Over at scienceprogress, Chris Mooney opines that the political Right is more “anti-science” than the political Left. He points to climate change and evolution as areas where the Right is anti-science, and dismisses the idea that the Left is anti-science when it comes to things like their exaggerations of the risks of genetically modified crops, nuclear power, and vaccines.
His reasoning seems to break down into two arguments:
1) Chris argues that one can’t really tag the Left as being anti-science on things like vaccines and nukes because he (and a few other environmental journalists) have done their own policing on the issues, or, at least, walked away from actively shilling them. Chris actually says that he and journalists on the Left have “chased vaccine denial out of the realm of polite discourse.” That’s going to come as a shock to virtually every social-network user, who probably sees half-a-dozen anti-vaccine posts a week.
2) Chris argues that the anti-science issues usually associated with the Left (vaccines, nuclear-danger exaggerations, GMO danger claims) aren’t really left-wing issues, but rather, are held by people on both sides of the political spectrum.
But if Chris’s first argument holds for the Left, then it holds for the Right/libertarian-Right: I have been writing about the fundamental soundness of climate science since 1997, including in a textbook I wrote for middle-school students. And I’ve taken considerable heat from conservative audiences for refusing to dismiss risks like ocean acidification out of hand. But then, I’m not the only one: I’ve read and heard Pat Michaels (usually portrayed as a climate antichrist) rip into conservative audiences for claiming the climate hasn’t warmed, and that greenhouse gases haven’t contributed to that warming. I believe that Richard Lindzen, John Christy, and Roy Spencer all acknowledge those scientific realities as well.
And if Chris’s second argument holds—that you can’t attribute anti-science to one side if it’s multi-partisan—then climate skepticism about both the risk and remedies can’t be pinned on the Right, since skeptics of either the science or policy identify as libertarian/Right (Spencer, Michaels, McKitrick, myself), Left (Nordhaus and Schellenberger), and outright socialist (Lomborg).
But as I commented at scienceprogress, the way I see the ledger, the religious Right gets a handful of anti-science points for views on evolution (and related rationalizations about the age of the earth, etc.), and for some dismissal of climate change theory, but the Left gets many more anti-science points for exaggerating the health and ecological risks of POPs; DDT; GMOs; plastics and plasticizers; pesticide residues; conventional agriculture; low-dose EM radiation; high-tension powerlines; climate change; population growth; resource depletion; chemical sweeteners; species extinction rates; biodiversity decline; and I’m sure the list could go on.
So which side is anti-science? By Chris Mooney’s standards (fairly applied), it’s either both or neither. My money, however, is firmly on the left side of the table.
Should be obvious…anti-science is whoever tries to frame science in the political discourse. But then, everybody does it, so…
Anyway, I can see the trouble with the Left is their living in terror that capitalism and liberal democracy are the way forward indeed, rather than socialism. So whatever results from capitalism and liberal democracy is automatically labeled as “bad”, including most of the material progresses of the past decades.
Therefore rather than saying the average Left Person is more or less anti-science than the average Right Person, I am inclined to think that the former is more trapped than the latter in a frame of mind that will forever push away from science. Unless socialism comes back and then perhaps the roles will reverse.
heh- you got mooney writhing like a salted slug.
he’s going to redefine ‘liberal’ to get out of it.
(the most sincere liberal apostasy ever filmed was dan pearl’s.)
Any stick will do to beat a dog with; or in other words the amount of intellectual discomfort generated by holding logically untenable positions can be reduced by associating contrary positions with groups you happen to dislike. Under Soviet rule in Russia all global wickedness was blamed on the evil capitalists; meanwhile in the capitalist West exactly the same events were being blamed on vile Communism. It’s much easier to buttress your own irrational beliefs by pointing to ‘enemies’ who think otherwise than to actually defend them logically. And of course religion makes a habit of it.
If you are looking at contemporary US politicians the Right has the lead in anti-science nonsense. This is certainly true among the likely presidential candidates and members of the US House and Senate. If you look at pseudo-scientific beliefs in the population at large the picture is more mixed. There have been plenty of times is history when parts of the Left were anti-science, from the Scopes Monkey Trial to the Lysenko Affair. But Stalin is not running for president.Opposition to nuclear power was likely the Left’s biggest mistake. For the Right it would be its support for the tobacco industry.
