Republican candidate Jon Huntsman appeared on the Sunday, Nov. 6 episode of Meet the Press and took a (sadly) rare pro-science stance for a modern Republican candidate, when questioned on the issue by host David Gregory:
I'm talking about a Republican party that dismisses mainstream science.... In order for us to be successful, we've got to win over some independents.... The math has to be in our favor. You can't run away from mainstream science ... and expect to win the race. You can't be on the extreme end of politics and expect to win over the independent vote. (Video clip on Meet the Press website and available, for now, on Hulu.com)
In one of those weird quirks of serendipity, I'm in the process of reading Shawn Lawrence Otto's new book Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America. (Review to come, once I've finished the book.) Otto is one of the founders of the Science Debate initiative, seeking to get national politicians to engage with scientific issues to the same degree that they currently engage with foreign policy, economic, social, and, yes, even religious issues.
Otto provides two quotes in his first chapter that were great illustrations of the trend within our politics, all the more telling because they both come from Republicans. The first quote is directly from President George H. W. Bush (1990):
Science, like any field of endeavor, relies on freedom of inquiry; and one of the hallmarks of that freedom is objectivity. Now more than ever, on issues ranging from climate change to AIDS research to genetic engineering to food additives, government relies on the impartial perspective of science for guidance.
The second is from President George W. Bush's spokesman, Scott McClellan (2003):
This administration looks at the facts, and reviews the best available science based on what's right for the American people.
In the first quote, the emphasis is on the ultimate supremacy of science. The scientific research must be handled objectively, so that it can provide honest guidance for the policy. In the second quote, however, things have turned on their heads. In 2003, the status quo is that decisions about "what's right for the American people" provide the basis for what is "the best available science." The Bush administration's arrow pointed in the wrong direction on this one.
It's odd to me that this has become such a polarized political issue, because the science doesn't inherently dictate, on most issues, whether a given response must be conservative or liberal.
For example, one of the most widely-endorsed responses to climate change, on the part of liberal activists, is the attempt to create a "Cap and Trade" system ... which is, actually, a market-based solution to the problem of too-high carbon emissions. It is the sort of plan that a conservative looking at the scientific evidence objectively might come to.
In fact, that time may be coming all too soon. Consider the recent evidence, provided by a group of climate change skeptics and funded by major climate change deniers, that global warming is real. They threw out every "questionable" methodology used in previous studies, looked at every trick in the deniers' handbook, and still came to the conclusion that the science was perfectly sound!
Granted, this research still needs to be peer reviewed, but given that the expectation is that the bias would go in the other direction, it's an impressive verification. But guess what? If a liberal, tree-hugging scientist finds a methodological error in their work during the peer review process ... I am willing to bet that they will point it out.
Because scientific truths are dictated - and, yes, amended - by the consensus of a highly skeptical community that looks at evidence with a great deal of scrutiny. It isn't a perfect way to yield absolute truth, but it's not supposed to be. It's the best way we know to achieve the highest-probability objective truths about our world.
Though scientific truths aren't dictated by political ideology, that doesn't mean that science is apolitical. The transformation of western civilization to democracy was driven by the truths about nature uncovered in the scientific revolution of the Enlightenment (including those "self-evident truths" of which the Declaration speaks). And Otto makes a rousing claim about the vital role that science plays in the public sphere, a claim which should resonate with the noblest aspirations of all freedom-loving citizens, regarding of their political aspirations:
The very essence of the scientific process is to question long-held assumptions about the nature of the universe, to dream up experiments that test those questions, and, based on the observations, to incrementally build knowledge that is independent of our beliefs and assumptions. A scientifically testable claim is utterly transparent and can be shown to be either most probably true or false, whether the claim is made by a king or a president, a pope, a congressperson, or a common citizen. Because of this, science is inherently antiauthoritarian, and a great equalizer of political power.
Or, in the words of Jon Huntsman:
You can't run away from science.
Do you agree with Otto that science is inherently political? That science, by its very nature, challenges claims to authority? Do you agree with Huntsman that Republicans run a danger of losing if they continue to distance themselves from mainstream science? Or is this an issue that only matters to intellectuals? Share your comments below!
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