Scientific American: Antiscience Beliefs Jeopardize U.S. Democracy

[All Along The Watchtower]

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More:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=antiscience-beliefs-jeopardize-us-democracy

Very interesting article.

[DC Al Fine]

I'd dispute some of the positions being "anti-science". If you're a pacifist, does being against government funding for nuclear weapons research make you "anti-science"? If you answer no, I would say that the vaccine, and stem cell are irrelevant as they are about consent/definition of a person respectively.

[John Dibble]

I'd dispute some of the positions being "anti-science". If you're a pacifist, does being against government funding for nuclear weapons research make you "anti-science"? If you answer no, I would say that the vaccine, and stem cell are irrelevant as they are about consent/definition of a person respectively.

In regards to the anti-vaccers:

The pacifist in your question isn't against the notion that nuclear weapons work as described, they are simply against their use and building more. The anti-vaccine folks are in denial of the science behind vaccines. They ignore the evidence presented by the scientific community and believe demonstrably false pseudo-science about it presented by fringe groups. (things like that they cause autism when the only evidence they have is one long debunked study) They are anti-science in the same sense that those who deny climate change and evolution are because they are denying the real science.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

On the stem cell issue tho, more and more it looks like we can get fully usable stem cells without having to destroy human embryos to get them.  Given the moral gray zone involved, I think having no government funding for embryonic stem cell research is a reasonable thing, and if it can be shown that we can do everything we want to do with them via other means, extend that to a ban on private research as well.

[Spanish Moss]

The fact that so many people in this country believe the earth is 5,000 - 10,000 years old says to me that maybe this country isn't quite ready for democracy.

[DC Al Fine]

The fact that so many people in this country believe the earth is 5,000 - 10,000 years old says to me that maybe this country isn't quite ready for democracy.

Utopia is just one forced march around the corner

[Mercenary]

I agree with the basic concept of this, but I disagree on the issue of stem cells.
Opposing embryonic stem cell research isn't an anti-science position as it is an ethical position. It's like say opposing human cloning or something, does that make one anti-science?

I support non-embryonic stem cell research, and organ cloning.

[Simfan34]

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More:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=antiscience-beliefs-jeopardize-us-democracy

Very interesting article.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfmXB7n6diA

[BringinTheTruth]

Says the guy who adopts and values the lightsaber....

[Marokai Backbeat]

An excellent article and it describes, far more than any other present surface level issue, the biggest challenge facing America at the moment. I fear it will only get worse.

[traininthedistance]

An excellent article and it describes, far more than any other present surface level issue, the biggest challenge facing America at the moment. I fear it will only get worse.

[muon2]

I strongly agree with the main thrust of the article. I agree that some of the examples in the article failed to distinguish between science and ethics, but the main point is that members of the public want to attack science when it disagrees with their ethics. For me the better response is to appreciate the science but note the moral issues applications will create, as it would in the area of human cloning.

I'm one of the 10% the article notes as a scientist who is GOP. I also remember getting into the field when the majority of my peers would have been R as well. A particularly interesting observation in the article is this passage.

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I remain a firm Jeffersonian and believe that science is critical to the informed citizen, and not inconsistent with faith.

[ilikeverin]

I'm not sure I quite buy that paragraph you've posted, muon; postmodernism has probably caught on the least in the US of Western countries with significant academic traditions, but anti-science sentiment is strongest here.

Might chime in with more thoughts later.  Might be worth noting, muon, that much anti-science sentiment isn't directly against "your" science, but against "mine".  No one is arguing that all funding should be cut for the natural sciences (instead, wrath is directed against certain projects that are producing results inconsistent with people's beliefs: global warming, stem-cell research, etc.), but Tom Coburn has argued that 100% of funding for the social sciences should be cut.

[bgwah]

I strongly agree with the main thrust of the article. I agree that some of the examples in the article failed to distinguish between science and ethics, but the main point is that members of the public want to attack science when it disagrees with their ethics. For me the better response is to appreciate the science but note the moral issues applications will create, as it would in the area of human cloning.

I'm one of the 10% the article notes as a scientist who is GOP. I also remember getting into the field when the majority of my peers would have been R as well. A particularly interesting observation in the article is this passage.

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I remain a firm Jeffersonian and believe that science is critical to the informed citizen, and not inconsistent with faith.

Primary him!

[muon2]

I'm not sure I quite buy that paragraph you've posted, muon; postmodernism has probably caught on the least in the US of Western countries with significant academic traditions, but anti-science sentiment is strongest here.

Might chime in with more thoughts later.  Might be worth noting, muon, that much anti-science sentiment isn't directly against "your" science, but against "mine".  No one is arguing that all funding should be cut for the natural sciences (instead, wrath is directed against certain projects that are producing results inconsistent with people's beliefs: global warming, stem-cell research, etc.), but Tom Coburn has argued that 100% of funding for the social sciences should be cut.

I don't know if the postmodernism fits the entire situation either. I do find it a fascinating observation, however. I suspect that if it plays a role, it does so in a way that those disparaging of science would not recognize. It's perhaps more a morphing of the concept that viewpoint can be as important as fact.

Natural science from physics to geology have seen substantial cuts in recent years. Defenders of that spending are diminishing in DC, but fail to realize that the private sector can't effectively take on projects with such a long-range and uncertain return. Yet few deny that the return for the economy as a whole is there decades later, it's just that in both the public and private sectors returns must be realized within a short few years to justify the spending.

