Fox News ends the year with a list of under-reported stories of 2009. It is notable how many are related to science or, generally, to the politicization of supposed "experts".
Nearly a half century ago, as he left eight years in office, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of a "military-industrial complex" that promoted particular new weapons systems and concomitant budgetary and foreign commitments. Ike, the former five star general and Columbia University president, warned that selfish professional ambitions and interests can create a deceptive perception of national interest. The term "military-industrial complex" has become famous.
However, less noticed, Ike's farewell address also warned of development of a grants-corrupted "scientific-technological elite."
"Today," President Eisenhower said, "the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded."
"Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should," he continued, "we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite."
Today, almost fifty years later, we are seeing the mature fruits of a Government-Foundation-Academia complex in science. It is beginning to appear almost as sinister and corrupt as the military-industrial complex ever was.
It is wanton hubris to assert that "science" and the agenda of the Government-Foundation-Academia complex are the same and that to criticize the latter is to be "anti-science." In truth, that kind of smear is just the problem with the system now coming under investigation. Even if man-made global warming is just as bad as we have been told, the case for it is undermined by efforts to suppress data and stigmatize opponents.
The reach of the ClimateGate scandal continues, embracing not only academia, but also government--from U.S. federal grant making bodies to the U.N., to liberal foundations (that is, most of them), and, of course, much major media.
What is needed is an objective study of the influence on science by ideologues in government funding agencies, foundations and the old-boy system that decides tenure and peer review. The hoary rule, "Follow the money," may be most instructive.
Activists with a political/social motive shape grants from foundations. They influence government funding and apply de facto ideological tests. Grant-makers (like the National Science Foundation) subtly influence professional bodies and the science faculties of major--then minor--universities, making it clear that if you want to get life-giving grants, you must conform to the policy "consensus". Grant seeking faculties force out tenure candidates who fail to toe the party line. They demand--as science journalist Chris Mooney (The Republican War on Science) has done--that media not publish news reports or opinion articles by scientific dissenters. (To do so would be akin to publishing flat earth stories, they say). You portray the "consensus" as a bulwark against the Right, presented in cartoonish forms. In other words, you politicize science.
Behind the tactics of coercion is the high presssue political philosophy developed decades ago by the Marxist Herbert Marcuse, then made practical by Saul Alinsky (Acorn's hero), and lately orchestrated by the activist public relations firm, Fenton Communications. The approach was used to promote the fake Alar apple scare in the 80s, the Sandanistas in the same decade, Moveon.org in the 90s and Rainforest Action Network and Global Exchange that were funded to disrupt the WTO conference in Seattle ten years ago. It has been evident lately in the activities of CAIR, the increasingly controversial Council of American-Islamic Relations. And it has been central to trying to shut down climate debate.
An eerie parallel to the treatment of scientific skeptics of man-man global warming has been the stigmatizing and ostracizing of scientific critiques of Darwinism. Fenton has had a big part in that, too.
A key strategy of those involved is to get the government itself to fund the activists' agenda.
Discovery Institute can only do so much, but we do rather well in standing up to the public policy activists who pose as scientific experst. We bring real research to bear on real problems, with real answers. Mind you, we don't see ourselves in opposition to a conspiracy. We do see ourselves in opposition to a well-funded and sometimes authoritarian mindset.
We were busy at that, and successful, in 2009. We aim to do the same in 2010. So, to all, a Happy New Year!
