Some environmental ethicists have proposed that different environmental values lead in principle to different environmental policy preferences. The controversy provoked by Bjørn Lomborg's book, The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001), has provided an opportunity to test this hypothesis in practice for scientists and other technical experts. In analyzing the language of the argument between Lomborg and his critics, I find that environmental scientists participating prominently in the debate fall into one of two camps according to whether their valuations of nature tend to be anthropocentric or nonanthropocentric. I find further that for these scientists moral philosophies correlate both with policy preferences and with interpretations of data. I conclude that unexplored differences in environmental values make important and underappreciated contributions to the politicization of science and to polarization among scientists and other technical experts involved in environmental disputes.

The stark divide between the political right and left is rooted in conflicting beliefs, values, and personality—and, recent research suggests, perhaps even lower-level physiological differences between individuals. In this registered report, we investigated a novel domain of ideological differences in physiological processes: interoceptive sensitivity—that is, a person’s attunement to their own internal bodily states and signals (e.g., physiological arousal, pain, and respiration). We conducted two studies testing the hypothesis that greater interoceptive sensitivity would be associated with greater conservatism: one laboratory study in the Netherlands using a physiological heartbeat detection task and one large-scale online study in the United States employing an innovative webcam-based measure of interoceptive sensitivity. Contrary to our predictions, we found evidence that interoceptive sensitivity may instead predict greater political liberalism (versus conservatism), although this association was primarily limited to the American sample. We discuss implications for our understanding of the physiological underpinnings of political ideology.

This article examines the recent political-cumepistemological criticism of reductionism in fields such as sociobiology, behavioral ecology, behavioral genetics, and IQ research. It identifies and challenges some unexamined assumptions underlying current “anti-reductionist” reasoning, especially the belief that there are inherent links between political motivations and scientific convictions, between “bad” science and undesirable political consequences, and between methodological and ontological reductionism. The author analyzes the conflict in scientific world views between anti-reductionist “weeders” and reductionist “planters.” Paradoxically, in their criticism of research strategies routinely used by alleged reductionists, anti-reductionists often sound like arch-reductionists themselves. The author argues that the various linked beliefs in anti-reductionist reasoning should be uncoupled, not only for intellectual, but also for political reasons.

In March 2008, I published an article in this journal that examined the ways in which the White House managed the news—and minimized the political impact—of Dwight D. Eisenhower's massive 1955 heart attack. In addition, the analysis explored the manner in which Eisenhower himself, in handling this issue, had brilliantly “manipulated his medical team, safeguarded his image, cajoled his staff, confused the press, managed his advisers, dominated his party, and ran a campaign that was virtually impossible for the opposition to counteract” (p. 18).1 This article expands on my previous work by considering the ways in which Eisenhower's ill health had significant public policy repercussions that went beyond the immediate political effects evaluated in 2008. These included the drawbacks associated with Eisenhower's concept of “Team Government,” a tragic war in the Middle East, a serious deterioration of the U.S. relationship with three very close allies and, finally, the beginnings of a presidentially led effort to add a much needed “presidential disability” amendment to the United States Constitution. These latter effects have been studied here through use of primary source materials located at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, commentaries written by Eisenhower himself, members of his family and other close associates and the voluminous secondary literature that has appeared over the years focusing on the Eisenhower presidency.

I endorse Mark Walker's thesis that there is no moral difference between genetic interventions to make it more likely that children will develop moral virtues, such as truthfulness, caring, and justice—however, exactly, these are understood—and environmental interventions aimed at the same outcome. In this response, I offer some further considerations that tend to support the thesis in the face of “loss of freedom” or “loss of autonomy” arguments.

Recent technological and political changes in the Sahel resemble earlier innovations that have failed to increase production or achieve equity in distribution, but perceived needs for large-scale changes remain, based on numerous misperceptions of what occurred in the famine of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Drought, large numbers of deaths, and decimation of cattle herds have been stereotyped to justify large capital-intensive development projects. Large dams, cash crops, and complex controls of the desert are among the projected schemes to increase production. The thesis of this article is that if a valid perspective of what occurred to the Sahel ecology in the 1960s is constructed, then capital-intensive projects frequently encouraging commercialization of agriculture will be replaced by labor-intensive, small-scale projects that involve primarily subsistence farming. The possible surplus from subsistence patterns is likely to exceed the surplus of large-scale efforts for a variety of reasons.

