The Stars and Stripes Down to Earth (posted for Daniel Davies by HF)

Nah, psycho-babble is nonsense. It’s all based on financial interest; every bit of it is coming out of various industry-financed think tanks, effectively distributed, neatly phrased, poll-tested, equipped with talking points and FAQs. Routine PR operation.

Intelligent design isn’t even a particularly congenial theory for fundamentalist Christians to be pushing, as it appears to me to be inconsistent with the literal truth of the Book of Genesis, which was surely the only point in opposing the teaching of evolution in the first place.

That’s a basic misunderstanding of the ID proponents in two respects, I think. ID proponents are not trying to prevent the teaching of evolution but rather are trying to get ID into the mix. And the point is to generate a sense of uncertainty and doubt that will create space for creationist beliefs of various kinds (young earth, old earth, ‘guided evolution’ — whatever). If that came to pass (though given the Dover case, it won’t), the children of creationists won’t learn in school that their religious beliefs are flat wrong but rather that (ID proponents hope) things are uncertain, nobody knows for sure, evolution is by no means proved, etc, etc.

and therefore also, I hardly need to say, of the kind of authoritarian politics which these days calls itself “libertarian” but never saw a pro-business law it didn’t like

Now that is just beyond bizarre. I know that libertarians come in for particular approbrium on CT because they are much harder to dismiss as uneducated, knuckle-dragging yokels, but libertarians as proponents of “authoritarian politics”? No pro-business laws that libertarians don’t like? How about copyright extentions, the DMCA, and the use of eminent domain to advance private development interests to name three obvious examples off the top of my head? And then, of course, more broadly, is a very strange sort of ‘authoritarian politics’ that would like to see a smaller government that gets out of the business of exercizing authority over private behaviors with respect to sex, marriage, and drugs.

I think it’s something more like the “authoritarian irrationalism”

And I think the term you’re really looking for is “anti-authoritarian irrationalism” — that is, a stubborn, toe-kicking refusal to accept the pronouncements and direction of credentialed elite authorities (very much including scientists). The IDers have also picked up ideas from the pomo-left (e.g. there is no scientific ‘truth’ there is only the self-interested exercise of power). So–according to this view–ID papers aren’t accepted into mainstream journals not because the science is unsound but because the mandarins in charge are closing ranks and protecting their turf. And scientists are pro-Kyoto for lefty political reasons as much as scientific reasons. I would say “anti-authoritarian” is a much more apt description of this attitude.

authoritarian politics in general are these days much less common in Europe than in America.

When David Duke comes in 2nd in a presidential election (as Le Pen did in France) get back to us.

“It is probably irrational (in the everyday language sense) of Europeans to be so implacably opposed to genetically modified food, but their opposition is not in general cast in “irrationalist” terms; it’s based on “despite what the science says, I don’t believe it” rather than “the science cannot possibly be saying that because I don’t want to believe it”.”

I don’t understand the distinction you are trying to draw here. The first suggests that something is wrong with science because it comes to a conclusion the speaker doesn’t like while the second suggests the same.

Slocum, I think you’re confusing anti-authoritarianism – opposition to authoritarian policies – with anti-elitist populism. Hating experts is about hating elites, rather than being opposed to authoritarian laws.

I don’t think so. Creationists are opposed not just to scientific elitism but particularly to central authorities (operating in a partnership with those scientific elites) exercising control over school curricula (they want local control). Their opponents want federal legal authority to overrule local control (as it has–the Dover case is final nail).

But the tendency to try to wield centralized authority when possible and resist it otherwise is seen on both left and right in the U.S. and both tendencies fluctuate depending on circumstances. Of course, the authoritarian tendencies differ as to goals — the right tend to be authoritarian with respect to personal morality and laissez-faire with respect to economics while the left tends toward the reverse. Libertarians (Henry’s ‘authoritarian’ betes noire) are laissez-faire across the board (sex, drugs, and free-trade).

