Science is Not Science When it is Politics
I am growing increasingly concerned about suppression of heterodox views in science. This story in the Telegraph, I think, demonstrates the point. It is about the stifling of scientists who are skeptical about the conventional view about the existence of global warming and its causes.
I don't want to get into the global warming issue. What concerns me is the stifling of opposing views--which is a corruption of science. From the story: Scientists who questioned mankind's impact on climate change have received death threats and claim to have been shunned by the scientific community. They say the debate on global warming has been "hijacked" by a powerful alliance of politicians, scientists and environmentalists who have stifled all questioning about the true environmental impact of carbon dioxide emissions... "Western governments have pumped billions of dollars into careers and institutes and they feel threatened," said the professor. "I can tolerate being called a sceptic because all scientists should be sceptics, but then they started calling us deniers, with all the connotations of the Holocaust. That is an obscenity. It has got really nasty and personal."...
"Richard Lindzen, the professor of Atmospheric Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology...recently claimed: "Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves labelled as industry stooges."
I have seen the same suppression in the human cloning issue. Scientists who have an ethical objection are threatened with firing if they express them publicly. They are informed that their careers will be in tatters if they support an "anti-science" view. They will not be invited to symposia or asked to write book chapters. If they don't have tenure, they are toast. If they do, they are shunned to the sidelines.
The media are quick to jump on the Bush Administration for suppressing views with which it disagrees, a matter about which I have no opinion. But with rare exceptions, such as the story in the Telegraph, they are silent about the bullying when it comes from the other direction. Indeed, I have tried to interest media in this story only to be met by barely stifled yawns.
Labels: Political-Science
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 7:12 PM
32 Comments
32 Comments:
A lot in the article, let's break it down:
1. Death threats, yeah, that's bad and newsworthy.
2. Loss of funding, that should be met with a yawn.
3. Denials with all the connatations of the Holocaust? Now that's plain melodramatic.
But really, would you complain if a scientist who wanted to study flogeston or how to turn lead into gold didn't receive funding? I think it's the same principle. At some point, we need to agree as a society that something is a fact and move on. Or, for the dissenters who still believe that lead can be turned into gold with the wave of a magic wand, they are free to do so, but won't receive big funding grants.
I thought of a better example:
What if a eugenist with tenure was marginalized and didn't receive funding?
Would you praise the institution of science for doing the right thing? My guess is you would.
If not, then I truly respect your consistency.
Royale: You missed most of the point. Enforced homogeneity in science isn't science.
Moreover, eugenics is evil. Having a heterodox view on cloning or global warming is not evil. And shunning those who refuse to follow the herd, for that reason alone, is also not science. It is politics and promoters of science, properly understood (like moi), should oppose lockstep thinking.
I'll concede that death threats is, of course, not science. I'll also concede you're probably right on how scientists view the morality of cloning.
But science does embrace group mentality and quite openly. That's the point behind the peer review system.
So, shunning people's point of view or cutting off funds - for disagreements on the facts and NOT morals - I must disagree. At some point, people need to accept a fact and move on.
I don't see the difference between a dissenter complaining about not getting funds to disprove global warming, and say, funds to turn lead into gold.
But yes, dissenters must be treated with a measure of respect, even if their views are worth marginalising or their research proposals should not receive funding.
It seems to me that if a view is really stupid, it will get marginalized in informal ways. What bothers me here (and in some other cases I should mention) is the way that people try to make it formal. That is, they try to have papers published and released to the press that say, "There is no debate about X," or they write letters to their fellow scientists saying, "Boycott this conference at your school because it's going to be discussing X, and we don't think that should be done." I mean, if there really _is_ no debate about X, people can notice that for themselves. Why the press release? And if X is so dumb, why do your fellow scientists (who may actually disagree with X but not find it so beyond the pale as not to be worth discussing) _need_ to be pressured to boycott a conference they were otherwise going to go to? If somebody tried to publish a paper on turning lead into gold, he'd just be ignored. There's something forced about all of this that smells fishy, sounds propagandistic, and makes the common man wonder just how open and shut the science is after all.
Can calling us embryonic stem cell deniers be far behind?
This is why dissident media and blogging are so important. How are people going to get their views out when the media clamps down on views that don't fit their paradigms.
I too think comparing this to the Holocaust is obscene.
The science supressionists need to be careful. Someday the shoe is going to be on the other foot and a lot of us will remember and cut their funding too. These people forget whose money and institutions these are.
