Science Under Siege: Balancing Technology and the Environment

Conservative journalist and science writer Fumento ( The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS ) here examines several public health issues--food additives, dioxins, food irradiation--from a mostly solid scientific base. But he wastes his efforts on a flimsy political thesis; that in these areas, the media promotes sensation and crisis over accurate reporting. Fumento employs his carefully assembled evidence in the service of a sour, sometimes sophomoric kind of sociology that reflects a political stance possibly shared with the conservative foundation sponsors noted in the acknowledgements, among them the Center for Science, Technology and Media. ``We are clearly in the midst of an environmental revolution,'' Fumento observes, adding that its current stage ``correlates with the Terror of the French Revolution.'' His reductive arguments serve public policy no better than those of the ``fanatics and faddists'' whose influence on environmental and conservation interests he deplores. (Jan.)