The Attack on Scientific Thinking and Why We Must Defend Science

[AndreiX]

Forum at UC Berkeley

“The Attack on Scientific Thinking and Why We Must Defend Science”

Revolution #045, May 1, 2006, posted at http://revcom.us/

UC Berkeley--On April 13, over 160 people, mainly professors of science, graduate and undergraduate students in the sciences, attended a forum and discussion, hosted by the Berkeley Student Chapter of Defend Science, titled “The Attack on Scientific Thinking and Why We Must Defend Science.” At a time when even such a basic scientific fact as evolutionary theory is under attack, this forum is a welcome development.

The leaflet announcing the event quoted from a statement by scientists to “Defend Science”: “In the United States today science, as science, is under attack as never before. The attacks are coming at an accelerating pace, and include frequent interventions by powerful forces, in and out of the Bush Administration, who seem all too willing to deny scientific truths, disrupt scientific investigations, block scientific progress, undermine scientific education, and sacrifice the very integrity of the scientific process itself. We must refuse to accept a situation where scientific inquiry is blocked or its findings ruled out of order unless they conform to the goals of the government, to corporate interests and to the ideology of religious fundamentalists; where dogma enforced by governmental and religious authority takes the place of science; where the scientific approach of seeking natural explanations for natural phenomena is suppressed.” (The full statement with signatories is available at defendscience.org).

The forum was moderated and introduced by Dr. Michael G. Hadfield, Professor of Zoology and Director of the Kewalo Marine Laboratory at the University of Hawaii. A number of prominent scientists spoke at the event.

Dr. Dennis Baldocchi, Professor of Biometeorology, Berkeley Atmospheric Science Center at UC Berkeley, gave an overview of the overwhelming evidence for global warming, showing how human beings, by their consumption of fossil fuels over the last 100 years, have changed the global climate, in ways which are having, and will continue to have, profound effects on the future of the planet. And he outlined some of the political attacks that have been launched against prominent climate scientists.

Dr. Stephen Palumbi, Professor of Biological Sciences and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for the Environment, and author of The Evolution Explosion, spoke on “Why evolutionary science in indispensable.” Dr. Palumbi explained how evolution by natural selection is easily observed in many ways, in medicine, agriculture, and technology. He brought out how the development of antibiotics to treat infection, medicine to combat the HIV/AIDS virus, and measures against the spread of the avian flu, all depend on an understanding of the fact of evolution.

Dr. Kevin Padian, Professor of Integrative Biology, Curator of the Museum of Paleontology at UC Berkeley and President of the National Center for Science Education, spoke of the extent of the attacks coming down on science by the Bush administration, from promoting false information on sexual abstinence in preventing AIDs, to demanding appointees to scientific panels answer questions about whether they voted for Bush. Dr. Padian was a major witness in the recent Dover, Pennsylvania case on teaching evolution, which resulted in a setback for the teaching of the unscientific and religious doctrine of “intelligent design” in public schools.

In the last question of the night a student asked, “What sacrifices will we have to make in this period to defend science?” Addressing this question, Dr. Padian said, “You’re going to have to do things that you don’t like doing. That’s why they call it a sacrifice. You may have to give up a scientific paper or two, or maybe one or two a year. You may have to give up your free time, if you had any to begin with.” The panelists went on to talk about the challenge of stepping outside of their research and outside the academy to speak to school boards, city councils, and people generally to defend science and the scientific method.

EXCERPTS:

Dr. Michael G. Hadfield, Professor of Zoology and Director of the Kewalo Marine Laboratory at the University of Hawaii:

If you’ve read the Defend Science Statement (available at defendscience.org) you’ll understand that right across the many disciplines that make up modern science, scientists have been forced into a defensive position as right wing political and religious groups seek to undermine the factual scientific basis for understanding nature and the very process of scientific inquiry.
Never, certainly in my own lifetime, has anything gone on like what we have witnessed in the last six years. We see this attack on science and scientific thinking in our schools and universities, our government agencies, and in U.S. policies worldwide. One of the things that impacted me most over the last four months is reading Esther Kaplan’s book, With God On Their Side, about George W. Bush and the religious right. As I said to my wife, ‘I couldn’t finish it without reading a murder mystery before going to sleep, because of the realization of how infiltrated the scientific establishment in the U.S. is now with people from religious and non-scientific backgrounds and how this had changed the very tenor and the reason for awarding grants or supporting efforts of the United Nations, and how these things are echoing out into things like increased AIDS in Africa, because of the withholding of things as simple as condoms.

I want to emphasize that the goal of the defend science project is to launch a movement and to issue an urgent call to the American people.

