The Politics of Science
Science writer Chris Mooney (Unscientific America and The Republican War on Science) has a recent column in The Washington Post about how scientists need to approach the general populous in getting their facts heard and understood. Mooney looks at climate change denialism, anti-vaccine hysteria and Yucca Mountain. (He doesn’t include opposition to evolution or denial of the Holocaust, but he easily could have).
For one thing, it’s political outlook — not education — that seems to motivate one’s belief on this [climate change] subject. According to polling performed by the Pew Research Center, Republicans who are college graduates are considerably less likely to accept the scientific consensus on climate change than those who have less education. These better-educated Republicans probably aren’t ignorant; a more likely explanation is that they are politically driven consumers of climate science information.
Mooney sees the answer in science policy debate and investigation. He holds Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization as a shining example of such debate. However, he fails to mention the Immunization Safety Review: Vaccines and Autism (2004) which did exactly that and was then ignored by anti-vaccine hysterics. Sadly, politics will always trump science, though the science community must always try and be as open and communicative as possible.
Tags: Science
There’s a real debate among the science bloggers about Mooney’s thesis. P.Z. Myers thinks Mooney puts too much blame on scientists and that Mooney’s approach has been tried and doesn’t work.
I guess I’m in the middle. I agree with Mooney that it’s best to get the community involved in the beginning and make them feel like a part of the process. I think the bigger problem is journalism in general, which doesn’t know anything about science and loves to go into he said/she said mode. They give equal weight to deniers and scientists and represent political controversies as scientific controversies.
One blogger (linked by Myers yesterday) suggested that we needed to set up think tanks to communicate the way oil companies and anti-evolution groups do. I agree with this. People on the side of science need to learn to communicate with the public in the way the public understands things and not the way scientists communicate with each other. Just laying out the facts and saying “see I’m right” is not working. We need a generation of talking heads and op-ed writers.
Scientists (like many Democrats) labor under a goofy faith in the old saying, “The truth will out.”
In fact, fortunes are being spent to ensure that the truth will not get out. The truth has no special powers that can bust through billions of dollars of 24/7/365 anti-science PR.
Scientists need to get their shit together and realize that the truth is waaay outgunned.
Exactly Jason. I think science needs more emotion-based appeals.
“A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its shoes on.” And it doesn’t matter who’s telling either one.
If global warming is such a major problem, why is the Bilderberg group worried about global cooling?
If global cooling is such a major problem, why are scientists worried about global warming?
If you have a secret meeting to influence public policy and then keep your results a secret, how do you influence public policy?
secretly.
So, if there’s a group worried about “global cooling” do we get to make hay every time it’s hot outside.
I’ll start – boy it sure is hot today! How about that global cooling?
I believe in funding science/research….what fries me is the “squeaky wheel” politics of funding the research and the disheartening “pet” projects being funded ad nauseum. Other worthy projects become orphans in a game not often dictated by importance or impact. That’s why I think it’s really important to get behind grassroots foundations set up for research, that are overlooked or discounted because they are not yet a targeted area of acknowledgement or in our crazy US world of “popular”.
It.s very simple
So-called “global warming” is just a secret ploy by wacko tree-huggers to make America energy independent, clean our air and water, improve the fuel efficiency of our vehicles, kick-start 21st-century industries, and make our cities safer. Don’t let them get away with it!!
Chip Giller, Founder, Grist.org