SOUND SCIENCE….If you want to play the game, you have to know the lingo. And you do know what “sound science” means, don’t you? Don’t you?
Short answer: Anything that “sounds like science.”
Slightly longer answer: The latest in a long line of Orwellian phrases from the right. It basically means accepting only science favorable to industrial polluters and corporations in general, and holding everything else up to impossibly high standards, especially if it comes from an actual impartial university researcher.
Sample usage: “We’re holding off on those cigarette warning labels until there’s some sound science to back up all that cancer scare stuff.”
Etymology: Still being debated by experts. Chris Mooney takes a shot at it today. Most likely suspect: Newt Gingrich.
