Michael Mann: Trump Admin Is ‘Co-Opting the Language of Science’ for Something Just the Opposite of What That Movement Seeks to Do

EXCERPT:

MANN: "I mean, what they’re doing is they’re co-opting the language of science. They’re co-opting the language of a movement in science, the open science movement, which seeks to, in essence, make science as accessible as possible to make sure that scientists provide all of the data and the methods for other scientists to reproduce what they’re doing. So this is actually a movement within science. And what they’re doing here is to actually co-opt that language for something that is just the opposite of what that movement seeks to do. It’s very Orwellian. I’ve used that term before in the context of this administration’s approach to science, and it’s Orwellian because when this particular directive talks about peer review and preserving the sanctity of peer review, what they actually want to do is replace scientific peer review, which is having independent experts assess scientific papers for accuracy, to replace that with government oversight, so that ideologues that they appoint to the science agencies can deem what is and is not — what does and does not constitute peer review. And indeed, they want to even redefine scientific misconduct for which scientists' sanctions can be taken against scientists. They want to redefine it as science that they don’t like. And that is very scary. It takes us back to the era of Lysenko in the 1940s in Russia, where ideological science replaced legitimate science and led to widespread famines.”