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Science & Virtue
By Graham Crumb | July 2, 2010
There’s a new article out from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, which suggests that scientists don’t communicate very well with the public. Among the observations:
“Perhaps scientists are misunderstanding the public…due to their own quirks, assumptions, and patterns of behavior,” suggests [Chris Moody, a science journalist.] Laypeople, meanwhile, tend to “strain their responses to scientific controversies through their ethical or value systems, as well as through their political or ideological outlooks.”
That’s the crux of the problem right there. What’s changed is not our tendency to filter everything through our own personal strain of moral and ethical judgment. What’s changed is what that moral and ethical fibre is composed of these days: fear, cynical distrust and an assumption of dishonesty.
It’s not communication skills that we’re short on, it’s moral and intellectual honesty.
The reason scientists are not believed now is because there is a deliberate campaign in place to discredit them by any means. Because they know most people can’t or won’t read the actual journals, the same cynical geniuses who bald-faced lied about the effects of smoking are teaching a new generation that scientists as a class are motivated by the same venality, mendacity and say-anything-to-get-approval motivations as are the rest of the world.
It’s pretty easy for people to believe this, because we recognise that there’s some of this in all of us. Indeed, it’s trivially easy to find individual examples of greed, jealousy, laziness and other human weaknesses in any field. But it’s a lie, of course, because it’s not true of scientists as a class, and therefore not true of Science.
Science, by definition, is the verifiable removal of these weaknesses from the pursuit of knowledge.
The problem is that the Know-Nothing philosophy is being appropriated for use across a larger swathe of human society than before. It’s a tremendously powerful force, and it makes it possible to crystallise human activity suddenly and with tremendous impact. Best of all, it can be done for virtually every reason.
People wondered at length what neo-conservative Straussians, the christianist Right and increasingly globalised corporate financial interests could possibly have in common. They searched in vain to understand why the core of the US Republican party faithful consisted of those who stood to lose most by its policies. Well, there you have it. The are united not by ideology, but by the simple tactic of institutionalised doubt.
Doubt is a stronger weed than trust. When we are no longer honest as a society, we cannot conceive of honesty in others, let alone in systems.
This problem can’t be fixed by explaining or communicating better, because anyone with the patience to listen is almost certainly not part of the problem group. The problem is that those with an unreasoning, idée fixe view of the world are no longer fed a narrative focused on the redeeming elements of human nature such as charity, kindness and respect. They’ve been transformed into crusaders [sic] against everything that’s wrong in the world. As a result, the dominant elements of modern culture today are intolerance, distrust, and cynicism deeper than we’ve seen in generations.
The biggest problem facing scientists today, therefore, is bad timing. They’re trying to save a world that no longer trusts them to help.
Update: An anonymous respondent writes (in part): “They discredit themselves. I just don’t mean the games they play with journals and data manipulation. If they cared about the carbon footprint, they would never support Kyoto or cap’n'trade.“
The person concludes by saying, “Watch more B5 [presumably Babylon 5. ed.], asshole.“
I could explain how the propensity to unthinkingly elide both science and politics together, and then to make the same mistake with empirical fact and fictional narrative, might actually be symptomatic of the very phenomenon which I am attempting to describe….
… or I could just say QED and be done with it.
‘Nother update:
Someone else writes:
So when are you going to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem? Mischaracterizing your opponents isn’t scientific either. Sure there’s probably a group inimical to science who is doing as you say. And there’s cynicism here as everywhere else. But distrust doesn’t spring from just ideology. It also comes from failing to deliver.
I’d venture to suggest that yes, distrust of Science does necessarily come from ideology. By definition, if you’re able to understand the principles of the scientific method and still fail see how they correct for personal bias, then you are either a victim of ignorance or willful self-deception.
By ‘failing to deliver’. I’m going to assume you mean, ‘failing to deliver good science.’ Anything else would be accusing you of confirmation bias, and I don’t think that’s the case.
If that’s true, then the solution is more science, not less. Distrust individual sources if experience teaches you that they’re unreliable, but do not discredit Science just because of a few incompetents.
In my view, the science of climate has been taken over by a bunch of characters more interested in the politics than the science (or pragmatic matters of what do with that knowledge). The scandal of climate change is simply that the science is remarkably sloppy given the stakes.
So you’re willing to argue that, because a subset of scientists are drawing conclusions that you feel the data doesn’t support or even misusing their findings to pursue political agendas that this somehow subverts scientists as a class? Climate science is a small (but admittedly prominent) sector of Science as a whole.
I’m quite sure that you and I could have a reasonable discussion about the failings of Climate policy, and I’m pretty sure that’s not what you mean. If you do feel that way, then you had better take a step back and consider the implications.
[T]here’s argument by consensus rather than by science (who in the scientific community should be convinced by the argument that tens of thousands of scientists (the vast majority who don’t have any more a clue than I do) have a certain opinion?)
