Has the Pandemic Made Us Appreciate Science?

 

No.

One would think that the pandemic would have made Americans want to learn more about disease and health, about how to minimize the spread of disease by means of vaccination, social distancing, etc. In fact, this is what science writer Robin Marantz Henig said in the November 2020 issue of National Geographic: “Maybe the pandemic will persuade even the skeptics how crucial scientific discovery is to human flourishing.”

At the time Henig wrote this, it seemed so inescapably reasonable. But this has turned out to not be the case. The surge in covid cases in America, the great majority of them among the unvaccinated, has only strengthened the anti-science fervor among many Americans. About half of Americans disregard science, and many of these openly detest it. Rather than acknowledging that masks slow down the spread of covid, some states not only do not have mask mandates but have made these mandates illegal. Here in Oklahoma, it is illegal for schools and other state entities to require measures that protect either children or adults. It is difficult to appreciate the depth and scope of the hatred that many Americans feel toward science, whether it is the study of how diseases spread (epidemiology), or any other branch of science.

Right now, as shown in this graph from a French news website, America is leading the world in the number of covid deaths per day. Brazil used to be the leader, and Indonesia was briefly, but America has gone back to being the world leader in covid deaths per day.

As a science educator in rural Oklahoma, I feel quite despondent right now about the hostility of my neighbors toward any kind of scientific evidence about anything. I used to be inspired in my work; now, I just count the days to retirement.

Conservative Hatred of Science Even at Its Most Basic Level

We all know that conservatives hate science. Conservatives want you to get all your truth straight from Donald Trump, without questioning it. Even the Bible has given way to Trump as the authority for all knowledge among conservatives.

One reason conservatives hate science is that science forces you to question your assumptions, your definitions, and it forces you to seek information to test your beliefs.

But they hate science at an even more basic level than this. For centuries, all scientific research and communication has used the metric system. This system is very logical, and is based on the Earth, water, and powers of 10. Scientists have universally, even in America, adopted this system to avoid miscommunications. When two different entities use two different systems of measurement, the result can be disastrous and costly, as happened in 1999. A Mars probe got all the way to Mars then crashed, because the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) used the metric system while Lockheed Martin, a contractor, used the “English” system, which the English no longer use.

Only three countries in the world reject the metric system: Liberia, Myanmar, and the United States.

Conservatives hate science all the way back to the very basics of measurement. They hate the metric system. At least Tucker Carlson, who represents the extreme right wing of Republicans who hold sway under Donald Trump, hates it. On June 5, 2019, Carlson said, “Almost every nation on Earth has fallen under the yoke of tyranny—the metric system...The United States is the only major country that has resisted...Esperanto died, but the metric system continues, this weird, utopian, inelegant creepy system that we alone have resisted.”

Actually, it is not we alone. Standing with us are the other two most wealthy, stable, and free nations on Earth: Liberia and Myanmar.

Carlson’s guest, James Panero, went further. He called the metric system “the original system of global revolution and new world orders.” Now there he has a point. The metric system was born out of the French Revolution. Carlson’s response was, “God bless you.”

What next? Maybe Trump can slap tariffs on imports from any country that uses the metric system.

If Carlson intended this as a joke, I have seen no indication of it.

But here is a fundamental(ist) point that the conservatives have missed. I wonder what fundamentalist Mike Pence would say about this. Fox and Friends seems to think that God wants us to use feet, inches, pounds, etc. But the Bible uses no such measures! The Bible uses the cubit as the basic measure of length. Any nation that does not base its measurements on cubits has fallen under the condemnation of the Almighty.

I’m not going to touch that one with a 25-cubit pole!

Science and Democracy: Confusion

I read a pre-publication copy of a book about attacks on science and on democracy, to be published soon by a company that has published two of my books. Because I do not want to give bad publicity to this publisher, I will give no further identification of the book.