Which leaves two questions; could there be a “Democratic War on Science”, and is this purely an American phenomenon?

I think that the answer to the first is yes there could. There are authoritarians on the political left of the spectrum as well as the right

Can you cite examples where Democratic politicians try to participate in or benefit from staging a left-wing anti-scientific crusade? We shouldn’t be too lazy to distinguish between “left” and “right” as general ideological labels and “Democratic” and “Republican” as specific political platforms.

Matt, I expect that many creationists would. See, for example, the widespread conservative opposition to NCLB, precisely because of a fear of centralization, and despite attempts to avoid the opposition by avoiding true national standards.

DD: “I don’t know why the politics of status insecurity are more common in the last remaining great world power, or why they have got more rather than less influential since the end of the Cold War,…”

One reason would be the greater economic uncertainty and risk experienced by the middle class since then (actually, since 1973, but deprived of the Evul Commie to blame).

Matt, the question of whether the conservatives who oppose mandatory national standards are creationists isn’t an easy one–there aren’t any easy markers for “creationism” in politics, but, given the political realities, I’m guessing that that creationists are over-represented within that group of conservatives. (Those opposed to national standards tend to be from the social conservative wing of the party (business leaders and other Main Street types tend to support national standards), and tend to be from states that are disproportionately “creationist”.)

The opposition to mandatory national standards in education isn’t narrowly focused. The Cheney effort was an effort to create voluntary national standards, not mandatory standards. The effort fell apart not because Cheney favored national standards only when drawn up by fellow conservatives, but because the history standards were condemned by a vote of the US Senate 99-1 (with the one vote opposed to the condemnation in favor of stronger words). Opposition to federal control over curricular decisions is long-standing and is actually enacted into law. (The US Code has for more than a generation contained the following provision: “No provision of any applicable program shall be construed to authorize any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution, school, or school system, or over the selection of library resources, textbooks, or other printed or published instructional materials by any educational institution or school system, or to require the assignment or transportation of students or teachers in order to overcome racial imbalance.”)

Can you cite examples where Democratic politicians try to participate in or benefit from staging a left-wing anti-scientific crusade?

There’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s insistence, on the basis of studies done by quackish alternative-therapy promoters, that mercury in childhood vaccines is a primary cause of autism and that the CDC is conspiring with Big Pharma to suppress the fact.

Granted, it’s not an exclusively left-wing crusade. As Orac has pointed out, this one is really non- or bipartisan, with both liberals and conservatives pushing it; but I know that on the liberal side the claim has a sort of anti-corporate cachet.

” I don’t know why the politics of status insecurity are more common in the last remaining great world power”

A combination of increasing economic insecurity, manifested in things like higher income variance and outsourcing (hardly unrelated) and no safety net? Ideological opposition to the idea of a safety net, combined with the fear that it won’t be there when needed? For further details see e.g. Barbara Ehrenreich, Fear of Falling.

…on the one hand, the economic self-interest of corporations […] on the other, the political interests of a coalition of right-wing authoritarians…

C’mon, what ‘right-wing authoritarians’ – this is America. Right-wing authoritarians are also businessmen or their PR agents; your ‘on one hand’ and ‘on the other hand’ are one and the same.

Pat Robertson.

The GM analogy is weak. First, that dispute isn’t about science – GM opponents don’t reject the underlying biological knowledge of genes and chromosomes and DNA, genetic determinism if you like – as about its use in technology. The same holds for opponents of nuclear power. (I’m not in either camp as it happens). Isn’t it reasonable to fear the consequences of complex and powerful new technologies introduced into poorly understood ecosystems and societies, in the hands of people whose strong interest is to minimise or conceal the risks? I do agree that sometimes this shades into paranoia (“Terminator seeds will starve millions in the Third World”), and the implication that doing nothing is risk-free is simply untrue, but the converse position of cheering on Monsanto doesn’t make any more sense.
It boils down to trust rather than knowledge. Is the optimum strategy for an averagely educated and busy citizen, faced with complicated sets of facts and theories and dispute among self-declared experts, is probably not to mug over science journalism. In the iterated Prisoners’ Dilemma, the best rule is simply tit-for-tat. Trust once, then if you find out you’ve been lied to, never trust again. Falsus in unum, falsus in omnia. That roughtly speaking is what happened to the nuclear industry.

