From The American, by Kenneth P. Green and Hiwa Alaghebandian
Science is losing its credibility because it has adopted an authoritarian tone, and has let itself be co-opted by politics.
In a Wired article published at the end of May, writer Erin Biba bemoans the fact that “science” is losing its credibility with the public. The plunge in the public’s belief in catastrophic climate change is her primary example. Biba wonders whether the loss of credibility might be due to the malfeasance unearthed by the leak of emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, but comes to the conclusion that malfeasance isn’t the cause of the public’s disaffection. No, people have turned against science simply because it lacks a good public relations outfit. Biba quotes Kelly Bush, head of a major PR firm, on the point:
Biba says researchers need a campaign that inundates the public with the message of science: Assemble two groups of spokespeople, one made up of scientists and the other of celebrity ambassadors. Then deploy them to reach the public wherever they are, from online social networks to “The Today Show.” Researchers need to tell personal stories, tug at the heartstrings of people who don’t have PhD’s. And the celebrities can go on “Oprah” to describe how climate change is affecting them—and by extension, Oprah’s legions of viewers.
“They need to make people answer the questions, What’s in it for me? How does it affect my daily life? What can I do that will make a difference? Answering these questions is what’s going to start a conversation,” Bush says. “The messaging up to this point has been ‘Here are our findings. Read it and believe.’ The deniers are convincing people that the science is propaganda.”
While nobody would dispute the value of a good PR department, we doubted that bad or insufficient PR was the primary reason for the public’s declining trust in scientific pronouncements. Our theory is that science is not losing its credibility because people no longer like or believe in the idea of scientific discovery, but because science has taken on an authoritarian tone, and has let itself be co-opted by pressure groups who want the government to force people to change their behavior.
In the past, scientists were generally neutral on questions of what to do. Instead, they just told people what they found, such as “we have discovered that smoking vastly increases your risk of lung cancer” or “we have discovered that some people will have adverse health effects from consuming high levels of salt.” Or “we have found that obesity increases your risk of coronary heart disease.” Those were simply neutral observations that people could find empowering, useful, interesting, etc., but did not place demands on them. In fact, this kind of objectivity was the entire basis for trusting scientific claims.
But along the way, an assortment of publicity-seeking, and often socially activist, scientists stopped saying, “Here are our findings. Read it and believe.” Instead, activist scientists such as NASA’s James Hansen, heads of quasi-scientific governmental organizations such as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, editors of major scientific journals, and heads of the various national scientific academies are more inclined to say, “Here are our findings, and those findings say that you must change your life in this way, that way, or the other way.”
So, objective statements about smoking risk morphed into statements like “science tells us we must end the use of tobacco products.” A finding of elevated risk of stroke from excess salt ingestion leads to: “The science tells us we must cut salt consumption in half by 2030.” Findings that obesity carries health risks lead to a “war on obesity.” And yes, a finding that we may be causing the climate to change morphed into “the science says we must radically restructure our economy and way of life to cut greenhouse gas emissions radically by 2050.”
To see if our suspicions were correct, we decided to do a bit of informal research, checking Lexis Nexis for growth in the use of what we would categorize as “authoritarian” phrasing when it comes to scientific findings. We searched Nexis for the following phrases to see how their use has changed over the last 30 years: “science says we must,” “science says we should,” “science tells us we must,” “science tells us we should,” “science commands,” “science requires,” “science dictates,” and “science compels.”
What we found surprised us. One phrase, in particular, has become dramatically more frequent in recent years: “Science tells us we should.” Increased usage of this phrase leads to a chart resembling a steep mountain climb (or, for those with a mischievous bent, a “hockey stick”). The use of the phrase “science requires” also increases sharply over time. The chart (below) vividly shows the increasing use of those particular phrases. Some of this may simply reflect the general growth of media output and the growth of new media, but if that were the case, we would expect all of the terms to have shown similar growth, which they do not.
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“Science” from “scientia” means “to know.” Acquiring knowledge of the natural world (not any metaphysical or supernatural “reality”) requires applying principles of disciplined awareness: Science as a Philosophy of the Natural World, an empirical Method of falsifying hypotheses, above all a Practice requiring open minds, replication of results via skeptical debate, attains “authority” only as a disinterested, objective, rational exercise dedicated to truth-telling insofar as possible.
For all their academic, corporate, political sponsorship, climate hysterics deserve no respect. As pseudo-scientific propagandists, neither by Philosophy, Method, nor in Practice do they exhibit any scientific virtues codified since Galileo, Kepler, Newton et al. first turned Aristotle’s subjective “natural philosophy” on its head.