Certainly FACTS should not be disputed. But in the ethical issues surrounding biotech, we are not dealing with facts, but ethics. In global warming, we are dealing with computer projections, which it is my understanding, don't even take in the activity of the sun. Be that as it may, heterodox views should be welcomed, and labeled as such. Holders of these views should not be marginalized. Otherwise, it is just a modern-day stifling of Galilleo.
The Telegraph is a worthless rag, part of the Rupert Murdoch empire, so I would not take anything it says seriously.
Climate-change denialists may lose out on peer-reviewed funding if they are too far from the consensus, but they can always tap the deep pockets of the energy industries, which in fact they do. I shed no tears for them. Similarly, evolution-denialists are laughed out of the peer-reviewed journals but can always find a home at well-funded faithtanks like the Discovery Institute.
mtraven: yada, yada, yada.
Wesley - it's a bit more than computer projections, a lot more actually. But that's probably beyond the scope of what you wanted to do.
I think the issue between stem cells and global warming aren't comparable at all.
For stem cells - the dissenters' arguments seems to be about ethics.
For global warming - the dissenters seem to argue about facts.
But given that dissenters frequently align with powerful other lobbies (industry, religious groups), their voices won't exactly be stifled.
In fact, I would argue that's because their voices are so powerful that we're left with such a quagmire that we're in.
" Well, that's if there's a real absence of serious debate."
I could make the same charge against dissidents of climate change or evolution. That they are not engaged in a "serious debate," just politicizing facts.
The "BBC Documentary" (which has nothing to do with the BBC, it was on Channel Four) is garbage as well, amply documented here.
Oddly enough the writer and producer of the program comes out of an obscure Marxist sect, the Revolutionary Communist Party! That this tiny group of cranks managed to get a prime-time documentary made and broadcast is very strange.
mtraven:
"Climate-change denialists may lose out on peer-reviewed funding if they are too far from the consensus, but they can always tap the deep pockets of the energy industries, which in fact they do. I shed no tears for them. Similarly, evolution-denialists are laughed out of the peer-reviewed journals but can always find a home at well-funded faithtanks like the Discovery Institute."
http://www.overwhelmingevidence.com/oe/blog/ej_klone/an_atheist_in_support_of_id
From the blog of an atheist who supports Intelligent Design. I recommend reading his blog because it's very well thought-out and it makes perfect sense to me, and he is *not* a creationist in any stripe.
ANYWAY!
Where would we be if we didn't have the ability to argue, if we didn't have people who occasionally pushed our buttons and believed in something the rest of us scoff at?
From time to time we need the tree shanken so we get a new perspective from different branches. Royal wondered if we would be upset if someone wanted to do research on turning lead into gold and was refused funds.
Well, I don't know about that, but I do know that I support funding a gentleman who is a very intelligent professor who is firmly convinced that Big Foot is real. I'm also a firm supporter of Cryptozoology, UFOlogy, and past life regression, none of which I believe in.
I also never believed that anything could go faster than light, and I recall reading about an experiment where, under right conditions, a beam of light shot through one end of their special tunnel-thingy came out the other end before it finished going in.
For anybody who finds that confusing, I'll look it up, but my description won't be any better - I majored in Literature for a reason...
People find stuff out by accident all the time.
Tabs: You are onto something important. We all need our orthodoxies challenged from time to time, so they don't become mere dogma. I think this is particularly true in science, which can become ideology or belief all too easily--as we see happening now in some spheres. And scientsist of all people should support heterodox challenges. Unfortunately--and to some degree this has always been true because it reflects something that is part of the human condition--in science today heterodox thinking is treated like heresy. When that happens, it ain't science.
Heterodoxy is all very well, but the two examples here -- climate change denial, and intelligent design -- hardly are suffering from their dissension from the accepted norms. Rather, both those causes are supported by extremely well-funded and politically connected groups, and they have no problem at all getting their message heard, if not necessarily taken seriously by people who actually know something about the subject. To paint them as persecuted minorities is laughable.
"Scientists who have an ethical objection are threatened with firing if they express them publicly. They are informed that their careers will be in tatters if they support an "anti-science" view. They will not be invited to symposia or asked to write book chapters. If they don't have tenure, they are toast. If they do, they are shunned to the sidelines."
This would be excellent fodder for a book.
mtraven: You brought up intelligent design, which seems to obsess you. I brough up global warming and cloning. Global warming "denial" is not anti science. There are some very accomplished climatologists and others who take a heterodox view. This is hardly akin to "Holocaust denial," as Ellen Goodman put it. It is not pernicious. It is respectable and a service to science that needs to be continually challenged. That some are turning warming into politics and ideology--an abuse of science--is demonstrated by the way they are treated.