I think I agree with Scott and especially James here. However, some thoughts with regards GM. I am currently anti-GM, in that I am quite happy with the status quo in the UK. If and when a seed company wishes to introduce some GM technology which farmers want, which does actually increase bio-diversity, and which actually does improve the food, then I’ll be all for it. AFAIK, however, so far the companies have only tried to introduce varieties which are more resistance to their special pesticides, and which were shown by the official government tests to decrease biodiversity. I’ve also read that these pesticides are decreasing in usefulness in the US, because of increasing resistance. However, it could also be that the seed companies have simply given up on Europe at present, given the very wide-spread consumer dislike for GM.

However, my point is that while much of opposition to GM might be irrational (“frankenfoods” etc.) it does seem to be grounded in some very reasonable fears that, at least for the current generation, GM is going to benefit no-one but very large corporations. Scientists (and industry lobbyist types: sadly you’ll find that many of the “scientists” who actually get on radio and TV are rather less independent than we might hope) keep mentioning the possibility of GM really improving food, especially for the 3rd world. When pressed, however, they have to admit that this is on-going research, and actually no-one wants to commercially grow such varities in the UK anyway.

Opposition to nuclear power is more irrational, in that the safety record has been much improved. Again, however, the UK nuclear industry was very recently caught lying to Japan over safety issues, so there are valid issues of trust. I suspect a lot of environmental compaigners also see the incredible cost of nuclear (both now and on-going with storage issues) and ask if, with a limited pot of cash, we wouldn’t be better off with more decentralised, renewable systems.

So, I do think these sort of “anti-science” (or more really, “anti-technology”) views are rather different from ID teaching, denying human-caused climate change and so on. The use and/or abuse of science is far more subtle, and often, one can make a very good argument which uses the science correctly, but draws differing political/economic conclusions (although maybe the general public, or some of the more vocal looney elements don’t do this). I see no way that one can do this with ID; one could, maybe, do this with climate change, but it isn’t what most people are doing: they are denying the science.

The anti-gm/anti-nuclear sentiment is a very healthy and rational sentiment indeed. It is the manifestation of public understanding that financial interests will inevitably try to suppress and distort unfavorable information; assurances of safety can’t be trusted; the public wants more, it wants to be convinced before they start eating this stuff or living near nuclear reactor. It’s called: healthy scepticism.

Fair enough. The sleep of reason breeds monsters, as they say.

As a symptom of a democratic war on science, I take exception to :

“Opposition to cost/benefit analyses of regulation.”

The principle that costs should be less than benefits is a tautology. But, following the line of arguement used by Steve Labonne, above, I am at least very skeptical of the way it’s done in practice. There is a long history of regulations that would cost politically powerful corporations money having their benefits understated and their costs overestimated. In the real world, costs and benefits are often computed using assumptions rather than proven facts. I don’t trust the people choosing the assumptions.

I’ve seen this attitude taken to hysterical extremes. This sort of thing does not lend itself to non-trivial absolutes.

abb1, I’ve read the wiki article you point to and I am familiar with several of the studies mentioned therein. On balance, it seems a quite strong endorsement of GM safety. Every GM product needs to be evaluated separately as the Pioneer experience shows. However, as a geneticist I have greater (albiet still slight) concerns about conventional plant breeding practices – especially with respect to introducing allergens, etc.

