[kijin]

A lot of benign facts are used in textbook political propaganda, too. More ice in North Pole this year! Global warming must be false! Doesn't make it any less interesting that ice levels fluctuate as wildly as it does. Sure, it gets annoying when people with the wrong ideas repeat it all the time. But if you're someone who is genuinely interested in how polar ice caps behave, it doesn't matter because you already know that those little fluctuations are par for the game.

Historians of science need to stay away from both extremes: (a) the religious pundits who claim that science is just like religion, as well as (b) simplistic views of science that paint it as more objective and value-free than it really is. If every historian flocked to (b) just because they got annoyed of having their work co-opted by (a), we'd end up with an understanding of science that is just as unrealistic. Without a solid understanding of how social, psychological, and even religious factors influence science, how do we even go about trying to reduce such influences? You don't solve problems by pretending they don't exist. Who cares if Jerry Falwell's ilk use it in their propaganda, they bend and use everything in their propaganda anyway.