John McCain thinks he’s hit on a good strategy for the upcoming Presidential campaign: make fun of scientists.
WEST GLACIER, Mont. — If you’ve heard Sen. John McCain’s stump speech, you’ve surely heard him talk about grizzly bears. The federal government, he declares with horror and astonishment, has spent $3 million to study grizzly bear DNA. “I don’t know if it was a paternity issue or criminal,” he jokes, “but it was a waste of money.”
A McCain campaign commercial also tweaks the bear research: “Three million to study the DNA of bears in Montana. Unbelievable.”
Three million whole dollars! Just think what we could do with so much money.
The Washington Post article goes on to note, what should come as no surprise to anyone reading here, that the grizzly bear study is actually very interesting and worthwhile science. The researchers, led by Katherine Kendall of the U.S. Geological Survey, performed the first accurate survey of grizzlies in the Northern Continental Divide ecosystem. They discovered the happy news that this formerly endangered species had substantially rebounded, thanks in part to three decades of conservation efforts. The kind of thing that you actually have to go out and collect data to discover.
Completely beside the point of course. John McCain doesn’t care about grizzly bears one way or the other, and to him 3 million dollars is chump change. What he cares about his the symbolism — enough to highlight it in his stump speech and TV commercials.
McCain is tapping into a deep strain of anti-intellectualism among American voters. Some of us tend to take for granted that questions about the workings of the natural world should be addressed by scientists using scientific methods, and that attacks on science must be motivated by external forces such as economic or religious interests. What scientists tend to underestimate is the extent to which many people react viscerally against science just because it is science. Or, more generally, because it is seen as part of an effort on the part of elites to force their worldview on folks who are getting along just fine without all these fancy ideas, thank you very much.
In the old-time (1980’s) controversies about teaching creationism in schools, pre-Intelligent-Design, one of the most common arguments was that school boards should have “local control” over the curriculum. Defenders of evolution replied that this was clearly a ruse to disguise a religious anti-science agenda. Which may have been true for some of the national organizations behind the movement; but for many school boards and communities, it really was about local control. They didn’t want to be told what to teach their kids by some group of coastal elitists with Ph.D.s, and creationism was a way to fight back.
Don’t believe me? They are happy to tell you so to your face. Consider the case of John Derbyshire, columnist for the National Review Online. Derbyshire is admittedly a complicated case, on the one hand writing books about the Riemann hypothesis and on the other proudly proclaiming that he reads Blondie and Hagar the Horrible for “insights into the human condition.” And he is also generally pro-science and pro-evolution in particular. But nevertheless — despite the fact that he is smart and educated enough to understand that evolution is “right” in the old-fashioned sense of right and wrong — he will state explicitly (and quote himself later in case you missed it) that
I couldn’t care less whether my president believes in the theory of evolution. In fact, reflecting on some recent experiences, I’m not sure that I wouldn’t prefer a president who didn’t. [Emphasis in original.]
And why is that? I wrote a whole blog post explaining why it is important that the President understand and accept the workings of the natural world, but obviously Derbyshire disagrees. The reason why is that scientific understanding is too often the bailiwick of elite leftist snobs.
Possibly as a result of having grown up in the lower classes of provincial England, I detest snobbery. I mean, I really, viscerally, loathe it. This is one reason I hate the Left so much…
Invited to choose between having my kids educated, my car fixed, or my elderly relatives cared for by (a) people of character, spirit, and dedication who believe in pseudoscience, or (b) unionized, time-serving drudges who believe in real science, which would I choose? Invited to choose between a president who is (a) a patriotic family man of character and ability who believes the universe was created on a Friday afternoon in 4,004 B.C. with all biological species instantly represented, or (b) an amoral hedonist and philanderer who “loathes the military” but who believes in the evolution of species via natural selection across hundreds of millions of years, which would I choose? Are you kidding?
The real point is not who you would choose in such a situation — it’s that Derbyshire sincerely believes that these are the kinds of choices one typically needs to make. One the one hand: character, spirit, dedication, and pseudoscience. On the other: amoral, hedonistic drudges (sic) who believe in real science.
Derbyshire is not alone. Conservative commentator Tom Bethell has published a Politically Incorrect Guide to Science in which he takes down such Leftist conspiracies as evolution, global warming, AIDS research, and (um) relativity. At Tech Central Station, Lee Harris pens a passionate defense of being stupid more generally:
Today, no self-respecting conservative wants to be thought stupid, not even by the lunatics on the far left. Yet there are far worse things than looking stupid to others—and one of them is being conned by those who are far cleverer than we are. Indeed, in certain cases, the desire to appear intelligent at all costs can be downright suicidal…
In a world that absurdly overrates the advantage of sheer brain power, no one wants to be seen as a member in good standing of the stupid party. Yet stupidity has been and will always remain the best defense mechanism against the ordinary conman and the intellectual dreamer, just as Odysseus found that stuffing cotton in his ears was his best defense against beguiling but fatal song of the sirens.
