Paul Starobin on Politicization of Science

Them's, as they say, fighting words.

The National Journal has a cover story on the Politicization of Science by Paul Starobin, and there is simply no way in the concievable Universe that this is not going to cause a ruckus.

In part, this is because in his desire to equally indite indict the Right and the Left in the politics of science, he utters some things that are outright incorrect. He repeats the "girls bad at math" meme that if I have to spend the rest of my life trying to debunk I will. (There is evidence that men and women have on average different cognitive strategies, not different cognitive performance.)

However, more broadly, this is going to cause a ruckus because it indites indicts scientists themselves in the process of making science more political, whereas we would all prefer to think of ourselves as innocent bystanders. It calls us out for having politics, something that I think most of us still like to believe is a game that we are above playing.

Here is a choice passage:

It is tempting, in this tale, to take pity on the scientist. Assailed from all sides, he -- yes, most top scientists are still men -- may appear to be just as much a casualty as the Enlightenment mind-set itself.

Alas, it is not that simple. Inevitably the scientist has been dragged, or has catapulted himself, into the values and political combat that surround science and has emerged, in certain respects, as just another (diminished) partisan.

This is plainly the case in the matter of the Religious Right's mugging of evolution. Darwin, anticipating just such a beating, had a ready response in the true spirit of science, which was that there was nothing in his scientific observations, nor could there be in any scientific gathering of evidence, that proved or disproved the existence of God. But that sort of agnostic caution seems to have lapsed as an example for today's scientists.

Among neo-Darwinian biologists on both sides of the Atlantic, a kind of counter-militancy has gathered force. Prominent evolutionists such as Richard Dawkins of Britain are proudly proclaiming their atheistic beliefs -- even suggesting that anyone who believes in God is a fool. "Of course it's satisfying, if you can believe it," Dawkins has said about faith in God. "But who wants to believe a lie?"

But it is Dawkins who looks dim for seeking to claim more from science than science can, by definition, provide. "He is an evangelical atheist" and "he is killing us," Alan I. Leshner, the CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said in an interview.

If modern scientists were the classical liberals that they like to say they still are, then they presumably would not be clustered on one side of the partisan divide. In fact, they display a deep-blue orientation. A Pew Research Center survey last year found that 87 percent of "scientists/engineers" (representing a random sampling of members of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering) disapproved of the way Bush was handling his job as president. In the fall of 1997, by contrast, 78 percent of scientists/engineers approved of Bill Clinton's performance.

What gives? The answer, in part, is that scientists have a long-standing tendency to believe that some societal problems -- global warming is a current example -- demand collective solutions of the sort that laissez-faire Republicans tend to be reluctant to support. In the 1930s, scientists widely embraced FDR's New Deal, and a number of researchers, blind to Stalin's crimes, were in fact Communist sympathizers or party members.

Today's Lab-Coat Liberal, as opposed to a Jefferson-style classical liberal, is also a product of the 1960s. Leading research scientists, as National Academy members generally are, inhabit an academic environment that was radicalized by the Vietnam War protest movement and civil-rights struggles. Although most scientists balk at the New Left's fixation on identity politics, science academia, even as it subsists on government grants, tends to take an anti-establishment posture that embraces a false view of science's own purity.

"Through its actions in Vietnam our government has shaken our confidence in its ability to make wise and humane decisions," the Cambridge, Mass.-based Union of Concerned Scientists declared in its founding document in 1968. Never mind that elite research scientists -- members of a secretive government-connected team dubbed "The Jasons" -- advised the Pentagon on certain Vietnam war-fighting strategies.

This mind-set, pitting the purportedly apolitical concerns of scientists against the connivers who wield political power in Washington, endures. In a recent Web posting on the prospect of a confrontation between the U.S. and Iran, the Union of Concerned Scientists declared that Iran "does not represent a direct or imminent threat to the United States." That is a policy judgment, not a scientific conclusion, and it is a dubious one at that, given the clear signs that Iran, a backer of Shiite militias in neighboring Iraq and of Hezbollah in Lebanon, is complicating the mission of U.S. forces in the Middle East.

The Bush administration as a whole, not just its military policies, is in the Cambridge outfit's gun sights. Citing climate change, childhood lead poisoning, reproductive health, drug abuse, and other issues, the group declared in 2004: "When scientific knowledge has been found to be in conflict with its political goals, the administration has often manipulated the process through which science enters into its decisions." Signatories included Edward Wilson, the Harvard entomologist once taken to task by the New Left.

In an interview, Cornell physicist Kurt Gottfried, chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists and a drafter of that founding declaration, denied that the group, or scientists generally, had a pronounced partisan disposition. "I do not believe that 77 percent or 87 percent of scientists vote Democratic normally," he said. But the available data, as scientists like to say, suggest otherwise. In 15 years of polling, scientists "have always stood out as among the most Democratic of the elites," Michael Dimock, associate director of the Pew Research Center, said in an interview.

Thus the science community, even if at times a reluctant warrior, is itself contributing to the polarization that afflicts America's political culture. Viewed by the Founders as part of the glue that binds American democracy, the scientist is in danger of becoming a force for its increasing fragmentation.

I haven't decided quite what I think about this editorial.

I do think it is true that science is a profession filled with many liberals, and that the public understands it as such. Don't believe me? Walk around a research facility looking at the cartoons on people's doors. Count how many make fun of Bush. Count how many make fun of the Democrats. Compare.

This is largely beside the point, however, and it is the next point that he makes that I still sit on the fence about: does science identify itself with liberalism? The question then is not whether you believe that scientists are liberal, but rather whether you believe that scientists should be liberal. In fact, the question is whether you believe scientists should be anything.

I am not certain I think that most are willing to say yes to that yet, but I do recognize the gravity of the situation if they are. When we make our profession -- rather than just ourselves -- political we jeopardize the cherished role we play in this society as honest brokers. While this may over the short-term seem like a good idea, for the IDers simply musts be beaten back, what are we going to do when next society asks our opinion and we would like to give one not percieved as biased? There is a difference between the correction of false ideas and the denunciation of the culture that produced those ideas.

Anyway, I am curious to hear the responses to this article. They are likely to be strident. I urge you in your analysis to separate his factual errors from the core argument -- partly because I think the core argument is more interesting and partly because I don't feel that I want or need to argue the factual errors.

Roger Pielke Jr. on Prometheus posted on this article with similar opinions. He also has a book coming out called The Honest Broker that I can't wait to read.

UPDATE: Fellow ScienceBlogger Chris Mooney, who is incidentallly mentioned in the article repeatedly, adds his two cents. He says that Starobin mischaracterizes his arguments. I am inclined to agree.