How Americans Came to Distrust Science

Americans have devolved from one of the most rationally, scientific people on the planet to one of the most distrustful of science. Libertarian-Socialism recognizes that this is a dangerous and untenable situation. Science is the basis of the modern world. It cannot be rejected, because it does not adhere to a political agenda. Like everything in America, politics and money has polluted science and corrupted it.

The world finds it difficult to grasp the American scientific devolution from most rational to one of the least rational nations on earth. It is especially baffling for those on the outside looking in after the United States had been instrumental in marshaling global support for environmental laws to curtail pollution. American environmental law founded in hard scientific data, became the basis of global law implemented at the United Nations.

A coalition of environmentalists and scientists got traction in the middle of the last century pointing out the fragility of the global environment. They sounded the alarm on industrial and agricultural pollution. Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring had a large impact on a opinion as it related to pesticide use. Of course, the deadly smog choking large cities like London got people’s attention as well. Prevention of ozone layer destruction was also clearly a political movement based on real scientific data. Scientists were correct to make common cause with politicians and social engineers on these issues.

These regulations on air pollution and water pollution often collided with private property rights. Scientists were key in winning legislative battles proving that the natural systems were connected. The data supported claims that pollution on private property could threaten public health. Unhoped for victories in the courts were won with the help of scientists and their data. This coalition successfully got real environmental regulation through Congress and then globally.

Some scientists who came forward in the middle twentieth century also had social agendas far broader than had traditionally been the case in that profession. These hard scientists began to make common cause with sociologists and political scientists. They had similar social agendas creating real synergies in pursuit of change through political action.

However, social science is not a hard science, so facts are a bit more fluid. The political science that came into vogue in the late twentieth century took this fluidity to perverse extremes. The successes on environment issues emboldened a more socially ambiguous agenda. An anti-pollution movement joined a “return to nature” social movement, mixing their messages and politics.

In an effort to promote a less consumerist life style, scientists were rallied to prove the unsustainability of consumerism. Many predictions of disaster permeated scientific opinion in the seventies. However, much of it did not come to be true. For example, a global Ice Age was prognosticated in the seventies. Also, starvation and death due to overpopulation were forecast. Such dystopian predictions extolled a radical environmentalism wrapping issues in the context of saving the planet from humanity.

An overzealous group of social scientists and radical environmentalists overplayed the hand that scientists had used in the mid-twentieth century to advocate for necessary social change to protect the global environment. This is not to say that this overzealous group did not make tremendous progress based upon scientific data. Much of it did support their agenda. However, in their opinion society’s change had not gone far enough. A more radical agenda was pushed by hyping “outlier” scientific opinions that predicted the collapse of the global ecosystem as eminent.

Fanatical environmentalism’s claims in the seventies of a dark future began to erode the American public’s faith in the scientific community. Time and again, dire predictions of doom came from the scientific community about overpopulation, a coming Ice Age, social collapse due to lack of food or even killer bees, all had scientific proponents. These predictions were then used to justify expensive government programs.

When the world kept rotating and social collapse did not happen, science began to look more political and less certain in its predictions. The Malthusian hysterics are what many older Americans remember from the end of the seventies. They also remember the big miss on a global Ice Age. This is what has made older generations a bit more skeptical about global warming.

Also, during this time some feel good sociological analysis of the nation’s problems led to a large increase in assistance programs. The metrics being used to justify the increased social spending in welfare were based on so-called hard data. However, social science simply is not a hard science. There are many, many ways to interpret the dirty datasets of social engineers.

Their unfounded claims that there were hard metrics to support the expansive social programs began to unravel. These softer social sciences with even softer theories were used to justify expensive, yet ineffective, social programs. To Americans, they were obviously incorrect as society’s ills seemed to get worse throughout the seventies.

The large and expensive failure of those same social programs was played out on the evening news. There was ever more crime on the streets in urban America according to the news media. This narrative helped substantiate some of society’s growing doubts about science in general. The subsequent political fight over global climate change and what to do about it clouded facts further. In this political conflict, science begins to appear even more confused about its facts to many Americans.

Libertarian-Socialism recognizes that biology, chemistry, physics and other hard sciences allow for repeatable experimental proofs verified in controlled conditions. This is the scientific method. Theories make predictions about the real world and experiments either support those predictions or they do not. That does not mean that “interpretation” of scientific data cannot be disputed, but the “data or facts” are not in dispute.

Social sciences always have to deal with that darn unpredictable human, so controls can never be properly applied, so that “data” can be validated to the same level of certitude. That means that repeatable experimental proofs are difficult to accomplish. The fact that experiments might have to run generations to yield results, does not help.

The push by socially concerned politicians and scientists in the late twentieth century to extract tax revenue to address societal ills backfired. The justification to American taxpayers was claimed to have been rooted in the scientific method. The reputation of American science was damaged when the promised societal improvements did not come to fruition. This is a very expensive failure, because it cost America more than dollars. The American public’s belief in the objectivity of scientific fact was shattered.

Libertarian-Socialists must be aware of how we got here as a nation that now distrusts science, especially as it relates to the climate. Libertarian-Socialists must be sensitive to the twisting of the narrative about liberal scientists pushing expensive social programs morphing into a similar narrative about environmental scientists. The patriotic libertarian and the patriotic socialist understand how politics has warped all inquiry in the United States. Politics has had a hand in creating “political” science to drive social policy or agenda.

Libertarian-Socialists know that science can and will be gamed by moneyed power for political ends. With the two political parties dividing the issues, money flows to both sides of the divide. Scientists willing to write opinions for either side are on auction, so the ability to examine the quality of an argument’s data matters. The duopoly has exacerbated American doubt in science by using the global climate change debate as a political football. A casualty of this is the credibility of any scientist in disagreement with the party line.

Americans continue to watch as both proponents and opponents find, or more correctly, FUND, scientific opinions and data to support their political positions. The expected consequence of so much private sponsorship of science is growing distrust of the scientific community by American citizens. Unfortunately, greedy and unethical behavior on the part of scientists has made sure that the distrust only grows.

Libertarian-Socialists understand that science has been correct about many things. However, the corruptions of American politics, corporate money and the self-righteous zeal of alleged do-gooders have caused too many scientists to lose their objectivity. Scientists have become political pawns. Libertarian-Socialists understand the scientific method. No amount of corruption by scientists changes the power of the scientific method to identify truth in the natural world for the libertarian-socialist.

The libertarian-socialist’s point of view recognizes that science is done by humans and humans are flawed. Nonetheless, the scientific method remains valid and available for any that wish to use it. Here is where a grasp of the scientific method is key to differentiate between the quality of the data in these two different types of science. Clearly, there are issues of global import that require Americans to understand, what so much of the world already grasps, which is that human activity, mostly economic activity, has an affect on the global climate.

Libertarian-Socialists must help average Americans use the scientific method to sift through competing “political” science claims. This grassroots execution of science is a tradition in the United States. America’s great expansion in the industrial age was driven by the citizen scientists that sprung from practical application of technology in the real world, not academia’s ivory towers. Steve Wozniak’s hacking that helped create the technological world we live in is another example of a citizen scientist.

The current distrust of science is bad for America and humanity in general. Real facts and real hard data presented through the scientific method is the only path forward. Filtering out the pollutants caused by American politics will be the great challenge.