Today is Earthday, 2007. On today’s CBS News Sunday Morning Program, one of the feature stories was The Legacy of “Silent Spring.” We all now know that Rachel Carson, the author of the 1962 book, Silent Spring wrote the book (with fierce opposition from the pesticide industry) to inform the public the fact (according to Carson) that pesticides were destroying wildlife and endangering the environment. At the time, the pesticide industry drummed up contrary opinion, and tried to claim that Carson’s science was flawed, and there was really no scientific evidence supporting her claims.

Doesn’t this sound familiar? President Kennedy appointed a committee of experts to look into Carson’s claims, and when all was said and done, the committee agreed with all of her science and her conclusions.

It is important to be reminded of how scientific ideas are received. Rachel Carson’s theory that pesticides injected into the environment were traveling through ecological webs and impacting all wildlife. Science does not exist in a vacuum, and its ideas have social, political and religious consequences.