In which our regular writers toss around subjects a
little more volatile than usual.
The Autumn 2016
edition of City Journal is home to a lengthy but remarkably even-handed
piece entitled “The Real War on Science”, in which author John Tierney points out that it’s actually Progressives rather
than right-wingers that are holding science back.
Tierney reveals
that academia has become what he calls a “monoculture”, much like the media,
that is in danger of losing public trust because so many scientists insist on
mixing politics with their jobs.
Tom: We’ve documented this trend here a number of times, Immanuel Can. [Way
too many times to link to, in fact; click “science” in the topic sidebar on our
main page to view all our articles on the subject.]
But Tierney’s piece
is just one more reminder how important it is to drill into our children,
especially before they reach college age, that because they are taught
something in a school classroom or read it in a textbook does not mean
it’s true.
Thinking at the Level of Children
Immanuel Can:
Well, yes — but it’s not actually the children I’m really worried about; it’s the vast number of people — secular liberals and, yes, even many Christians — who think about science at the level of children.
Tom: Ooh, zing.
You must expand on that.
IC: Well, lots of
people have really naïve views of what science is, views that cause them
to be both more fearful and less respectful than they should be of what science
can really do. For example, many people think science is about certainty;
and everything else — and in particular, “religion” — is just
superstition, emotion or gratuitous faith. Or they think that
science can be ignored if it contradicts their personal agendas, and not only
will bad things not follow from that, but good ones will happen. So they
block science in all of its good uses, and are totally credulous about its
limitations.
Tom: Right. Science
is one of those areas that provokes strong opinions from people who are
actually acting on very little information indeed.
Two Great Threats to Science
Now, Tierney’s piece dissects two great threats to science
from Leftist ideology: confirmation bias, and the aforementioned mixing of
science with politics.
Let’s talk about confirmation
bias for a moment: we’re all predisposed to it. By that I mean the very
human tendency to seek out and accept information that confirms our beliefs and
prejudices.
In science, this tendency can manifest in publishing
recommendations: if you lean the wrong way politically, or if your thesis is
anti-PC, it’s likely to be ignored. It manifests in the tendency to use peer
reviewers that are sympathetic to a researcher’s ideological position. It
manifests in groupthink, and the inability to see the world from the other
side’s perspective.
Are Christians ever guilty of confirmation bias, IC?
IC: Oh, sure …
everybody is. But unless you understand that, you’re not able to guard against
it at all. The problem with postmodernist thinking is that they believe (a) nobody
ever can get beyond confirmation bias, so (b) the truth is that we’re all
just lunatics fighting for our own agendas. Truth is out.
Truth and Personal Preference
Tom: Do you
think? They seem awfully dogmatic about their view of the universe for people
who don’t actually believe anything to be objectively true.
IC: Heh. Yes,
that is terribly ironic, isn’t it? But look at how they interact with the
opposition: their interest in truth is zero. Absolutely zero. Posing,
virtue-signaling, bullying: all very important to them. But truth matters not a
jot. It’s all about them advancing the version of the world they believe will
fulfill their personal preferences.
More irony: as the famous novelist David Adams Richards has
noted, they are perfectly willing to hurt anyone, in any unscrupulous way, in
order to promote their vision of a world where nobody is hurt.
Tom: Oh, I see
that last bit, definitely, and it’s rather funny. But I do detect on the Left a
sense that they the guardians of Truth, capital “T”. Even the post-modern
Lefties seem convinced they have latched onto something real that nobody else
has grasped.
I believe they have actually drunk their own Kool-Aid.
Insensible
Objectivism
IC: Well, that has to be what
they mean, doesn’t it? I know they’re absolutely terrible at things like logic,
but even they must see that unless their vision of the future is better —
truly better — then they have no reason to believe anyone should prefer
it. So under their relativism is a most harsh, absurd, unwarranted, dogmatic
and unthinking kind of objectivism.
Now,
I would be an objectivist about truth myself. I think any sensible person has
to be. But there’s nothing sensible about their kind of objectivism.
They believe, without any reason to do so, that they have grasped truth at a
level nobody else has or can. And boy, they’ll tell you about it.
Tom: Well, we’re certainly seeing
that in the streets currently. Nothing the Left is saying about the Trump
presidency is coherent, and at least half the complaints are mutually
contradictory. But what I am seeing is real, wholly deluded conviction. And
much of that is simply confirmation bias.
You’ve Got Your Politics in My Science!
We’ve
drifted into Tierney’s second point a little, which is the intermingling of science with politics. But once that starts to
occur, as it has, we should not find ourselves surprised if Leftist scientists
put their Leftism ahead of their Scientistry. It is, after all, a worldview.
Science is just a method.
