The Real War on Science

[zenkai]

Source

My liberal friends sometimes ask me why I don’t devote more of my science journalism to the sins of the Right. It’s fine to expose pseudoscience on the left, they say, but why aren’t you an equal-opportunity debunker? Why not write about conservatives’ threat to science?

My friends don’t like my answer: because there isn’t much to write about. Conservatives just don’t have that much impact on science. I know that sounds strange to Democrats who decry Republican creationists and call themselves the “party of science.” But I’ve done my homework. I’ve read the Left’s indictments, including Chris Mooney’s bestseller, The Republican War on Science. I finished it with the same question about this war that I had at the outset: Where are the casualties?

Where are the scientists who lost their jobs or their funding? What vital research has been corrupted or suppressed? What scientific debate has been silenced? Yes, the book reveals that Republican creationists exist, but they don’t affect the biologists or anthropologists studying evolution. Yes, George W. Bush refused federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, but that hardly put a stop to it (and not much changed after Barack Obama reversed the policy). Mooney rails at scientists and politicians who oppose government policies favored by progressives like himself, but if you’re looking for serious damage to the enterprise of science, he offers only three examples.

All three are in his first chapter, during Mooney’s brief acknowledgment that leftists “here and there” have been guilty of “science abuse.” First, there’s the Left’s opposition to genetically modified foods, which stifled research into what could have been a second Green Revolution to feed Africa. Second, there’s the campaign by animal-rights activists against medical researchers, whose work has already been hampered and would be devastated if the activists succeeded in banning animal experimentation. Third, there’s the resistance in academia to studying the genetic underpinnings of human behavior, which has cut off many social scientists from the recent revolutions in genetics and neuroscience. Each of these abuses is far more significant than anything done by conservatives, and there are plenty of others. The only successful war on science is the one waged by the Left.

The danger from the Left does not arise from stupidity or dishonesty; those failings are bipartisan. Some surveys show that Republicans, particularly libertarians, are more scientifically literate than Democrats, but there’s plenty of ignorance all around. Both sides cherry-pick research and misrepresent evidence to support their agendas. Whoever’s in power, the White House plays politics in appointing advisory commissions and editing the executive summaries of their reports. Scientists of all ideologies exaggerate the importance of their own research and seek results that will bring them more attention and funding.

But two huge threats to science are peculiar to the Left—and they’re getting worse.

The first threat is confirmation bias, the well-documented tendency of people to seek out and accept information that confirms their beliefs and prejudices. In a classic study of peer review, 75 psychologists were asked to referee a paper about the mental health of left-wing student activists. Some referees saw a version of the paper showing that the student activists’ mental health was above normal; others saw different data, showing it to be below normal. Sure enough, the more liberal referees were more likely to recommend publishing the paper favorable to the left-wing activists. When the conclusion went the other way, they quickly found problems with its methodology.

Cont....

The author is inherently biased to the right and it's a long read, but I think he brings up good points. Science has become too political, it's about people pushing agendas. Like in the days where cigarette companies would fund research to show smoking wasn't that bad for you. I see the same about nutrition, there is always people pushing agendas telling us what's good and not good to eat.

[Kujako]

Science will win. We have rail guns.

[Vindris]

Both sides cherry-pick research and misrepresent evidence to support their agendas.

Does this surprise anyone?

[Shadowferal]

The biggest "war on science" is economic viability.
If everyone could do whatever...cheaply, whole industries would tank.

[GennGreymane]

Im skimming through it

I am reading a lot of BS.

Yet many climate researchers are passing off their political opinions as science, just as Obama does, and they’re even using that absurdly unscientific term “denier” as if they were priests guarding some eternal truth. Science advances by continually challenging and testing hypotheses, but the modern Left has become obsessed with silencing heretics. In a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch last year, 20 climate scientists urged her to use federal racketeering laws to prosecute corporations and think tanks that have “deceived the American people about the risks of climate change.” Similar assaults on free speech are endorsed in the Democratic Party’s 2016 platform, which calls for prosecution of companies that make “misleading” statements about “the scientific reality of climate change.” A group of Democratic state attorneys general coordinated an assault on climate skeptics by subpoenaing records from fossil-fuel companies and free-market think tanks, supposedly as part of investigations to prosecute corporate fraud. Such prosecutions may go nowhere in court—they’re blatant violations of the First Amendment—but that’s not their purpose. By demanding a decade’s worth of e-mail and other records, the Democratic inquisitors and their scientist allies want to harass climate dissidents and intimidate their donors.

