Suppose we lived in a world in which reporters asked politicians to explain the grounds on which they believe what they purport to believe; in which they did so regularly at press conferences and in presidential debates—

• why, for example, they are “skeptical” about the presence of climate change that virtually all scientists think is in significant measure the product of human activity;

• whether they are equally skeptical of scientific arguments about, say, genetic modification, the design of wing shapes or drone technology;

• in other words, on what basis they pick and choose their scientific arguments;

• or why (if they are Republican) they believe that jobs are produced when taxes are lowered, in the light of the fact—reported by a notorious Communist newspaper called The Wall Street Journal—that fewer jobs were created under George W. Bush’s…

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