Dan Sarewitz, professor of science and society at Arizona State University, argues that we should fully expect politicians to politicize scientific information because “that is their job...and this—like the second law of thermodynamics—is not something to be regretted, but something to be lived with.” Sarewitz’s assertion flies in the face of many recent discussions on science and politics, focusing predominantly on the actions of President George W. Bush, which are characterized in ample portions by both blame and regret.

The Bush administration has courted controversy in many areas of policy making, and science is no exception. While complaints about the heavy-handed tactics and questionable decisions of the Bush administration are both justified and easy to offer, such complaints can do little to address the challenges of science in policy and politics, especially now that President Bush enters the final months of his presidency.

The most simplistic prescription that has been offered to the issues of the politicization of science is simply to elect another president, a solution that plays well in large segments of the scientific community, where many never shared President Bush’s politics anyway. For instance, in 2004 a group called Scientists and Engineers for Change sought to use the issue of science politicization to help elect John Kerry to the presidency. At times a rallying cry to end the Republican “war on science” can be heard in the current presidential campaign.

More sophisticated efforts to address the challenges of science and politics look beyond the efforts to gain partisan advantage and instead focus on practical strategies for living with the reality that science and politics will always be intermixed in the practice of governance. If Sarewitz is correct—and many decades of study on the role of science in decision-making suggest that he is—then efforts to keep science and politics separate are not only doomed to fail, but they are likely to create conditions enhancing the pathological politicization of science.

Politics and Science Have Always Mixed

Accepting that science and politics are inextricably intertwined begins with a clear-eyed view of history. Consider just a very few examples of political issues that involved science during the past six presidential administrations. President Richard Nixon had the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) move the timing of the launch of Apollo 17 in order to better serve his 1972 reelection campaign, against the wishes of NASA scientists and engineers. During President Ford’s administration the Los Angeles Times alleged that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had falsified data in support of its regulatory position on sulfur oxides. A subsequent investigation by the US Congress found serious issues with EPA’s peer review and that some of its epidemiological research provided an unsuitable basis for regulation.

President Jimmy Carter went against the wishes of his scientific advisors when he committed the United States to drawing 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2000. President Carter explained that he accepted his advisors technical conclusions that the goal would be impossible, but that he had put forward the proposal for political reasons. President Ronald Reagan, prior to being elected, questioned the science of evolution, calling it a theory that was being increasingly challenged by scientists. He suggested that if evolution was to be taught in schools, “then I think that also the biblical theory of creation, which is not a theory but the biblical story of creation, should also be taught.” The administration of President George H. W. Bush proposed redefining “wetlands” in such as way so as to exclude millions of acres of land from federal protection and open them up for development. The proposal was eventually withdrawn for lack of a scientific basis. President Bill Clinton ordered a strike on the Al Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan in 1998 in retaliation for bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The target of the attack was justified in part by scientific evidence gathered at the factory site. It was later revealed that the scientific evidence had in fact been inconclusive.

If science and politics have always been intermixed, then what, if anything, is different about today? I can point to seven reasons why the politicization of science has gained so much more salience in recent years. First, there is an increasing number of important issues that are related to science and technology in some way. Some issues are the result of advances in science and technology (e.g., the ethics of cloning or stem cell research); in others, science and technologies are central to their resolution. Second, policy makers increasingly invoke expertise to justify a course of action that they advocate. Third, advocacy groups increasingly rely on experts to justify their favored course of action. Fourth, Congress, at least for the past decade and perhaps longer, has been derelict in its oversight duties, particularly when relating to issues of science and technology. Fifth, many scientists are increasingly engaging in political advocacy. Sixth, some issues of science have become increasingly partisan as some politicians sense that there is political gain to be found by exploiting differences in public opinion on the politics of issues like stem cells, teaching evolution, climate change, and so on. And lastly, but most visibly, the Bush administration has engaged in hyper-controlling strategies for the management of information.

Of these varied reasons for the increasing number of issues raised at the interface of science and politics, only one will be addressed by the election of a new United States president. The others will remain, and dealing with them will require a more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the messy interconnections between science and politics.

The Language of Politics

The very language of science in public discussions lends itself to politicization. For instance, in February 2006, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory complained because they had been instructed to use the phrase “climate change” rather than the phrase “global warming” in their public communications. The reason for this complaint is that the language of climate science has become politicized. A Republican strategy memo recommended use of the phrase “climate change” over “global warming,” though environmental groups have long had the opposite preference. At a panel discussion at the 2008 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Harvard’s John Holdren recommended that political action on climate change might be better motivated by using the term “global climate disruption.” Any language used to characterize the human role in the global environment will necessarily be loaded with emotional and symbolic meaning. There can be no getting around this reality—there is no bloodless, neutral language.