What the fuck does this even have to do with the topic? Look at the cringe level phrasing "silencing heretics". "Democratic inquisitors"

Where are the scientists who lost their jobs or their funding? What vital research has been corrupted or suppressed? What scientific debate has been silenced? Yes, the book reveals that Republican creationists exist, but they don’t affect the biologists or anthropologists studying evolution. Yes, George W. Bush refused federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, but that hardly put a stop to it (and not much changed after Barack Obama reversed the policy). Mooney rails at scientists and politicians who oppose government policies favored by progressives like himself, but if you’re looking for serious damage to the enterprise of science, he offers only three examples.

federal funding is a big deal. Interesting how this paragraph has no sources in it.

The health establishment spent decades advocating a low-salt diet for everyone (and pressuring the food industry to reduce salt) without any proof that it prolonged lives. When researchers finally got around to doing small clinical trials, they found that the low-salt diet did not prolong lives. If anything, it was associated with higher mortality. The worst debacle in health science involved dietary fat, which became an official public enemy in the 1970s, thanks to a few self-promoting scientists and politically savvy activists who allied with Democrats in Congress led by George McGovern and Henry Waxman. The supposed link between high-fat diets and heart disease was based on cherry-picked epidemiology, but the federal government endorsed it by publishing formal “dietary goals for the United States” and creating the now-infamous food pyramid that encouraged Americans to replace fat in their diets with carbohydrates. The public-health establishment devoted its efforts and funding to demonstrating the benefits of low-fat diets. But the low-fat diet repeatedly flunked clinical trials, and the government’s encouragement of carbohydrates probably contributed to rising rates of obesity and diabetes, as journalists Gary Taubes and Nina Teicholz have chronicled in their books. (See “The Washington Diet,” Spring 2011.)
The dietary-fat debate is a case study in scientific groupthink—and in the Left’s techniques for enforcing political orthodoxy. From the start, prominent nutrition researchers disputed fat’s link to heart disease and criticized Washington for running a dietary experiment on the entire population. But they were dismissed as outliers who’d been corrupted by corporate money. At one hearing, Senator McGovern rebutted the skeptics by citing a survey showing that low-fat diet recommendations were endorsed by 92 percent of “the world’s leading doctors.” Federal bureaucrats and activists smeared skeptics by leaking information to the press about their consulting work with the food industry. One skeptic, Robert Olson of Washington University, protested that during his career, he had received $250,000 from the food industry versus more than $10 million from federal agencies, including ones promoting low-fat diets. If he could be bought, he said, it would be more accurate to call him “a tool of government.” As usual, though, the liberal press focused only on corporate money.

This segment makes me think the writer is anti science.... science changes over time. Policy changes more slowly. Thats the problem. The fact policy was built around science that was eventually weakened/disproved is not a political problem in the way the argument is framed.

Zenkai, you can do better.

[PC2]

Science is being done and invested in regardless of who is in office. It's all very exciting. There is no reason to be alarmed about it.

[MasterHamster]

None of this is new to me, though the problem with climate change denial isn't that people challenge the idea, but that they dare criticize such an overwhelming consensus of scientists and science through anything other than science.

Feels great to have a climate change denier as [soon to be] the most powerful man in the world.
Not even sure it's a way to truly cement that he's going to put american economy before such "trivial things", or that he's genuinely that dumb.


What is it with the US and taking pride in ignorance

[Kujako]

What is it with the US and taking pride in ignorance

Imagine someone in a baseball cap, worn backwards, in a plaid shirt with the sleeves ripped off, shouting "you think you're better than me!?". 'merica!

[derpkitteh]

i see it from the left and right, the left trying to say there's more than two genders and a few other things, and the right with all of its typical bullshit.

[sarahtasher]

As for the good old argument about ''using genetics to determine difference in IQ'' (read, prove that X group is dumber and inferior than my group), Clémenceau famously said that he was quite okay with that talk of ''inferior races proven by science'' until he noticed that the Germans had ''scientifically proven'' that the French were inferior to them....

[RoKPaNda]

Science is too political right now yes, and is too frequently fueled by some agenda or misinterpreted to further an agenda, just like anything else. Science is also very cool and in right now, so it has a lot of rabid little fans that are in denial about that. In fact, some of them are downright creepy about it. And then you have parasites like NDT running around preaching his own agenda in the name of Science.

[LaserSharkDFB]

Thank god there is no such thing as bias or methodology and all science is pure reason eh.

