Intellectual Stalinism of Science Establishment Revealed
This story from the Washington Post does not directly involve the issues about which I advocate. But it reveals a mindset that I see on a continuing basis. An editor of a science journal connected with the Smithsonian decided to publish an article by Steven Meyer on the theory of intelligent design. (Meyer is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, as am I. We are friends.) The article was peer reviewed and the reviewers agreed that it had scientific merit and should be published.
As soon as the article was published, the long knives came out. The editor was subjected to vicious attempts to ruin his professional career. Strident demands were made that he be fired. Lies were told, his personal life was investigated, false rumors were circulated, accusations were even made that he was on the take and had not actually had the article peer reviewed. All false, as revealed by a government investigation.
I have been told numerous times of the same tactics being threatened or employed against heterodox thinkers in the human cloning controversy. Scientists who want to testify in favor of a ban on all human cloning are warned that if they do, their careers are over, that they will be branded "anti-science" and no longer be invited to participate in seminars or write book chapters. If they don't have tenure, they will never get it. If they do, they will be shunned, shunted to a corner and forced to teach "punishment" freshman classes, rather than their usual advanced or post grad courses. (This happened to Dr. David Prentice at Indiana State University.)
This is the point: The leaders of science have become woefully ideological, to the point that they are willing to stifle discourse and crush academic freedom. In the end, they won't succeed in insulating their views from criticism. But they could destroy the good reputation of science as a venerable field, and transform it into being perceived by a weary public as merely another area of special interest advocacy.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 9:12 AM
9 Comments
9 Comments:
Greetings from The Corner. I want to comment on your idea that ideology "could destroy the good reputation of science as a venerable field". For me, it already did.
When I began college my options were wide open and I had little direction. I had already backed away from my first love, journalism, because of qualms about the partisan lockstep of the journalists I had worked with. Ditto for my (far more improbable) career on the stage.
My first semester in school, I had a terrific science course with Dr. Gordon Cates (I believe now of UVa). He is an energetic and interesting professor, as I am certain any of his students will attest. Afterward I considered a non-engineering science curriculum rather than the history or economics majors I was thinking about from day 1.
Right about then, the global warming debate was heating up as President Bush declared the Kyoto treaty DOA -- an obvious response, as both common sense and the Senate had already determined. But scientists, among others, excoriated him for it. I had just enough training in planetary sciences, and more than enough in economics, to know that their objections were bunk -- all politics, no science. The objectors included at least one vocal critic from my university, as I recall. I was stunned -- this was not a crowd I would ever be able to "play ball" with and, knowing the importance of harmonious herd relations in tenure and peer review, decided to end my budding foray into hard sciences.
Needless to say, little has changed. I am in business now and happy enough with my decisions. But it is no exaggeration to say that that the leftist groupthink of most American scientists ensured this Ivy Leaguer would never be one of them.
I hear this again and again. Thanks for commenting.
I think the West has been here before.
The last time this happened the scholastics had taken over nearly all of the universities of Europe and they rigidly taught Aristotleanism as the basis of science. Dissent was not allowed as Aristotle had become a sort of honorary "Church Father". Isaac Newton's Trinity College was a very unusual exception, basing its 'natural philosopy' on Descartes' writings. (Which may be why Newton, and not someone else, made his discoveries.)
However the larger world no longer had to tolerate that foolishness because the invention of printing and cheap paper had opened another option: the various scientific societies and journals began at that time.
If academic scientists don't straighten out and shed their ideological blinders (and their bureaucratic ones too - a related problem), the internet and the related decentralization of human endeavor can provide a modern equivalent to the 18th century societies.
Sites like http://arxiv.org/ have the potential to replace the 'peer reviewed/gate-keepered' deadtree academic journals. Perhaps even more importantly, we are seeing technology driven economic changes that may make "Big Research" just as obsolete as "Big Industry". I suspect that when the history of our time is written, much of the environmental hysteria will be seen as the response of an obsolete and bloated academic research establishment desperately trying to maintain its salaries, influence and control.
People like the previous commenter, apxonz, may find that a path into business, if it provides some freedom and resources, may eventually be a truer route to a scientific vocation than the academic path.
Interesting. This is an important issue, regardless of what one believes with regard to cloning, ID, or global warming. I hope others will comment. Thanks.
Anytime we disagree with the radical left, they say we are against science.
If challenges as to evidence or interpretation are treated as if they were heresy, then science has ceased to be science and become religion.
Thank you for this entry. I hope it will be read widely. But my experience with the orthodoxy leads me to expect that anything that challenges it is simply labelled, not read. And at one time, I would have considerred myself "left"leaning.
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