Editor’s note: This commentary is by Robert Roper, the president of the Ethan Allen Institute. He lives in Stowe.
[F]olks celebrated Earth Day this year with a March for Science around the nation. The marchers’ message is, ostensibly, that policy should be based on science and not things like emotion, morality or politics. But is this really what they’re after? Or is this more of an attempt to legitimize their own emotions, morality and politics by claiming for them the label of “science”?
It’s ironic that nationally and locally the science marchers’ most visible spokespeople, Bill Nye and Bill McKibben respectively, are not actually scientists (nor is Al Gore for that matter). McKibben is a journalist, and Nye got his big television break performing as a stand-up comedian. Nye calling himself “The Science Guy” instead of “The Scientist” is kind of like the cereal Froot Loops using creative spelling to avoid a fraud lawsuit over the fact that there isn’t any real fruit in them.
But here is why I am most skeptical about the motives of the marchers: they are trying use “science” – the word, not the process — as a way to end debate rather than to further it, and that’s not what science is about. Science is an ongoing process of open-minded experimentation and learning, not a mic drop slogan.
Real science doesn’t accept consensus; it challenges it. And great scientists obliterate consensus. A sign featured at one of the marches said, “Think You Can Stifle Science? Ask Galileo How That Worked Out!” This is a great example. Galileo went down in history for standing up to a scientific consensus at the time probably exceeded 97 percent. He was jailed for being an “earth-centric denier,” and forced under threat of execution to recant his findings. Today, like the inquisitors who persecuted Galileo, Nye very unscientifically called for criminalizing and jailing scientists who do work challenging the consensus on climate change.
What the marchers are really attempting to do is politicize and weaponize the word “science” so that they can use it as a means to avoid debate and shut down their opposition without actually having to present facts or a cogent argument. This is the opposite of real science, and is actually dangerous to real science.
Nobody’s asking to see the scientific data here because it would show … Vermont’s energy policy to be about as sound as ritually sacrificing a goat to the volcano god.
Science constantly questions assumptions and forces conventional wisdom to defend itself through a rigorous process of experimentation. As Einstein explained, “No amount of experimentation [science] can prove me right. But one experiment can prove me wrong.” I didn’t get the impression these marchers had any interest in allowing a process, scientific or otherwise, to question their assumptions about the world let alone opening themselves up to the possibility of being proved wrong.
Here in Vermont, for example, activists and some legislators are pushing hard to pass a carbon tax. They say we need to do this in order to save Vermont winters and the maple syrup industry from climate change. Anyone who disagrees with this carbon tax policy is a climate or science “denier.” End of debate! Drop microphone. Walk off stage.
But, if you genuinely believe science should be driving policy, you would demand to see the scientific data showing how Vermont’s passing a carbon tax and related energy policies would impact local and global climate trends. You would demand to see scientific proof that these policies would impact weather in Vermont to a degree where winter snowfall levels and maple trees will remain as they are into the future. Without such data, you couldn’t support the policy because it’s not based on science.
Nobody’s asking to see the scientific data here because it would show pretty definitively that a carbon tax and Vermont going to 90 percent renewable energy sources by 2050 would have zero impact, would not affect winter or maple trees, and, scientifically speaking, it would show Vermont’s energy policy to be about as sound as ritually sacrificing a goat to the volcano god. They want to do it anyway. To heck with science.
Science is certainly a critically important tool for learning about ourselves and our universe, and it plays an enormous role in human progress. But, it is by nature a learning process, and let’s not forget it is often wrong. A great article came out a couple of days before the March for Science titled “How Settled Science Caused a Massive Public Health Crisis” about sugar vs. fat. The scientist who 45 years ago warned that sugar, not fat, was the real culprit behind obesity, heart disease and diabetes was vilified, his career destroyed, for challenging the scientific consensus and public policy of the day.
Science claimed the victory for sugar. Really, it was politics that won. Lesson learned? It doesn’t appear so.