I dunno, it seems to me the burden of proof should be on the gm proponents to convince the public that it’s safe.

abb1: The point is that far more effort is made to prove safety of GM foods in situations where comparatively riskier conventional practices are given a pass. I don’t have a problem with that, but it is something to be aware of. For example, a large proportion of conventional breeding in crops is directed toward disease resistance. Typically, the genetic sources of disease resistance are crossed in from exotic wild relatives. Hundreds of other wild alleles come along for the ride. In the case of tomato for example some of the wild relatives are pretty nasty and highly toxic. Should you be worried? Not especially, but objectively the risk is greater.

Abb1,
You ask where smoking bans come into the war on science.

Here’s the basics:
It is indisputable that smoking is harmful to the smoker’s health.
It is probable that constant exposure to high levels of second-hand smoke (living with a chain-smoker) is somewhat harmful to health.
It is unlikely, given our knowledge of the body and the lack of studies, that occasional exposure to low levels of second-hand smoke (passing smokers at the entrance to the office, eating in a restaurant with a smoking section) has any harmful effect on health in most people (some people who have allergies/allergic asthma are affected).

Despite this, smoking bans outside offices and in restaurants are promoted as a public health measure.

Perhaps you might try rereading my comments and addressing them rather than your own strawmen.

Touchy much, Steve? Although yours (and samchevre’s) were the only names mentioned, there were probably a dozen posts I was responding to.

I took your water comments as tongue in cheeck, and responded in kind. Sorry if you didn’t catch that.

I don’t think anything in the Democrat portion of the post had anything to do with you.

But I do get angry when anti-GM (not so much anti-nuclear) types pollute the intellectual atmosphere with pseudoscientific garbage that really doesn’t help their case. And there has been quie a bit of that, for example Rifkinite mystical bullshit about the evils of crossing (purely imaginary, since there’s plenty of horizontal gene transfer in the natural world) species “barriers”. That kind of stuff actually costs them potentially valuable support from the scientifically literate.

I’m not sure what you think is so subtle about your argument that my characterization of it is “stawman.” You get “angry” when the “intellectual atmosphere” gets “pollute[d]” by “pseudoscientific garbage,” and imply that it costs anti-GM types your “scientifically literate” support. Sounds to me like you refuse to look past the less-informed positions on one side of an argument to make a decision based on the better-informed positions. Or maybe you don’t. But that’s what you said you did – or that the scientifically literate do.

(Never forget that the fundraising needs of advocacy groups also constitute an “interest”.)

Here, perhaps I was a bit strident. But this really is identical to arguments continually put forth by corporate PR firms, as well as conservatives who argue that social workers earning $20k in inner cities are profiting from poverty. Yes, advocacy groups get strident for publicity and fundraising reasons. But the raison d’etre of advocacy groups is to advocate; fundraising is incidental. Whereas the raison d’etre of Monsanto, International Paper, and Westinghouse is to maximize profit. To equate the two is dishonest or hopelessly naive. I’m sorry if your intention was not to equate them, but I have trouble deriving another reading of your parenthetical.

There is no smoking ban where I live now and everyone I know – 95% no less – would like to have a ban. Isn’t this enough of a reason?

I would argue that it isn’t–but that’s not a dispute about the science, but about political morality. Replace “smoking” with “homosexual activity” and you’ll be close to my reason for arguing that it isn’t–I own my body, what I do with it isn’t your business unless you’re harmed.

jroth: While I have somewhat greater sympathy for opponents of GM foods than proponents of ID, some of the methods for spreading disinformation are similar. The common strategy is to exploit the uncertainty inherent in any scientific result however small that may be. My favorite example is the Nature paper a few years back claiming to show that GM maize had contaminated traditional maize landraces in central Mexico. Their evidence was based on using a very sensitive method (PCR) at its extreme limit of detection, then reporting data that were later shown (predictably) to be spurious noise. They could easily have built a convincing case (if they were right) by making measurements within the appropriate range of sensitivity. Sample availability was not limiting. The authors diliberately chose not to. The Union of Concerned Scientists later used the same approach to “show” contamination of heritage seed sources in corn. Theirs at least was not peer-reviewed. These strategies amount to deliberate obfuscation disguised as science. The problem is glaring to anyone with experience in the relavent methods, but laymen and journalists are understandably misled. In this case, we still don’t know the correct result though I imagine a positive result would have been confirmed by now.

