How are Republicans attempting to squash scientific facts that challenge their own agendas? By funding and generating alternate research that backs up their claims instead. More than a dozen conservative senators are currently calling for an end to disclosure rules so that biased scientific studies can be presented as fact without having to acknowledge who paid for the research, writes The Daily Beast.
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Senator Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, is leading the charge to rescind disclosure requirements. According to a member of Alexander’s staff, “the chilling effect the financial disclosure could have seems counter to the idea of robust inclusion of a diverse set of ideas and views to inform the rule-making.”
Ah, yes. The old “both sides of the story need to be presented” argument. While that’s good in principle, when the “other” side of the story is a fabricated, biased one, why does that deserve comparable consideration? If private interests can pay to make “fake science” indiscernible from and on equal footing with real science in the eyes of lawmakers, then there’s no hope for real science at all.
Pay no attention to the old white men behind the curtain.
