Why Trump Will Lose His War on Science

Donald Trump, meet science. Science, meet Donald Trump. I bet you two are going to get along fantastically. OK, maybe not. It was never likely that an Administration that coined a term like “alternative facts” after just three days was ever going to be comfortable with a world of study in which facts are the hard, un-devaluable currency. If I tell you that the speed of light is 186,282 miles per second, you don’t get to argue for 187,000—not if you want to be taken seriously. But while you can’t change established science, you can try to deny it or silence it. On that score, the Trump team has moved quickly and appallingly. Even before the election, Trump was a shameless peddler of scientific fictions — that climate change is a Chinese hoax; that vaccines cause autism. No sooner had he won than he conspicuously summoned Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a leading anti-vaccine fabulist, to Trump Tower for a meeting. His transition team floated the possibility that Kennedy would be appointed to a position overseeing vaccine safety and effectiveness — though the team later denied that any such job had been offered, perhaps as a result of public blowback. Once in office, the Trump Administration went much further, launching a series of strikes on both indisputable fact and institutional science. The White House website stripped out any mention of climate change or the effort to fight it, and word went out that the Environmental Protection Agency ...
Source: TIME.com: Top Science and Health Stories - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized alternative facts climate change EPA onetime politics trump vaccines Source Type: news