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Contrary imaginations. 

This is the final installment of a three-part series on radical skepticism and the rise of conspiratorial thinking about science. . . . .

Thus far, the strategy of the creationists has been one of radical skepticism: They look for signs of uncertainty, gaps in the fossil record. Like the tobacco companies, the drug manufacturers, and the environmentalists, they need only the shadow of a doubt to make their case: . . .

Like the producers of Expelled, Farber portrays mainstream, government-funded science as a repressive regime intolerant of dissent.

Harper's has shown a peculiar affinity, over the years, for contrarian science: In addition to the Farber piece, the magazine has run repeated attacks on the theory of evolution from former Washington editor Tom Bethell, not to mention last month's excerpt from David Berlinski. But it's also the place where Richard Hofstadter laid out his seminal thesis on "the paranoid style in American politics"—an analysis of the conspiracy-minded, radical right that might just as well describe today's radical skeptics of science. The essay first appeared in November of 1964, the same year as the first surgeon general's report on the dangers of smoking, and not long before the tobacco companies geared up the machines of manufactured uncertainty.

The paranoid style, Hofstadter wrote, "is nothing if not scholarly in its technique."

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