In his Spectator column this week, Toby looks at the “head-scratcher” of how progressives seek to both politicise science and appeal to it as an objective source of justification for radical measures like lockdown and Net Zero.
Here’s a paradox. Over the past two-and-a-half years, a cadre of senior politicians and their ‘expert’ advisers across the world have successfully promoted a series of controversial public policies by claiming they’re based on ‘the science’ rather than a particular moral or ideological vision. I’m thinking of lockdowns and Net Zero in particular. Yet at the same time, this group has engaged in behaviour that has undermined public confidence in science. Why appeal to the authority of science to win support for a series of politically contentious policies – and then diminish its authority?
Take Anthony Fauci, for instance, who recently announced he’s stepping down as Chief Medical Adviser to Joe Biden. Even though he once claimed to “represent science” in the eyes of the American people, he misled them about the likely duration of the lockdowns (“15 days to slow the spread”), overstated the efficacy of the Covid vaccines when they were first rolled out, refused to countenance the possibility that COVID-19 leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (it later emerged that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, under his leadership, had given a grant to the EcoHealth Alliance, which helped fund ‘gain of function’ research at the Chinese lab) and conspired with other prominent scientists, such as Francis Collins, to besmirch the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration (“There needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises,” Collins told Fauci in an email). A recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal concluded: “His legacy will be that millions of Americans will never trust Government health experts in the same way again.”
Another case in point is a recent editorial in Nature Human Behaviour, one of several journals in the Nature Research stable, the world’s pre-eminent publisher of scientific research. “Although academic freedom is fundamental, it is not unbounded,” it begins, and then proceeds to set out rules that future academic papers will have to comply with in addition to meeting all the usual standards for publication, e.g. peer review. It says the journal won’t publish articles that might cause “potential harms” (even “inadvertently”) to individuals or groups that are most vulnerable to “racism, sexism, ableism or homophobia”. “Academic content that undermines the dignity or rights of specific groups; assumes that a human group is superior or inferior over another simply because of a social characteristic; includes hate speech or denigrating images; or promotes privileged, exclusionary perspectives raises ethics concerns that may require revisions or supersede the value of publication,” it says.
It should be obvious, says Toby, that “far from being politically neutral, these rules embody a particular ideology and in future the truthfulness of a scientific finding will be subordinate to this perspective”. Were this to be political conservatives stating that research would be rejected if it went against their views on, say, family values and religion, then “those progressive scientists applauding Nature Human Behaviour would throw up their arms in horror and point out – correctly – that these rules are at odds with one of the foundational principles of science, which is to pursue the truth, wherever it may lead”.
In the end though, Toby notes, it’s an own goal for those who want to “appeal to the authority of science to promote lockdowns and Net Zero”, as it undermines the concept of objective, politically neutral science and announces that “the only knowledge that will count as ‘scientific’ is that which promotes their agenda”.
Is it a sign of how emboldened progressives now feel that they can make science explicitly ideological yet still appeal to it as the embodiment of objectivity, or is it an indication of overreach that presages a downfall?
Worth reading in full.
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I’m actually glad that Nature Human Behavior has been honest about their new editorial policy, rather than just implementing it quietly. Now we know that their publications can never be trusted to be objective. We will never know what research was rejected because it didn’t match their political agenda, or to what degree any published papers had to be slanted or modified to suit their editorial policy.
It’s like when several of the major medical journals published anti-Trump editorials in the run up to the 2020 election. At least you know where they stand
Marxism has always claimed to be a science.
Indeed: at one point it masqueraded under the moniker ‘scientific socialism’!
To be part of the
ruling class you MUST believe in this “science”:
1) Human released co2 which accounts for around 0.004% of atmospheric gas is boiling the planet. The planet can only be saved by freezing the poor to death a d taking our energy grid back to the medieval period.
2) Electric cars are really good for the environment, all those tonnes and tones of ores needed to make the battery are far better than simply pumping oil from the ground
3) That locking up healthy ppl and printing vast sums of money saved millions of lives
4) That the vaccine is is safe and effective and saved hundred of thousands of lives
5) And many other stupid things too numerous to mention
In short political power is a deal with the devil.
It’s maybe a bit early for conclusions like that but I nevertheless like to suggest one: A self-governing chamber of so-called professional representatives, ie, one that’s not a correction/ advice facility to a government independent of it will always end up being overrun by selfish morons with weirdo agendas and good connections to professional PR people. At least, that’s the picture we’re now uniformly seeing in the so-called west: Our politicians are mostly hapless clowns whose thoughts never extend beyond the start of the next election campaign. Behind the scenes, real power rests with whoever is willing to spend money on that. And the money spenders are not so much interested in accomplishing anything than in always muddying the waters to a sufficient degree that their ROI remains guaranteed.
The lament of the so-called American right The state is eeeeviiiill! would be more appropriately worded as Your political system is shit. Force-exporting it to all of the world just gave all of the world a share of your home-made domestic problems.
Science answers to whoever funds it. When the state does, eg as with Covid and Climate, it produces results that benefit the state.
The trouble is that the people who control ‘the science’ have also bought control of the MSM. We can sit here yapping away in our echo chambers until Kingdom come; until a more truthful view reaches readers, viewers and listeners (voters) in their millions nothing will change.
The fact that Fauci has been in control of NIAID for 38 YEARS and was still there in his 80s should itself have rung the alarm bells.
Environmentalists have been politicising science since the 1960s, to ‘prove’ their various outrageous claims which were harmful to society and economy.
Socialism doesn’t do democracy. The environmental religion has become a home for all those Lefties displaced after the USSR fell.
None of their policy wants have 51% popular support supposedly required in democracies, so to go ahead with unpopular policies requires a higher authority – The Science. This is a mix of real, faux and junk science.
It is no different to days past when unpopular policies were backed by higher authority… God, as relayed by the High Priests and Bishops and used to advantage by secular authorities and opportunists.
The real problem is, the political class have been colonised and become captive to this misanthropic movement, and it is backed by big corporations and rich and powerful people who see power, control, wealth as the reward.