Some Reactions to Chris Mooney
October 13th, 2005Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.
The discussion continues over at TPM Cafe; check it out here.
I do have a few other “down in the weeds” reactions to Mooney’s response to my first post.
First, Mooney is caught up on passing a judgment on which political party is better or worse at the politicization of science. He writes, “just because science is always to some extent politicized, that doesn’t mean that today’s Republicans and Democrats are equally guilty.” On this point we seem to be talking past each other. If the issue was campaign finance reform, Mooney would be talking about which party exploited the rules to a greater degree while I’d be talking about how to reform the system so that it works better for all participants. But to get past this, lets just postulate that Republicans have been more effective at exploiting science to achieve political ends. I have discussed this before here.
Second, Mooney’s better/worse tendency results in his mischaracterizing my perspective. He writes, “Pielke suggests that I am just as bad on this issue as Senate Environment and Public Works committee chair James Inhofe.” I suggested no such thing. Here is what I wrote, “Mooney’s argument adopts the exact same tactics of cherry picking and relying on convenient experts as does Senator Inhofe”. Mooney’s cherrypicking is not as significant as Senator Inhofe’s, clearly, given that Mooney is a pundit and the Senator is a policy maker. Without a doubt cherrypicking is endemic (even here at Prometheus!).
Third, Mooney demonstrates that he doesn’t get what Dan Sarewitz is arguing when he writes, “Sarewitz more or less suggests that we should just shrug off the political misuse or abuse of science–it’s no big deal.” Sarewitz does not say this at all, and given that Sarewitz writes often about science and politics, he clearly thinks that it is a big deal. Sarewitz argues that there is no point in trying to achieve political ends through realizing some agreement on scientific facts. I am sure that Sarewitz thinks, as I do, that we should always strive to have the best knowledge possible when making deicsions, but we would be foolish to think that we can adjudicate values discputes through debates over science. I discuss this in my secod post at TPM Cafe here.
Fourth, Mooney (and several commenters at Slate) asks us to “Consider the “intelligent design” movement, a well organized, PR-savvy crusade against evolution that masquerades as science even as it seeks to redefine science itself to include supernatural explanations within the fabric of inquiry. This goes far beyond mere “cherry picking,” and becomes a more fundamental assault on the nature of scientific knowledge itself.” Well lets consider ID. If you look at the data, a similar number of Democrats as Republicans support the teaching of ID in public schools, with only a slight advantage to Republicans. So are these Democracts who support ID also a party to the “war on science”? It is baffling to me how Mooney can just ignore such data that is inconvenient to his thesis. If anything, data on ID clearly supports my argument that we are looking at a phenomena that is much more complicated than can be described as Rep/Dem.
Finally, let me again thank Chris for the chance to discuss these topics at TPM Cafe. It is a pleasure to participate in an open and wide-ranging discussion of these important topics, even though Chris and I disagree.
October 13th, 2005 at 8:10 am
Roger: “If you look at the data, a similar number of Democrats as Republicans support the teaching of ID in public schools, with only a slight advantage to Republicans. So are these Democracts who support ID also a party to the “war on science”?”
You are moving the goalposts again Roger. Where is your evidence that LEADERS of the Democratic party are pushing ID. Is there a Feingold equivalent to the Santorum Amendment that I’m not aware of?
October 13th, 2005 at 8:52 am
Bob-
Thanks for your comment. It is worth noting that the so-called “Santorum Amendment” which provides language discussing education in the report of the No Child Left Behind Act was passed in the Senate 91-8. Democratic Senators Kennedy and Byrd both publicly supported the Santorum Amendment and as well, the teaching of diverse views on evolution, see this story: http://www.aip.org/fyi/2001/081.html.
While the teaching of ID is being pushed most strongly by Senator Rick Santorum, presumably Senators Kennedy and Byrd and all of the other Democracts who voted for the Santorum amendment are also part of the war on science.
We discussed ID at length in a number of posts, such as:
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/science_policy_general/000530why_id_wont_go_away.html
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/science_policy_general/000534finding_god_in_scien.html
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/hodge_podge/000550party_id_and_id.html
October 13th, 2005 at 10:06 am
Roger Pielke Jr. writes, “It is worth noting that the so-called “Santorum Amendment” which provides language discussing education in the report of the No Child Left Behind Act was passed in the Senate 91-8.”
Yes, intersting! And from that website to which you hyperlinked (the period at the end needs to be removed from the hyperlink)…the 8 Senators who voted against the Amendment were all REPUBLICAN!
P.S. According to the website, the 8 Republicans who voted against the amendment did so on the grounds of the federal government interfering with local schools, rather than science-vs-religion grounds.
P.P.S. Apparently, the Santorum amendment did NOT make it into the final versions in the House and Senate, and was therefore NOT in the bill signed into law:
http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/santorum.html
P.P.P.S. Apparently, the final bill signed into law was 1600+ pages in length…so every other word ever written did make it into the bill!
(Interesting how the final bill is approximately a hundred times the length of the Constitution!)
October 13th, 2005 at 10:36 am
My final commentary at TPM Cafe is up here:
http://bookclub.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/10/13/122337/79
October 13th, 2005 at 12:21 pm
Let me commend you for going into the lion’s den, so to speak.
The data on who supports ID is fascinating. There can be no doubt that a signifigant part of the Republican strategy is to court evangelical voters. As Rove was often quoted as saying, “one million evangelicals stayed home in the last election”. Getting them to show up was the core of his re-election strategy, mostly through exploiting the gay marriage amendments. So how do you explain this paradox?
