There’s an excellent article on the Bush administration’s fudging of scientific findings on Wired.
Honestly, science isn’t that hard to figure out. It’s not just another way of deciding how the world works, like religion is. Science isn’t about deciding “oh, this is how the world works because of SCIENCE!”. Science is about formulating theories and then actually testing those theories to see if they’re true, and throwing out the ones that simply don’t work, even if you really REALLY wanted them to be true. In fact, a great amount of scientific progress has occured when experiments proved a theory didn’t work because the scientists had to come up with a new theory as to why that was!
For an excellent book on science, I highly recommend The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. It’s a great read and will really open your eyes to the scientific method. And no, it isn’t boring or dry or anything but rather its filled with wonder about the world and how it works. The Canadian Amazon page for it is here.
Here is a book that I am planning on picking up when I have time.
“The Man Who Shocked the World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram” by Dr. Thomas Blass.
http://www.stanleymilgram.com/
Milgram is famous for some of his experiments that were perhaps unethical. I don’t want to get into details because if you don’t know about the experiments, that is half the fun of reading about him.
Make that a second recommendation to read that book.