The book has no overall theme, because it is a collection of essays from different authors, each one writing whatever he or she wants. The essays contradict one another. That is fine, and is part of the appeal of a multi-author edited volume. One possible theme is that both science and democracy are being attacked by the same people and for the same reason: the so-called conservatives want to control the world, and they want to brush aside or destroy any criticism they may receive from scientists. Another possible theme is that science is essential to a functional democracy: citizens without access to reliable knowledge cannot make the right decisions for running their society. Along these lines, essays range from the extremely pedantic (e.g., John Dewey would not have approved of the modern attacks on science) to leftist pot-shots, with which I agree but I would prefer to make my own rather than to read someone else’s. I may throw potshots into this blog but I try to leave them out of my books.

I see two major problems with all of the essays in this volume. First, there is the assumption that science is essential to democracy. This is true. It was certainly what the Founding Fathers envisioned, especially the very scientifically literate Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. The first presidents, all Enlightenment figures, governed with the spirit of scientific reason, even though they were sometimes wrong. But, starting with Andrew Jackson, everything got messed up and has remained messed up ever since. Andrew Jackson despised scientific knowledge, or any knowledge at all. Even when he was shown that the Cherokee tribe had adopted the advancements of civilization, he continued to call them savages and insist that their land be taken by white people. He simply would not look at the facts in front of him. That is exactly what Donald Trump does today. Trump has a painting of Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office. To discuss the importance of science to democracy is so Enlightenment and has been an irrelevant topic in American politics for almost two hundred years.

A more important problem is that all of the warring approaches to the relationship between science and democracy, whether positivism or Popperianism or Deweyanism or post-modernism or whatever, totally ignore the evolution of the human brain. As I point out in my new book Scientifically Thinking, the human brain did not evolve to reason. It evolved to rationalize in such a way as to promote the evolutionary success of the person with that brain. The human brain creates illusions that may or may not bear any resemblance to the real scientific world. That is, without science, the human brain is open to infection by any and every kind of delusion, whether from the right or from the left. Ideas live in human brains as organisms live in habitats, and the successful ideas are not necessarily the ones that are right but the ones that, for any reason or no reason, people like.

As I plowed through all the approaches to science and democracy in this book, I wondered, which approach is right? Probably none of them.

Not a Scientist

According to Dave Levitan, author of Not a Scientist: How Politicians Mistake, Misrepresent, and Utterly Mangle Science, it was Ronald Reagan who first used the phrase “I’m not a scientist, but...” and then proceed to make outrageously false statements that were easily disproved by scientific evidence. The plague of false statements has proliferated until now politicians, almost all of them Republicans, seem to feel obligated to tell lies and pretend that they are being scientific in doing so.

Politicians, like most other people, can be forgiven for not understanding science. It can sometimes be very complex. But what any reasonable non-scientist would do is to trust scientists to understand science. It is reasonable for politicians and others to demand to see some evidence, and I think scientists are obligated to provide evidence. I present evidence to my students and readers all the time. But once this is done, the non-scientists should at least acknowledge that the evidence has been presented. It would really, really, really bother me if I made a statement outside my field of expertise, only to discover that 99.9 percent of the experts disagreed with it. But this never seems to bother Republicans.

Levitan goes through lots of examples of Republican politicians lying and trying to cover it up with the appearance of scientific fact. He classifies the examples into a small set of patterns. I mention just six of them.

One of these patterns is cherry-picking. In global warming, a Republican can pick the warmest year in the 1980s and the coldest year in the 2000s and point out that the temperatures are not very different—deliberately ignoring the fact that all the other 1980s temperatures were cooler and all the other 2000s temperatures were warmer. It’s like finding a seven-foot-tall giantess and a four-foot tall male dwarf and saying that women are three feet taller than men.

Another pattern is to ignore the follow-up. For a while, the so-called Climategate scandal circulated around the conservative pseudo-media. When the news first came out, there was the possibility it might have been true. Subsequent investigations have shown, however, that there was no scandal at all. But Republicans still talk about it as if it is true.

Yet another pattern is to praise scientists and then, behind their backs, undermine them. Many Republican representatives have praised NASA then said that NASA’s climate data are false.