October 13th, 2005 at 12:58 pm
In my opinion the best comment at the Mooney site on Roger’s perspective came from Tom Hilton. He pointed out that the main function of elected politicains is to govern. Governing dioes not mean optimizing things for your base but achieving the best for the most. You govern a country not a faction. To do this requires examining information and balancing opinions.
This administration makes no attempt at that process or that objective and instead follows preconceptions in a winner take all attitude. This sad fact was revealed to me from the very top. I refer primarily to former Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O’Neill’s book, “The Price of Loyalty”. Clark and others confirm it.
When such a perspective takes control, you no longer have a valid everybody does it argument. I find this ideological control and religious emphasis to be new in American politics and something to be scared about.
Indeed, in my opinion, that clique will war on science and any other pursuit of truth if it serves their purpose. However I am concerned about whether or not this attitude may also have affected the other side as well. It seems like every other comment on the Mooney site mentioned “global warming” in the “settled science” mode. I could almost feel the heat of the command and control fire coming from their nostrils. Certainty is in their brains.
The Canadian ambassador to the USA recently labeled our government as dysfunctional. That description could easily be extended to all of American politics. Sad
October 13th, 2005 at 7:11 pm
Roger, I don’t give a damn if Republicans are more effective at exploiting science to achieve political ends, actually that would be a good thing. I do get angry when they distort and falsify science for political ends. Silly me, wise old hands like yourself do not recongnize the difference
October 14th, 2005 at 8:58 am
A few final reactions to Chris Mooney’s final post at TPM Cafe, and then I plan on leaving this subject behind.
First, lets cite Machiavelli, “Although men are apt to deceive themselves in general matters, yet they rarely do so in particulars.” – The Discourses. 1517. Mooney has not once responded to my specific criticisms of his book, either on climate change or ID, or any assertions of the misuse of science on the left, which I have backed by examples. His argument is clearly easier to defend at the general level rather than in terms of specific cases.
Mooney writes, “So, in short, one needn’t accept a naïve “linear model” of how science relates to policy in order to point out that misinformation–bad science, bad information, bad data, a bad understanding of the world–can drive bad decision-making, or have other very negative real world consequences.”
Well, in fact this is the linear model! Mooney restates the linear model again when he says, “he time has come to mount an active defense of the integrity of science as a source of policy relevant, but not policy prescriptive, information.” The language of “policy relevant, but not policy prescriptive” comes straight from the IPCC which has institutionalized the linear model.
Mooney criticizes the Bush stem cell policy as an example of bad policy resulting from bad science. Again, the linear model. But Mooney fails to appreciate that he thinks that it is “bad policy” only because his values differ from those held by President Bush. It has nothing to do with science. There are many people equally sure that the Bush policy is good policy. And it streches credulity to think that the Bush policy is in place because the president inflated the number of stem cell lines available in making his decision. Mooney’s interpretation of the stem cell case as an issue of science is a perfect example of how people map their values onto questions of science. See this op-ed:
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/resource-1619-2004.16.pdf
When Mooney writes, “The abuses of science have gotten so bad under the Bush administration, and the Republican-controlled Congress, that the time for reconciliation–for making nice–is long past” it seems clear that his interest is not in science policy and decision making, but gaining partisan advantage over Republicans. There is not much point in debating issues of science policy when the real issue is achieving a political victory. Before long, George Bush will be retired and yet the issue of the politicization of science will remain.
Mooney’s calls to politicize of science policy in the form of attacking Republicans clearly resonates with the ideologically predisposed, including many scientists and academics. This is really too bad because in the long run it can mean nothing but bad outcomes for the scientific community. The long-term support of science depends upon maintaining the bipartisan support for science that has existsed for decades among poliycmakers and the public. Scientists dismiss this at their own peril.
My final point – if the politicization of science is undesirable, when then should it be acceptable to politicize science policy?
October 14th, 2005 at 9:11 pm
I certainly agree that characterizing the stem cell debate as “bad policy”, as well as your criticism at TPM Cafe of Clinton’s choice to ignore the science regarding needle exchange rather than distort it was bad policy (as you said, “From where I sit, it was simply wrong for President Clinton to give in to calculations of political advantage rather than improve the lot of people suffering and even dying”.) But it seems like the criticism of the Bush Adminstration in my case is NOT based on values. My criticism of Bush is not based on policy because it was the SAME as Bush’s. Clinton’s approach TO SCIENCE was better because Bush distorted it, Clinton didn’t. It seems like you find pointing out the correct number of stem cell lines is ineherently a choice of values based on ideological lenses.
Why can’t a Republican with different values but who supports the scientific process also find it better for Bush to do as Clinton did, and simply say stem cells are a moral issue and regardless of the number of cell lines, he doesn’t think they ought to be used? Then even though our values differ, I would not have a problem with it. That is acceptable political discourse. If DeLay acted as Clinton had, he wouldn’t have accused Schiavo’s husband of attempted murder or claimed she was responsive, but said regardless of her mental state, killing her is wrong. After all, isn’t their stand that ANY life is valuable? If they took that position, despite my disagreements in terms of values, I could have a reasonable debate. I would look forward to it. The fact that our values differ is fine. It’s the fact that they are afraid to debate these values in the open, so they have to malign and distort to prevent that values debate from occuring.
If you think a stem cell is human life, then don’t hide behind faked numbers. Stand up for what you believe in. If mental vegetables should not be taken off their feeding tubes, regardless of whether they’ll come out of it – fine. Stop hiding behind character assassination and bogus medical diagnoses and say so.
Stop fudging the science and say what you really believe, and I’ll respect you for it.