Again: most sensible conservative commentators are quick to say “of course, all things being equal, it’s better to be correct/intelligent/scientific than otherwise.” But they truly don’t believe that all things are equal. The real fight isn’t against science, it’s a much broader culture war. Science is being used as a stand-in for a constellation of things against which many Americans react viscerally — elitism, paternalism, snobbery. Presenting better science and more transparent evidence isn’t going to change this attitude all by itself. We need to address the underlying cause: the relic anti-intellectual attitude that still animates so many people in this country.
The grizzly bears will thank you.
The dumbing down of America is no accident…and no failure either.
Hi Sean — thanks for the reply (22) to my post (21).
I wasn’t responding directly to McCain’s churlish comments but more to the general attitude and some of the above comments. Yeah, McCain’s rhetoric is stupid, but I don’t expect much from a stumping politician, Republican or Democrat. But bad behavior on their part does not mean we have to behave badly too.
I was responding to this kind of sentiment.
Quoting Sean’s original post: “What scientists tend to underestimate is the extent to which many people react viscerally against science just because it is science”.
That’s crap. I can guarantee that the public widely respects individual scientists as hardworking, creative people that do things that ordinary people cannot. There is much general goodwill from big things like the A-bomb, moon landing, pharmaceuticals, etc. However those taxpayers do not necessarily have respect for the large amounts of taxpayer cash used to found often apparently esoteric work with no practical value. I say this as a scientist who often likes to work on esoteric things with probably no practical value. I just don’t have the gall to ask for $3 million to do it.
So, yes, I read the article. The scientist, and study, in question seems pretty impressive. But no where am I convinced this is a really necessary study. This is a problem with scientists in general. They are good at selling their ideas to fellow scientists, but not to the public. That is the root of the so-called “anti-intellectualism” of those who might rather have some of that $3 million used sensibly elsewhere, or just back in their pocket.
“put some pants on over these Union Jack boxer shorts.”
this makes no sense to me. Why would you need two sets of underwear on at the same time!?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pants
I’m a Northerner.
My favorite section of your post was the “choice” quote: “Invited to choose between…”
I wanted to modify it a bit:
“Invited to choose between having my kids educated, my car fixed, or my elderly relatives cared for by (a) unionized, time-serving drudges who believe in pseudoscience, or (b) people of character, spirit, and dedication who believe in real science, which would I choose?”
Or perhaps:
“Invited to choose between a president who is (a) an amoral hedonist who believes the universe was created on a Friday afternoon in 4,004 B.C. with all biological species instantly represented, or (b) a man of ability who believes in the evolution of species via natural selection across hundreds of millions of years, which would I choose?”
The variations are endless.
Dan
Why indeed, I did! I apologize! That being said, you will never make me put milk in my tea! Never!
um, Odysseus didn’t stick cotton in his ears. He put wax in the ears of his crew – Odysseus lashed himself to the mast, because he wanted to hear the song of the siren himself. I’m sure there is more than one metaphor demonstrated by Harris’ ignorance here.
We might stop for a moment and consider why there is this equation between a scientist who uphold evolution or big bang cosmology and the rest with immorality or sin. Consider the theology and theodicy of modern Christianity. Adam and Eve were created as perfect being presumably by a God who had some need to create what might be compared to an aquarium with beautiful fish. But what happened in the story. God was asleep at the switch. The much later prophet Isaiah spun a bit about Satan and his angels being kicked out of heaven, and well Satan decided to have some fun. In the form of a serpent he managed to get Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, sin entered the world and well that set a lot of stuff off. It is also the reason given that we die and that things in general die.
In a curious way it is a bit similar to inflationary cosmology, for the whole thing was an unstable set up, just like the Higgs on the false vacuum which by a fluctuation slid off the peak in the “mexican hat” potential and started the big bang off. Just get rid of the Biblical mytho-poetic particularities.
Well A lot of Hellenic ideas got mixed into Judaism at the 1st century BCE and certain interpretations of the prophets brought in this idea that Isaiah’s “born unto us a child is given,” and “By his stripes we are healed,” which BTW have different Judaic interpretations, meant that God had to come as a man to suffer and die for us so we can meet God without sin and have eternal life. As Luke puts it “Death, where is thy sting?” Great, it was a hot idea to come out of the 1st century AD.
But wait a minute! Darwin sort of puts all that Genesis (B’raysheet) stuff into the same status as Homer’s Iliyad = Mythology. If that is the case there there was no original sin and fossils of trilobytes and dinosaurs indicate that death has been in the world since the dawn of life some 3.5 billion years ago. Well, that puts a crimp on the whole Jesus salvation plan. For some of these people the suggestion that Jesus was not son of God amounts to a seriously painful catharsis. To admit evolution and put doubt into the system is to literally shatter their internal psychological world. It gets that serious with some of these people.
