Immediately on writing the title, I feel the need to
equivocate.
- Well, yes, occasionally science misinterprets the data … but it quickly catches itself.
- Well, no, science can’t prove anything; it’s all theory … that’s the nature of science.
- Well, yes, some scientists are in the pay of big corporations … but it’s a minority and they are concentrated in a few industries, like pharmaceuticals, and their conclusions are still subject to peer-review.
The mere fact of my defensiveness around science tells
us something scary about the decline of our country. Any democracy requires its citizens to accept
basic, well-known facts, especially those that impact governance. If we can’t depend on science to set the
basic boundaries of truth, what can we depend on?
And the answer at this time is, “Nothing. Within today’s American culture there is no
standard for truth.”
It’s not unusual for politicians to deny the inconvenient
truths of science. The most obvious and
most dangerous example is an entire political party that denies the fact of human-induced
climate change. Another is that politicians
still talk about evolution as an “unproven theory” for fear of offending their
base. And politicians still claim that
vaccinations can cause autism or other serious illness despite overwhelming
evidence against it.
But President Trump has taken science denial to a
whole new level. Most notoriously, he
has withdrawn the US from the Paris Climate Accord, leaving us as the only UN member not signed on. And that’s not all:
- The Administration has rolled back access to birth control, challenging the scientific consensus that birth control leads to a lower rate of unwanted pregnancies, to fewer teen pregnancies, and no increase in sexual activity among teens.
- Trump’s administration stopped requesting scientific evidence on methane emission from the oil and gas industry and suppressed a scientific report from inside one of his own agencies that was to be delivered to Congress.
- The Department of Treasury removed from their website an economic analysis that provided evidence that a corporate tax cut would not benefit workers more than owners of capital.
President Trump has gone out of his way to appoint as
agency administrators precisely the people who’ve previously attacked those
agencies for following scientific consensus.
For example, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Scott
Pruitt described himself – when serving as Oklahoma’s Attorney General and suing
the EPA fourteen times – as the “leading advocate against the EPA’s activist
agenda.”
As administrator of the agency, he removed from the
EPA website critical scientific data about climate change, greenhouse gas
emissions, and arctic sea loss; in fact, he later eliminated the entire climate
change section. Pruitt also announced
that, despite staff recommendations, he would not ban a
pesticide that poses
a clear risk to children, farm workers, and rural drinking water users.
In an unprecedented move Pruitt has prohibited all
scientists who receive grant money from the EPA from serving on its science
advisory board, thus barring the most qualified scientists in the country from
the board. While the agency touted this
as a way to decrease conflicts of interest, Pruitt has not disqualified any scientists funded by industries the agency is
tasked with regulating.
Another Presidential nomination flying in the face of
scientific consensus is that of former Texas governor Rick Perry to head the US
Department of Energy. Perry had
previously called for abolishing the agency, which is responsible, among other
things, for steering energy policy as it affects the climate. Just this month, Perry
said natural causes are likely the main driver of climate change.
And yet another example: Trump appointed Sam Clovis, a former talk show host and political science
professor, as the chief scientist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The 2008 farm
bill states that the person filling the post be chosen “from among
distinguished scientists with specialized training or significant experience in
agricultural research, education, and economics.” Clovis is not a scientist at all, much less
distinguished. After a political uproar,
Clovis resigned the position, but the President had already made his opinions
clear.
Perhaps most compelling (but not surprising), the President
has yet to fill the post of Presidential Science Advisor, which has now remained
vacant far longer than in any other administration in the last forty-five years.
The practical consequences of each these particular
actions are bad enough. But perhaps more
harmful to our polarized democracy is that the President is encouraging an
atmosphere in which science is automatically suspect and has no more claim to
truth than a neighbor’s anecdote or a random page on the Internet. This leaves us with no standard for truth, so
meaningful political debate becomes impossible and governing is left to whim. Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said: “You
are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.” Apparently, he was naïve.
A president
who knowingly encourages such ideas and behavior makes even informed debate a
relic of a lost past.
And American democracy thereby loses one more toehold.
