Augustin Fuentes has a letter in Science. It’s pretty good.
Science, both teaching and doing, is under attack. The recent US presidential election of a person and platform with anti-science bias exemplifies this. The study of climate processes and patterns and the role of human activities in these phenomena are at the heart of multiple global crises, and yet the scientific results, and the scientists presenting them, are attacked constantly. The dissemination of knowledge on health involving reproduction and human sexuality is increasingly marked for attack (in Russia, Uganda, and the USA), and researchers in these areas are often the target of extensive political pressure. The massive attack on the science and the scientists behind vaccines, pathogen transmission, and public health during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond is well documented, as are attacks on basic science education and the practice of science (for example, in Hungary and the USA). Even in the arena of biodiversity conservation, there is growing politicization of the data and political targeting of the scientists producing it. According to the US-based National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT), climate change, reproduction, vaccines, and other evidence-based scientific topics are being deemed “controversial” by school boards and state officials and are being removed from state-approved teaching resources across the country. Core research on health, climate, human biology, and biodiversity is being undermined by private foundations, governments, and anti-science ideologues.
Whether science is political, and if it should be, is an age-old debate. Some assert that scientific institutions and scientists themselves should seek to remain apolitical, or at least present a face of political neutrality. Others argue that such isolation is both impossible and unnecessary, that scientists are and should be in the political fray.
But…is there really a serious debate about whether scientists should be politically neutral? In my experience, the question is settled: scientists should be activists. I emerged from the University of Oregon in the 1980s; Aaron Novick was the chair of the department. He was a veteran of the Manhattan Project, who protested against the Vietnam War, and was on the board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. I worked with George Streisinger for a year, and he was even more radical. His family fled Hungary as the Nazis came to power, also opposed the Vietnam War, and when I knew him, was campaigning against mutagenic pesticides and testifying for the Downwinders, and writing editorials on the dangers of radiation.
What debate?
The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said people are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. We are up against people who make up their own facts, or don’t care about facts whatsoever. Among those we have to thank are the religious, who encourage evidence-free “reasoning,” which they consider a virtue.
Given that Science also published Marcia McNutt’s piece “Science is neither red nor blue”, I’d say some scientists want there to be a debate. Some choice snippets that got under my skin:
“For starters, scientists need to better explain the norms and values of science to reinforce the notion—with the public and their elected representatives—that science, at its most basic, is apolitical.”
What norms and values of science could she be referring to? Because I’m sure if she bothered to describe any of them, she’d have to contend with them being political and, in fact, quite partisan. That whole Belmont Report thing, for example. Not exactly a politically neutral and dispassionate document.
“For example, although science can affirm that climate change is happening and is primarily caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, science can only predict the outcome of the various policies that might be enacted to address the problem. It is up to society and its elected leadership to decide how to balance these options…”
Except science is part of society. And scientists are also voters too, and in some cases even appointed or elected leaders in political institutions around the world.
“At the same time, the scientific community must fight scientific mis- and disinformation as though lives depended on truth and trust, because they do.”
Some of the worst and most dangerous forms of scientific mis- and disinformation are coming from political actors. Race science, eugenics, climate change denial, anti-vaccine sentiment, AIDS denial, gun control, stem cells, opposition to gender-affirming care (which is, admittedly, part of eugenics but should be called out specifically), the list goes on. How can one remain politically neutral, neither red nor blue, when it is disproportionately one and only one political party in the United States that has gone all in on pushing disinformation about what science is and what science says? McNutt has no suggestions, just platitudes.
This isn’t a battle between politicized science and science, as I see it, but between fantasy and reality. I suspect that Americans would be screaming loudly and consistently if there was a movement to teach the stories of the Koran as factual in public schools, with politicians making the Muslim faith a big part of their campaigns and policies. How would this be any different?
One of my biology lecturers recounted a story from the Vietnam war era where women were working in a chemical plant manufacturing Agent Orange. He was among a group of scientists that knew it was teratogenic and raised their concerns with the relevant government ministers. They were told that information was classified and if they revealed it they would be charged. Naturally they leaked the information to the unions. They coppef a dressing down and were threatened with dismissal but no prosecution. It didn’t stop the production but women were moved off the production. Sadly it didn’t stop veterans and Vietnamese civilians being exposed with horrendous results.
kome @2
One of those things are not like the others.