This paper has five parts: (1) a historical background to UNSCOM; (2) an explanation of how I came to work for UNSCOM as a staffer and inspector; (3) a description and analysis of the UNSCOM experience in Iraq; (4) a review of seven verification measures employed by UNSCOM; and (5) concluding thoughts on the wider applicability of the UNSCOM experience.

While the science of animal biotechnology is advancing at a rapid pace, the ethical discussion about the boundaries the public might want to set is at the most nascent stage. There is a tendency in the public debate for opponents to favor an all-out ban on the science, while proponents want to grant it carte blanche. I argue that a more nuanced position on animal biotechnology considers individual projects to be located on a moral continuum, where some are clearly morally justified, others morally impermissible, and some lie in the ethical gray-zone. To begin to define this continuum, we use the bioethical method of casuistry to analyze one case at the end of moral permissibility, and we contrast it with a case that is located at the opposite end of the moral spectrum. I advocate this approach to assessing the moral merit of biotechnology projects because of its attention to the details of individual cases — the protocols, ends, and methods — on which an accurate moral judgment necessarily rests.

This paper examines the contextual factors shaping legislative debates affecting stem cell research in two states, Kansas and Massachusetts, which both permit therapeutic cloning for stem cell research but markedly vary in their legislative approach to the issue. In Kansas, restrictive legislation was proposed but effectively blocked by research proponents, while in Massachusetts permissive legislation was successfully implemented under the auspices of an act to promote stem cell research. The importance of university and industry involvement is highlighted in each case, as are the roles of enterprising and persistent policy entrepreneurs. Providing a close examination of the policy process attending the cloning debate in these states is intended to contribute to an enhanced understanding of the cloning-policy process as it has played out at the state level, with an eye toward informing legislative debates over related biotechnical advances in the future.

We introduce the Politics and the Life Sciences Special Issue on Disgust and Political Attitudes discussing the importance of understanding state and trait disgust, the innovative and transparent process by which registered reports and preregistered studies were chosen and funded, and the manuscripts that make up this special issue. This essay concludes by discussing future research directions in disgust and political attitudes, as well as the benefits of a transparent review process that avoids the “file drawer problem” of unpublished null findings.

Only one man in American history has been elected four times to the Office of President. Despite the image of vigor and hearty good cheer that he projected, Franklin D. Roosevelt was afflicted by both disability and serious illness while in the White House. He had never recovered fully from his 1921 bout with polio, a fact concealed from the public for many years out of fear that it might be detrimental to his political career. The methods of concealment, involving both image control and media management, produced a veil of secrecy that only time has penetrated. Also, after several years in office, Roosevelt suffered from cardiovascular disease that eventually ended his life. The belief of some critics that his physical deterioration impacted negatively on his performance as president, most notably at the Yalta Conference in early 1945, is worthy of examination, with the perspective that more than forty years can provide.

If the life sciences are to have much to say about politics, there needs to be a universal element to political orientations. In this essay, I argue that the recent prominence of nativist, law-and-order, populist politicians reveals the nature of this universal element. All social units have to address bedrock dilemmas about how to deal with norm violators and how welcoming to be to outsiders as well as to proponents of new lifestyles. Might differences on these core dilemmas be the universal element of political life? Using the followers of one of the most prominent examples of a nativist political leader—Donald Trump—as an example, I present data showing that Trump’s most earnest followers are different from others—even those who share their general ideological leanings—not on traditional economic or social issues, but rather on the group-based security issues that grow out of the bedrock dilemmas of social life.

Contrary to the claims of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that its torture program was scientific, the program was not based on biology or any other science. Instead, the George W. Bush administration veneered the program’s justification with a patina of pseudoscience, ignoring the actual biology of torturing human brains. We reconstruct the Bush administration’s decision-making process to establish that the policy decision to use torture took place in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks without any investigation into its efficacy. We then present the pseudoscientific model of torture sold to the CIA, show why this ad hoc model amounted to pseudoscience, and then catalog what the actual science of torturing human brains—available in 2001—reveals about the practice. We conclude with a discussion of how a process incorporating countervailing evidence might prevent a policy going forward that is contrary to law, ethics, and evidence.