If you have problems with ID take it at the ID sites.
bmmg39: I cover that issue over several pages in Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World. After writing the book on animal rights, which I am beginning to get around to, the thought had occurred to me. Thanks.
Wesley,
I think mtraven raises a fair point in that analogizing the dissenters of climate change, stem cells, and ID to Galileo is false.
First, the debate of stem cells is largely one of ethics, while the others were about facts.
Second - and probably more importantly - powerful lobbies give the dissenters a microphone. Galileo certainly did not have that.
1) You are associated with the Discovery Institute, which is best known for promoting ID, so I don't think you can really complain if people bring it up. If you don't want to be associated with it, don't take their money.
2) You are quite right that it is possible to have respectable heterodox opinions about climate change. However, the pieces cited here (from the Telegraph and a Channel 4 documentary) are not respectable sources. They are junk.
3) The climate change denialists are anything but a persecuted minority. In fact, they have had the ear of the current administration in preference to the majority view of scientists. This is what makes denialism pernicious -- the fact that it is the preferred view of the powerful and has been allowed to trump more reasonable viewpoints. If the majority viewpoint is right, the denialists have caused incalculable harm by retarding our response.
For the denialists to then pose as some kind of persecuted minority is, I repeat, laughable. And disgusting, when you consider what's at stake.
Here's an article that goes into some detail about how the climate change denial industry is funded.
"For years, a network of fake citizens' groups and bogus scientific bodies has been claiming that science of global warming is inconclusive. They set back action on climate change by a decade. But who funded them? Exxon's involvement is well known, but not the strange role of Big Tobacco. ... "
In other words, it's the same corporate junk science FUD strategy that was used by the tobacco lobby for years.
mtraven: I hope the DI is someday as well known for bioethics. That's what we're working towards.
But if you are so smart, and they are so dumb, why don't you take it up with them directly instead of sniping from the sidelines?
What do you mean "them"? Aren't you part of DI? If you are referring specifically to Intelligent Design, then you are now changing the subject, since my last comments were mostly about climate change.
In any case, there are dozens of people with more time and qualifications than I that deal with that stuff on a regular basis. Sniping at conservative bioethicists, on the other hand, seems like a wide-open field.
Anybody out there study anthropology? I only took it briefly to support my studies in Folklore and Mythology, so I'm not as up-and-up on it as a regular anthro student would be, but mtraven does have one point: among scientists, or at least among the majority of the anthropologist profs at the two universities where I studied, the attitude was that global warming was a *good* thing, and these profs found support amongst their peers without hesitation (Last attended University of Houston - that was pretty much the attitude of the staff there).
Now, these profs based their theory that global warming is good on the information they gathered from the various early cultures; studies suggest that the earth really does go through cycles of cold and hot, and that the last warming spell akin to this one was responsible for a surge in flora growth - people ate better because there was more food available for longer periods of time due to the extended warm seasons.
So I agree with mtraven that we're hardly without allies in this belief, but the problem is so much political effort has been pushed toward stopping the greenhouse effect that it doesn't matter what science says, only what the politicians say. And they're being pushed by groups that stopped looking at new developments the moment they saw, "Danger, end of the world ahead," on the paperwork.
All we want is a fair chance to have our say with the public on the issue and let them see all the facts gathered, both past and present, and *then* make a decision. The man on the street almost never hears the opposing side because it's drowned out by "common knowledge."
Well, it was "common knowledge" that the universe was in a steady state, and when Einstein's findings suggested the universe was expanding, he made up an equation to balance everything out, because everyone clung to the ideology. He later had to recant it.
And we used to believe that whole bit about how exposure to an environment would change the structure of an organism - the Soviet Union had the ideology that adversity made things stronger, so they believed if you exposed seeds to harsh climates they would become plants able to survive in harsh climates, and produce baby plants that would do the same thing. Again, discredited when it came down to the facts, but not without a struggle.
Maybe the wonky guy with the passion for Big Foot really will find it, but I'm not taking bets on it. But it wouldn't surprise me if he did discover some kinds of smaller mamals previously unknown, just because he happened to be looking in the right area. But unless he has the opportunity to look, we won't know, and if people aren't willing to look at things that they don't like, then they won't grow.
