Madness About a Method: The Politicizing of Science

This ignorance of science, flecked with outright hostility, is worth pondering at a moment when three of the nation's most contentious political issues - global warming, stem-cell research and the teaching of intelligent design - are scientific in character. One reason that has been cited for the dislike of science is that it is "irresistible" - that its influence tends to overwhelm and drive out competing values and authorities. But the Bush administration seems all too successful in resisting it. Time after time, critics say, the administration has manipulated and suppressed scientific findings for political reasons.

In rationalizing his opposition to the creation of new embryonic stem-cell lines, for example, the president informed the public that existing lines would be sufficient for medical purposes - a claim that left researchers flabbergasted and proved to be wildly off the mark. On the issue of climate change, American inaction on curbing greenhouse gas emissions is defended on the grounds that there is still some uncertainty about the magnitude and causes of global warming. Administration allies have even maligned the motives of climate researchers, arguing that their "alarmist" predictions are aimed at ensuring a steady flow of scientific grant money - and conveniently overlooking the fact that many global-warming skeptics are themselves financed by the energy industry. (As Richard Posner has observed, the industry with the keenest financial interest in getting climate change right - the insurance industry - is taking global warming very seriously, indeed.)

Are we to conclude that the Bush administration is anti-science? Not necessarily. Its selective aversion to scientific evidence may be more strategic than philosophical. Perhaps the administration accepts the authority of science but has a scheme for reckoning costs and benefits that it is not entirely candid about - a scheme in which, say, the next quarter's corporate profits outweigh rising sea levels or third world drought a half-century hence. When it comes to science, a cynic might remark, there is little point in "speaking truth to power": power already knows the truth.

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Vaclav Havel once observed, in a transport of anti-science afflatus, that "Modern science. . .abolishes as mere fiction the innermost foundations of our natural world: it kills God and takes his place on the vacant throne, so henceforth it would be science that would hold the order of being in its hand as its sole legitimate guardian and so be the legitimate arbiter of all relevant truth." So what are the options for someone who is determined to resist this usurping arbiter? One of them is to insist that science can't possibly tell the whole story: by limiting itself to "natural" explanations, it blinds itself to the supernatural order that gives meaning to the universe. The problem is that no one has ever shown how supernatural causes can be accommodated by the scientific method, which relies on testability to produce consensus.




http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/magazine/11wwln_lead.html

The fact that science by definition is a reality-based activity is just one of those unfortunate coincidences.

The problem with the Bush Administration is that it thinks backwards -- a trait that I am willing to argue is a part of its religious heritage.

In Iraq, it was accused of "fixing the intelligence to the policy." That is to say, the come up with a conclusion first, then looks at the evidence. Evidence that supports its conclusion is sound. Evidence that conflicts with its conclusion is suspect.

This is how they read the Bible. The Bible is a set of answers -- literally true. Rational thought consists of taking other observations and comparing them to the literal truth of the Bible. The Bible is used as a test case whereby any theory that contradicts the Bible is flawed and to be viewed with suspicion, whereas anything that supports the Bible can be trusted.

This is not a malicous way of thinking -- this is actually what, to these people, counts as criticial thinking. A divine revelation is taken as a literal and unquestionable truth. With this truth now fixed, all "evidence" can then be evaluated according to whether it supports or conflicts with this unquestionable truth.

So, they honestly believe that the evidence supported the case for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq because, that which did not support this conclusion was not good evidence, and that which supported this conclusion was good evidence. They honestly believe that there is no scientific case to be made for global warming or for evolution. They are sincere in their statements that stem cell research cannot produce any medical advances and that existing strains are enough.

Alonzo Fyfe
Atheist Ethicist Blog

between the cancellation of the SSC in Texas, the absolute lack of fudning for basic R&D for manned space flight at NASA, and the list goes on and on. Not that the people doing science are exactly in the clear themselves. Wether it's universities not funding research themselves instead turning their science professors into grant whores or the publish or perish mentality that determines tenure. Science itself is a bit hosed. Was a time when a science professor could get tenure just by being a good teacher. Not like that any more. And students, as well as science, suffer for it.

and jolly well f'ed up a good thing. Conservatives tend to take pride in their tradition of taking things on faith, and not feeling the need to seek proof. BushCo has taken this a step farther by attacking the people who are responsible for collecting (and informing us about) scientific information .... because facts tend to upset their sponsors.

And if they can make the public suspicious of science, so much the better. Critical thinking skills could make the public dangerous.