Why Evolutionary Science Is Indispensable: Evolution and the Bacterial Arms Race

Dr. Stephen Palumbi, Professor of Biological Sciences and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for the Environment, Author of “The Evolution Explosion”:

Natural selection is a provable biological proposition; you can see it happen, and evolution by natural selection is something you can observe in medicine, in agriculture, in biotechnology…. A really fabulous example of evolution by natural selection has to do with antibiotics, which burst upon the industrial scene in 1943 when penicillin first became commercially available. This saved millions of lives. It also caused an incredible burst of evolutionary change in those very bugs--those very bacteria--that penicillin was generated to combat. The examples are everywhere. I could name dozens of very well documented examples of evolutionary change that happened in bacterial populations because of antibiotics. This is a list for just one such bug, staphylococcus--the bacteria that causes staph infections. It was wonderfully susceptible to penicillin in 1943. By 1947, the first resistance to penicillin was reported. We switched to methicillan in 1960, because, by that time, methicillan was much more effective in treating staph infections. In 1961 the first resistance to methicillan was discovered in a hospital in Cairo. Methicillan resistance begins to build up in the 1980s and by the mid-1990s 35% of the staph infections you might get in a hospital were methicillan resistant and had to be treated with another drug, called vancomycin. Vancomycin at the time was known as the drug of last resort, a really bad name for a drug if you’re on it, but there was nothing else. Then, in 1996, the first vancomycin-resistant staphylococcus was discovered in Tokyo. So the FDA rushed into approval of another drug called linezolid, which was approved in 2000, and in 2002 resistance to that drug was discovered. Get the pattern? Find a drug. Use it massively. That creates natural selection on these organisms. They evolve resistance to these drugs over and over again. This is not a theory. We can even predict it. It’s an arms race between the development of a new antibiotic and the evolution of resistance. And the resistance causes us to invent and deploy new antibiotics. You can say that’s fine, we’re very clever and we can keep on inventing new antibiotics. And so far we have been able to. But just barely, because the rate of development of new antibiotics is slowing while the rate of evolution of bacteria is not slowing. Along the way you run into escalation. The organisms become more deadly and the cost of drugs goes up.

… I think we need to ask: who will be served by denying to our children information about evolution, the technology of evolutionary science, and the ability to create health solutions, agricultural solutions and other natural solutions in our world? I think the people who will be served are the people who would rather that people not ask questions, try to get their own answers and make up their own mind. The scientific process that evolution actually includes is to get the facts. It is to make up your mind based on those facts and reach conclusions that are consistent with those facts. And to question those facts when other facts come on board and move your own understanding from one point to another. I have children and I desperately want my children to have that ability – to move from one point of view to another because they got the facts and they made up their own mind. Denying them that by telling them that evolution can’t work because it isn’t a science – and by the way that will eventually apply to climate change, astronomy and everything – is like denying them the ability to walk up the stairs, or to learn a foreign language or to play a musical instrument. This is a fundamental thing that my children need. So when I think about this problem of teaching evolution and what it means in our society, I see it as an attempt to limit my children’s ability to deal with the world and create a better world in the future than what we have now.


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[cain_7777]

1. Dumbing down of America

The war on science is very disturbing but as in most systems there is a balancing act to reach equilibrium. The Religious fundamentalists take pride in their ignorance and their stupidity will come back to bite them in the ass. As this country falls behind in science education eventually so too will the economy and we will all suffer. Then as in the times just before the period of enlightenment, people will wake up and realize religion is a farce created by man, and that True knowledge is in plain sight waiting to be understood by scientific thought.

"Religion is a crutch for those who can't think for themselves!" at least that's what my bumper sticker says, right above my Darwin fish with legs humping the jesus fish, across form another sticker that says, "One Nation Under Educated." That about sums up my feelings toward ignorance, because most people have the capacity to retain vast amounts of knowledge, and with knowledge comes greater responsibility, but for the religious ignorance is bliss. Religious people are just intellectually lazy.

[AndreiX]

2. Religion isn't the solution

I definitely agree; although we shouldn't diss people for believing in God and religious people can make great contributions to society, religion/spirituality won't solve our problems or help us transform the world in an effective, scientific way. There is no God, and we can't rely on imaginary forces to help us; we must be the masters of our world in a bold, scientific way.

Bob Avakian, the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, has 2 really good speeches available online about religion and its effects on society, called "Christianity and Society – The Old Testament and the New Testament, Resistance and Revolution" and "God Doesn't Exist – And We Need Liberation Without Gods". You can find them here: http://bobavakian.net/

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. we aren't so bright either. Whoda thunk we'd need to refight these battles

over and over again?

