Far-Left Big Science Accuses Critics of Being Anti-Science

A new anti-realism is sweeping Big Science.
But when the inmates run the asylum, who is calling whom crazy?

 

We’ve been pointing out the far-Left trend in Big Science for several years now. Dennis Prager sees the same thing, calling it a clear shift toward the political left in scientific institutions in the last three years. His response now to “I’m a scientist!” is “So what?” (Epoch Times, 13 July 2022). Prager gave several instances where scientists have taken positions completely out of touch with reality and common sense only because they comport with today’s fads of political correctness. Many spokespeople for science these days are jumping on the bandwagon of calling everything ‘racist’ and denying that women exist.

I no longer assume when I read a statement by a scientist that the statement is based on science. In fact, I believe I am more committed to scientific truth than are many scientists.

On the same day, theologian and podcaster Albert Mohler shook his head over news that a law professor from UC Berkeley, Khiara M. Bridges, accused Senator Josh Hawley of violence when he asked her at a hearing if pregnancy is a women’s issue. In an article for World News, Mohler stated that Marxist “critical theory” has so invaded academia that one must now deny reality to avoid being labeled a terrorist.

The occasion was that on July 12, Senator Hawley was lambasted for answering, “No, I don’t think men can get pregnant.” Bridges responded, “So you are denying that trans people exist.” She had said to him before that, “I want to recognize that your line of questioning is transphobic and it opens up trans people to violence by not recognizing them.” In other words, Bridges claims that believing a biological fact triggers violence. Mohler is concerned.

These two worlds are now contending for supremacy. The world of Professor Bridges is now firmly in control of elite higher education and the political left. There are pregnant men in that world, as Bridges insisted. The other world is not only the world of Sen. Hawley, it is the world of farms and homes and churches and playgrounds and schools where reality still matters and where human nature remains unchanged. That is the world all human beings inhabited until very recently. And I mean very recently.

Remember that shocking moment when new Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson could not define what a woman was? It’s true that Bridges and Jackson are jurists, not scientists. But it’s also patently obvious that the science departments at major universities are not rising up and condemning the nonsense. As we have shown repeatedly, they are joining it wholeheartedly (e.g., 25 Jan 2022, 14 March 2022). And they are condemning anyone who doesn’t join the bandwagon going over the cliff of being “anti-science.”

It should be a huge embarrassment to thousands of honest working scientists that their leadership is acting this way. But Big Science and their pals in Big Media have no shame. They are doubling down. Like the others in the totalitarian Marxist left, they demand conformity to their politics, and do not hesitate to destroy anyone who resists. Let today’s examples from PNAS (the journal of America’s prestigious National Academy of Sciences) illustrate. Science is supposed to be about discovering facts of nature from evidence, but it has gone…

Off the Rails

Intersectionality within the racial justice movement in the summer of 2020 (PNAS, 12 July 2022). PNAS gave peer-reviewed honor to a far-left “scientific paper” praising the violent rioters from the summer of 2020. It uses all the talking points and lingo of Marxist radicals to openly advocate for “racial justice,” rationalizing the riots of that summer as a “movement against systemic racism in the United States.”

We show that personal identities to specific subgroups representing race/ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation are connected to specific intersectional motivations. Movements that activate individuals by connecting to a range of subgroup identities are more likely to engage diverse crowds, and therefore, have the potential to motivate greater social change.

What does this have to do with microbiology, astronomy or chemistry? What is it doing in PNAS? Where is the debate, the literature search, the fair hearing among non-Marxists? It’s nowhere to be found in the text or references. The word “conservative” doesn’t appear. People died in those summer riots. Business were destroyed. But the focus of this paper is on some nebulous “justice” based on intersectionality scores for “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and others.” And this is not the only such paper; PNAS recommends other similar papers it has published. Of note: one of the authors also belongs to the “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

Submit or Else

Why are people antiscience, and what can we do about it? (PNAS, 12 July 2022). PNAS has no shame for having published these far-Left hit pieces against conservatives. In fact, they label anybody who doesn’t go along with the Big Science consensus as anti-science. And that is a first step in marginalizing, censoring and canceling them as threats to humanity. Oh, but it’s OK, because everything Big Science does is “evidence-based,” you see.

From vaccination refusal to climate change denial, antiscience views are threatening humanity. When different individuals are provided with the same piece of scientific evidence, why do some accept whereas others dismiss it? Building on various emerging data and models that have explored the psychology of being antiscience, we specify four core bases of key principles driving antiscience attitudes. These principles are grounded in decades of research on attitudes, persuasion, social influence, social identity, and information processing. They apply across diverse domains of antiscience phenomena. Specifically, antiscience attitudes are more likely to emerge when a scientific message comes from sources perceived as lacking credibility; when the recipients embrace the social membership or identity of groups with antiscience attitudes; when the scientific message itself contradicts what recipients consider true, favorable, valuable, or moral; or when there is a mismatch between the delivery of the scientific message and the epistemic style of the recipient. Politics triggers or amplifies many principles across all four bases, making it a particularly potent force in antiscience attitudes. Guided by the key principles, we describe evidence-based counteractive strategies for increasing public acceptance of science.