According to Green whinging about their struggle to bring Truth and Light to the world, Big Oil, Big Coal, the paid shills of both groups, geologists as a group, Christian Fundamentalists, the mainstream media of TV, radio and print are against them in a overt and at times covert campaign. Who are for them starts to become a mystery as the Greens rail also against not only Obama but both Congress and the Senate, most Governors and any other political person or body other than the German and Australian heads of State. All this in a world that creates Carbon Trading Commissions, gives the EPA legislative authority and grants Messiah-like profile to Gore, Hansen and the Church of Global Warming, the IPCC.
We, the vast majority, the warmists seem to say, are a maligned minority in the world. We have no power and no presence, and we are broke.
So who are the skeptics? The skeptics would say not the politicized scientific groups like the AAAS, the Royal Society, NASA, NOAA, the AAPG, the USGS … The skeptics would say not the MSM with the exception of Fox News, sometimes. Not the Washington Post or the New York Times or the BBC. Not CNN. Not the President or the Governors of most States, except for Texas. Not the various universities of hard and soft science whose departments live on Climate Change grants.
In fact all the people that the warmists say are anti-warmists are the ones that the skeptics say are anti-skeptics.
Except the geologists. Everybody agrees that the geological community is anti-CAGW, but then they think the days of the dinosaurs were cool and would like to see steaming jungles in the Arctic again, and think that 25,000 polar bears are nothing compared to a half million herd of 5 ton hadrosaurs.
Nobody is Green except the Core. It is the same with all cults. Only the inner circle are Pure enough, and enough to get exemptions to the rules (large houses, aircraft, suits Hong Kong). The Core routinely cull those non-Core enough. Obama? Said he was Green, but not anymore. Isolate and excise him, for sure.
Eventually there is no one outside the Core, and they go live in Guyana or – this would be rich – the Maldives. At 25,000 islands, there would be two islands for each of them.
How did you write a paragraph without including the Left’s vilification of The Bell Curve? That has to be the poster child for liberal anti-science.
“the bell curve” interesting am I following you correctly?, in the concept of equality, liberals (those that favor government regulation) shifts towards law/order to protect those that need protecting.
Certainly the right favors no child left behind? I however do not as a bit leftist, it is simply unrealistic rhetoric and creates, frankly, a country of sub prime student loans, inflating college tuition on the backs of the taxpayer
These things have to be discussed on the merits. I think you know perfectly well that the “Bell Curve” was attacked by legions of statisticians, psychologists, and educational specialists, all on substantive grounds. The issue is not: right winger makes “scientific” claim, left-wingers denounce it, left-wingers are therefore also anti-science. The issue is: once debates are largely settled, who holds on to discredited positions, and why? In the case of the “bell curve,” it’s clear that hardly anyone defends it outside of the Heritage Foundation basement.
As a scientist, I find it difficult to classify “The Bell Curve”, with its misinformation and simplistic arguments, in the same arena as global warming and evolution.
He is refering to the Left’s refusal to even analyse the Bell Curve for fear that it would legitimize such studies. It is not an issue over the specific theory being advanced. In other words, they would rather not know of any racial correlations, much less causations, because they do not believe the rest of us “can handle the truth”. That is the very definition of anti-science.
Bob in Portlandia
It seems to me that the religious, and non-religious left have at least as much of a ‘religious’ belief in catastrophic, runaway feedback, AGW as the religious and non-religious right reject it for ‘religious’ reasons.
The religious right doesn’t believe in it because it wouldn’t make sense for an end-time event to happen not on god’s timeline. The non-religious because of their belief in the inherent goodness of economic progress. The left, lacking a belief in any god directed end-time catastrophe, are religiously prone to believing in a man-made catastrophe tied in to their religious belief in the inherent negativity of economic progress.
Believe in nothing, fall for anything; believe in something, probably be wrong. The human condition if your in a really cynical mood!
I find that much of Chris Mooney’s output is a mirror reflection of Fox News. He knows nothing about science but he fancies himself an expert on how the world works and who to believe and who to censor and ridicule.
Good luck on getting Chris Mooney to admit any error.