[muon2]

I strongly agree with the main thrust of the article. I agree that some of the examples in the article failed to distinguish between science and ethics, but the main point is that members of the public want to attack science when it disagrees with their ethics. For me the better response is to appreciate the science but note the moral issues applications will create, as it would in the area of human cloning.

I'm one of the 10% the article notes as a scientist who is GOP. I also remember getting into the field when the majority of my peers would have been R as well. A particularly interesting observation in the article is this passage.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I remain a firm Jeffersonian and believe that science is critical to the informed citizen, and not inconsistent with faith.

Primary him!

I think you'll have to adjust that avatar color first.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I'm not sure I quite buy that paragraph you've posted, muon; postmodernism has probably caught on the least in the US of Western countries with significant academic traditions, but anti-science sentiment is strongest here.

Might chime in with more thoughts later.  Might be worth noting, muon, that much anti-science sentiment isn't directly against "your" science, but against "mine".  No one is arguing that all funding should be cut for the natural sciences (instead, wrath is directed against certain projects that are producing results inconsistent with people's beliefs: global warming, stem-cell research, etc.), but Tom Coburn has argued that 100% of funding for the social sciences should be cut.

I wonder what you are basing that on exactly... (of course "postmodernism" means many, many different things depending on who is using it, which is another matter). Of course "postmodernism" however we define it has very little to do with popular anti-science sentiment.

Wait... Tom Coburn said that?

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Ridiculous simplification. And anyway that is mostly gone now.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I'm not any kind of academic postmodernist, but that's an utterly absurd and factually inaccurate - frankly libelously so - account of what it is/was (mostly was: it's not fashionable these days. Cultural PoMo is doing just fine, of course), why it came about about what it did/why it mattered. Fundamentally, not everything is about you.

[ilikeverin]

I'm not sure I quite buy that paragraph you've posted, muon; postmodernism has probably caught on the least in the US of Western countries with significant academic traditions, but anti-science sentiment is strongest here.

Might chime in with more thoughts later.  Might be worth noting, muon, that much anti-science sentiment isn't directly against "your" science, but against "mine".  No one is arguing that all funding should be cut for the natural sciences (instead, wrath is directed against certain projects that are producing results inconsistent with people's beliefs: global warming, stem-cell research, etc.), but Tom Coburn has argued that 100% of funding for the social sciences should be cut.

I wonder what you are basing that on exactly... (of course "postmodernism" means many, many different things depending on who is using it, which is another matter). Of course "postmodernism" however we define it has very little to do with popular anti-science sentiment.

This is based on my vague knowledge picked up from a single history course I took this spring.  Here, "postmodernism" is defined as "sorta-Foucault-inspired shenanigans".  I was under the impression from the course that Foucault was worshiped in France but is still Controversial (tm) here, though, perhaps, that might just be due to the fact that we have more of a "science-industrial complex" here that can push back against those ideas.  You undoubtedly know more about this than me.  (And I suppose the, er, strong thoughts of many American anthropologists, say, couldn't've come from nowhere.)  Discuss with maps.

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Yep.  Here's one of my idols replying to him.  (It's not a great editorial, but it does get at the point, i.e., Coburn considers the entire social, behavioral, and economics section of the NSF to be "waste".)

[Insula Dei]

It strikes me that people sometimes seem unable to tell Post-Modernism* as an intellectual movement (to the extent there ever was such a thing) appart from such Philosophers of Science as Feyerabend or probably even Thomas Kuhn.

* By which those same people probably mean 'post-structuralist', which is yet another label that preciously few people ever applied to themselves.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

The harder the public trends toward modernism and science, the harder the GOP works to try and stem that inevitable change. And as the GOP digs its heels in, the public finds itself less interested in supporting a party firmly stuck in biblical times.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Patrick Joyce once wrote an article claiming (I don't recall the exact wording) that Post Modernism was The Future and that fellow historians had better jump on the bandwagon or be left behind by Progress. I don't make this up, srsly.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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Ok then... well, the thing is that none of that is true.

I assume like Belgian said that when we say "Pomo" we are really referring to the movement (Ok, that's too strong and inaccurate.... so "thing" then) known as Poststructalism. Which are not necessarily the same thing. Of course, the other use of "Postmodernism" is generally applied to any trend present in humanities/social science academica over the past 40 years or so that Conservatives and Evolutionary Psychologists don't like... glossing over the (often quite wide) differences of opinion between various positions that have existed in this time.

The harder the public trends toward modernism and science, the harder the GOP works to try and stem that inevitable change. And as the GOP digs its heels in, the public finds itself less interested in supporting a party firmly stuck in biblical times.

American political discourse is much more overtly religious than it was at the period of Kennedy's election. I see no reason why it go away - even if the evangelicals and their inspired movements become an obvious political minority, and perhaps I should say especially if.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The harder the public trends toward modernism

T.S. Eliot for President? No... wait. No. That's a terrible idea. Forget I said anything.

[muon2]

It strikes me that people sometimes seem unable to tell Post-Modernism* as an intellectual movement (to the extent there ever was such a thing) appart from such Philosophers of Science as Feyerabend or probably even Thomas Kuhn.

* By which those same people probably mean 'post-structuralist', which is yet another label that preciously few people ever applied to themselves.

I think the article's references to postmodernism are being lost now in this thread. As I read it, the author is noting that postmodern thought gave rise to intellectual approaches that put opinion on a par with scientific fact. I myself have seen that happen in academia. The assertion is that when anti-science beliefs rise to the level of reasoned argument (and that happens, too) in the political sphere they use some of the same intellectual approach. That's not the same as saying that anti-science beliefs are postmodern.