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It's more about arguing from ignorance rather than they dare challenge the idea.

Science is pure reason. If you add anything else, it's not science. Problems in methodology and bias are why we have peer review.

[GennGreymane]

Science is too political right now yes, and is too frequently fueled by some agenda or misinterpreted to further an agenda, just like anything else. Science is also very cool and in right now, so it has a lot of rabid little fans that are in denial about that. In fact, some of them are downright creepy about it. And then you have parasites like NDT running around preaching his own agenda in the name of Science.

BEWARE!!!! THE END IS NYE!!! lol What agenda?

[thatmikeguy]

Does this surprise anyone?

Both sides cherry-pick research and misrepresent evidence to support their agendas.

This is true for every person alive. This in combination with "mob mentality", is why we are living Idiocracy. When people ask things like "Is Facebook or CNN making people dumber?", this is the simple reason behind it. Even when facts change, it can take forever for people to accept the reasoning behind it, usually it's only after something else fits their original agenda. Overall this changes the rate and way the average person accepts things without question.

[Docturphil]

Does this surprise anyone?

Greetings brother.

[derpkitteh]

Gender is a social construct and can come in quantities of 0 to ∞. Sex is biological. While sex generally occurs in one of two forms (at least in animals), even sex does not exclusively come in two forms, as various versions of intersex people exist and it's entirely possible that some such mutation could eventually lead to a common and relatively consistent third sex.

it's reinforcing gender norms to say there are more than two. it says a female can't like X, and if she does that means she's not female.

it's fucking stupid. we evolved with two sexes, genders are either male or female. you can be transgendered and in the wrong body, but you will never actually be a xhe.

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You're definitely not as bipartisan as you're pretending you are.

oh i'm not entirely bipartisan, that's for certain. i'm much more left leaning.

but in the places i am right leaning, i'm very right leaning, like on immigration and refugees.

[Machismo]

it's reinforcing gender norms to say there are more than two. it says a female can't like X, and if she does that means she's not female.

it's fucking stupid. we evolved with two sexes, genders are either male or female. you can be transgendered and in the wrong body, but you will never actually be a xhe.

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oh i'm not entirely bipartisan, that's for certain. i'm much more left leaning.

but in the places i am right leaning, i'm very right leaning, like on immigration and refugees.

Hermaphroditic humans do exist.

[LaserSharkDFB]

it's reinforcing gender norms to say there are more than two. it says a female can't like X, and if she does that means she's not female.

it's fucking stupid. we evolved with two sexes, genders are either male or female. you can be transgendered and in the wrong body, but you will never actually be a xhe.

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oh i'm not entirely bipartisan, that's for certain. i'm much more left leaning.

but in the places i am right leaning, i'm very right leaning, like on immigration and refugees.

You're confusing sex with gender. Anyway, what about hermaphrodites? They do exist, you know. If the human body can develop both sets of genitals, why can't it develop lesser masculine or feminine psychological traits in a body of a different sex?

I'm old enough that transgender issues aren't really a normalized thing to me, but there's enough anecdotal and scientific basis behind it to keep me from dismissing it out of hand.

[Machismo]

Science is not the problem, the cherry picking of data and the ignoring of science are the problem. In America, both liberals and conservatives often times ignore the science, or try to manipulate it to further their agenda. Liberals do it with GMO foods, vaccines, and even in industries like logging. Conservatives do it with abortion, climate change, and the drug war.

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Sorry i confuse bipartisan with racist all the time. my bad.

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Intersex is the word you're looking for.

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I mean that's idealistic.

Realistically your peers are often from similar educational/social backgrounds so there is bias.

I know that "intersex" is the new word used, mainly because of the connotation of the other. I have no problem using either.

[derpkitteh]

You're confusing sex with gender. Anyway, what about hermaphrodites? They do exist, you know. If the human body can develop both sets of genitals, why can't it develop lesser masculine or feminine psychological traits in a body of a different sex?

I'm old enough that transgender issues aren't really a normalized thing to me, but there's enough anecdotal and scientific basis behind it to keep me from dismissing it out of hand.

hermaphrodites are a mutation, not a legitimate evolution(though, i do wish it were. i would prefer humanity to have all female bodies with penises and vaginas). and i'm not speaking against transgendered people, i fully believe they have a legitimate struggle.

but there's no third, fourth, and fifth gender. it's just not scientifically possible. maybe one day the hermaphrodite mutation will become more than a mutation, then there will be a third gender. but until then, there just isn't.