IC: Right. That phrase is hugely
important: “Science is a method”. The problem is, most people don’t
realize what a “method” is.
Tom: Tierney gives nice examples
of Lefty prejudice within the sciences against Christians and conservatives
that exist primarily because the Left happily skips the rather important methodological
step of conclusively demonstrating the validity of a hypothesis. Like Michael
Mann, they jump right to demonizing anyone opposed to their point before they
have bothered to prove it. They assume their conclusions, as with the whole
“CO2 causes climate change” debacle, and then attack anyone reserved about
those conclusions as “irrational” or a “denier”.
IC: Yes, they do. They actually
shut down science by using rhetoric. They call themselves “Progressives”,
implying that they are on the side of historical progress, but they don’t want
science to progress in any area dangerous to their agenda.
The Influence of Marxism
All
this comes from Marxism, actually. Marx claimed he knew where history was
headed — the “triumph of the Proletariat”, he called it — the ideal
worker’s State. History was going to go that way anyway, he said, and anyone
who was holding it back was simply “on the wrong side of history” (to borrow an
Obama phrase). Historically, that has meant that the opposition can be harmed
without impunity or limit, since they are holding back the good we all
should want.
Tom: And it’s a small step for an
ideologically motivated scientist to go from attacking fellow scientists who
are thought to be holding back the tide of history to erasing, ignoring or
dismissing facts and data that inconveniently contradict that ideology.
IC: Now, any time somebody tells
you they know where history is progressing to, that man is either a prophet or
a dangerous fool, since we all know that (Que Sera, Sera) “the future’s
not ours to see”. Only God knows where it’s headed. But in pursuit of
their fanciful utopia, the “Progressives” will commit any unscrupulous act,
convinced all the while that their hands are continuously purified by dint of
them serving “progress” toward their ideal vision. No evil can be done by
someone serving The Cause, they think. So, ethics? Who cares? Truth? The only
truth that matters is the truth of The Cause. And mercy? The only mercy
possible is forcing the ideal future State to exist as soon as
possible ...
And
science? The only “good” science is that which supports The Cause.
The Corruption of the Scientific Method
Tom: In that sort of ideological
environment, scientists don’t stop discovering and implementing new things, but
they use the scientific method in a corrupted and rather horrible way. For
example, they stop addressing the question of whether excessive CO2 emissions cause climate change, and instead dedicate
their efforts to obscenities like the task of reengineering human beings solely for the purpose of reducing those emissions.
What conclusions can we draw here for Christians, IC?
Realistic Expectations
IC: Oh, rule number 1: have
a realistic view of what science actually is and does, and tell
your kids about it.
Science
helps us with our observations of the physical world — things you can
taste, touch, smell, measure, heat up, bend, drop, and so on. It does no
work — and does not even pretend to work — on things that are
real but untouchable. For example, science can tell you if you have hormones
rushing through your system: it cannot tell you if that is because you are ill,
or because you have “true love”. Science can tell you how the
world works mechanically: it cannot tell you why the universe exists. It
can even tell you a bit about what the Creator might be like — but it
cannot tell you what he can tell you about himself by speaking through his
word. Science, rightly understood, is no threat to faith; wrongly understood,
it is.
What
do you think, Tom?
Shrewd as Snakes
Tom: Christ-likeness
makes us shrewd, not gullible. Be cautious about new pseudo-scientific pronouncements in the
media; they tend to appear at remarkably convenient times to support
already-existing views, rather than arising in a political vacuum and changing
minds organically. Homosexuality and transgenderism were normalized by
political pressure from shrieking minorities, not through the accumulation of
irrefutable scientific evidence. In fact, they were normalized in the face of
the evidence.
For this reason, I anticipate within the next decade we’ll
see scientists make convenient new “discoveries” about gender fluidity, etc. I would give them about as much weight as they merit, which is none.
Follow the Money
Secondly, follow the money. I was suspicious of the climate
change racket years ago, well before Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. But the massive wealth-transfer potential of
global warm-mongering was less apparent at that time than was the questionable
nature of the evidence for man-made warming. That part was obviously dodgy. And
in time it became obvious that all the people shouting out “The science is
settled!” stood to benefit in some major way from the universal acceptance of
their theory. Big lies usually have financial incentives baked in.
As little people in an environment largely controlled by
others, we may not be able to do much about the big lies they tell us. But we
can certainly avoid repeating them, telling them to our children, or voting
for them.
IC: Great advice,
Tom. I guess the big message is this — follow the truth, not the
rhetoric, eh?
This looks to me like a solid confirmation that global warming is not going to happen at this time.
ReplyDeletePresentation by Australian global warming scientist Dr. Daniel Evans:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3NZuh4_A5kw