So this is where this strange equation with immoral behavior comes into the picture, for Darwin is saying there is no special creation, and indirectly there is then no original sin, which puts the whole salvific mission of Jesus into question. So to suggest evolution itself is a sin and a part of immoral behavior or sin, or as a way of supporting Satan’s plan of sin in the world. Thus evolution and evil get strangely equated. It is a bit odd, for evolutionary biologists have not gone around setting up the Spanish Inquisition, nor did Darwin advocate as did Martin Luther that Jews should be exterminated — something Hilter took up rather seriously four centuries later.
There is a way of looking at this, the evangelical Christians and fundamentalists are completely out to lunch on a lot of things, but frankly they are victims of these Republican Sons of B***’s as the rest of us. They have been cynically exploited to garner votes by these vampires politicians and psychopaths. It is interesting that E.O.Wilson is forming some coalitions with evangelicals with respect to environmental issues, and the new televangelists such as Osteen are preaching a very different perspective on Christianity. Yeah, they are still a tad out of date on the science, believing a modern made over literalism on the Bible and Creation (The Jewish meaning on this is very different), rejecting evolution and skeptical of big bang and … . But honestly, don’t attack these people. Kid gloves are advised. In due time things may change.
Lawrence B. Crowell
It seems that McCain doesn’t think there is an inherent value in pursuing knowledge simply for knowledge’s sake. And he’s not alone. Learning is fun, but we make it less than fun in school.
One reason we’ve lost the joy of learning is the way science is taught in K-12 education. Instead of teaching a way of approaching problems and acquiring knowledge, K-12 educators tend to focus on the boring part. It’s not the individual educator’s fault, since K-12 curricula tend to be inflexible and discourage teacher creativity, but science should instill awe and wonder, not boredom, anxiety, and fear.
We’re so fixated on grading, test scores, and other measurement in education that we miss the fact that learning is supposed to be fun. It’s fun to solve problems, to figure out how something works, to develop something that’s better than what came before. It’s not fun to memorize facts, sit in lectures, and regurgitate what you’ve been told. The trick is to work in the not fun bits with the fun bits, so that kids learn without really realizing it. That requires creative and dedicated teachers who are well trained and well supported by a school board who is not ignorant on science issues.
In other words, it takes scientists being involved in local school boards where they live, and doing so in constructive ways.
It is also instructive that the current regime, following in the footsteps of Ronald Reagan, has invested billions of dollars in a missile defense system that is fundamentally flawed in its design, due to basic scientific principles (the well documented inability to distinguish between real and dummy warheads based on their infrared images alone). We can only assume that McCain will continue this waste of taxpayer money. Again more than a thousandfold larger expenditure than the Bear DNA project.
This is why we need more scientists actively involved in policy making decisions to call out this nonsense, which will make us no more safe than our illegal pre-emptive attack on a sovereign nation.
e.
Is it just me, or do you find it ironic that these same anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-evolution right wingers love to harp about their gas guzzling Humvees, blue-tooth phones, wireless internet and all the other gadgets and technical wonders of consumer culture? Aren’t all of these devices the net result of scientific breakthroughs? Is not oil the left over residue of plants and animals that decomposed over millions of years? Any one who drives a car with a gas driven internal combustion engine is ipso facto assenting to the theory of evolution just as any one who turns on a light in their bathroom is assenting to the theory of electromagnetism. Lets keep reminding these stupid bastards of these things…
This goes way back. Proxmire… wasn’t he the one? Got a hair transplant. “Liberal” from … what, Wisconsin? Had this down to a comedy routine. Take some funded science project, and demonstrate how silly it looked in the eyes of the ignorant. He’d pull something out by the calendar… once a month, his version of the Fireside Radio thing.
The ignorant don’t want to disabused of their ignorance, and there is much political hay to be made from this–lest we forget… not just from the right.
This whole thread has brought about a sudden attack of existential nausea. As someone who grew up working class in London not the provinces, I grew up with a strong dislike of snobbery, in particular the snobbery of the rich and powerful. However what what disturbs me is the subtly crafted ideology that is used to turn the righteous disgust of snobbery into an attack on the liberal intelligentsia. They are collateral damage in a war to support the rich and powerful. This together with the incorporation of these memes into spectacular society is the source of the nausea.
However what Sean is dealing with and which and is plain from his blog post is something common to both the US and Britain and of course the Empire will pay well for such apologists. Its centre attracts them from its far flung Anglo-Saxon satrapies slavering from the mouth at such a prospect.
This is specifically anti-intellectualism; Americans generally don’t mind elite sportsmen or elite businessmen or even elite entertainers, and the accusations of snobbery surely fit these types more than they fit a typical scientist.
Deeply ingrained indeed. Professor Bhaer in ‘Little Women’ fights the atheists:
3 million dollars is a lot of money. Bear research is interesting work. Forcing citizens to pay for it is not what our government should do. I agree with the argument that 3 trillion spent on Irag is wasted money: it should not have been taken from the tax payer to waste.
Derbyshire is doing what all the best political ideologues do — deflect attention away from a weakness or failing of his side using bluster and by demonizing the opposition. He doesn’t honestly believe that anti-intellectualism is better for him and American in general. He just can’t help the fact that American conservatism would be dead and buried if it wasn’t for the support of millions of fundamentalists who prefer religious dogma over reason.
Then who should pay for it? Are bears a private asset of the landowners to do with as they please, or are they part and parcel of the American wilderness and a national asset to be looked after and treasured? If your answer is the former, what is to stop those landowners deciding that the best way to exploit this particular resource they own is to kill all the bears and sell their pelts for fur coats and the rest of their remains to the lucrative Chinese traditional medicine market? Hint: libertarianism isn’t the answer.
The government has a duty to preserve what’s left of our dwindling wildlife and wilderness for the benefit of those generations to come. You can’t preserve what you don’t know about, and this research appears to be an important step in that process. Nothing wrong with that at all.
Perhaps we could revive an old slogan to describe the current funding priorities of Congress: “Millions for Bears, but not one Cent for Particle Physics!”
Some natural doubting of scientific theories is healthy. Michael T mentions in comment 5 that people shouldn’t think that belief is required in science – however unless you’re interested in personally going through and verifying all accepted knowledge, belief (in scientific systems of the past, etc.) is essential – and personally, most science students / grad students / faculty seem quite happy to take a lot on face value without the need to personally verify it, provided it is presented through the right channels (how else would you get anything done).
However the system also needs people who are naturally curious as to whether commonly accepted theories are correct (otherwise mistakes of the past could possibly go unnoticed, and future conceptual innovations may be missed).
People who believe in obviously dubious, sometimes silly things are perhaps just inevitable (if unfortunate) byproducts of a healthy degree of questioning (combined with a large spread of different types of people within a population).
Then again, when these people are US presidential candidates, or when the proportion (and power) of these people goes beyond a certain rather small level, things are a little different…
Wow: Your statement that you are a scientist is rather scary to me, who
believes that scientists are interested in the nature of an external reality, not
folks who just want a better light bulb. Interest in other species is important to
those of us who aren’t narrowly focussed human utilitarians.
As for the use of studying grizzly bears, to quote Benjamin Franklin,
“What use is a newborn baby?” Read some E.O. Wilson, maybe “Diversity” or “Life on Earth”
Is he the same John Derbyshire who wrote “Prime Obsession”?
…Oh my god he is. I just googled his name.
You’ve got to be kidding me. A man who wrote a book an the Riemann Hypothesis detests snobbery? I mean, just *reading* a book on Riemann Hypothesis in high school would constitute a crime of snobbery. (At least in high schools I know of… but I don’t think those in America would be much different.)
Heh, actually, just *knowing* the name of Riemann would be snobbery to many people. What the hell was he thinking writing such a book? I confess I immensely enjoyed reading Prime Obsession; it would have been less enjoyable had I known what kind of bullshit he is. 🙁
The rich and powerful, in an attempt to prove solidarity with the “common man” feign respect for stupidity as needed. It certainly suits them to keep everyone else stupid. Much easier to fleece the public coffers, eliminate troublesome responsibilities like taxes, dismantle public education, entitlements and generally move us back to the guilded age. $3 million is a lot of money on it’s own. It is a pimple on a pimple of the ass of the federal budget.
Since Mr. Derbyshire likes either/or questions, here’s one I would love to hear him answer:
Is it better to spend $3 million on:
a) a study to determine whether or not grizzly bear conservation is working, or;
b) 10.8 minutes of the Iraq war?
An essential feature of Anti-intellectualism seems to be this: what is X for? as in, what is algebraic geometry for?
Through personal experience, I have realized that by virtue of the fact that a person is asking such a question, which indicates that the said person does not understand that knowledge can be an end in itself, he is precluded from understanding that the question is often meaningless. It’s a bit like asking what pleasure is for? Of course, it’s not for anything, we do things for the sake of it.
Now, its an unfortunate fact, that most people just do not get this idea, so why should they feel happy if their tax-money is being used to fund such research?
Even an excellent argument idea for funding ‘esoteric ideas’ (such as the one outlined in Tim Gower’s IMU keynote address: The Importance of Math ) generally fails to convince.
It seems there is not much one can do to change the attitude among adults.