Since 1988, not one major Warmist hypothesis has withstood genuinely scientific scrutiny. Given their vitriolic scare-mongering based on spurious data, manipulative techniques, absurdly self-delusive outcomes, today’s New Aristotelians are clown-college caricatures without integrity or even understanding.
I saw that also 50 million hits.
People looking for an authority on weather. They hit the other sites when looking for authoritarianism from warmistias
Curiousgeorge says:
July 29, 2010 at 4:04 am
… People will believe and trust modern Oracle’s and witch doctors, as much as they did ancient ones. And will obey their Masters whether by trickery or force. Beware the Master-Oracle complex ( h/t to Ike ).
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Sounds like the quote of the week.
Quoting: “we have discovered that some people will have adverse health effects from consuming high levels of salt.” Or “we have found that obesity increases your risk of coronary heart disease.” Those were simply neutral observations that people could find empowering, useful, interesting, etc., but did not place demands on them. In fact, this kind of objectivity was the entire basis for trusting scientific claims.
These are far from neutral statements and, in fact, have about the same level of rigor as the alarmist claims of runaway global warming. Sandy Szwarc of http://www.junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/ has done an incredible job of debunking these kind of claims in recent years. She has stopped posting in recent months, but the archived files are still there and are a gold mine of information; much as your site is. I hope she will soon return to the battle. I’m ignoring your out of “some people” and the juxtaposition with smoking which is a very different kind of claim.
Cheers…..William
KPO, I think you have hit the nail on the proverbial there. That is also what pushes MY sceptical buttons too.
KPO says:
July 29, 2010 at 4:20 am
… For example, something I still cannot come to terms with is that we have a global network of sensors, the calibration and accuracy of which is sketchy at best and unknown at worst, recording a wide range of temps between highs and lows over a 24hr period, and extending over years We know that many are recording false/no readings (placing, uhi, unavailability etc). We then brush over the obvious, invent mathematical formula to correct and extrapolate what we don’t know, average it all out and then proclaim in BOLD HEADLINES, accuracy to within tenths of a degree over decades. Yes I realize that it is the anomaly, not the actual readings, but how does one measure an anomaly between data points when each preceding and following point has a significant error factor? …
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Actually you have nailed it quite well.
Check out AJStrata’s article on the ” significant error factor” http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/11420
No amount of PR can repair a tainted and discredited brand.
Ref – Kate says:
July 29, 2010 at 6:43 am
“It’s all very simple, really. If politicians, civil servants, journalists, and scientists keep lying to the public, and on such a vast scale, eventually nobody will believe a word of what they are saying. That is the current crisis they are faced with on this issue. Journalism, once known as a teller of truth and a bulwark against tyranny, was known as the 4th estate. Now it has morphed into the 5th column and has become a threat to our freedoms. The press was once a magnificent lady. Now she is a malignant prostitute, spreading the lying propaganda disease to whatever she touches. That includes the BBC, The Guardian, The Independent, and the Royal Society.”
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I agree (-;and don’t;-).
The 4th Estate was always a Prostitute (in my humble opinion;-). It’s just that there used to be a lot more and more with class. We have developed a 1941 ‘Hollywood’ mentality of the press (nothing good has come out of the place in the last 40 years) and we’re forgetting a lot of “Yellow” liquid in the ointment of the ink always used by publishers since Gottenberg. The level of integrity has indeed fallen to the microscopic, if not nanoscopic, these days.
We of the 21st Century ‘seem’ to have a strong healthy body, but on closer examination there is a cancer; and, I agree, the biggest tumers are located in the area of the brain controlled by what we formerly called the “4th Estate”. Integrity and ethics are the modern words we use to refer to a collection of fundamental rules that humans have developed over the past 4-5 million years. “Doing yer’ own thing” and “trashing the system” and “Imagining no countries, no religions too, etc….” don’t work, I’m sorry to say. Truth hurts sometimes. Sorry everyone! Life really is a Beach!
The problem is “climate celebritards” not Oprah and her legion of decision home makers. We expect nothing but idiocy coming from those we know as media whores and many climate scientists have taken up there own street corner. That the verbiage of climate celebritards everywhere is being ignored by most able to manipulate a Pez dispenser without injury should surprise no one, least of which being themselves.
I don’t doubt that as main stream media outlets curse the Internet, so too does the Church of Climatology. An informed public is one not easily manipulated.
Need PR to pitch your brand of science? Like selling a brand of laundry detergent or a stick of deodorant?