In a press release about this “study” at OSU, the two “researchers” (actually, psychologists: see 6 Aug 2019) are oblivious to their own bias. They look down their elite noses at peons who don’t think like them, while they themselves claim to have “evidence-based” views. “But there are evidence-based strategies that can work for increasing public acceptance of science,” they say, so that nobody questions “vaccines, climate change and other subjects” (guess what those include: the paper mentions “dismissal of evidence for evolution”). As usual, communication in their elitist mindset is always one-way, from expert to the unwashed masses of peons. By “science” they’re talking about scientism (see 11 July 2022). They really need to get out more.

Anti-science beliefs are built on four foundations, or bases, the authors said. These foundations are: thinking scientific sources lack credibility; identifying with groups that have anti-science attitudes; a scientific message that contradicts a person’s current beliefs; and a mismatch between how a message is presented and a person’s style of thinking.

If we were to apply these criteria to the two psychologists, how would they fare? Suppose, for instance, we challenged their assumptions about the “science” of psychology by pointing to its history of failures and its long-standing reproducibility crisis (5 Sept 2015). Suppose we got them out of the circle of friends at OSU with whom they identify (predominantly Democrats), and exposed them to other perspectives from leading conservatives and Darwin skeptics with PhDs in science. Suppose we changed the messaging in their “research” and exposed its own political bias. Suppose we challenged their own “style of thinking.” Suppose we used evidence-based presentations to unmask their own anti-science beliefs. Suppose we proved that scientific materialism is self-refuting. Would they listen? Would it cure their Yoda Complex? Or would they run back into their safe space at OSU and shout “Anti-Science! Anti-Science!” (See “How to Nudge an Elitist,” 11 June 2017).

 

Nature, Too

We’re not just picking on the National Academy of Sciences. These attitudes are widespread among all the leading Big Science journals. Readers are encouraged to submit to us any counter-examples they find from mainstream journals. Good luck finding one.

How climate change could drive an increase in gender-based violence (Nature, 13 July 2022). “A meta-analysis suggests violence against women and those from gender minorities in the aftermath of extreme weather events is on the rise amid global warming.” What? They’ve got to be kidding.

As extreme weather events occur more frequently — something that climate scientists say is inevitable — so, too, will violence towards women and people from gender minorities. That’s the conclusion of a meta-analysis examining events in the aftermath of floods, droughts, cyclones and heatwaves, among other weather disasters, over the past two decades.

What does the weather have to do with gender minorities? A lot, assumes this “scientific paper.” And yet the methodology of linking “climate change” to violence against “gender minorities” required tossing out most of the data:

This initial search yielded more than 26,000 titles, including papers, conference proceedings and other literature. After excluding duplicates and studies that did not meet the selection criteria — such as those focusing on violence against cisgender heterosexual men and boys, or ones that concerned natural disasters unrelated to climate change — the team ended up with a sample of 41 studies.

One can prove anything with methods that toss out 99.85% of the data. Clearly, the authors of this “meta-analysis” were out to get a politically correct result. Nature was happy to let them do it, giving it their stamp of approval with no criticism at all. This is pure quackery – promoted by Big Science.

Is it any wonder that Dennis Prager and Al Mohler, both highly intelligent and influential thinkers, feel the way they do about so-called “science” these days? They are probably glad they are not tied to this gang of anti-realist Marxist lunatics with white lab coats. But if the lunatics had their way, they would censor, imprison or kill those who they label “anti-science.” You say men don’t get pregnant? Off with your head!

Speaking of “intersectionality,” do your own little study on intersections between these views: climate alarmism, gender identity, unrestricted abortion, gun confiscation, socialism, critical race theory, global governance and Darwinism. Most likely, you will find that the ones accepting all the leftist positions on these issues also embrace the Stuff Happens Law that King Charley introduced to the world, where species, life, and universes just pop into existence from time to time.

Tyrannical pseudoscience has happened before. Stalin and Mao’s favorite scientist was Trofim Lysenko, whose views on agriculture were radically anti-evidence. But he was useful to the communist dictators because he supported the regime. Scientists who tried to protest his views were silenced, imprisoned or killed. Search on “Lysenko famine” for the aftermath. Count how many millions died of the famines that resulted from his “science.” It’s enough to make one weep and say, “Never again!”

We live in bizarre times. In his poem to a young man, titled If, Rudyard Kipling said that the world belongs to those who can keep their heads when everyone else is losing theirs. If you still have your common sense, and can smell nonsense masquerading as science, stand tall. Be strong. They will call you names. They will say you are anti-science. They will gaslight you. They will try to get you to buckle, to love Big Brother and make a confession for more lenient treatment. They will try to make you say, ‘Yes, men can get pregnant, killing children is healthcare, and the Stuff Happens Law explains the human brain.’ Don’t let them break you down. The truth will eventually triumph, and righteousness will be vindicated.