How to counter "scientific-sounding spin"?

by: Jay Stevens

Wed Mar 25, 2009 at 07:47:13 AM MST

Can we ever know, on any contentious or politicized topic, how to recognize the real conclusions of science and how to distinguish them from scientific-sounding spin or misinformation?

Congress will soon consider global-warming legislation, and the debate comes as contradictory claims about climate science abound. Partisans of this issue often wield vastly different facts and sometimes seem to even live in different realities.
In this context, finding common ground will be very difficult.

Mooney's solution?

Perhaps the only hope involves taking a stand for a breed of journalism and commentary that is not permitted to simply say anything; that is constrained by standards of evidence, rigor and reproducibility that are similar to the canons of modern science itself.

Yeah, and the newspaper publishing the new, more rigorous commentaries will be delivered by a fleet of flying pigs.

Seriously, if we want to take action on climate change, we can't wait around for utopian journalistic ethics to kick in. Right now, the very existence of climate change has warped into a political issue and calls for a political solution. But what? A massive grassroots campaign to educate voters and pressure lawmakers to respond to the science?

Local action? Of course, local action doesn't help when the neighboring town installs a coal-burning electricity plant while you're spending municipal dollars weatherizing city buildings, does it? At some point, we need federally-enforced standards for carbon dioxide pollution.

What have you got? Do you know of any other grassroots orgs tackling this problem? Possible solutions to the current political morass?