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| The Republican War On Science: An Interview with Chris Mooney |
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| By José Morales and Allan Coop | ||
| November 2005 | Science and Society | |
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Recently, Natural Selections interviewed Chris Mooney (www.chriscmooney.com/blog.asp), Washington Correspondent, Seed magazine; Senior Correspondent, The American Prospect; and author of the best-seller The Republican War On Science (TRWS, Basic Books, 2005).
Natural Selections: Who is your audience? Chris Mooney: Anyone who cares about politics needs to care about the role of science in politics. I’m really trying to appeal to that broad swathe of people and convince them that scientific knowledge has to play a crucial role in decision making today. I’m trying to convince them of how dangerous it is to undermine the role that scientific knowledge plays in policy making…It is fine for scientists and experts to sit and argue with each other, but we need the best available science when we actually make a policy decision. Politicians are not the people who should be deciding about the validity of the science. NS: Is modern conservatism anti-science and anti-Enlightenment? CM: I would say, not necessarily. However, the modern conservative movement has a lot of electoral and political tendencies that put it at odds with science. When you look at the fact that first of all conservatism generally is more resistant to change, that obviously sets up an opposition with science because science is driving change through technology. The distrust of government that you see in modern conservatism affects science because science has been happening in government and in a lot of cases is being being funded by government. I do think that the modern conservative movement has an anti-intellectual undercurrent. I think that you can trace this back to its roots to a kind of, I don’t want to use the word resentment, but at least distrust of the East Coast liberal establishment, the elites, the intelligentsia. The idea that these people are biased against a conservative movement coming from different parts of the country. The clear distrust of the nation’s scientific experts at universities, often in cities, often in blue states, I think that is very prevalent in the conservative movement. But then there’s the raw politics, what politicians know they have to say to keep their constituents. This is their base, politicians know what they want and will give it to them. NS: You describe what you call a “grand clash” [TRWS, p. 6] and you even say that it is like a grand scale political strategy—to what end? CM: The strategy is to stay in power. It is not to directly undermine science. The end is political power, to get it and keep it. For Republicans, it is the religious and corporate constituency who are the people who help them do that, that is their base. A lot of money is raised from industry and a lot of votes come from the religious conservatives. So in that sense it is a strategy, give these people what they want. The clash that I am referring to is the scientific community squaring off in a full-fledged confrontation with the current administration. This is really quite a striking and dramatic development. It’s one that has been in motion for a long time. If you look at the conservative movement and you look at some of the tendencies that I discuss in my book: distrust of government, distrust of universities, and of course the willingness to cater to constituencies; now we see it out in the open, but I think it has been latent, building for a long time. It is in the open now for a lot of reasons. We have a conservative president, conservative control of both branches of government, there is little check on the abuse of science by government. It is this sort of abuse that is increasingly becoming part of the way that constituencies get what they want. So the clash is alive for all of those reasons. One unappreciated aspect of all this is that we really now have a very systematic problem resulting in the scientific expertise of government agencies being undermined. People are resigning and the credibility of agencies is being undermined3 . Staffing an agency or restoring its credibility is not necessarily something that can be done overnight. These agencies are going to have to recruit scientific talent and you wonder if people will think differently about working there. That is more of a long-term problem. But depending on how systematically misuse of science affects the culture of federal agencies, how many great people have been lost, it could take a long time to replace them. NS: What do you think of Vernon Ehlers’ [Republican Congressman, MI, TRWS p. 244] implication that, when politicians consider candidates for science advisory committees, scientists think of themselves as a privileged class: “…that politics is for everyone else and not for them”? CM: I think that scientists do have to be involved in politics and they can not be excluded from it. I can see why politics should be a consideration for the head of the whole agency, for the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, maybe even for the Food and Drug Administration commissioner, but again this seems more like a role where expertise matters. But for people way, way down in what is called the fifth branch of government, the scientific advisory committees, for anyone to ask them whether they are a Democrat or a Republican, it is immaterial to what they are supposed to be doing. I think Ehlers was blessing the extension of the political misuse of science deeper into the government. Scientists should not be immune to having engagement with the system and having to defend themselves