Kenneth P. Green and Hiwa Alaghebandian analyze the authoritarian turn science has taken since the early 1990s and conclude,
If science wants to redeem itself and regain its place with the public’s affection, scientists need to come out every time some politician says, “The science says we must…” and reply, “Science only tells us what is. It does not, and can never tell us what we should or must do.” If they say that often enough, and loudly enough, they might be able to reclaim the mantle of objectivity that they’ve given up over the last 40 years by letting themselves become the regulatory state’s ultimate appeal to authority.
[From Science Turns Authoritarian — The American, A Magazine of Ideas]
Three years ago in “Servants of a Twisted God,” I noted the priestly and idolatrous character science was taking on, and observed,
Yet if scientists are still our priests of the god of knowledge, priests ought to be pure and chaste. Their purpose is to speak for their god, to represent him (or it) disinterestedly and accurately. When priests seek other goals—especially power—their authority soon dissolves….
[Matthew] Nisbet and [Chris] Mooney would have scientists do more of this: to present persuasive arguments rather than pure science. They want scientists to spend less energy on telling the public the full truth, and more on being politically effective. They are encouraging scientists to follow the fatal path that too many clergy took in the past: to become priests of power, servants of a twisted god.
Green and Alaghebandian see the same thing continuing to happen:
While nobody would dispute the value of a good PR department, we doubted that bad or insufficient PR was the primary reason for the public’s declining trust in scientific pronouncements. Our theory is that science is not losing its credibility because people no longer like or believe in the idea of scientific discovery, but because science has taken on an authoritarian tone, and has let itself be co-opted by pressure groups who want the government to force people to change their behavior.
I predicted in 2007,
The public will lose its religion over this.
Though these two authors do not employ the same metaphor, they certainly seem to agree.
Also posted at Thinking Christian.
August 9th, 2010 | 12:12 pm | #1
I just wanted to say how proud I am to blog here with Tom. This is great stuff.
August 9th, 2010 | 4:55 pm | #2
I, too, want to say how proud I am to blog with Mr. Gilson because, like me, he’s worried about the overweening ambition of science in late modernity. But I’m also worried about the “reckless and incompetent expounders of Scripture” (Augustine) who turn the biblical creation story into primitive science. My original post on this topic, “The Future of the Science and Religion Debate,” sympathizes with Karl Giberson’s call for a “synthetic middle ground where one might simultaneously embrace a science shorn of its over-reaching scientism and a faith freed from a simplistic biblical literalism.” The polarization on exhibit at Evangel increases my worry that “as the voices grow louder and more insistent, the perch between them will grow ever more precarious, making it all but impossible to avoid sliding by default down a slippery slope toward one or the other” (Giberson).
August 9th, 2010 | 6:20 pm | #3
If this “scientists stay out of policy” advice were taken seriously, we would never have had some obvious good things, like Einstein’s letter to Roosevelt about the danger of Nazi nukes; or the conservation and anti-pollution movements; or numerous improvements in public health, product safety, food quality, etc. True, we might have avoided eugenics, but it’s certainly not an obvious slam dunk that keeping scientists out of public policy would be a net benefit.
Furthermore, the only way it would have a chance of working would be if various basically nefarious interests and pseudoscientists (ID/creationists, global warming denialists, homeopathy & other quack medicine advocates, etc.) also withdrew from the policy arena. Ironically, it is those pseudoscientists whose credibility is hurt the most in the long run by engaging in public policy, because, unlike the real scientific community, the pseudos don’t have a vast body of real research backing them up, and don’t have the credibility that accrues from spending most of your time on research (for most scientists, most of the time, original research is 99% of what they do, policy & public opinion influencing is 1%; for pseudoscientists, it’s closer to the reverse). In any contentious big political debate this eventually comes to bear as politicians, courts, journalists, etc. gradually figure out who knows what they are talking about and who is engaging in demagoguery. I fear that what is really behind this post and its cited sources is the feeling of annoyance that scientists occasionally crawl out of their labs and into the sunlight and participate in the public discussions of a democracy, instead of leaving the public to the tender mercies of PR firms, pseudoexperts from right-wing think tanks, and the like.
August 9th, 2010 | 6:32 pm | #4
Green et al.’s Argumentum Ad LexisNexis Rising Graph is worthless and, ironically, shows just how poorly he understands science:
http://blog.essayweb.net/2010/07/28/on-science-turns-authoritarian/
August 9th, 2010 | 9:14 pm | #5
So much to say. Some of it will need to wait until tomorrow. But Nick, you just bring out the best in me.
First let’s put this in context. We know that you were formerly the Public Information Project Director, which I take to be a PR position, for the National Center for Science Education, which is itself a science advocacy group. You were a PR person for a science PR firm. I think it’s helpful to bear that in mind.
