strange confrontation. The secular modernist state which is completely saturated with scientism at every level of action and policy, has been commandeered by a radical right, which in turn has wrecked havoc on the state regulatory and policy apparatus. This havoc takes the form of a destruction of a scientism based public policy apparatus with all its propaganda of impartiality, and has replaced it with a clearly righwing and openly ideological apparatus that makes no apologies about its bias.
[WS:] You seem to be mixing up different phenomena that use science or at least science-based claims but in very different ways and to different ends. Some of them are fraudulent uses of science, but other are legitimate rational pursuits.
First is policy impact analysis which aims to predict likely effects of a particular course of action taken by government authority. As all science, it is only probabilistic and as good as the behavioral models it assumes - but it is the best that we as society can do: it is both rational and democratic.
Second is using science or rather "research" to avoid making a policy decision. This is a common tactic used by both industry and government to derail any policy initiative on, say, climate change, public transit, health care etc. without appearing obstructionist. Here the special interest groups and government agencies they control have vested interests in the inefficient status quo and do not want any changes, but cannot say that openly without jeopardizing their legitimacy. So they use science and research as a tactic to delay or derail any initiatives to change that status quo.
Third is the use of science in a deliberately "imperfect information" mode to reach the needed conclusions without appearing too arbitrary or irrational. The imperfect information mode is a rational processing of information that has been selectively limited by some artifice to steer the inquiry in a desired direction. The artifices can be quite blunt e.g. corporate bosses declaring that their task is to protect the interests of the shareholders rather than employees - which basically declares all information pertaining to social consequences of their decision to be invalid entries in their formally rational calculus. Other artifices can be more subtle, e.g. by using measures (such is money value) that give more weight to some phenomena (e.g. production or commerce) than to other (e.g. happiness, social well -being).
My concern is that criticism of "scientism" often either throws the baby with the bath waters i.e. dismisses legitimate science (case 1 above) by overzealous critique of fraudulent uses of it (cases 2 and 3 above), or itself is a fraud - obscurantism aimed to undermine legitimate scientific conclusions that do not fit an ideological agenda (cf. theory of evolution or scientific medicine.) I think that the very term "scientism" as opposed to old fashioned "fraud" and "charlatanry" smacks of ideological obscurantism, populism, and luddism by stipulating that there is something suspicious in science itself rather than in its improper or fraudulent uses.
It is my perception that obscurantism, populism and luddism pose far greater dangers to rational thought than all fraudulent uses of science combined. The latter recognize the authority of reason, they only try to fraudulently use it to its own ends, whereas the former launch a frontal attack on that authority.
Wojtek