Come on, don’t start tilting at straw men. You’re smarter than that. You know perfectly well that the argument from consensus is that the vast majority of climate scientists are finding data that meshes well with what others are finding. The fact that a bunch of people less qualified to know also agree neither adds nor subtracts from that contention.
I’m not denying that anyone in favour of action on climate hasn’t said something as silly as that. I’m saying that they’re part of the problem, because they’re no less willfully ignorant than the rest. See where I’m going with this? The Know-Nothing, fear-driven, us-against-them, world-is-ending bullshit affects all of us, regardless of our political stance. Anti-intellectualism and resentment of Smart People generally is an equal opportunity subversive.
If what you really meant was that the data is based on too few sources, so the consensus itself is flawed, then that’s easily verified, isn’t it? And equally easily refuted. So let’s have that argument instead. It won’t be nearly as frustrating.
And P.S. You’re wrong on that count. While the predictive capability of current climate science is necessarily limited (see cloud formation for an example of how complex the systems are that we’re attempting to characterise), there’s no lack of evidence for the macro-level findings that the climate is undergoing a significantly accelerated change and, while we don’t necessarily know what will happen in Tucson or Mindanao, we do have a pretty good idea that it’s not going to go easily for humanity as a whole.
Turning that decidedly nebulous fact into policy implies a lot of stumbling around in the dark. And it drives me nuts that we can’t get beyond the emotional arguments to start actually having that discussion.
Topics: geek, hard-core, social commentary, wonk | 2 Comments »
July 3rd, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Once again, I have to disagree. I do not believe that we are any more intellectually and morally dishonest than previous generations. Everyone, everywhere, at all times, has “strain[ed] their responses to scientific [and all] controversies through their ethical or value systems, as well as through their political or ideological outlooks.” That includes laypersons and scientists, whether Nobel winners or research technicians, whether Christian or Muslim or Jew or Buddhist or …
What has happened to Science is what happens to all man-made gods — including the G-d of the monotheistic religions. Humans, regardless of their ‘political or ideological’ outlook, expect gods to deliver Paradise. When Paradise remains as far from this realm as ever, the disappointed turn on the god or gods they themselves set up, and tear them down. Doesn’t matter if the god in question is the one you pray to, the one you vote for, or the one that is supposed to produce an endless narrative of earthly ‘progress’ — the cycle is always the same.
In the 20th century, for most of the literate world, Science was the god that was going to give us endless economic growth, endless improvement in life expectancy and quality, endless expansion of power, until we conquered the universe. One had only to look at the advances it has already given to extrapolate to the coming Paradise on earth.
That this worship confounded science with technology into one large lumpengod is a good part of why capital-S Science was bound to fail. Science as a discipline gave us the knowledge to make the tools — the technology, also called Applied Science — but it did not give us the wisdom to see into the future, and foresee the consequences of our uninhibited use of those tools.
Science is simply a way of understanding how the world works, not a guide to how we should work with it. The scientific method, as a way of proceeding, is morally neutral. It is no accident that many of the finest scientists are also religious: those who practice science know its limits.
Paradise didn’t arrive. The worship of Science ran up against the limits of human knowledge and the law of unintended consequences. The very classes who touted and worshipped Science turned against it when they discovered that the consequences of their unthinking worship were, rather than Paradise in this world, a kind of Hell on earth.
The propagandists of Madison Avenue would not have been so successful if there had not been ears to hear. At first, those ears were few in number, but, as we, the people, were faced with increasingly overwhelming damage from our own, uninhibited application of technology, we sought someone, anyone not ourselves, to blame.
Just as the Enlightenment rationalists laid all the evils of their society at the door of Religion, ignoring its genuine accomplishments, and touted their own religion of reason in its place, our new intelligentsia now lays all the evils of our present condition at the door of Science.
Ah, the more it changes
The more it stays the same.
And the Hand just rearranges
The players in the Game.
— ‘Nostradamus’, Al Stewart
Does it require an increase in moral and intellectual dishonesty? I don’t think so.
It only requires that we be as human as ever.
July 25th, 2010 at 4:07 am
“As a result, the dominant elements of modern culture today are intolerance, distrust, and cynicism deeper than we’ve seen in generations.”
Anyone living through 2010 in North America, Australia or the subcontinent, knows that climate change is real. Hottest summer on record in most of North America, all of Australia, driest monsoon season on the subcontinent. These are developments in longer term trends that have been making news, and problems, for over a decade.
Ain’t gonna argue with that. I am going to argue with the cited generalisation about ‘modern culture’.
Which culture is that: Western Canadian? German? Midwestern US? South Indian? Chinese? They co-exist, created by the same human race, and have the same depth in time. Is one really more ‘modern’ than the others? Or are you falling for the western teleological idea that the more economically and technically advanced society must, ipso facto, also have the most modern culture?
I would argue that you are referring to a very narrow band of a specific culture, the socially and politically conservative petit bourgeois of North America, particularly Caucasian North America. These are the people who, as a class, generally believed deeply in the G-d anointed superiority of their way of life, which happened to be based on technological advance and economic growth as a means of social improvement.