Now, did Einstein’s letter say “Science says we must …” ? No. He wrote as a scientist, explaining what science could explain, with a recommendation for how Roosevelt could keep up with what the scientists were discovering. He did not recommend Roosevelt hire a policy advisor but someone
I doubt that “put forward recommendations for Government action” was to be along the lines of, “‘science’ says we should develop a bomb;” but rather how to proceed should the government decide to do that.
Similarly, were all the other improvements you spoke of at 6:20 pm the result of science reporting facts, or from men and women in white lab coats intoning “the research says we must …”? If you’re going to call out Green and Alaghebandian for not properly distinguishing fact from opinion, would you care to do the same yourself?
Further: if pseudoscience is such a big fear in your mind, will genuine science carry the day by fighting by their rules or by doing what science does best, which is to discover and report what is true?
As to Green and Alaghebandian’s weak science, I’ll grant your point on that. I don’t think much of their methods of normalizing their research. I also think, however, the (anonymous? I can’t find a name) author to whom you linked at essayweb overstated the problem, especially his paragraph beginning “Which is more authoritarian? ‘Science commands’? Or science tells us we should’?” On that I think his reasoning is at least as week as Green and Alaghebandian’s. Also, the fact that Lexis/Nexis was used as the data source is no mark against their research. The question is not what science does when science is doing science, it’s what science does when science is interacting with the wider public.
On the other hand, now that you’ve successfully (and I think accurately) alerted us to the Least Mockable Unit in their piece, what about their contention that “science says we should … ” is bad policy—especially since there is no such thing as “science” in that sense, there is only “scientists” with their various perspectives and opinions? Do you really think “science” should hire PR firms to push its policy “findings”? Do you agree with Nisbet and Mooney’s recommendation that science take on what I have described (see the link above, “Servants of a Twisted God”) as priestly authority?
In other venues you and I have had frequent discussions on what does or does not constitute true science. If you think PR is true science, good science, or even advisable for “science,” then you’re giving up a lot of credibility on what science really is.
August 10th, 2010 | 6:41 am | #6
Christopher,
Thanks for the caution you raise. How shall we resolve it, though? Certainly not by navigating to some middle ground, as if Hegel were our guide to scriptural and scientific truth. Neither you nor I regard the middle as the safe place where truth resides.
If this conflict is to be resolved, it will be by treating one another charitably in our differences, in the short run; and in the long run by discovering epistemological principles that we can all share and all can trust.
For spiritual reasons, there will always be some for whom one of those principles must be, “God cannot be part of my answer.” Christians will never be able to reach rapprochement with that view. I don’t expect full agreement ever to be reached.
But if we treat each other charitably, there is nevertheless value in the dialectical process of working toward the right epistemological principles. (Hegel is better as a guide to process than to outcome.) The BioLogos group has its approach, YECers have theirs, the Discovery Institute theirs. Ultimately one is more correct than the others (unless there’s some fourth option out there to be discovered). The history of Christian doctrine shows that definition on these kinds of things always arise out of a process of dispute, discussion, and resolution. That’s how it worked for Christology, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, baptism, and more. Some of these remain unresolved, as you know, but at least for the most part comfortably so within the church.
I don’t think any of these issues were resolved by trying to avoid polarization. The peak might be right in the middle of the roof, but if the slope down from it on either side is slippery, the peak isn’t a very stable position either.
I hope we can avoid anger, distrust, and ill will. That’s an excellent goal to pursue right now. I’d like to think we could bypass all disagreements entirely, but I know it doesn’t work that way. We’ll have to push through to a solution the usual way, which is by facing our real disagreements and resolving them over time.
August 10th, 2010 | 10:27 am | #7
Tom: Thanks for your pleasant note. Let me begin with some generalizations, keenly aware that generalizations always risk oversimplification. Nevertheless, we humans seem incapable of living without generalization. So, here’s how I would generalize three camps and their relation to science:
• The creationist camp disregards science.
• The ID camp distorts science.
• Darwinists (or naturalists) idolize science.
Notice, there’s a fourth camp missing here. For lack of a better term, we’ll call this the “via media” (middle way) camp, positioned between the creationist pole that disregards science and the Darwinist pole that idolizes science. Karl Giberson says this camp simultaneously embraces “a science shorn of its over-reaching scientism and a faith freedom from a simplistic biblical literalism.”
BioLogos, another name for the middle ground, “takes both the Bible and science seriously, and seeks a harmony between them that respects the truth of each. By using appropriate biblical and theological scholarship BioLogos believes that the apparent conflicts that lead some to reject science and others to reject the Bible can be avoided.” The big names in this camp include Francis Collins, John Polkinghorne, Kenneth Miller, Alister McGrath, Howard Van Till, Timothy Keller.
