Ceccarelli, Leah. "Defenders of Science Shouldn't Let the Sophists Carry the Day." SEATTLE TIMES June 17, 2008.

Public questions in America about science have become the playthings of the manufactured controversy, or "manufactroversy," in which political activists invent a scientific disagreement that isn't real. An example is global-warming skepticism. PR man Frank Luntz admitted as much in an infamous memo in which he confessed that disagreement about global warming was fading away, but he nonetheless urged Republicans "to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue." This tactic was taken from the tobacco industry, which likes to say there are two sides to every question. South African President Thabo Mbeki's support for AIDS dissent eight years ago is a similar case. Mbeki ingeniously turned the scientific community's values against it by drawing on the importance of open debate, a skeptical attitude and the need for research. Mbeki alleged that scientists who questioned the causal link between HIV and AIDS had been branded as "dangerous and discredited." Claiming the moral authority of a leader who suffered political intimidation in apartheid South Africa, Mbeki condemned the scientific community for its "campaign of intellectual intimidation." The intelligent-design movement now has a "teach the controversy" campaign against evolutionary biology. Ben Stein's recent movie, Expelled, portrays scientists casting out anyone who questions biological orthodoxy. This movie is the most extreme application yet of the intelligent-design movement's "wedge" strategy to break the scientific community's influence over how science is taught. Of course, any claim by biologists that there is no scientific controversy to teach merely feeds the notion of an orthodoxy. In light of this, some have suggested that the best response to manufactured controversy is no response at all. I understand the impulse to remain silent in the face of nonsense, but I think it's shortsighted to cede the public stage in the naive hope that no one will pay attention. There have long been those who misuse the power of persuasion. In ancient Greece, the Sophists taught the art of persuasion to those who could pay their fee. These included Gorgias, who apparently boasted that he could persuade the multitude to ignore an expert and listen to him instead, and Protagoras, who claimed there are always two sides to a question and that it was the Sophist's job to make the weaker case appear the stronger. It was to oppose such deception that Aristotle wrote Rhetoric. Aristotle wanted to teach experts how to confute those who mislead. . . . Read the rest here: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2008001029_rhetoricop17.html.