.
I'm delighted that the former vice presidential candidate's views on the value of scientific research have evidently undergone a transformation since last year, when she mocked government funding for genetic-mapping research commonly conducted on fruit flies. (Palin's zinger on the subject: Some of the research took place in France! "I kid you not," the then-governor of Alaska said.)
But in an article with a number of strange assertions, calling for a dependence on "sound science" -- when the scientific consensus is that human activity does indeed contribute to global climate change -- struck me as probably the strangest. Palin points to leaked e-mail exchanges that climate change skeptics have seized on as evidence for their complaints, in which scientists at the University of East Anglia discuss ways to present the data and statistics in their climate studies and mock global warming skeptics. Of course, among scientists, the overwhelming conclusion was that nothing in the e-mails had any effect on or called into question the scientific principle -- based on the accumulation of research -- that human activity contributes to global climate change.
Invoking a group that disagrees with your conclusion as evidence to back your conclusion is a rather unusual (or perhaps just maverick-y?) move. Or, it could be a sign of something else: an assurance that your comments will be taken at face value, even when they fly in the face of the evidence. And it's that assurance, perhaps even more than Palin's troubled relationship with science, that I find most concerning.