In recent years we’ve heard cries of “follow the science” in support of all kinds of agendas and political movements. But science is a methodology and, in many cases, has exposed those agendas as unsupported by, and sometimes even contradicted by, the science.
Claiming a word as your own and attaching that word to your agenda is a neat trick, if you can pull it off. (Prosecutors do it all the time with the word truth.) But despite the recent flurry of creativity surrounding the word science, this tactic is as old as the hills. A brief look at the history of science-misuse is instructive.
In Mathew Stewart’s book The Management Myth, he explains that various groups have historically used the word science to promote their own agendas, regardless of whether there was any actual science involved:
