Politicized Science: A Bastard Child
“Politicized science” is a general term that distinguishes agenda-driven endeavors from their intellectual counterparts of “pure science.” These are complex terms, but useful in making obvious distinctions between the two. Agenda-driven science can involve such phenomena as monetary considerations, policy leverage, or ideological advancement. Politicized science claims the authority of science-proper, and that is exactly what makes it so potentially powerful.
Many of us celebrate scientific inquiry as one of the most ingenious approaches to knowledge that humanity has ever invented. In western culture we often cite the pre-Socratic Greeks of Ionia as initiating scientific inquiry, and certainly we acknowledge how Aristotle advanced the scientific method. Joseph Needham dedicated much of his scholarly life to exploring and documenting the Chinese approach to science. The Golden Age of Islamic Science (generally during the 8th to 13th centuries CE) gave the Europeans vital things like Arabic numerals (the zero borrowed from Hindu culture), vast astronomical tables, immunology, ophthalmology, and a great deal more. “Algebra” comes from the Arabic word الجبر al jabr. Imagine Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton trying to understand astronomy with Roman numerals.
Without science, the majority of us would never reach old age or even middle age, as infectious diseases or ruptured appendices and other medical problems would claim us along the way. Science deserves our reverence and respect. But politicized science merits our skepticism.
Politicized science shows up in many places, especially where we find money, power, and policy interests that intersect with science-proper. In recent generations, medical and environmental science have been (and continue to be) two prominent areas where politicized science flourishes. For example, as David Hilzenrath and Holly K. Hacker have reported, industry-funded science compromised and complicated the MitraClip medical device that addresses mitral regurgitation. For another example, journalist Susanne Rust and others demonstrated how vested interests in the chemical industry covertly sponsored “scientific studies” that supported the notion that Bisphenol A (BPA) was a harmless additive in food packaging.
Contemporary beliefs in anthropogenic climate change offer stellar examples of politicized science. A perusal of articles in the Journal of Climate or the International Journal of Climatology reflect innumerable climate scientists who appreciate more nuanced understandings (and ongoing mysteries and questions) regarding their field — in striking contrast to the simplified doom loop dogma that the news media and the International Panel on Climate Change commonly report. And, lest we forget, it was not that long ago that a “consensus of scientists” (including the National Academy of Sciences itself) was predicting a coming ice age, an idea that culminated in Lowell Ponte’s 1976 book, The Cooling. Afterward, a “consensus of scientists” rather suddenly opted for global warming instead.
Of course, in the strictest sense “pure” and “politicized” science reflect a false dichotomy. Instead, a spectrum is likely more useful for understanding this phenomenon, with the unattainable ideal of pure science on one end and flagrantly subjective agenda-driven inquiries and findings on the other. Much occupies middle portions of the spectrum. But for argument’s sake it is still useful to distinguish pure and politicized science for some important contrasts.
Science loves questions; politicized science loves answers. One avoids policy implications, the other seeks to influence policy. The only agenda of science is (or should be) open intellectual inquiry, curiosity, and initially tentative discoveries. In stark contrast, politicized science intersects with power, money, or ideology and declares authority. Furthermore, those pursuing science tend to be agnostic regarding applied science (technology), whereas those pursuing politicized science sometimes have strong opinions regarding applied science, especially as it relates to policy. Science is an open-ended method of inquiry. Politicized science becomes a means to a (policy) end.
Science does not pretend it can answer metaphysical questions; selective science serving an agenda comes to resemble a religion that blurs science with metaphysics. We see the contrast here especially in matters of biological evolution and “creation science.” The latter reflects an ironic example of religious people allowing science to set the standards against which they untenably gauge their beliefs, and thus invent a pseudo-science in a lame effort to win an argument that they misconstrued in the first place. But we see problems of mixing scientific facts with philosophical values in the secular “green religion” that environmental science too often becomes. Here, activist-scientists assume dubious philosophical premises such as humanity being separated from nature (and thus despoilers of nature) and of nature resembling a static Edenesque paradise (which ironically contradicts biological evolution). Also, consider value-laden terms such as “invasive,” “exotic,” “introduced,” or “alien” species. Imagine seeking grant funding to study the “invasive species” impact of European cows, sheep, pigs, and horses in North America. Or, for that matter, what about the “environmental impacts” of the much-beloved European honey bee?
Science remains more purely intellectual, regardless of funding or lack thereof — whereas politicized science often becomes corrupted by grant funding and especially when producing certain satisfying results in the pursuit of grant renewals. We have seen rampant examples of this in psychology — ever a “soft science” in the first place, but also ever claiming the authority of science-proper. No one should have been surprised by the “replication crisis” of doctored social psychology results that the New York Times and The Chronicle of Higher Education revealed during 2015–2016.
Now we come to a core of the matter. Better scientists are ambiguous about the “authority of science,” whereas politicized science strongly asserts this authority, sometimes vis-a-vis the ad verecundiam fallacy. Science in its purer forms accepts ambiguity and inevitable outliers in its findings; these scientists appreciate that their endeavor never reaches a true consensus because that is not how the scientific method advances. As Thomas Kuhn observed long ago, unexplained anomalies sometimes become seeds for future paradigm shifts. By contrast, politicized science ignores or downplays ambiguity and inevitable outliers, thus fostering their claims of an authoritative “scientific consensus” that supports their policy agendas. Preconceived agendas fundamentally bastardize the very method of inquiry that has delivered so much fascinating knowledge that we rightfully respect as science.
Copyright © 2024 Will Sarvis. All rights reserved.