The fact that we let it get so far must be taken into account and frankly, we blew it. We allowed these anti-science fundies to take the lead in schooling, legislation and eventually, the presidency and the DOD. See where that got us?

Even worse, this is not the first time.

1800 the fundies preached the end of the world
1820 same
1865 Civil war seemed like the end of the world for millions
1900 a new growth in fundie preaching, with Rapture in their hearts.
1916 tent revival meetings
1920 scopes
1930s an over-reaction to the roaring 20s, with the Crash and a revival of fundie thoughts.
1950s Christians vs. commies
1980s Moral Majority
and now, 2000-2006 Bushista-ism

It is not like we didn't have enough warning.

[gordianot]

4. As terrible as it is it can get worse.

The hard core fundies are going to flip when(if votes are counted) Democrats return. I do not have the inclination and patience to put up with the American Fundie Taliban.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

5. you have me as a partner, front and center, boss. no more sitting back

and letting them take over.

[cain_7777]

8. Ignorance will always attack freethought

Bible humpers fear the unknown i.e. death, that is why they flock to a mythical being promising eternal life. The ones who are educated, who know history, politics, sciences, anthropology, and mathmatics, are able to see the entire picture. We understand that gods were created from igorance and rose to power on the heels of man's own self interest. Oh look, a flash of lightning. what could it be other than a more powerful being throwing them down to Earth. Let's call him Zeus and if we worship him he'll favor our people instead of our enemies. A couple thousand years later, a fat bald womanizer, figures it out with a kite and a key. For the freethinkers, we can see as plain as day the evolution of religion, from the first burial of early hominids to the incorporation of Egyptian creation myths being rewritten into christian beliefs. Science had proven the bible false time and time again, but yet the masses keep their minds forced shut. That would be fine if it didn't affect me, but they are changing America into a Theocracy, and the very political system our forefathers fled and in which the constitution protects against; however, this president thinks of it as just a piece of paper and that church and state go hand in hand. Disgusting!

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. Very good point. Science is under attack!

[melissinha]

7. This is what its about: environmental regulations

its the science that supports evolution that is used to set environmental regulations.... so when companies want to get out of environmental regulations start believing in God .... just for profit.... cause these pigs aren't contesting the science behind medical science.... conveniently the science that keeps Dick CHeney alive.... coincidence? I think not.

[Hissyspit]

9. kick

[Cobalt-60]

10. Its much more difficult to lie

to people with an understanding of math and physics.

[Igel]

11. They're right, scientific thinking needs to be defended.

The enterprise and rational for it, not just the methodologies and conclusions. That's where the problem lies; anti-evolution arguments are a symptom of rejecting the aims and goals of science and why scientific thought is structured as it is.

The underpinnings of science have been under attack for decades, and not just from religious nut cases. I've met many an atheist grad student that rejected the foundations that science is built on. They accepted some conclusions simply because to reject them would ally them with the religious folk that they so hated. Other conclusions they neither accepted nor rejected ... they were oblivious to them.

A principled defense of science should be that: a defense of science, not primarily an argument against some other group.

BTW, many of the humanities and some of the social sciences at Berkeley lead the charge in undermining the philosophy behind scientific thought.

[trotsky]

12. It's under attack from the right wing AND left wing.

The righties primarily out of defending their fundamentalist dogma. But the lefties are ferocious in their own way, attacking what they see as "big corporate" science. You know, stuff that's funded and published and proven. Much better is the "folk" science, dominated by evidence in the form of personal anecdote.

[Odin2005]

15. Good point.

Over here on the Left I see a growing anti-science eco-primitivism who use a few abuses (like Monsanto abusing GMO technology to help sell more Roundup) of science to get people thinking that all science is bad. Both they and the Religious Right are dangerous.

Another group that scares me is the Postmodernists, who think truth is all a matter of opinion. it is thier notions that give people like GW "sceptics" and other cranks a way to attack scientists as "dogmatists."

[Posteritatis]

16. Hell yes, they scare me too

The number of people I've seen who saw "What the Bleep?" and now believe that reality does not in fact exist... ugh. Really fun trying to discuss a history thesis on psychiatry when you've got a few people in the room who think that Foucault has refuted the idea of mental illness.

I might just be somewhat embittered anyway; between my contempt for pomo "thought" and my transhumanist leanings I'm the very definition of evil to a lot of these guys on both sides of the political spectrum, but...

[Odin2005]

17. I'm a Transhumanist as well, and they have bashed me constantly.

These fools have called me "Scientism-loving Positivist Fundimentalist" numerous times. Thier stuff is so meaningless I going like "This is so stupid it isn't even wrong!". :rofl:

[Posteritatis]

19. Ever mention the Social Text Affair around 'em?

It's great, they completely lose it at times.

