Judging from the stem cell vote, it looks like the Republican right is still predominant, even if there has been some erosion on this issue and a lot of Republicans shifting positions:

In the Senate, 43 Democrats, 19 Republicans and one independent voted to expand federally funded embryonic stem cell research, while 36 Republicans and one Democrat — Ben Nelson (Neb.) — voted against it.

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This CNN story is quite representative of an obnoxious genre: Stories about Bush’s failed stem cell policy which pretend that the President’s “more than 60″ lines claim was only undermined by the passage of considerable time, rather than almost immediately. In fact, as I detail in The Republican War on Science and as others like journalist Stephen Hall have also detailed, the claim was never defensible. The only factor that delayed and defused outrage over Bush’s dramatic misleading of the public on this subject was 9/11, which wiped the issue of stem cells completely off the map (and rightly so). But now that we’re debating stem cells again, can we please stop pretending that Bush merely made an innocent mistake back in 2001, rather than basing his whole policy on poorly vetted (or poorly understood) information?

For more info see the opening chapter of The Republican War on Science.

Well, here I am in London….blogging about events from before I left. Better late than never.

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Turns out he had a big article on this subject in the neoconservative New Atlantis fairly recently. As we’ve done before–very successfully–I’m going to pull out three numbered quotes and invite you to respond:

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Just kidding…I’m not debating him, but I am appearing on a panel with the famous deputy director of the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, this Friday at the “Bioethics and Politics” conference in Albany, New York. The panel set-up could lead to debate-like exchanges, certainly. Guess I’d better brush up on stem cells; I’ve been focused on climate for so long I suspect I’m a bit rusty. So anyway, here’s a set of Google links on Doerflinger. Just like we’ve done with Ron Bailey and Tom Bethell in the past, I’d appreciate your reactions…

The anti-research types get a lot of mileage out of arguing that embryonic stem cell research has been hyped. In general, I think they greatly overstate the case, but we must admit–and I certainly do–that some pro-research statements have been made that are really beyond the pale. Perhaps the most outrageous example, of course, is Jonathan Edwards’ statement during the 2004 campaign that

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I’ve been going on and on lately about the adult stem cell partisans and what’s wrong with their arguments. But underlying those arguments, I suspect, is something deeper. These advocates just don’t seem to share the scientific mindset when it comes to embryonic stem cell research. Some of them, I speculate, may not even fully grasp why scientists want to see this research get done in the first place.

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As I’ve noted previously, there have been attempts to question the scientific peer review process following the Hwang Woo Suk scandal. But a Rick Weiss article in the Washington Post over the weekend helpfully explains why it’s naive to think that peer reviewers can catch this kind of chicanery:

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Yesterday, extending a public debate that I participated in earlier in the week, I criticized some arguments by Reason‘s Ron Bailey and started to criticize some writings by the Discovery Institute’s Wesley Smith. I’m pretty much done with Bailey (see our exchange here), with whom I really don’t disagree all that much. But I have more to say about Smith’s arguments on the stem cell issue.

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The three way debate/discussion on science and politics hosted by the Smith Family Foundation on Tuesday night was an interesting event, to say the least. It was in some ways a difficult discussion for me, because the other participants, Ronald Bailey and Wesley Smith, are much more inclined than I to mix it up about the ethics of different kinds of research, especially when it comes to future biomedical advances and whether they should go forward without restriction. I, on the other hand, simply take the stance that while ethical viewpoints may differ, that’s no excuse for either side to distort the science.

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