The conservative reversal on science

The 1980s and 1990s were prime time for environmental scares, many of which proved bogus. On one side were liberals, greens and professional alarmists who always assumed the worst. On the other side, many non-liberals chose to heed scientists who had studied the evidence. Time and again, the skeptics were right.

Remember the Alar scare of 1989, when Meryl Streep went before Congress to warn of a pesticide used on apples? There was much concern at the time, but it didn’t pan out. An official with the National Cancer Institute eventually concluded the cancer risk from eating apples treated with Alar was “nonexistent.”