Try the Watts approach; it seems to be working. Check out the stats on the sidebar:
Gone over 50,000,000 hits and all without any organized PR campaign.
Richard Feynman observed: “Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts”. This kind of healthy, scientific humility that Dr.Feynman possessed seems to be disappearing today.
We have always had a hand full of scientists and academics telling us what to do. This is not new, what is new are the numerous shills and “true believers” running around saying these things. In previous times we saw this behavior most prominently in the “religious”. Of late society has allowed “obesity and AGW” to become the new “science based” religion of masses. If you look at most of the true academic articles published, they do not use terms such as should or must and so on. It is the propagandists, all to often posing as journalists, who are making these claims. Where the practitioners of science fall short is in admitting and defending what it is they do not know and what the limits of their work/results reality are.
That’s a mistake (in the original article). “Bush” should read “Biba.”
[Thanks, fixed. ~dbs]
vigilantfish says:
July 29, 2010 at 6:29 am
Hang on a few seconds, there, all you people who equate the scientific warmists with Creation scientists. Creation science is a defensive position against the overwhelming march of science and with it scientism. It does not have the massive funding of AGW science, and is not supported by any government….
Some of you commenters here on WUWT, while otherwise excellent, don’t seem to give any quarter to religion having a positive role in society….
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The intolerance for religion especially at college campuses goes back over a century to the teachings of John Dewey father of modern American education (or how to dumb down the masses so you can control them)
“Humanists declared their intention of transforming western culture and moving it from its Christian base into the enlightened religion of humanism. In 1933, when Humanist Manifesto I appeared, its co-author John Dewey was made honorary president of the National Education Association (US). The manifesto itself stated that:
There is no God and no soul. Hence there are no needs for the props of traditional religion. With dogma and creed excluded, the immutable truth is also dead and buried. There is no room for fixed, natural law or permanent moral absolutes.”
http://www.khouse.org/articles/2001/365/
Now you can understand why “science” is no longer “science” but “post-modern science” and why morals and ethics are seen as unnecessary baggage.
“…Dewey’s philosophy had evolved from Hegelian idealism to socialist materialism, and the purpose of the school was to show how education could be changed to produce little socialists and collectivists instead of little capitalists and individualists. It was expected that these little socialists, when they became voting adults, would dutifully change the American economic system into a socialist one.
In order to do so he analyzed the traditional curriculum that sustained the capitalist, individualistic system and found what he believed was the sustaining linchpin — that is, the key element that held the entire system together: high literacy. To Dewey, the greatest obstacle to socialism was the private mind that seeks knowledge in order to exercise its own private judgment and intellectual authority. High literacy gave the individual the means to seek knowledge independently. It gave individuals the means to stand on their own two feet and think for themselves. This was detrimental to the “social spirit” needed to bring about a collectivist society. Dewey wrote in Democracy and Education, published in 1916:…”
http://www.ordination.org/dumbing_down.htm
Robert Thomson gets credit for being the first to mention IPCC on this forum. I want to say that IPCC and its boss, Pachauri, are the poster-children for corruption in science. The authoritarianism is in part a result of the fact that the IPCC makes outrageous claims and then defends them by attacking critics as unworthy of participation among the anointed and by demanding that critics recognize hierarchical authority in the community of scientists. The clearest example is when Pachauri defended the absurd claim, published by the IPCC, that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by the year 2035. In response to criticisms, he attempted to marginalize the critics and he asserted that the science is settled. That is, he used the usual strategy of claiming that the critics are neither among the anointed nor responsive to the official hierarchy of science. Of course, the claim that the glaciers will disappear by 2035 proved to be based on no genuine science at all.
The fact that the Once-MSM has seen no story in this coup that has effectively eliminated the scientific method from debates on science today, proves beyond a doubt that they support the coup or that their understanding of science is that of someone in grammar school. At this time, Fred Pearce of the Guardian is the only mainstream media professional who has understood the tragedy that is Climategate and who has written about it with integrity. His articles are available at the Guardian’s “Environment” website and he has just published them as a book. England does have two opinion writers who understand the scientific method, Delingpole of the Telegraph and Christopher Booker of I forget where.
These phrases are still media born, not research article born. A more compelling argument would be a search of published journal articles (which I would imagine costs money to do). The search should be limited to online and hard copy science magazines and journals and include letters as well as research articles. Out of the mouths of researchers written in ink tells us if research has become what this author says. Otherwise, we are left with the null hypothesis still, as we don’t know if these are reporter words, or researcher words. Anyone who has been interviewed understands that reporters spin what you say and write.