Sorry but my attention was drawn to the fact that it is apparently because of political correctness that ‘Democrats’ have an ‘opposition to studies of racial differences’. For a start I don’t even know what such studies might consist of. Race is (pardon the phrase but it’s true) a ‘social construct’. Are you perhaps suggesting that the (completely trivial and uninteresting) scientific fact that some people have darker skin than other people might be connected with IQ? Why? How? How about hair colour? Might that be connected? Or eye colour? Where are the studies claiming that people with green eyes have higher IQs than people with blue eyes? They don’t exist, because the whole idea is too preposterous to even study. What about hair? Are hairier people smarter than non-hairy people? Or the size of people’s feet? Is it because of PC that people don’t study this?

All I can say in my own limited experience is that people who evince an interest in so-called ‘racial differences’ are people who

a: believe in ‘race’ (whatever that word means)

and

b: have already made up their minds about the existence of such differences and then go about looking for evidence to ‘prove’ it.

“What about all those horrible anti-vaccine pseudo-science claims still being propounded by liberals like Robert Kennedy?”

I think it’s telling that this one example has come up so many times. As observed, it’s not “liberals like Robert Kennedy” who push this particular barrow, it’s “a diverse bunch of people, including Robert Kennedy”. And the fact that you have to go the views of someone who’s never run for office, and is notable primarily for his surname, is an indication of how limited is the set of examples of Democrats opposing scientific consensus.

If race can be correlated with the frequency of sickle cell anemia, why not IQ? Because it’s too awful to be true?

If you were really confident there was nothing there to find, you’d want people to look…

slocum writes:

I don’t think so. Creationists are opposed not just to scientific elitism but particularly to central authorities (operating in a partnership with those scientific elites) exercising control over school curricula (they want local control). Their opponents want federal legal authority to overrule local control (as it has—the Dover case is final nail).

You must not know much about the creationists. They are extremely authoritarian; that is in fact the basis of their entire worldview. That is why, for example, they feel the need to slap the label of “science” onto their belief system. Science is an authority, and thus they see it as a major weakness if this authority is against them. Therefore, they either need to adopt the authority as their own, or they need to destroy its status as an authority. Otherwise, why not just say that science is wrong and be done with it?

As for “local control”, in every case the creationists have always appealed to central political entities to further their agenda, and have only pushed for local control after they were frustrated at the larger level. The very first political manuver by the ID movement was to insert language into a Federal bill, the No Child Left Behind Act, and then they went aroung the country claiming that this required local schools to teach ID. Only later did they go after state legislatures and state school boards. Now with that tactic not faring so well, they’re starting to argue that individual schools or teachers should be able to teach what they want without the state making them follow the curriculum. Calling for local control is purely a matter of political pragmatism; if they could get a Federal law passed that required the teaching of ID (assuming it would pass the courts), they’d do it in a heartbeat.

“I brought up Kennedy and the vaccine issue because I’ve honestly not met any conservatives up in arms on this. ”

Here’s Dan Burton for example.

I agree on GM foods & irradiation, but these are more issues for Greens than for Democrats. And the Dems are in office in plenty of states, but don’t seem to be pushing an anti-science line.

Some clarification on this. Do you mean that if I smoke a single low-tar cigarette per day, I get the non-smokers rate, or even a reduction on the standard smokers rate, on the basis that exposure to small doses doesn’t increase risk.

