I happened to see Crichton's 'State of Fear' again in the library yesterday, and I was amused and again thought of how it provides a great case of how politicians and naysayers cherry pick on scientific results and present biased views draped to look like authority. For anyone who is reading that book and getting impressed by the 'scientific' data it references, I again would point to the authoritative RealClimate article penned by respected climate scientists, as well as Chris Mooney's factcheck of Crichton's footnotes. Mooney, as I have noted, has written the readable The Republican War on Science. As Mooney says it best:

" In the appendix to ''State of Fear,'' Crichton frets about ''Why Politicized Science is Dangerous.'' But he may himself have provided a case study."