Wulf and Wolf: March 2007

Anti-intellectualism is very pervasive in American politics, much more so than I had previously thought.

I recently checked out from the library The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney, a journalist who specializes in the relation of science and politics. In this book, Mooney tells the history of the Republican ideologues' attempt to win support for their ideologies by distorting science and misrepresenting facts — substituting sound science with junk science — and then accusing other people of doing this, usually liberals and Democrats. While political groups on the left have distorted science for their own causes before, and while it is healthy to suspect that most politicians distort the facts to some minor extent, the left is almost never as guilty as the right.

This flagrant disregard for science is extremely worrying to me as a man who greatly values the scientific method for its ability to refine our understanding of the universe. The fact that they're succeeding is terrifying to me as a man who values knowledge, intelligence, and critical thinking.

The fronts in the war on science are manifold: There are those who want to confuse the public on whether or not cigarettes and second-hand smoke are harmful, even though many, many habitual smokers die of cancer in the respiratory system. There are many who wish to disparage environmentalism, the movement to literally save the world, by claiming that environmentalists are overreacting over trivial things, even though the facts show they're anything but trivial. And there are many who, for ideological reasons, wish to convince people that evolution has little or no supporting evidence, even though it has mountains of it.

I wish it were more obvious to people that anti-intellectualism is irrational to its core. Think about the common claims made by these people: Universities, well-respected institutions of learning, are propagating left-wing ideology; scientists, largely impartial in their quest for knowledge, are a bunch of liberals with an agenda to brainwash the public; intellectuals, who exercise their mind and think critically, are prone to ideologue.

It all rests on the ideas that smart people are stupid, ignorant people are smart, and that people who aren't experts, are experts. The scientists who have dispassionately discovered and studied the facts don't know what they're talking about, while the common taxi driver or barber with only a high-school diploma — if even that — is perfectly qualified to say exactly what's fact and what's speculation. A person with a Ph.D. makes too many mistakes to count, but the average Joe off the street is practically infallible.

I hope that you, the reader, see how irrational this way of thinking is. And I wish it were more obvious to more people. But sadly, it's not. And this is very troubling.

It's one thing to promote a policy when the facts indicate the policy is unwise. It's another thing entirely to deliberately win support for your side by distorting the facts. It is intellectually dishonest and morally deplorable to do this.

As far as science is concerned, there is no shame in acknowledging our negative impact on the environment but declaring we should do nothing for economic reasons; this much is for economists and politicians to debate. It is very shameful to magnify uncertainty, and to declare that the facts are wrong and that any impact we have is negligible, in order to make your side look better.

Science is not politics. Facts and evidence are not matters of opinion. Scientific consensus does not indicate a political agenda. Scientists may make mistakes — they are human — but the scientific method is a remarkably effective safeguard against the spread of mistaken knowledge among the scientific community. There is room for honest criticism in the scientific community, but no room for Lysenkoism.

I do realize there are people who have simply been misinformed and are not aware of what the facts really are. One cannot blame them; when science is politicized, it often confuses people. It does annoy me to see people confuse fact with speculation and conclude that evolution is "only a theory", or that global warming is "junk science". And I'm sure it annoys many other people too. But we should try to recognize who's deliberately distorting science and who's been victimized by such.

I seriously hope that, in the end, science and intellect will triumph, and that no politician will ever again represent scientific facts as political conjecture.

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