I suspect not, and that the issue is not one of actuarial calculation, but of verification. You can divide the population into smokers and non-smokers, but trying to distinguish within these groups (low vs high-dose smokers and low vs high-dose passive smokers) is just about impossible, particularly in the latter case.

I agree with the Catallarchy trackback that the main Science Democrats wage war on is economics. For example: anti-“price gouging” legislation, “living wage” mandates, minimum wage laws, rent control.

Other issues where politicians War against the Science of economics are more bipartisan: protectionist import tariffs and quotas, farming price supports, immigration restrictions.

Erm, not to derail this thread completely, but Economics not does equal Science! And I suspect you’d find a lot more debate between economists on those listed subjects that you would between scientists on any of the subjects Mooney addresses.

“Creating genetic mutations in a lab is not the same as cross fertilizing corn.”

Seth,

What’s your point exactly. GM technology is not based on creating mutations, “mutation breeding” had its hay day back in the ’60’s. It was not considered controversial at the time as far as I know. Domestication of corn from its wild relative involved selection of a whole series of mutations that radically changed the form of the plant – making it among other things totally dependent on man for propagation. That biotechnology crime was committed >8,000 years ago by native women (most likely) in the Central America. The ensuing bio-catastrophe converted the American midwestern plains into the monocultural corn desert we enjoy today. We didn’t actually get around to crossing corn in ernest until the late 19th century. Lewontin still claims that the hybrid seed industry built on wonton crossing of corn is a capitalist conspiracy, but not many agree with him. Ilegitimate crossing of corn with other grass species also has a rich history. In recent years, some real sickos at the U. of Minn even crossed corn with oats. On the other hand, maybe its like the guy who wrote “Botany of Desire” suggested, agriculture is nothing more than an elaborate conspiracy of the grasses to get rid the trees. It seems to be working ;)

drm,
I apologize for using the wrong terminology. but you know exactly what I meant to say,
Stop quibbling, respond to the comment itself or shut up.

You still missed my point, which was that this mistrust is often justified.
Is there not a quantitative difference between cross breeding and even simple genetic manipulation among strains, and the production of rabbits that glow in the dark? I’m not talking about abstract morality (I’m not about to argue that a mule is a crime against nature).

“What we live with today are end products of evolution over millions of years, of a cone of experience and time narrowing to a point in the present. [and our impact is minimal seen in this scale] The desire to expand from a point is one of the most famous fallacies of modernity,”The Year One” being a famous early example.”

Read that carefully. By your logic the harnessing of nuclear energy is the equivalent of the discovery that a mixture of olive oil and vinegar goes well with ripe tomatos.
Less glibly, even fossil fuels are less of a transformative break than nuclear energy and they’ve been problematic enough. I’ll return to the image of a cone of events, leading to a point in the present, or from the present into the future.
What’s the number of combinations that computers have been able to map out and predict on a billiard table?
Every event is at the end of a process of narrowing cone of probability and the beginning of another cone of widening probability. Revolutionary modernists like to say they can predict the future, and that everything will be fine, but their success rate isn’t very good; and though it isn’t very sexy the basics of improved public health have saved more lives than high tech science, which seems driven more by desire than the mundane logic of human decency.
I prefer a retrospective intelligence to a simply predictive one. That’s preference but not a religious one.

“The most common method used for inserting foreign genes into plant genomes was invented by a species of bacteria…”

drm,
I won’t quibble with your personification of bacteria[!], but I’d tend to see a difference between organisms that developed by evolutionary processes parallel to our own, and those we’ve manufactured. Beyond that, I began my rant along the lines you assumed: talking not about science but its reception. I can argue against the sensibilities of scientists as inventors who are often more interested in satisfying their own curiosity than anything else, but I’m not a scientist myself (and I don’t play one on the web)
s.

“Quite right.”
I did try end on a note of civility.

I hope you read numbers more carefully than you read words.
I should have just gone back up the thread and read Scott Martens and ‘doormat’ and left it at that.