against political attacks. They should not see themselves as privileged in that sense. But I think that on committees they should not be subject to political questions. NS: You quote Robert Walker [retired Republican Congressman, PA, ex-chairman of the Science Committee, TRWS p. 245] where he says that there is going to be a push back at some time in the future. What do you think that this means? Does it have to do with funding? CM: Well, he did not say exactly what it meant. This is a statement for which he has often been taken to task. He clarified that this was not issued as a threat, but rather that he was warning scientists of the consequences of their actions. In other words, if scientists are going to get political and misuse information, they are going to pay a price for distorting things. But I don’t think scientists are actually distorting things. NS: What’s the price? CM: He didn’t say. NS: What do you think it is? CM: I think that clearly in the second term of the Bush administration, not only have these things not gone away, but I think the scientific community feels it’s getting back-handed even more. The administration doesn’t want to deal with scientists any more. They are now outcasts because of their willingness to get so critical of the administration. I think there is evidence that some punishment has taken place. The 2006 budget is clearly of grave concern to scientists. Can I prove it’s that way because of payback, no. Are scientists justified in that suspicion, maybe. I suspect that the Bush administration is angry at scientists and is not above a little payback. NS: Do you follow Greenberger’s thesis in his book Science, Money and Politics that scientists should become more political? CM: I think Greenberger agrees with me that science is very abused right now. I know this because he reviewed my book in the London Review of Books and was very favorable about the content about the misuse of science, but he said I wasn’t hard enough on the scientists themselves for not getting engaged. I am in agreement that on issues of scientific integrity the scientific community really needs to stand up and defend the content of scientific knowledge. They are the people that are in the best position to do so, and it is their duty to do so to ensure that the public knows something is really relevant, policy-significant information. So, for example, I think that scientists have to speak out and denounce misuses of science and defend actively the teaching of evolution. Universities should be involved in this fight, they should be very activist and university presidents should be speaking out. The scientific community is powerful. It is not an insignificant constituency. If you combine it with universities, then I think that this is a fairly large group with significant, respected people that can get a response from the political system. I think they need to use what power they have to defend the integrity of science. I know they’ll use that power to defend funding and so forth, but the integrity of science is their interest too and they really should fight hard for it. NS: How would the Republican “war on science” affect a grad student, a postdoc, or a junior faculty member? CM: Well I’d like to think that it’s going to actually have a positive effect. A lot of people at that level are telling me what they really want to do is to at least make part of their career dedicated to talking to the public, communicating scientific information, not just publishing, not just the rat race of getting a lot of journal publications, getting a position. They also want to engage people. Now I know the tenor of your question is, why should they care? NS: Why can’t they just stay in the lab? CM: They just can’t stay in the lab because things can get worse. I’m not sure how bad it can get, but people are going to be affected if they are working in a controversial area. If the politicization of science continues, some individuals of the new generation are going to be directly affected either in the funding area or the scientific integrity area, and are going to be attacked for their work. But even those that aren’t affected need to see it as their job to energize themselves in support of those who are coming under attack. It is called the scientific community for a reason because it’s a community that is international in nature and it is committed to certain norms for the advancement of knowledge. Attacks on the integrity of science really do go to some of the most fundamental things: freedom of inquiry, to operate without harassment, to discuss with colleagues, to publish without interference. A lot of these things are being interfered with and they are very fundamental to the norms of the scientific community, so I think that everyone is implicated. NS: Here at The Rockefeller University we have a large international community. Could you comment on whether you see the “war on science” as a uniquely American problem, or is it more of a global problem? CM: Certain aspects of this problem are uniquely American. We have the history here of a modern conservative movement which is a specifically American phenomena. You can trace its origin and see the role it has played in American politics. Religious conservatism has a uniquely American flavor. There is some difference between industry in this country and industry in other countries, e.g. different regulatory systems. Certainly, the American anti-evolutionists are not really paralleled, for example, in Europe. There is no analogy, that doesn’t mean they don’t have people that deny evolution, but they don’t have this really energized political phenomenon that we have. That’s not to say that there are things about it that are not more universal. We have theocracies in this world, and I guarantee