Science Is Not Democratic

By James Conca
From:  http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2014/08/03/science-is-not-democratic/
            

And it’s not supposed to be. When that happens we start burning books, burning witches and making some very bad decisions. We’re not there yet, but we are seeing a very worrisome trend.

President Obama touched on this very subject while speaking to the League of Conservation Voters’ Capital Dinner at the end of June, implying that science is being politicized (LCV Dinner). While on the surface this isn’t news, the extent to which our country is rejecting science over ideology is news – bad news. Bad for business, bad for security and bad for the future.

During his speech, Obama lambasted members of Congress who espouse either an active distrust of our scientific community or passive ignorance of its findings. The distrust of scientists in the U.S. has become an effective political tool since the 1980s. But it is also extremely dangerous to our democracy.

No one expects the public to be experts or to recognize important scientific results. But we do expect that when important scientific results occur, they are implemented and used for the betterment of America and the world.

Caption - President Obama at the League of Conservation Voters when he lambasted members of Congress who espouse either an active distrust of our scientific community or passive ignorance of its findings. The distrust of scientists in the United States has become a growing ideology used for political purposes but is actually dangerous to our democracy. Source: White House

Everyone remembers how the tobacco industry pretended scientific studies showed cigarettes didn’t cause cancer. But when results finally came out from independent scientific studies showing they do cause cancer, the country, and even smokers, accepted it pretty quickly. As Obama put it:
“I’m not a doctor either, but if a bunch of doctors tell me that tobacco can cause lung cancer, then I’ll say, OK.”

 

The most glaring examples of this distrust of scientific experts are in climate change, evolution and nuclear energy. Being a geologist, I know quite a bit about climate change, having studied its effects over the last two billion years on Earth, and even on other planets like Mars Mars and Venus, where we began our models of extreme climate change in the 60s and 70s. But even I have to defer to those researchers who are knee deep in its influence over the last 10,000 years and the role of human activities, such as deforestation, agriculture and volatilization of fossil carbon, in aggravating the effects over recent time.

But if you disagree with the scientists in these fields, it is easy to believe it’s a conspiracy by various moneyed interests who have bought that entire scientific field and everyone in it. So you can just ignore all of them.

The notion that science should not depend on public opinion is an American tradition, a major reason we became the most powerful nation on Earth. The Founding Fathers were students of the Enlightenment and viewed science and technology as fundamental to the emerging Nation’s survival:

“There is nothing which can better deserve your patronage, than the promotion of science and literature.” – George Washington, 1^st State of The Union Address, 1790

“Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry” – Thomas Jefferson, 1779

We all understand that public attitudes on science are more influenced by political and religious beliefs than by the public’s scientific literacy (IFL Science). That a quarter of Americans think the Sun revolves around the Earth isn’t as bad as it sounds. Half of Americans believed that 100 years ago. Close to 100% thought that in 1776.

 

But they didn’t really influence scientific policy. Now they do.

Before 1980, Congress and the President generally deferred to the scientific community to interpret science. Franklin Delano Roosevelt didn’t argue the merits of the Bohr atom with Oppenheimer when he wrote to him 1943. Yes, the Moon landing was driven by military and Cold War aims, but no one in politics questioned how NASA went about getting us there.

Science isn’t a belief system. It’s proven knowledge. It either knows the answer to a problem, or admits it doesn’t and keeps looking for it. Every time we ignore the scientific community, bad things generally happen.

Beginning in the 16^th century, it took almost 200 years for the scientific method to develop to the point where it provided demonstrable survival advantages to civilization. It is not coincidental that this realization by the monarchs and governments of those times came first through military applications and the advancement of material sciences, since they were the original funding agencies.

At the same time, application of scientific results to agriculture and sanitation began to affect everyone, for the better. The long 20^thcentury rise in scientific advantages, and resultant military and economic power, began in the late 1800s. A combination of 19^th century American individualism, the rise of manufacturing and unions, and the assumption that scientists should be encouraged to excel with less direction from patrons than was generally exercised in Europe, allowed the United States to rise in economic and military power fast and far in the 60 years following World War One.

