The Republican War on Science Isn't Going Anywhere

By Jeremy Adam Smith, Greater Good. Posted December 29, 2008.

JAS: What changed your mind?

SP: I've been personally involved in three issues, and in each case, intervention from the Bush administration has gone against scientific consensus.

The first involved bioethics, where the President's Council on Bioethics has been packed with cultural conservatives and opponents of biomedical research, with a concerted effort to exaggerate the downside of biomedical research and to play up the fears.

The second is evolution, where Bush himself called for the so-called "controversy" between intelligent design and evolution to be taught in schools, whereas virtually every intelligent scientist believes that there is no such controversy.

The third involves regulation of language on the airwaves, where my book The Stuff of Thought was cited by the solicitor general in a brief to a U.S. Appeals Court on whether the Federal Communications Commission has the authority to sanction the networks for failing to bleep out fleeting expletives -- that is, celebrities such as Cher or Bono or Nicole Richie saying "fucking brilliant" or "they can fuck themselves" during live television broadcasts. And the government cited what I think are bogus considerations about protecting the mental health of children as a rationale for restricting speech on the airwaves. They used my writing to support their case in a way that I felt was deceptive.

JAS: Do you believe that the Bush administration's actions will have any lasting impact on Americans' levels of trust in science and scientific institutions?

SP: Yes. For example, the Religious Right and their supporters in the Bush administration argue that scientists are suppressing debate about evolution. Having long ago lost the legal battle to have intelligent design taught in the classrooms, they are now framing the issue as an attempt to "teach the controversy," therefore putting scientists on the side of appearing to want to suppress controversy.

To the extent that they succeed in framing the debate that way, it would look as if scientists are pushing their own dogma. And that is simply dishonest. Scientists would have no interest in a debate between astronomy and astrology or chemistry and alchemy, simply because you have to draw the line somewhere and impose some barrier to entry of basic scientific credibility before you engage in a debate. But that can be distorted into making it seem as if scientists are as dogmatic as the defenders of religious fundamentalism.

JAS: You mentioned taking the word of climate scientists about debates in global warming because you have no expertise in that area -- something you have in common with me and a majority of Americans. What red flags should ordinary citizens watch out for when it comes to political debates about science and scientific issues?

SP: Certainly they should be curious about the degree of scientific consensus, which is what I sought to understand in forming an opinion about climate change. And science journalism has a responsibility to report the current degree of consensus, rather than taking a "he said-she said" approach.

Secondly, people should be curious about the state of the evidence, which means that there is a parallel obligation on the part of scientists to lay out the evidence. Scientists should resist any temptation to pronounce what might look like dogma. They should be prepared to explain, in intelligent layperson's language, what compelled them to a particular position, in terms of the available evidence, and be prepared to articulate that background in publicly accessible articles. Conversely, the public should insist on being persuaded by seeing the evidence stated as clearly as possible.

JAS: What, in your opinion, does the next presidential administration need to do in order to repair the damage done by the Bush administration?

SP: At the very least, the next administration needs to renew a commitment to the de-politicization of science. ... In the long term, this underscores the need not just for better science education, but for the attitudes of science at its best to be applied throughout the public sphere -- a demand for evidence and logical consistency rather than dogma, and an emphasis on understanding rather than sloganeering.

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Jeremy Adam Smith is the senior editor of Greater Good magazine and author of The Daddy Shift, forthcoming from Beacon Press in Spring 2009.

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