Big Science Succumbs to Political Correctness
Is science immune from cultural trends? In theory, hopefully; in practice, often not.
The timing looks suspicious. Right when Obama pushed ahead on so-called “transgender rights” to appease LGBT activists, science news sources announced that transgender identity “is not a mental disorder” (Medical Xpress and Live Science). Till now, the World Health Organization listed it as such, but according to another post by Medical Xpress, the “findings” of a new “study” conducted in Mexico City interviewing 250 individuals purports to show that the distress and dysfunction are not caused by their alleged gender identity, but rather by their feelings of rejection by other people.
This resembles the case where activists pressured a leading psychiatrist to de-list homosexuality as a mental disorder (1/10/16). Homosexual activists needed to dismantle that stigma, so that they could advertise themselves as just as normal as heterosexuals. Their political rise to power (despite the suspicious circumstances behind that psychiatrist’s change of opinion, and their small population size) has been legendary. Now that the T in LGBT is taking prominence, one can foresee the complete normalization of gender-identity politics as well. If they succeed, any fringe group could conceivably follow the same playbook to achieve political power.
Science is not supposed to work this way. Researchers are supposed to base their findings on empirical evidence, making tentative conclusions that are reproducible. Surveys are notoriously subject to bias, as we saw in the Lacour fraud (12/12/14). Who knows what went on with the survey takers and questioners? We can guess from the result: the tables have turned, and the UN is now announcing that the real concern is “transphobia.” Normal people are the new mentally disordered for not accepting the trendy transgenders.
Big Science continues to blatantly support the Democrat Party, seeing them as more likely to fund their pet projects. The UK-based journal Nature inserted itself into American politics again, comparing Trump and Clinton as being “worlds apart” on “science” priorities. Their partners in bias, the editors of New Scientist, don’t even pretend to give balanced coverage. To them, “Donald Trump is bending reality to get into the American psyche.” Apparently that’s not Hillary Clinton’s character defect. Where is their mention that she was caught in multiple lies by the FBI?
Left-leaning Live Science, always glad to stick it to Republicans, gleefully showed that Barack Obama is listed as co-author on a journal paper. “In an unusual move for a sitting president, Barack Obama has published a scholarly paper in a scientific journal,” Rachael Rettner writes, even though the paper deals with his controversial health policy angrily rejected by Republicans. Is that what science journals should be doing? What does it tell you about the Journal of the American Medical Association? Would they give equal opportunity for a Milton Friedman to respond? Does the AMA stand to benefit in some way from Obamacare?
Whenever there is a serious disagreement between scientists on a given issue, the journals of Big Science can be counted on to take the leftist side. Ironically, Nature is wringing its hands over the terrible situation for scientists in Venezuela—a once-prosperous market-based democracy—that has imploded under the socialist policies of former dictator Hugo Chavez and his successors. Inflation has skyrocketed, store shelves are empty, and hungry people are rioting in the streets. To what does Nature attribute this political disaster? Not to socialism, but to a drop in oil prices.
When 1960s hippie radicals got clever, they stopped burning and rioting and turned to politics. They infiltrated the universities, the courts, and the labor unions. Now almost all the “Big” institutions—Big Labor, Big Education, Big Law, Big Hollywood, and Big Science—are firmly in their grasp. Big Business is falling in line now, too, as seen in corporate support for “transgender rights” at Target, and repudiation of North Carolina for having the audacity to state the obvious, that people should use the restroom matching their sex stated on their birth certificates.
As western civilization commits suicide without help of IS beheaders, one thing will stand: reality. You can’t fight God’s moral order forever. Sooner or later, reality fights back. We just hope it won’t be too late.