“We talk about science as this pure ideal and the scientific method as if it is something out of a cookbook, but research is a social and human activity full of all the failings of society and humans, and this reality gets totally magnified by the high political stakes here.” — Dr. Dan Sarewitz, a science policy professor at Arizona State University, as quoted in an Associated Press story on allegations that global climate change researchers faked data and hid conflicting material.

Smart Tan believes the hyperbolic statements made by anti-tanning advocates in the past year — statements that often ignore conflicting data or confounding conclusions — are a story very much like the tale of global warming scientists who allegedly hid information that contradicted some pro-climate change data.

When researchers in June allowed the press to report that tanning is as dangerous as smoking — failing to disclose the confounding information and allowing that mis-statement to proliferate — it was the same kind of story,” Smart Tan Vice President Joseph Levy said. “Researchers who succumb to politics cheapen the brand of all their work.”

To read the AP story on climate change click here.