Remember the folks who told you that Darwin's theory is really "fact" and that only cranks disagree? And the folks who promised that dire, man made global warming had been demonstrated objectively and beyond question--enough to justify massive economic dislocations? Well, it increasingly seems that the uniquely promising field of embryonic stem cell research offers another case of warped and hyped "consensus science".
A hundred years ago consensus science proclaimed the merits--and advanced the the political program--of eugenics.
In the past decade, the moral objections to embryonic stem cell research almost seemed to make the project more, not less, appealing to certain science bodies, journals and bureaucrats. In California, the state sold the public on a gauzy multi-billion dollar vision of miracle cures that supposedly were just around the corner. The warning signs about the California Prop. 71 embryonic stem cell program were virtually ignored by the mainstream media. Our Discovery senior fellow and co-director of Human Rights and Bioethics, Wesley J. Smith, was unusual if not unique in his coverage of the issue. Now he and other skeptics are vindicated. California is broke and plainly has wasted billions on a quixotic errand for political correctness. The real progress with stem cells comes, happily, in less controversial--and less well funded areas.
In every case of dogmatic certainty in science's recent past, the blinders on the science establishment (including especially federal funders) are political and ideological. In real science, as I keep saying, you have free and accurately reported studies and reports. In politicized science, ideology determines what and who gets funded, and even how results are covered.
Meantime, the space program is being gutted. Space exploration is not p.c. any more.