Autorefuting philosophy is so much fun. It's like Dadaism without the need to even feign art skills, and that's even without thinking about the ones far enough out there to claim that Derrida literally invented metaphor.

Amusing as they are, the mindset's still dangerous when it gets popular. It's just anti-intellectualism in another form. :P

[Odin2005]

23. Social Text Affair? never heard of it. What is it?

[Posteritatis]

24. Here you go

The short version: a physicist named Alan Sokal submitted a deliberately nonsensical piece of jargon-laden pomo crap to Social Text, a moderately prestigious journal populated by postmodernist types. It was deliberately meant to make as little sense as possible while still pandering to pomo style, and was kinda autorefuting and inherently Wrong in a lot of places. (For instance, he 'claims' physical reality itself is a social construct.)

They published it - they published it enthusiastically.

Sokal then followed up by pointing out that the whole thing really says nothing at all, and was mainly meant to see if gobbledygook like that would trip their BS alarms. Not only didn't it, but they loved it, and howled in darkest rage for months when they found out he was pulling their chain. Some of them still get all furious about it when his name's invoked; Sokal's practically the antichrist in a lot of postmodernist-populated university departments.

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/ is Sokal's personal page on the whole thing. If you scroll down past the table-of-contents links at the top, the first three bolded links are the original article and his two followups. The second identifies that it's a parody, the third explains why he did it. The rest are a variety of other related links to the whole thing; huge amounts of ink were spilled over it.

[Odin2005]

25. Oh, now I know what you're talking about.

I just didn't know what that funny incident was called. Thanks.

[Viking12]

26. "It's just anti-intellectualism in another form"

Is this self-referential? Because it's quite apparent you don't understand the philosophic principles that you attack. Trying to use the "Sokal Affair" to discredit postmodernist thought is analogous to using the piltdown man to discredit evolution; it's flawed logic.

[Odin2005]

27. It's the post-modernists who use flawed logic.

[Posteritatis]

28. Oh, I'm quite familiar with them

I just see them for the bullshit sophistry that they generally are.

[Viking12]

29. Who/what in particular?

Perhaps you can share with us some of your extensive knowledge on postmodern thinkers/thought and provide some insightful critique into those ideas.

[Posteritatis]

30. Foucault's "mental illness is a hoax" BS is a good start

Just one example, anyway; that man and Szasz have singlehandedly kept tolerance of mental illness in stasis for forty-five years now.

On an intellectual level, postmodernism's rejection of the idea that anything can be even vaguely objective is another sore point; I've seen some pomo types get wrapped up in it enough that they start rejecting math as something with any kind of value (usually because they don't understand it, much like postmodernist rejections of other sciences and humanities). Contrarianism for its own sake simply doesn't impress me, and that's a large chunk of what contemporary postmodernist thought is predicated on. When I encounter not one but many self-described postmodernists who believe things like "scientists make up physical laws so they can get prestige by 'breaking' them later on," I can't hold very much respect for those peoples' knowledge of, well, anything. A lot of these people are simply unwilling to accept that other people know things they don't, and use the philosophy as a handwave to avoid worrying about that fact. In short, a lot of them have simply "lost the capacity for linear thinking and analytical reasoning," to quote one guy about it.

On a logical level, most postmodernist arguments against whatever it is they're considering evil this week - "modernism" and "positivism" are two examples - tend to be directed at straw men as opposed to legitimate targets. (You can see this in some of the better ahistorical ramblings, such as generalizing one unusual Renaissance-era hospital into the prevailing attitudes of contemporary Europe towards the mentally ill.) The very name of the movement is indicative of a false dichotomy, creating some fuzzy monolith which it can claim to supercede simply because it's newer. The sillier levels of its radical relativism generally wind up autorefuting, as well; most of its more popular tenets have quite a bit of trouble holding up under investigation, almost as though it was meant to be deconstructed out of existence in the first place. While I do get a kick out of the idea of philosophical Dadaism, I rather doubt that was the intent of the philosophy's founders or current adherents.

On a more aesthetic level, as I said, most of it's bullshit sophistry. I've seen the term "rhetorical gymnastics" in a few places, and the Sokal affair you so handily reject as having any significance is a prime example of these. Equating it to the Piltdown hoax is silly, because the Piltdown hoax at least made an attempt at looking legitimate. Anyone intelligent - or even anyone moderately intelligent but well-read - who read more than a few sentences of "Transgressing the Boundaries" would know that Sokal was talking entirely out of his ass. This is obvious by the third sentence of the thing, and I consider it particularly damning to the field of 'thought' as a whole that there are people who cheered this thing on enthusiastically before discovering that it was meant to parodize their views. Claiming Sokal didn't genuinely point out glaring, systematic problems in postmodernist thought (you might want to read his followup articles - or the original paper) is on the same level as creationists dismissing evidence of evolution because it just can't be true. It's so much nyeah-nyeahing with fingers jammed into the ears.