There was a recognition in America that it was important we have both basic scientific and applied scientific research – one that would provide fundamental discoveries and advances while the other would take those results and determine if, and how, they could be of any use. Thus, research on the mating habits of the Tsetse fly in the 1960’s would become integral in identifying vectors in the spread of AIDS in Africa 30 years later.

 

In fact, the real difference between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was just this idea of scientific control and integrity. In the Soviet Union, many scientists were told that their results better be acceptable to the Communist Party. This led to several major disasters in the Soviet Union, the most famous being Chernobyl. But the worst was an attempt to impose a pseudoscientific theory in place of true evolutionary theory, à la Darwinism and genetics, during the 1940s and 50s. This last one decimated their agricultural productivity and mortally wounded their economy during the critical period when America had an upper hand in the Cold War.

That disaster resulted from the Communist Party’s support of an ideology, derived from Lamarck and espoused by biologist party-loyalist Trofim Lysenko, over the scientists who understood evolution. All scientists were told to believe only in this Lamarckian theory and to denounce Darwinian evolution. The Party went so far as to require only this theory be taught in school.
Dissenting scientists were driven out of science, imprisoned or killed.

Since this theory was wrong, it was inevitable that applying it exclusively would destroy the agricultural industry of the Soviet Union. This even spawned the term Lysenkoism which means the manipulation or distortion of the scientific process as a way to reach a predetermined conclusion as dictated by an ideological bias, often related to social or political objectives.
Obama is actually referring to Lysenkoism when he refers to the rejection of scientific consensus by many in Congress (KSTP).

This dangerous warping of science by politics was feared by scientists beginning in the 17^th century. In order to make sure science didn’t get too politicized, and that results didn’t start being cooked to satisfy the powers-that-be, scientists began forming scientific societies to support the scientific method itself.

 

Each society focused on its own field since only those in that particular field understood the subject sufficiently to self-police its members. It wasn’t always perfect, and they themselves were subject to lots of internal politics, but it made it difficult for non-scientists to pretend they were experts.

Thus formed in America were societies like the Geological Society of America, the American Chemical Society, the American Medical Association, the American Nuclear Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute of Biological Sciences, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the American Geophysical Union, to name a few of the hundreds we have in this country.

Not only did these societies encourage the exchange of results and vetting of theories, they convinced the Government that science actually mattered and that there should be federal agencies that were populated by scientists trained in specific disciplines of importance to the Nation.
Overtime, many science-based government agencies were formed to address the pressing scientific and technical challenges of each time period, including the United States Geologic Survey, our system of Agricultural Research Stations, the Center for Disease Control, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, and many, many others.

The benefits to America were vast and obvious, and led directly to the United States becoming the greatest nation on Earth in the years following World War Two.

 

But things began changing in the United States about 30 years ago. Basic Science began being cut in favor of Applied Science. Research budgets for agencies like the Department of Defense exploded while basic research funding for Universities and scientific societies began drying up. The Directors and Chiefs of those science-based government agencies, previously held by scientists in those fields who worked their way up that agency’s ladder, became political appointees. It was worrisome.

Slowly, a scientific expert started to become a dirty word in some halls on Capital Hill. Political and ideological groups became adroit at pretending to include science to push their agendas, resorting to pseudoscience when necessary. The new crop of Google Graduates are their present-day soldiers and are flooding society with so much science noise, it’s difficult to tell who’s a scientist and who’s not.

Vaccines are suddenly seen as more dangerous than diseases like whooping cough. Fluoride in water is a conspiracy. Instead of asking the Geological Society of America about earthquakes and evolution, for which it was formed, it’s now OK to surf Creation Ministries. While we love TV shows featuring fancy CSI scientific mega-labs, that’s not how real law enforcement works. Watching political activists on TV discuss events like Fukushima, one wonders “where are the nuclear scientists on this show?”

These are dangerous and stupid trends, trends that have undermined our funding for science in America,  have eroded our scientific and technological leadership in the world,  have discouraged American students from entering the hard sciences, and  have made us more dependent on science coming out of other countries. A few generations of this foolishness and we won’t ever recover.
But if you don’t believe me, there must be some expert you can ask.

Follow Jim on https://twitter.com/JimConca and see his and Dr. Wright’s book at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1419675885/sr=1-10/qid=1195953013/