Yet another pattern is for the politicians to claim that if we do not know everything about a subject, then we know nothing about it. Republicans demand absolute certainty about every aspect of climate science—every ocean current, every glacier, every local slight variation of temperature—or else we can say nothing at all about climate science. This is, of course, hypocritical, because these same Republicans make statements about things regarding which uncertainty remains, in fact, they make stuff up without any evidence at all.

Yet another pattern is for Republicans to make fun of anything they do not understand. Following the lead of Sarah Palin, they love to make fun of biologists who study fruit flies. What Republicans deliberately ignore is that fruit flies have many of the same genes, and mutations in those genes, that we do. Biologists can study the effects of those mutations in fruit flies, which have two-week life cycles and regarding which there are no ethical concerns. There is an autism-related mutation in fruit flies. Fruit flies don’t get autism, but we can experimentally study the gene in them, which we could not do in humans.

The last category that Levitan considers is the straight falsehood, in which a politician just makes something up. His first example is Todd Akin saying that a woman’s body can spontaneously abort a fetus that resulted from rape, and that therefore abortion laws should not contain any exceptions for rape—since rape pregnancies simply do not occur. But I think Levitan missed something here. Todd Akin must have heard, somewhere in a biology class in which he was half asleep, about what biologists call the Bruce Effect. Some mammals, such as mice and monkeys, are, in fact, able to abort unwanted fetuses. In geladas, for example, when a female is taken over by a new dominant male, her body aborts fetuses that were fathered by a previous dominant male. This must have been what Akin was thinking about, only it does not happen in humans.

Of course, there are examples of Republicans just making stuff up. Mike Huckabee (who fancies himself a highly ethical Preacher of the Gospel) said that a single volcano can produce as much carbon dioxide as a hundred years of human activity. In actuality, the biggest recent volcano, Pinatubo, released 0.05 gigatons of carbon; but human activity releases 10 gigatons per year, that is, 1000 in a century. Huckabee’s numbers were off by a factor of twenty thousand. But, if you are a preacher, who’s counting?

Understandably, in the infinitely tortured world of Republican political thought, there are examples that may not fit into any of Levitan’s categories. One example that he did not (as I recall) mention comes from Michele Bachman (whom he did mention in a different connection.) She said, in 2006, that we should not worry about global warming, or any other environmental issue, because Jesus has already saved the world. You will notice that Bachman did not say, “Don’t worry about terrorism; Jesus already saved the world,” or, “Don’t worry about the economy, Jesus already saved the world.” She used—deliberately—a line of reasoning that she would not use in other contexts.

The only problem I have with Levitan’s book is that it is too timid. The Republican politicians he cites are not merely making mistakes, or bending the truth, or even merely lying. You can pretty much summarize the entire Republican position as, “I’m not a scientist, but I don’t need to be, because God has made my brain infallible and utterly incapable of error, so I can just make stuff up and God is obligated to make it true.” Republican politicians do not merely mangle science. They are blasphemers who consider the possibility that they may be wrong to be as unthinkable as God Himself being wrong. Of course, if Levitan had said this, the publisher would have rejected it. (Maybe Levitan tried and had to back down.)

Republicans have guns and consider themselves to be incapable of error even after thinking about something for only a few seconds. What could possibly go wrong?

Welcome, Science!

With the inauguration of a federal administration that is more hostile to scientific research and understanding than perhaps any in American history, scientists are beginning to feel anxious. Not all scientists; medical research will probably do okay. But climate scientists, ecologists, and evolutionary scientists now feel like a persecuted minority. As a participant in all three areas of research and writing, I feel like I do not want the new government to even know what I think. Fortunately, unlike some climate scientists such as Michael Mann, who has been repeatedly persecuted by the Republicans, I am a small target.

Many other countries are much more open to scientific insights. Make no mistake: they are opening their arms to American scientists. One of these countries is China. In the fall of 2016, at least four Chinese cities bought two-page spreads near the front of Science magazine depicting themselves as wonderful places for scientists to live and work.