you that evolution is not being taught in madrasahs. My sense is that in Europe the science abuses as they exist are probably on the left; for example, some of the extreme anti-GM [genetically modified food] activity they have there. But I also think that Europeans actually in some instances have learned from the United States some of the good things we have, and they probably have, in some ways, a more healthy science/politics relationship. For example, the Office of Technology Assessment that the Gingrich Republicans got rid of has European offshoots that still exist. They still have a healthier science/politics relationship just by virtue of having clear qualified scientific advisory apparatus that serves the policy makers in parliament. People have made other arguments that I’m aware of but not that particularly versed in; more participatory democracy, and more bringing actual citizens into good dialog with experts in other countries, so that there is not such a real polarization. There is such distrust of experts in America and that’s something that is uniquely American too. We have to break down that barrier. We need the public to understand that first, experts aren’t all that different from ordinary people in a lot of ways and second, there are some things for which you really need experts. You can’t replace that. My sense is that other countries don’t have quite the same level of tension that we do. NS: What are the strategies to develop a public counterbalance to the corporate and religious conservatives who drive the misuse of science? CM: Well that is a huge long term problem. The most obvious solution is to vote. I don’t say just put in a Democrat, I say let’s judge politicians on scientific integrity. Politicians do not have any right to mislead us, that’s not what we put them in place for and if they do that they should be replaced by people who are honest. If that’s Republicans, fine, if it’s Democrats fine. So how do you affect the public itself? That is the really, really tough question. That is the million dollar question. Obviously education is a very long-term solution that isn’t going to happen overnight. A more scientifically literate public might be more able to call out policy makers on some of their abuses…The strategies of misuse are intricate enough and misleading enough that it’s always going to be relatively easy to mislead a lot of people. Sometimes you really need an expert to explain why the global warming skeptics are misusing things, or why the adult stem cell promoters are wrong…Another partial solution is a role for the media. They communicate to the public, they supposedly affect the public in some way, so that will have at least some impact. Ultimately, another way I would like to mobilize the public is by communicating that the misuse of science is bad science and results in bad information that can actually hurt people. I don’t think that’s too hard to understand. If you deny, distort, and try to undermine the science of global warming, you are contributing to policy inaction, which allows the problem to get worse before it’s dealt with. The attack on condoms is another very obvious example. If you either a) don’t teach people about them, or b) make people feel that they are not effective enough, then people are going to go into sexual situations and expose themselves to diseases that can kill them. I think that message has some promise. Chris Mooney’s TRWS identifies the immediate threats to scientists and the public. We contend that TRWS is a component of a potential longer-term decline in the United States’ ability to provide its peoples a better quality of life. Mooney’s claim that TRWS is a mostly American phenomenon points to a curious paradox. While the United States’ Enlightenment roots advance democratic traditions that level social hierarchies, exalt “the common man,” public education and scientific progress, they simultaneously foment a deep distrust of experts, elitism, and intellectual culture. The modern conservative movement forms a distrusting extreme of the democratic tradition, seemingly detrimental to science/politics relationships and the creation of better. One must ask what can be done to create a ‘healthier’ science/politics relationship that advances the tradition of better in our lives. One sensible direction that Mooney appears to endorse is the democratization of science. Examples he cites include the aspiration of many early career scientists to communicate with the public and a European-inspired model of engagement between scientists and the public. Lastly, as to methods to create a popular, science-friendly counterbalance to conservatism’s anti-science activities, Mooney mentions voting, education, and the media. For another answer to this “million dollar question,” we turn to Europe again for a practical method of science democratization—the thirty year tradition of “Science Shops.” As they say on Madison Avenue: “Better is better!” References1 www4.nationalacademies.org/news.nsf/isbn/0309100399?OpenDocument 2 Shopping for Science: Will Society Help Itself, Natural Selections, Issue 3, March 2005. 3 http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=28817 Related Articles: |
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Better. Better is an idea we live by at The Rockefeller University. We seek better resources, to carry out better experiments, to produce better data and better models that lead to better understanding and better medical interventions. To our collective benefit, the idea of better, that the human condition can be improved, goes beyond the confines of our university and is embedded in our society. The pervasiveness of this notion is a product of our inherited Enlightenment traditions. In the 21st century, better is under threat