By "them" I meant the ID guys, since you brought it up in the post before last, which was the post to which I was responding. You seem awfully obsessed about my think tank. You look down your nose, and yet have you accomplished half of what the ID guys have? By the sheer force of the ID fellows' intellects-- which whether they are right or wrong, have much gray matter heft--and in an extremely hostile milieu in which their actual views are often misstated (for example, the DI has never called for the teaching of ID in high school science classes), DI fellows in ID have grabbed the attention of the world. In this regard, you and the other hysterics having conniptions over a small think tank's heterodox advocacy, remind me of religious fundamentalists obsessing about secular humanists. Chill, man.
Now who is using ad hominem tactics? The accomplishments of the ID folks are mostly negative from my standpoint -- devoted to spreading ignorance -- so I hope that my own meager accomplishments have had better effects.
I don't quite understand the thrust of your comment, which seems to simultaneously inflate the achievements of ID and say that they don't matter. If they have "intellectual heft that has grabbed the attention of the world", then what's wrong with me caring about what they have to say?
The DI is a well-funded organization with ties to the extreme right. They takes an active role in public policy and it's perfectly proper for me or any citizen to care about what they are up to. Maybe this isn't the place to talk about ID, but certainly I feel quite justified in probing the links between you, DI, IDists, and the conservative movement in general.
My comment was not conceivably ad hominem. I'll spare you some probing, at least as far as my work is concerned.
I am a senior fellow in bioethics. It is a no strings attached, no demands made, kind of deal. It is our mutual hope to expand the program. Time will tell whether that happens.
The people I know at the DI are men and women of integrity, intelligence, and commitment. They are involved in many different issues, including technology, free trade, and ID. I am not privy to all fund raising activities, but do know that Bill Gates, that notorious right winger, helps fund technology issues.
That my work is considered by some to be "right wing" is a constant source of amazement to me. I see it is essentially liberal--at least the kind of liberalism that attracted me so intensely in my long lost youth. I believe in the power of the individual to have a positive impact: Thank you Ralph Nader. I believe in promoting universal human equality and standing firm for the the intrinisic value of all human life no matter how disparaged. Thank you Martin Luther King.
I respect people who disagree with my opinions. Indeed, I encourage such criticism. I have less respect for argumentation that seeks to disparage ideas through attacks on colleagues involved in other areas of concern.
The DI might do all kinds of wonderful things, I wouldn't know. It is primarily known for promulgating Christian fundamentalism under the guise of science, and its primary funder is Howard Ahmanson, who has ties to the most extreme elements of the Christian right.
Your own work was not really under discussion here, but since you brought it up, I've noticed that despite whatever liberal credentials you might hold, you are more likely to cite the likes of Leon Kass, Charles Krauthammer, or George Will, and other right-wing hacks.
But -- you are right, ideas should be judged on their merits rather than their associations, and if you want to call yourself a liberal while associating with the right that's your privilege. But you shouldn't complain if people point out the contradictions.
So, very accomplished people who disagree with you are just "hacks." Kind of tells me the cut of your jib. And yes, I am definitely a Kassophile.
I still think Wesley's main point in the original post was good, and it surprises me that people can't see it. Look, if something is really kooky, you don't need the government to issue press releases saying, "X is really kooky. There is no debate about X." Can't you guys see how forced that looks, and how suspicious? It's like everybody's being asked to salute the Flag of Gaia or something.
I'm not denying that people can and do believe stupid things and disbelieve well-established things. I may just reverse the lists of these things from what mtraven's would be. But what I do say is this: It only hurts the global warming-ists' cause to be going around saying, "There is no debate" when obviously there _is_ a debate. I mean, Allegre obviously didn't get the memo that "there is no debate."
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=2f4cc62e-5b0d-4b59-8705-fc28f14da388
So why not just let the debate take place and make your arguments, instead of rushing around frantically trying to tell other people to shut up? It looks like the emperor has no clothes and is trying to force everyone to say that he does.
Right you are, Lydia. Telling heterodox scientists to shut up, and stifling them, isn't science.
Kass for me will always be known as the man who disapproves of ice-cream cones as "animalistic". Not to mention his bold stand against the dissection of medical cadavers, and life-extension. I don't care about his "accomplishments", he's published an incredible body of nonsense and exerts a pernicious influence on society. And a philosopher who justifies his arguments based on vague notions of "disgust" is a hack, sorry.
There's plenty more on Kass at the linked site.
Re stifling scientists, were you as vocal in the defense of scientific freedom when the Bush administration was trying to suppress NASA scientist James Hansen?
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