Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum are liars, with a severely warped moral compas, and I would rather the fundamentalist approach to science win out in America, than that their approach to science win.

That’s my dead-serious verdict after finally reading their book Unscientific America, a book published last July attempting to explain how to improve the state of science in America, but which I only got to read recently, first because I was traveling, later because reading initial reviews made me promise myself not to spend money on the thing, so I had to wait arrived until the Notre Dame university library’s copy arrived.

Here’s why they are liars: Last year, a college student took a communion wafer out of the church without eating it. People sent him death threats as a result. Biology professor and blogger PZ Myers called the people sending the death threats demented fuckwits. And Mooney and Kirshenbaum spin this incident in their book as “blogger calls religious leaders demented fuckwits.” That was a lie.

It also shows a twisted moral compass. The incident was one where, on the one hand, you had people willing to send death threats over an improperly handled cracker, and on the other hand, a guy who stood up to those demented fuckwits by calling them out, getting someone to send him a second improperly handled cracker, and posting a picture online with a nail through it. And Mooney and Kirshenbaum treat the guy standing up to the threat makers as the more serious offender, to the point where they would smear him with a lie. Contrary to the impression I had gotten reading reviews of the book, they at least mention the existence of the death threats, but in some ways, that makes it worse: by mentioning the issue and never addressing it, they show how little they think it matters (or how little they want people to think it matters).

Most of this won’t surprise readers who’ve followed the reviews of the book. But now I’m going to say something that might be surprising. I’m convinced the points above aren’t really what’s bad about the book. Humans lie a lot, and unfortunately we’re obsessed enough with respect that it isn’t surprising to find people caring more about respect than death threats. The really bad feature of the book starts from the first chapter, the notorious that makes a big deal over the publicity surrounding Pluto’s demotion from planet status. As someone who witnessed first hand as friends joined Pluto-related Facebook groups, it was obvious that for 95% of the people involved, it was a big joke, and had nothing to do with science’s prestige in American society. It made me wonder if Mooney and Kirshenbaum had really paid close attention to the incident, or perhaps if they both suffered from the same mental deficiency affecting their ability to read social cues. Reading the actual book ruled out the first possibility, because they quote a whole series of obviously jokey slogans that cropped up around the Pluto issue. But reading the book convicned me that they probably don’t have any trouble detecting jokes. Rather, they just don’t care if what they’re saying is true.

Anyone who’s read a lot knows is that an ideal first chapter of a book will give readers something dramatic to hook them in. In the case of non-fiction, this is supposed to be some surprising information that leads into the main point of the book. Mooney and Kirshenbaum clearly got the point about drama, but didn’t get the point about information instead of a fanciful story based on a bizarre misreading of the facts. They didn’t even try. Jason Rosenhouse put it nicely in the comments thread of his review: “Much of it read like it was coming straight out of a communications manual.” And they forgot to mix genuine intelligent analysis in with the communications-manual tactics. Rosenhouse shows this nicely regarding the parts of his review where he talks about things like Sagan and post-modernism. But even Rosenhouse’s review didn’t mentally prepare me for the way the book oozed superficiality. In the discussion of science popularization, for example, they accuse Larry Moran of being anti-science popularization because of disparging remarks he made about science journalism, as if the two were the same thing. Given the way they idolize Carl Sagan, can’t they see that the issue was not whether popularization was good, but whether journalists rather than scientists should be doing it? How can anyone be that stupid?

At bottom, Mooney and Kirsenbaum never even go through the motions of trying to present rational arguments. And their position seems to be that rational arguments don’t matter at all, it’s all about using clever communications tricks. That’s why I would rather the fundamentalists win than them: right-wing religious apologists at least have a history of going through the motions of rational thought. I regard Thomas Aquinas and William Lane Craig as enemies of rational thought, but you can actually learn something about how to think from them precisely becasue they go through the motions. Not so with Mooney and Kirsenbaum.

The place where they really fundamentally don’t get it is that reasoned argument and good communication can be combined. And they even miss evidence of this right under their noses: they mention climate change deniers who can present congressmen with convincing-looking presentations, but don’t seem to notice that doing this isn’t purely a matter of communication skill. It also requires the attempt–however dishonest–to make it look like there are good rational reasons for adopting the position argued for. That why, even if you forget everything you believe about rationality and honesty being good things, the approach of Unscientific America is deeply flawed.

Side point: this book is another example of just how far you have to bend over backwards to be regarded as “polite” when talking about issues in science and religion. Among the examples of alleged communication blunders is: attempts by scientists to fight back against postmodernism, Daniel Dennett’s philosophical work, and even E. O. Wilson’s writings, in spite of the fact that they admit Wilsons wrote “calmly, respectfully, and beautifully.” With such condemnations, its hard to miss the point that for people like Chris Mooney and Matt Nisbet, being polite means simply not voicing certain ideas.