I don’t even get a chuckle? Screw you guys, I’m taking my ball and going home. I thought it was a damn masterpiece.
Chris in OZ says:
July 29, 2010 at 6:45 am
I see that most postings on this thread, when talking about science becoming a religion, is right on the mark, but I can see that no one, so far, has taken those points to the next step.
As I see it, the only way out of this mess is to be aware of what buttons, and what chains these scammers are pressing and pulling. Once we know and are aware, we cannot be beaten.
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Thanks to the warning from Australia, farmers here in the USA figured it out. Fight this one down to the last cowboy. Speech by John Carter of Australia to R-CALF
What is the Hegelian Dialectic?
Delphi Technique
The Delphi Technique is the method being used to squeeze citizens out of the process. This is a must read if you feel being controlled in any meetings. The Delphi Technique is a pre-determined outcome.
We are still fighting but the Monster will not stay DEAD.
Knowing nothing about the size or composition of the database, this is not remotely interesting without a control phrase to determine how much coverage is being given to science. If, for instance, a neutral phrase such as “recent scientific research” has been constant while the others rise, it says something. If they all rise, it simply says that Lexis Nexis stores more articles about science from recent years than earlier years.
Isn’t the model the author espouses to “fix” things the model that is already in place?
A group of scientists (Mann, etc) and a group of celebrities (Sheryl “use-one-square” Crow, Al “ManBearPoodle with an Unmentionable fever” Gore, etc ad nauseam) who point at them?
What is the definition of insanity again?
I note that the Wikipedia has an article titled ‘Scientocracy:’ “Scientocracy is the practice of basing public policies on science.” While this may be an enlightened practice in general, it may be subject to the garbage-in, garbage-out problem if the pronouncements of Science are taken too literally and with inadequate scrutiny of the processes involved.
Garry says:
July 29, 2010 at 7:14 am
This is an interesting and revealing study of authoritarian *reporting*, and note that it’s from Lexis Nexis which really doesn’t cover blogs and “new media.”
So this is actually an accurate chart of the state of decline in mainstream reporting, which indeed has become dramatically more leftist and “prescriptive” in the last decade or so.
So this is really a reaffirmation (and a decent one) that mainstream reporting and writing of all genres has gone waaayyyyy off the reservation and is being rejected by more and more people, not necessarily that *science* is being rejected. You can see that with the decline of formerly great publications like National Geo, Scientific American, Smithsonian, and many others, and all of which have taken the CAGW alarmist path, as well as promoting many other leftist ideals.
You simply MUST remember: Almost ALL of the MSM are OWNED by a small cadre of insiders.
Like it or not, believe it or not, that’s the way it is.
THINK: How is it that almost all of the MSM —newspapers, radio, TEE VEE, major magazines, journals, etc., all seem to reflect the VERY SAME THOUGHTS?
It’s NOT by coincidence: THEY ARE OWNED by the same small cadre of insiders.
It IS how the American people were convinced to go to war against Spain, to get involved in WWI, WWII, the Korean ‘conflict,’ the Vietnamese ‘police action,’ and all the rest.
When you may —quite literally— control how the majority of Americans think, then you essentially control the country.
Marlene Anderson says:
July 29, 2010 at 7:31 am
I just read a book on how the government lost the trust of the people through its long sordid history of exposed lies and deception. Now they wonder why people no longer have faith in their elected officials. They’re trying to talk their way out of a situation they behaved themselves into.
Substitute the word ‘science’ for ‘government’ in the above and you see the parallels.
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This Rassmussen Report certainly supports your statement.
” The notion that governments derive their only just authority from the consent of the governed is a foundational principle of the American experiment. However, just 23% of voters nationwide believe the federal government today has the consent of the governed.
The frustration that voters are expressing in 2010 goes much deeper than specific policies. At a more fundamental level, voters just don’t believe politicians are interested in the opinions of ordinary Americans. “
Rassmusen on Energy and Climate shows voters are more evenly divided on the subject.
“The Political Class views global warming as much more serious a problem than Mainstream voters do. While 55% of Mainstream voters say global warming is due to long term planetary trends, the plurality (48%) of the Political Class blames human activity. “
Time to start convincing the politicians…
Next .. the soft peddle …
Disregarding scientists for the moment as our bad guy of the day, media news is now “a show”, or “a program”. It is filled with editorials, not reporting. It seems the only type of reporter who actually reports are the poor saps standing out in the middle of a hurricane reporting that the wind is so strong they are actually tethered to the news van.