If Dr. S. Fred Singer didn’t have Amy Ridenour to stand up for him, you’d wonder how he could bear the strain of being the only “honest” scientist in the world. Apparently, everyone in the global scientific community who doesn’t agree with Fred and Amy is a fake, a fraud or a liar – or is being duped by one of the three. At least, that’s the conclusion that Amy makes in this post from her National Center for Public Policy Research.

Amy says:

“Over the past 30 years, Singer has seen far too much scientific data fudged or worse, ignored; and on some occasions, even forged.”

Political correctness, regulatory fervor and sheer greed are the motivations, Amy says.

“Playing to widespread public fears, government scientists and private scientists receiving government grants have sometimes used misleading statistics to panic Americans into supporting over-reactive remedies for imaginary or overstated problems. By doing so, they help assure to further public funding for their agency or project by a largely-scientifically-illiterate Congress.”

It’s no wonder that Congress is scientifically illiterate when they insist upon getting their science briefings from fiction writers and lobbyists.

It’s also good, I suppose, that all those government-scientists-on-the-take are balanced by evenhanded characters like Singer, whose industry income is untainted by money from big, constitutionally derived, democratically governed organizations that are dedicated to the public good.