August 10th, 2010 | 1:06 pm | #8
I’m well aware of BioLogos, Christopher, and I appreciate your explanation of their position. I know you are well aware that BioLogos’s view of creationism and ID is not shared by all, including me. I do think there is at least a camp within naturalist evolution that idolizes science, so on that we agree.
August 10th, 2010 | 11:28 pm | #9
A clarification: there is no problem with using LexisNexis, there is just a problem with drawing statistical conclusions from a dataset with huge and obvious internal biases.
It is somewhat possible that “science demands”-type phrases actually have increased, but you would want to compare it to some set of neutral phrases like “science suggests”, “scientists say”, etc. And you would want some spot checks to assess the frequency of false hits, like, “succeeding in science demands a lot of education and training”.
If there has been an upswing in the “science demands” sort of language, my sense is that it would primarily come not from scientists, science organizations like the NAS, etc., but from the radical end of the environmental movement, and from marketers for health products, and from the hair-raising propaganda they put out. And if that’s the case, then by all means criticize it where it’s found. But don’t blame it on scientists who participate in their democracy in responsible ways, through raising issues for the public and the government to consider, and making recommendations on that basis. And don’t make the bizarre argument that if a scientist comments on public policy then their credibility automatically goes down.
Re: Einstein: the attempt to get out of this devastating and obvious counterexample by splitting hairs is weak. This is very directly a case of a scientist using his prestige to gain political influence for the purposes of getting the government to take an action he recommends (and actually, Einstein basically did it on behalf of Leo Szilard, an excellent but unknown physicist who was working on chain reactions; Szilard apparently drafted the letter).
If Szilard & Einstein had done what Green, Gilson, et al. seem to be recommending for scientists, apparently they should have just sent Roosevelt a copy of their latest technical paper, sans context, and just hoped the politicians managed to figure out its significance themselves. Better yet, according to Green, Gilson et al., they should have been too meek even for this, and just published their papers and sat back, unconcerned about the practical real-world implications of their research.
I think my position is much more rational. Scientists should be neither full-time propagandists nor restrict themselves to some mythical world of unattachment and pure serene objectivity gained by isolating themselves in the lab. Instead, they should be responsible citizens of a democracy. They, like everyone, should comment on political issues that effect everyone; and, when they have special expertise that is obviously relevant to the public debate, they should lay out both the research and its implications in terms that the public and politicians can understand. When they don’t have expertise in a particular area, they shouldn’t pretend to. And they should keep a distinction between facts and policy clear in their minds and in their comments. This is all just common sense, as inconvenient as it is to those who prefer to ignore some crashingly well-documented piece of science, like the common ancestry of life or the anthropogenic rise in global temperatures.
Scientists should exercise restraint, but they definitely shouldn’t refrain from the policy arena; quite often in this complex modern age, policy discussions would be totally hopeless without the participation of scientists. Rather like the American government’s uranium discussions would have been without the physicists.
August 10th, 2010 | 11:33 pm | #10
Re: Public Information Project Director at NCSE: nonprofits need spokespeople. I was one of them. Journalists, scientists, teachers, etc. wanted information and would call us. I’m pretty sure they called us and not someone else because we happened to have a staff with lots of scientific training and minimal PR training (I never had any PR/media training whatsoever). But once you do it for awhile, you do learn that there is more to communicating science to journalists etc. than just knowing science. If you just dump details on people, they don’t understand any of it, and everyone is having their time wasted. PR, at least as done at NCSE, is a lot more like teaching. You figure out what scientific background someone has, and you start there, rather than at the most complicated, cutting edge part of the science.
August 11th, 2010 | 11:53 am | #11
Nick, you may have misunderstood something. You wrote,
I don’t think anyone here is saying scientists shouldn’t explain themselves. My concern is for their taking an authoritarian tone with it. I really don’t think Einstein committed that error.
In other words, I agree with your recommendations in the last two paragraphs of your 11:28 pm comment.
Green and Alaghebandian’s quantitative analysis is suspect at best, and I wouldn’t count on its accuracy. I have, on the other hand, seen numerous instances where supposedly science is speaking authoritatively on policy. For example, I’ve seen it said that we who oppose embryonic stem cell research are opposing what science says. It seems that Nisbet and Mooney, whom I referenced in Servants of a Twisted God, and Kelly Bush, mentioned in Green and Alaghebandian’s article, may be encouraging scientists to do more of the same. Regardless of past frequencies of authoritarian language, stepping it up in the future would be disastrous for science and for policy.
August 11th, 2010 | 12:14 pm | #12
Science says nothing. ScientISTS are the ones who do the saying — and what they say always involves presuppositions and interpretations (there is no such thing as an uninterpreted fact).
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