• September 9: Foshan “has an obvious advantage of industrial cluster.” The advertisement proudly displayed the data about how prosperous this city is, its 7.4 million residents and its 170,255 private enterprises.
• September 23: Nanhai advertised itself as close to the Hong Kong economically-open region, and “a highly civilized city worth visiting. It is also considered as the national sanitary city…and one of the highly-educated cities in Guangdong.”
• September 30: Sanshui promoted its industrial potential, but mainly depicted itself as a wonderful place to live. “The southern scenery is coquettish and graceful,” says the advertisement. “Here, with picturesque scenery, people live and enjoy the peaceful and prosperous environment as well as the wonderful and leisurely moment. Here, has got the breeze, drizzle and canoes on the river form the beautiful scenery of three rivers in the misty rain.” Thank God for Google Translate.
• October 7: Shundei advertised itself as a growing hub of manufacturing.

Of course, they mostly want to attract the same scientists that American corporations want. But it has escaped nobody’s attention that China does not officially denounce scientists who study evolution, ecology, and climate science. If I were young and mobile and with a freshly-minted Ph.D. I would give China some serious consideration.

Many American cities could, and do, promote themselves in similar terms, and they are right to do so. Tulsa, where I live, has as its slogan “A new kind of energy,” meaning the promotion of entrepreneurship instead of just the continuation of Tulsa’s twentieth century image as an oil town. The difference is at the national level, where Beijing promotes science and Washington is antagonistic toward it.

In order to prevent the “brain drain” of scientists out of the United States, it is not necessary for the government to spend a lot of money. All we need is for the Republican leaders to quit making scientists sound like traitors. The Republican Congress has relentlessly pursued investigations of climate scientists in order to discredit them, and now they have a president who has proclaimed that global warming is a hoax.

I do not foresee a massive exodus of scientists out of America. But certainly more scientists will leave America than at any time in the past.

Let's Hope Lysenko Stays Dead

Isaac Asimov, one of the most brilliant science writers (or writers, period) of the twentieth century, had something to say that is particularly relevant right now about how the outcome of the elections may influence the future of science and education. This quote, in fact, illustrates a fundamental weakness of democracy. He said something to the effect that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

I fantasize that there could be a society in which well-educated people who understand the world and care about it could make the decisions in the best interests of everyone else. But of course this is impossible. If a scientific elite ruled a society, evil demagogues would soon displace the scientists and create a dictatorship far worse than any democracy could ever be.

The list of scientific things that the new Trump team has totally wrong—despite having their errors explained to them—goes far beyond the ones most people already know about: global warming, evolution, and endangered species. According to this article, Trump has also bought into anti-science hoaxes such as the belief that vaccination causes autism, that there never was anything wrong with the ozone layer, that environmentally-friendly light bulbs cause cancer, that wind farms will make you sick, and that ebola can spread just by being around Africans.

The Trump team attacks on science affects me personally in three ways. First, one of my major pieces of ongoing research shows that tree buds are opening earlier each year, which is evidence of global warming. Do I need to suppress or alter my results to fit in with Trump’s views? Second, I teach and write books about evolution. Will I be suppressed from doing this? Third, another major research and conservation effort in which I am involved is saving an endangered species (the seaside alder Alnus maritima). Does this make me an enemy of the state?

I used language that was a little bit exaggerated in the previous paragraph, such as enemy of the state. Surely the Trump team cannot actually ban the teaching of, and research on, evolution, global warming, endangered species, etc., can they?

As you are probably not surprised to discover, the answer is yes and no. No, they cannot do so directly. But they can use the power of federal money to do so. Suppose—and at this point it is just speculation—that the federal Department of Education, soon to be run by creationist Ben Carson, announced that no federal funds can be used at educational institutions in which evolution is taught? This would include student scholarship money. If they did this, my university would face an immediate crisis: the president would have to tell me to not teach evolution, for if I did so, it would cause the university to close. Such an action could be challenged in the courts, but this would take years.

