It is not only Republicans (and of course, not all Republicans) that misuse and abuse science for political gain.
The beauty industry regularly and openly misuses science when it comes to hawking their products to an unsuspecting population.
The true culprits are the latter-day Nostradamuses who, under their icons of cuddly pandas and polar bears, have misused science to stoke fear, guilt and a craving for atonement in the minds of the public.
"I pray that the politicians will be clever enough to save us from the evil misuse of science," Heisenberg, who returned to prominence in German science after the war, told The Associated Press in February 1947.
A few years ago, the National Academy of Sciences turned its attention to the misuse of science in courtrooms, saying that pseudoscientific theories had been used to convict people of crimes they may not have committed.
It was established in 1969, during the height of the Vietnam War, by scientists and students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who were concerned about the misuse of science for military purposes.
On Wednesday, more than 60 influential scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, issued a statement criticizing what they described as the misuse of science by the administration to bolster its policies on the environment, arms control and public health.
"It's great news," says Rena Steinzor of the University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore, who studies environmental regulation and the misuse of science in environmental policy.
The advocacy group, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, argues that the survey shows a pattern of political misuse of science leading to weaker protections for public health.
The guilt and horror at that grotesque misuse of science was a major factor in transforming Germany--once a leader in genetic research--into one of the most hostile environments for such research and the scientists who do it.