These are the same people who have taken one blow after another since the beginnings of contraction in the late 1970s. Suddenly, as The Boss pointed out, “these jobs are going, boys, and they ain’t coming back.” They reacted by electing Ronald Reagan/Brian Mulroney and dreaming of the time when hard work, honesty and inventiveness were all a man — Real Women didn’t need jobs — needed to get ahead.
Their problems were caused by ‘politics’, so they relied on politics to fight back. Only it didn’t work, because there were, and are, deeper problems with the system than those caused by hippies and commie-pinko liberals. And Reagan might talk nostalgia, but it’s the corporations that fund politics, not the voters.
Climate change is the death blow to a society built entirely on G-d, economic development and technology. To even begin to cope with, let alone ameliorate, the impact of climate change means human change beyond the comprehension of even the most imaginative members of the larger society. One has only to read the post-apocalytpic sci-fi that dominated the past 15 years to understand that no one raised in the culture of Endless Economic Progress, no matter their ideology, can conceive of the other side of this upheaval in any terms except bleak.
Is it any wonder that the most embattled groups prefer to see this is a conspiracy of enemies? Enemies can be defeated: reality cannot.
However, outside that particular group in that particular culture, I would argue that people continue to rely on tolerance, trust and faith, in themselves, each other and sometimes a god, to get through. Canada refuses to give the conservative political elite a majority. It remains a multicultural success story. It survived the latest economic downturn because it regulates the economy for the good of society, still, despite the hammering away of successive governments. It’s not perfect, but it’s not awash with intolerance, distrust and cynicism, either.
The same could be said of most of Europe. It is striking that, in the EU, the countries in the most trouble are those with the least regulated economy, and the ones that have weathered the crises best are those generally seen by the American petit bourgeois as ‘commie’.
One can hardly argue that the Chinese suffer from increased ‘intolerance, distrust and cynicism’. The dominant ideologies of China have been that way for at least 2,000 years. India and the subcontinent have problems, no doubt, and there are areas of deep ethnic division. But beyond those areas, India is a miracle of multiethnic co-operation, faith in the future and in the value of working together. Pakistan might be on the verge of collapse, but Bangladesh survives the most ineffective government structure imaginable because the ordinary Bangali fervently believes in tolerance, trust and faith as the only way to stay one step ahead of anarchy and starvation.
The Near East has problems, but they are not caused by cynicism, except perhaps the cynicism of generations of Western politicians who, having dumped the Jews in the midst of the desert, really, really want them to stay there. Am I a bit cynical to think that the same cultures that did not want Jews before the Holocaust also did not want them after, and still don’t want them? To the point that they will support the kind of behaviour in an Israeli government that gets sanctioned and condemned in any other?
Southeast Asia also has troublespots but, by and large, is doing pretty well. True, the faith of the Fathers in Viet Nam and Cambodia has changed dramatically in all but name, but it seems to me that these nations are often too trusting, given their recent history. If they really suffered from intolerance, cynicism and distrust, they’d all be little Myanmars.
I could go on, because there’s still Central and South America, Africa and Oceania. But you get my drift.
I would suggest a different interpretation: every culture, in every era, has rising groups and threatened classes. By and large, as long as the culture is based in a stable economy/society, it is the rising groups that set the agenda. When there is upheaval, the threatened classes gets more attention, because their fear finds resonance in the insecurities of others, brought on by the process of radical change.
Only a short while ago, the President of the United States bluntly told the rest of the world to stop relying on the US and its dollar. Unspoken, was the message that the US was in economic and political decline, no longer the world superpower. Not a message that the believers in the US as Zion want to hear. Not surprising, then, that the news media barely mentioned his warning. Best not scare the horses, nu?
Me, I think we have a future, and it will be fine. It might not be the future that my parents thought, it might not include a world of billions on a moving sidewalk to Eternal Economic Growth, but it also won’t be the post-apocalyptic dystopia of the trendy science fiction authors, either.
There will be extinctions, far too many. There will be mass movements of people. There will be upheaval, death and suffering for every living thing on the planet.
There will also be new species adapted to the new climate. The much lamented polar bear is already spinning off new species, and interbreeding with the brown bears that gave rise to it in the first place. The tiger is going, but the smaller cats are thriving in almost every area of the world. Where there is an ecological niche opening, someone is waiting to move in.
There will be periods of calm in the storm, and a world on the other side of it. I am fairly certain that there will be human beings in that world, because we are amazingly adaptable creatures. The ancestors of the survivors will be the ones who were prepared to trust and work with others, regardless of race, creed and colour, to increase everyone’s chances of survival, who have faith in themselves, each other and, possibly, a god, and are ready to set aside differences to focus on a common goal.
When the world settles down again, which it will, if not to the degree it has been settled since the early Holocene, those on the other side will look back at us and wonder how we could have been so backward compared to them, the modern, up to date people who know so much more….