June 16, 2009

Bad Science Can Have a Wide Impact

The Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2009

Letters to the Editor

Eugenie Samuel Reich’s June 6 list of the “Five Best” books on scientific fraud misses the most egregious scientific fraud to date:the pseudoscience behind global warming hysteria. Including a book like “State of Fear” by Michael Crichton, or “Climate Confusion” by Roy Spencer, or “The Deniers” by Lawrence Solomon, or any one of a number of others would have tied in nicely with your editorial in the same issue, ” ‘Worse Than Fiction,’ ” which was a case study in bad science and global warming alarmism. The books in the Five Best list focus on the damage that scientific fraud does to science, but they fail to emphasize the damage that scientific fraud can do to society.

Peter Staats, Loveland, Ohio