I admit it's occasionally contributed a few useful ideas. I do like the idea that just about anything can somehow be viewed as a "text" rather than a physical, word-based text itself, for instance, as a result of my interest in things like oral history. The idea of things having a context in which they exist is also useful (though these days I see that denied as much as embraced by PoMo, and they hardly invented the idea anyway, no matter what Derrida's fanboys claim). However, things like that are tools, not the mindset as a whole. I do draw a reasonably sharp distinction between the two, and I continue to see much, if anything, of significant, helpful substance within the bulk of postmodernist philosophy.

[Name removed]

31. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Posteritatis]

32. Nah, I got his incorrect ideas from his own writings

"According to Foucault, the new idea that the mad were merely sick ("mentally" ill) and in need of medical treatment was not at all a clear improvement on earlier conceptions"

He may have thought that. He was wrong to do so.

"Moreover, he argued that the alleged scientific neutrality of modern medical treatments of insanity are in fact covers for controlling challenges to a conventional bourgeois morality."

Conspiracy-theory bullshit caricaturizing the entire medical community, again using the assumption that there is no such thing as mental illness.

Yeah, yeah, it's all a hoax made up by quack doctors, and the only purposes of treatments are to discourage people from Challenging The System Oh Noez@^$!1!!111!. Whatever; I'll take the word of people who know what they're talking about instead, even if they are part of "the conventional bourgeois morality."

If you are one of those types who believes that the eeeevil psychiatrists are just fabricating mental illness out of whole cloth to control us all or something, there's no real point in continuing this discussion. Holding that view requires a very active and consciously-maintained ignorance of a large and well-supported field of knowledge - something rather typical of the philosophy I'm attacking here.

[Name removed]

33. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Viking12]

34. Wow. 5 paragraphs, a dozen strawmen.

Let's catalogue them:

1) Foucault's "mental illness is a hoax"

2)postmodernism's rejection of the idea that anything can be even vaguely objective;I've seen some pomo types get wrapped up in it enough that they start rejecting math as something with any kind of value

3)Contrarianism for its own sake

4) "scientists make up physical laws so they can get prestige by 'breaking' them later on,"

5) simply unwilling to accept that other people know things they don't, and use the philosophy as a handwave to avoid worrying about that fact

6) postmodernist arguments against whatever it is they're considering evil this week

Well you get the point...Not one substantive claim. A complete misrepresentation of Foucault and then the heroic battling of the ever illusive "many" and "some" people. Is it harder to construct strawmen or knock them over?

[Orrex]

13. A great and horrifying post!

I'm distressed at the pride people seem to take in their own ignorance. Knowledge of science or math--even a basic layman's understanding--is seen as fringe or geeky or weird, while encyclopedic pop-culture knowledge is seen as the hallmark of enlightenment.

Honestly, I'd be thrilled to see greater attention to science in our culture, but I'd be pretty damned happy if we taught critical thought from an early age. Children would be better equipped to undertake scientific inquiry if they were skilled at recognizing bullshit.

Unfortunately, that's a dying art.

[icymist]

14. This is why it's dangerous having a White House 'Faith Based' office.

These people (wingnuts) have direct access to the POTUS. They've gained so much attention to their little 'god' trips that they are embolden to try and influence the world. When the most powerful country in the world becomes a self-righteous religious nut the whole world is in danger. The Republicans are to blame for they choose this bed partner.

[Odin2005]

18. One big problem is a loss of faith in science to help Mankind.

This is mostly a result of nuclear weapons as well as the eco-primitivist branch of the enviromentalist movement (as opposed to techno-gaianist enviromentalists like myself).

[Posteritatis]

20. Okay, I'm intrigued..

I haven't heard the term "techno-gaianist" before - what's that?

[Odin2005]

21. From Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technogaianism

Technogaianism (a portmanteau word combining "techno" for technology and "Gaia" for the Earth Mother of Greek mythology) is the stance that advanced technology can help restore Earth's environment, and that developing such technology should therefore be an important goal of environmentalists.

This is different from many environmentalists' position and a common perception that all technology necessarily degrades the environment, and that environmental restoration can therefore occur only with reduced reliance on technology.

[Posteritatis]

22. I can get behind that. (n/t)