We all have our agendas: the growing hostility to science
January 30, 2011
ONE SHOULD BE troubled by this week’s episode of Horizon, in which Sir Paul Nurse explores what he describes as a growing hostility to science. He begins with global warming, and that is probably what disturbs me the most: after all, in 2008 I spent almost a year experimenting with a variety of sceptical arguments, including the claim that average global temperatures had not risen since 1998, as well as the theory that the IPCC had cherry-picked data in order to bolster its case. I was also prone to the old Einstein argument against the Nazi book, 100 Scientists Against Einstein: if I was wrong, Einstein said, they would only need one scientist, not 100. That is to say, I was suspicious of the idea of consensus. It is a logical fallacy to argue that something is true just because a majority believes it to be so.
I’d like to be able to say I was wrong, but I have no idea if I was wrong or not. The reason why I’d like to say I am wrong is because I now feel rather embarrassed by the opinions I expressed, most of which seem to have originated in right-wing think-tanks, unscrupulous oil companies and their PR firms, and a host of lunatic American churches who believe God has commanded them to burn gasoline. But I also realise that it is a logical fallacy to dismiss an argument on the basis of its origins.
Quite apart from the science, there is also an element of wishful thinking going on, and that doesn’t just apply to climate change deniers. Global warming confirms the suspicions of many left-wing environmental groups that there is something fundamentally wrong with the idea of progress or economic growth. It represents a way of thinking about nature, and about the way we have somehow violated it. Climate change can actually support a conservative, even Heideggerian position – a sense that things were actually much better in the old days before we started mucking about with technology, when status was determined not by intelligence, human ingenuity or invention, but by tradition and hierarchy.
But the point is – truth doesn’t ultimately depend on whether we like it or not. When it comes to climate change or anything else, it doesn’t matter what sort of philosophy lies behind some of its proponents, because the scientific evidence stands on its own merits. Consensus does not mean group-think: it just means that thousands of scientists from thousands of different backgrounds have come to the same conclusion.
The problem is: I do not have the ability to judge the science.
In the end, the fundamental problem is also our ingrained suspicion of all sources of information. We have learned to distrust everything. We are habituated to the idea that everyone has an agenda, that every claim – every scientific study, every speech act – is based on self-interest and is therefore suspect. As Benda said in Trahison de les clercs, there is no longer a truth, but only truths – corporate truths, environmentalist truths, political truths, economic truths, U.S. truths, Chinese truths – each considered equally valid.
And we have learned to distrust not just the oil lobby and their PR shills, but also the pressure groups, the laboratories, the universities. Truth has become something constantly up for grabs, something to be manipulated, and every organisation has its own manipulation machine. A plague on all their houses, we say, and we descend into a sort of cynicism.
Nick Davies in Flat Earth News describes several cases of military media operatives showering journalists with lies, and it occurred to me that this, somehow, is the equivalent of chemical or biological weapons. Such behaviour should, somehow, have been forbidden in the Geneva Convention. Somewhere, a duty to basic truth should be enshrined. The basic principle I am trying to express is probably best encapsulated in the story of the boy who cried wolf. The devotion to falsehood is ultimately destructive. Once you make the move into the mendacity of psy-ops, you become vulnerable, not just because you lose the moral highground but also because you lose sight of reality. Truth itself becomes part of the spoils. And how satisfying can anything be if it was achieved by lying?
Instant access to all sorts of information has obviously made us, er, more informed, but we are also more confused than ever: it has actually made the truth seem more contingent, more relative. It has given us more access to alternative theories, but it also gives us the choice to entrench ourselves in our own worldviews. We can choose what we see. If the idea of evolution fills us with dread and fear, we can surround ourselves with the voices of creationism. If we hate the idea of anthropogenic global warming or atheism, there is a host of self-censoring websites telling us that we are not alone and providing us with all kinds of defence mechanisms to protect us against our opponents.
More than anything, with so much more information flowing around the world, it seems to have become even more important for people in power to learn how to control it. The stakes are so much higher than they were when they just had to make sure only the papers or the official publications lied.
