Lift Up Your Hearts!

Back to LaMonte Fowler's essay, for the fifth in this series.

Science is real. We know things because of science. Don’t be afraid of it. You have an iPhone and Facebook because of science. It’s your friend.

It's hard to respond to this without knowing what he means by being afraid of science. I've certainly never been afraid of science itself: growing up an avid science fiction fan, in an era when SF was more science than fantasy, in a family where anyone who was not an engineer was a mathematician. Math major in college with a heavy sprinkling of science and engineering courses—later I worked as a software designer in a university research lab. No, I never was afraid of science. 

But here are a few things that do cause me concern.

Misuse of technology  I've loved computers since paper tape. I think technology is wonderful. The Industrial Revolution was wonderful, too, but it had a dark side. It's foolish to believe the advances in computing, medicine, and agriculture, for example, can be safely accepted without serious environmental, ethical, and social considerations. So yes, I'm scared of science unbounded.

Science politics It doesn't take long working in the field to realize that scientific research is as plagued by prejudice, good ol' boy networks, and partisan politics as anywhere. It doesn't matter how good your research and reasoning are, if you run afoul of accepted doctrines, they may never see the light of day, and you're not likely to get funding. This is nothing new, having been around as long as science itself has, but it still scares me. If the work of Ignaz Semmelweis had not been ignored because it contradicted established tenets, much suffering and innumerable deaths would have been prevented. I'm afraid of missing important breakthroughs and making dangerous mistakes.

Science-as-religion  Science is a wonderful servant but a terrible master and a worse deity. There are many people, usually professing themselves to be atheists, whose devotion to Science displays all the characteristics of the religious fervor they despise. "But what we profess is the truth," they may object. Q.E.D. Science fanaticism scares me as much as any other—maybe more so, since it's a fundamentalist faith that's flying under the radar.

Science isn't my friend. It's much too powerful and overarching to be friendly. It may be one of the greatest tools we have, but it's more like a chainsaw than a friendly nextdoor neighbor.

Global warming or “climate change” as the cool kids call it IS REAL. Anyone who tells you it’s not real is not a smart person and probably should not be dressing themselves or caring for children.

Once again skating past the gratuitous insults, I have to say that if Fowler thinks the objection people have with the current climate change ideology is "it's not real," then he's not listening very well. Sincere and serious issues that I have heard include: 

• Questions about the reliability of the computer models used to predict the future—especially from those of us who have seen how badly computer models have sometimes performed in other areas
• Questions about how much of the change is due to man-made causes and how much is part of a natural cycle
• Questions about the efficacy, sustainability, and social consequences of any actions we might take to ameliorate the situation—especially from those of us old enough to have lived through the time when the worry was global cooling, and it was seriously proposed that we might improve the situation by spreading sun-absorbing dirt on the ice caps
• Concerns that the issue has become less science and more religion, with those who venture to question the orthodox creed suffering ad hominem attacks and the full force of science politics as mentioned above

To be clear: I don't question climate change. I do have serious objections to using straw-man arguments and insulting language instead of listening carefully to those with whom we disagree and responding calmly and rationally.