In case you think this cannot happen, I need to remind you of the story of Trofim Lysenko, who had an utterly wrong theory of genetics but one which Joseph Stalin liked. Lysenko’s utterly wrong theory of genetics became the doctrine of the Stalinist USSR. The world-famous geneticist Nikolai Vavilov opposed Lysenko. Stalin did not kill Vavilov, but let him die in prison. The Trump team would not take any steps against people like me as Stalin did against Vavilov. They would not have to. I will not starve in prison. But I might find my job description changed overnight. I might turn overnight from a science teacher into a teacher who must be silent in order to not be a creationism preacher.

A more recent example was a George W. Bush era director of the Fish and Wildlife Service who told FWS scientists that they would not discover, in their research, that there were any endangered species. Period.

The federal government can in fact strangle science. I remain vigilant against any first steps in this direction. You say Trump would never do this? I hope you are right.

Here is my summary of Lysenkoism, from my Encyclopedia of Evolution:

Lysenkoism Lysenkoism is the doctrine of agriculturalist Trofim Lysenko, who dominated Soviet biological science during the Stalinist era. The early years of the Soviet state were plagued with social upheaval and, in the early 1920s, poor harvests. Wheat was usually planted in the autumn, when it produced leaves; after overwintering, the wheat plants would reproduce in the spring for an early summer harvest. The Russian winters frequently killed the overwintering wheat. Lysenko, a plant breeder in Azerbaijan, demonstrated that if the wheat seeds were stratified (kept in cool moist conditions for a few weeks), they could be sown in the spring and would reproduce in time for an autumn harvest. Stratification is now known among plant physiologists as one of the standard ways of influencing the germination and developmental characteristics of seeds. If Lysenko had stopped here, he might today be revered as the man who helped to save Soviet agriculture. But he went further. He claimed that this stratification process actually changed the seeds in a way that could be inherited. Stratify the first generation, he said, and all the subsequent generations would have the new, convenient trait. His genetic theory was essentially the same as that of French biologist Jean Baptiste de Lamarck, which had been discredited years earlier by most scientists.

What happened next is an illustration of a government imposing its philosophy on science and on its technological application. Lysenko’s Lamarckism happened to resonate well with Soviet philosophy, which claimed that individuals and whole societies could be changed if forced to change, and the change would be permanent. If humans, why not all species? Moreover, Lysenko adopted just part of the Mendelian view as European and American scientists understood it at that time: that heritable changes could occur by big, sudden leaps (mutations). This also pleased the Soviet authorities, still proud of their Bolshevik Revolution that appeared to them to have, in the single year of 1917, propelled Russia from the Middle Ages into the modern world. Lysenko’s doctrine was proclaimed to be truth; evidence to the contrary was suppressed, and experimental results were forced to fit into a Lysenkoist interpretation.

The principal Russian scientist to disagree with Lysenko was geneticist Nikolai Vavilov. (Due to secrecy imposed by Soviet authorities, scientists outside Russia knew scarcely anything about what was happening there.) Vavilov had done extensive research regarding genetic variation in crop species (local varieties and wild relatives), and provided great insights into the processes of domestication that had produced these crops. The thing that emerged most clearly from his research was that in order to breed crops, and in order to save them from disease, it is necessary to save the genes. The researcher must travel extensively, gather seeds or other plant reproductive parts (such as potato tubers), and keep them alive. One cannot just grab some seeds, like Lysenko, and force them to change into what one needs them to be. Vavilov spent time in prison for his beliefs. He died during the Nazi siege of Leningrad (now once again St. Petersburg). Some of his fellow geneticists starved within reach of bags of potatoes, which they were saving for the future of agriculture. Vavilov was one of the small number of scientific martyrs.

After Stalin’s death in 1952, Soviet leadership had to rethink many things about domestic and external policy. While they never openly repented for their Lysenkoist errors, the Soviet political and intellectual leadership moved away from Lysenkoism and adopted the same kind of genetics that was proving successful in the west—particularly with the breakthrough the next year by Watson and Crick in demonstrating the structure, and genetic efficacy, of DNA.

Further Reading

Gould, Stephen Jay.  “A Hearing For Vavilov.”  Chap. 10 in Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes.  New York: Norton, 1983.