Horsefeathers, Ken. Republican technophiles may be legion, but there is no significant conservative caucus fighting for control of the agendas of such major scientific organizations as the AAAS or AIP, and no right wing counterparts to such long standing foci of political activism as the Union of Concerned Scientists or the FAS.
Nary a conservative journal or newspaper of record has a science editor , and the handful that did have disposed of them. Instead of the state of the art geophysics or climate science dictating op-ed technical discourse in say, the WSJ, we get a mix of free market apologetics from science -deficient think tanks , press releases from PR flacks, and homilies from The Discovery Institute, Dominionists and evangelicals metaphysically indisposed to deal with materialists of any description.
Many on the left, most famously AAAS president Steve ( “My daddy raised me to be a Marxist’) Gould have been candid as to their political activism , but the lack of transparency as to the strings, financial and religious attached to subsidized scientific advocacy on the right combines with a ludicrously small number of scientific spokesmen and a positively demented set of blog followers to lend the ring of truth to some of Mooney’s charges.
Your stonewalling just makes it easy for him to dodge the left’s parallel problem of an inherited authoritarian agenda of social engineering.
Since the recent Republican debates figure in our perceptions of this , permit me to illustrate the impression they have left on this long time observer of the Climate Wars
http://tinypic.com/r/3144jua/7
There is room for dissent in science. Science is not, as some assume, settled. It’s an exploration and scientists are supposed to welcome examination and alternative thinking… like the folks who recently discovered there might be something faster than light… like the folks who discovered Planck’s Constant wasn’t…
There are legitimate scientists who differ about climate science conclusions regarding global warming and the effect of humanity on the planet. Unfortunately, they’ve suffered some severe persecution of the sort Galileo might recognize.
I’m unfamiliar with left-wing anti-vaxxers but very familiar with right-wing ones. In my considerable experience in dealing state legislators, anti-vax is an issue for conservatives. Michelle Bachmann is not an isolated case. Perhaps on the coast it’s the left that is anti-vaxxers, but not in the Midwest.
As for your thesis in general, it strikes me as a false equivalence – to be blunt, as bull. The poor risk analysis of many liberals is not the same as the rejection of science on the right.
why do you criticize as anti scoence people who are agaoinst nuclear power ?
Aside from all the other issues, nuclear power is a great cover for developing nuclear weapons – I mean, you don’t have a nuclear power industyr, people are gonna ask questions, you setup high level decon facilities, special transport for high level waste, rad hardened remote control robot arms, etc
I know there are a lot of issues with solar and wind (like the sun in AZ doesn’t shine iat midnight, in DEC, when you need heat in the north) but those issues seem a lot less daunting then the issues surrounding nuclear power.
HOwever as someone who likes the free market, I assume you are in favor of removing the gov’t guarentee for liability, as I am sure you know, without the gov’t basically saying we will pay all the costs beyond a certain amount, should there be an accident, the gov’t is bascially propping up an industry that would close down in a second in a true free market
RE the plasticizers
originally,I was as skeptical as you, as BPA (bis phenol A) was something like a million fold less potent at estrogen receptors then authentic hormones, and one could conclude that in vivo levels had no effect. (EC 50 in the nanomolar range vs picomolar for authentic hormone)
but then someone made a major discovery: there are a new class of membrane bound estrogen receptors, and BPA does bind to these at reasonable levels
in any event, recent reviews (Endocr Rev. 2009 Feb;30(1):75-95. Epub 2008 Dec 12.) conclude that BPA is a bad thing, while industry funded scientist come to the opposite conclusion (Crit Rev Toxicol. 2011 Apr;41(4):263-91.)
In summary, I don’t think it is anti science to conclude that BPA should be avoided, if one knew that the alternative is no worse (god knows what the plastics people used in place of BPA)
So basically you are saying that the liberal view is the CONSERVATIVE view.
Clearly the Left .. if you include nearly every fantasmogoric conspiracy theory such as magical torpedoes flying into the Pentagon (despite a massive list of first-person witnessing of the airplance crash), faked moon landings, Roswell aliens and the like. The Left I have found is far more gullible and receptive to anti-scientific pseudo-science.
Oh, and the tea-party protest at Wall Street going on at the moment against, um, the science of economics, is not of the Right.