Oh dear, Austin Frakt of the liberal healthcare blog The Determined Statist (a.k.a. The Incidental Economist) is deeply saddened by the Supreme Court’s recent Hobby Lobby decision (see here). In that case, the court ruled that the government could not require the owners of a closely held corporation to include certain forms of contraception in the health insurance provided to employees to which the owners object on religious grounds.

According to Frakt, the Supreme Court’s decision in Hobby Lobby proves that it “doesn’t get” either science or economics and Frakt is troubled “when any branch of government (or anyone at all) makes policy decisions that turn on arguments in contradiction with evidence.” So, in addition to calling those who disagree with them racists and haters, we can add “antiscience” to liberals’ standard list of insults.

Frakt refers to the “evidence” as he criticizes the Court, which is quite funny coming from a guy who, along with his fellow contributors at The Incidental Economist, routinely denies competition and doesn’t so much as flinch from the idea of big government central planning, despite the massive amount of evidence accumulated over the last two hundred years that proves the clear superiority of competitive markets over centrally controlled and directed economies.

By ignoring this evidence, Frakt ignores the proverbial log in his own eye at the same time he seeks to remove an antiscience speck from the Court’s eye. In reality, Frakt and his colleagues are the ones who don’t get science or economics. Liberals not only don’t get science when they ignore evidence of social processes, but their use of deception as a basic political tactic to expand government actually erodes the credibility of science, especially in healthcare.

Medical studies have appeared lately (many of which are reviewed by contributors at The Incidental Economist) suggesting that medical tests such as prostate exams, pap smears, mammograms, etc. are not effective and should be discontinued or reduced in frequency. Even the annual physical exam is now questioned and judged to be potentially harmful because of false alarms that require additional testing.

And whaddaya know, these studies’ conclusions just happen to support the central planners’ goal of “containing costs” in healthcare. How convenient. But when liberals routinely misrepresent facts to support their ideology, serious questions arise about the results of medical studies that are financed by a central government controlled by liberals and conducted by government employees who voted for Barack Obama (twice, even) and strongly support Obamacare.

Whenever the mainstream media (i.e., liberals) report the results of a drug study that liberals consider questionable, the author is sure to imply that the results may be rigged because the study was financed by a big, bad drug company. Yet the media doesn’t treat government sponsored studies in the same way – we are all supposed to just accept without question the results of studies conducted by Obamacare supporters.

Given today’s politicized economy and liberals’ dishonest tactics to impose an evidence-free ideology on the rest of us, to discount the results of these government-controlled studies would not be antiscience, but rather a sensible approach of any rational person.

Note:  To his credit, Frakt updated his post with a link to an argument that contradicts his assertion that the Court does not get science.