The Missionary

I am, at the present time, a science missionary. I teach biology at the college level in rural Oklahoma, which is the hotbed of nearly every anti-science and anti-humane belief you can think of. For example:

• Evolution. All of my colleagues teach about evolution, but I teach the evolution course at our university. Some of my students believe that if you accept evolutionary science, or even if the Earth is old, there is no point in you even believing in God. Therefore, I am considered, by some, to be an agent of Satan.
• Global warming. Senator Jim Inhofe cites the Bible as proving that global warming cannot be occurring. Therefore, to teach about global warming—as I do extensively—is to put oneself on the side of Satan, according to some.
• Environment. I teach about the importance of environmental stewardship, not only to protect nature but to protect the living systems that keep billions of people on Earth alive. This runs slap counter to the fundamentalist Christian belief that Jesus is going to come back and destroy the Earth soon and therefore we should deplete it as quickly as possible.
• Racial equality. In general biology, and in evolution, I teach about the scientific evidence for the equality of human races. Racial inequality is theoretically conceivable, but is not true. But, I now report from personal experience, there are still violent people in rural Oklahoma who believe passionately in the inferiority of non-white races, and these people have guns.

I could teach these things in some part of the world where people already believe them; I could give them evidence that they could use to see that their beliefs in evolution, global warming, environmental issues, and racial equality are fact-based, not just “politically correct.” For example, were I able to speak French, I could teach such things in France, where nearly everyone, except for the (very minority) nationalist party and (the rare) notorious Islamist extremists, everyone would agree with me. But I have chosen to be a missionary, teaching these things in an environment of hostility and, sometimes, violent hatred. We white Americans have subdued Native Americans (all 500 nations of them), demeaned blacks, and now see the trees as just obstructions to the wrecking ball of progress. And in rural Oklahoma, many people passionately believe that these were, and are still, the right things to do.

I experienced this in a direct way on Friday, August 21, 2015. I stopped at a roadside stand in Tushka, Oklahoma, that was selling Confederate flags. Despite the fact that the stars-and-bars has become an almost toxic symbol in most of the United States, it is in fact the flag of rural Oklahoma. I felt I had to tell the vendor that this symbol was offensive to even most Oklahomans. This is when he started yelling at me and telling me that Tushka, Oklahoma, was not part of the United States but was part of the Confederacy “and damn proud of it.” He bragged that his grandfather fought on the Confederate side of the civil war; I said my great-great-grandfather did also, on the Confederate side, and that I respect him but I do not need to celebrate this particular aspect of his legacy. The man further claimed that the Confederate flag was just offensive to Yankees. I informed him that my family’s roots go back six generations in Oklahoma. The very moment I began talking with him, his friend (whom he identified as a prominent citizen of Tushka) called the sheriff. The sheriff’s deputy immediately showed up and started to get out of the car and let me see his gun. He did not point it at me because by then I was already leaving—if he had pointed his gun, it would have been at my back—and I got away. Apparently he did not consider me worth pursuing, although I am sure my license plate number was recorded and, for anything I yet know to the contrary, there may still be a warrant out for me. I was unarmed and merely stopped to tell the vendor that he was offending many Oklahomans. First Amendment. I was not trying to arouse any violence (as if there was anyone present who might have joined in with me to start a riot had I done so).

I feel, though I cannot prove, that had I been black, law enforcement in that particular place would have tackled me and beat my face into the pavement. This has happened in several places, even places with much less of a Confederate presence than rural Oklahoma.

There are parts, perhaps many parts, of rural Oklahoma that are racist and where racism is supported by law enforcement. These people are a relatively small fraction of the population, but they have guns and they have religious zeal. We all know what even otherwise peaceful people can do when they are high on religion. The Crusaders raped and murdered Constantinople, even though it was (an Orthodox) Christian city; Catholics raped and killed Huguenots in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre; Protestant Pilgrims burned Pequots alive; Orthodox Serbs tortured and killed Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina; Islamists have tortured and murdered whole Muslim villages. I don’t think we are anywhere near that point yet—I don’t expect any threats in the near future to my personal safety—in rural Oklahoma, but all the elements are there, just waiting for the spark to start the flame. I am a missionary science educator in rural Oklahoma and am aware of the risks that this entails.

I can tell you that this Confederate champion was wildly angry at someone disagreeing with him in public, someone merely saying he was wrong. He was reacting the same way that North Korea, the same week, reacted to anti-communist messages being broadcast by South Korea. In that case, shots were fired across the no-man’s-land border, and, as of this writing, war between North and South Korea has been narrowly averted. Both North Korean and modern Confederate leaders are equally violently opposed to any public criticism, and weapons are ready to hand in both cases. My position as a scientific missionary in Oklahoma is not as dangerous as would be the position of a Christian missionary in North Korea (one of them was actually arrested), but in both cases the hostility against missionaries is the same.

It is not just uneducated people who hold these beliefs. A student wrote a paper for a class taught by one of my colleagues in which the student openly stated that blacks are inferior to whites and ought to be enslaved. People who believe these things generally do not like to think for themselves, and it turns out this paper was plagiarized from a white supremacist website.

Rural Oklahoma crawls with people who are angry and delusional enough that they could, if they chose, use guns against people who disagree with them about evolution, global warming, environmental issues in general, or racial equality. So far, they have chosen to not do so. But this is their choice. I’m not sure I can trust them to keep making the same choice indefinitely into the future.

Some Ways of Confronting Anti-Science Are Better Than Others

It is an annual ritual in Oklahoma. The same legislators file the same bills each year. Two of them that come up year after tiresome year are intended to guarantee the rights of religious students to not be forced to believe in evolution. Sigh. Students already have this right. As President of the Oklahoma Academy of Sciences I know a lot of science teachers in Oklahoma and none of us, to my knowledge, ever requires our students to believe in evolution, just to know the scientific theory and evidence. What they do with it is their own business. A couple of years ago, the best student in my evolution class (and, incidentally, the university valedictorian) was a creationist. I certainly did not penalize her. Students do not need legislators protecting them from scary scientists.

So every year the leading science educators in Oklahoma send emails to legislators urging them to not consider these bills in their committees. I tell them, each year, that these bills are a big-government top-down solution to a non-existent problem.

There is no need to resort to abuse and ridicule of these legislators, even though it is clear that they do not know what they are talking about. (What else is new?) A simple explanation that the bill is unnecessary is sufficient. But I recently saw an article written for an Oklahoma progressive website (there are some) that mercilessly ridiculed one of these bills. Yes, the bill was ridiculous (and may not even be heard in committee) but there is no need to insult people. For obvious reasons, I will not identify the author. Here are some excerpts from “Frankensteins Return with Obsessive Legislation”:

The religious fundamentalists here who want to keep our school kids as dumb and unsuccessful as possible have introduced yet another ‘Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act’ bill in the Oklahoma Legislature.

These types of bills have been regularly defeated or vetoed in the past, but I must say the bill introduced this session, in its current form, is one of the most loony and unconstitutional measures I’ve ever read in my more than 30 years of writing about politics in the great state of Oklahoma.

This latest religious-intrusion bill is a rambling, overly qualified, disingenuous cartoon of rhetorical nonsense. It should be enshrined as one of the worst legislative bills ever written in the history of the planet. (Full apologies to the legislative staff member/attorney who had to put this slop together in some semblance of coherence.) The bill’s language should be carved out in stone and placed next to the state Capitol’s Ten Commandments monument. My fellow Okies, let us now bow our heads in prayer to Our Oklahoma God of Mediocrity and forgive those who make this state a laughingstock to the rest of the world. Amen.

Using language like this only makes religious fundamentalists stronger in their distrust of scientists and educators (I don’t know the author and I’m not sure if the author is either). To save time and to minimize the effects of cortisol on my body, I’ll just stick with the basics when I write to legislators.

For more information about the anti-science bills in Oklahoma, you may visit the website of Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education (OESE).