https://www.salon.com/2019/04/28/democracy-has-a-problem-with-science/
Democracy has a problem with science*As populist leaders stoke rage and
rejection of elitism, they also throw out objectivity and the value of
expertise*
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Michael J. Thompson <https://www.salon.com/writer/michael-j-thompson> • Gregory
R. Smulewicz-Zucker
<https://www.salon.com/writer/gregory-r-smulewicz-zucker> April 28, 2019
2:00PM (UTC) This essay is adapted from "Anti-Science and the Assault on
Democracy: Defending Reason in a Free Society
<https://www.amazon.com/Anti-Science-Assault-Democracy-Defending-Society/dp/1633884740/?tag=tkazmtk-20>,"
by Michael J. Thompson and Gregory R. Smulewicz-Zucker, published by
Prometheus Books.

In August 2018, the recently elected populist government in Italy passed an
amendment that startled scientifically-minded citizens in the country. The
amendment suspended the law that requires parents to show proof of
vaccinations for their children entering school, claiming that, in the
words of Matteo Salvini, Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister, they “are useless
and in many cases dangerous, if not harmful.” More recently, the
anti-vaccine movement has penetrated even deeper into the United States,
with an outbreak of measles spreading in several highly populated centers
in the country. Add to this the stubborn persistence of climate-change
denial, and even new beliefs about the earth being flat, and it does not
take us long to see that modern democracies are having a problem with
science. What it is important to see in these trends is that this rise in
anti-science attitudes is also corrosive to modern democracy as well.

What is so troubling about these events, beyond their obvious public health
implications, is what it indicates about the growth of anti-science
world-views in modern democracies. A crescendo of anti-science attitudes
has been gaining steam in recent decades leading to a cultural and
political environment where adherence to basic standards of truth,
evidence, reasoned argument and agreement have all but collapsed. From the
stubborn denial of climate change, to the rejection of findings by natural
and social scientists, we seem to be entering not only a “post-truth”
environment, but more dangerously, an “anti-science” climate where modern,
liberal democracy itself is under threat. It gives aid to the enemies of
modern democracy and to the impulses of a reactionary populism bent on
nationalist and ethic superiority.

The relationship of modern democracy and science is an intimate one.
Centuries ago during the Renaissance, the re-emergence of scientific ideas
were aimed at cracking open the encrusted forms of traditional authority
that held sway. Science was able to test and, in so doing, to question the
authority of the Church, theological doctrines, as well as political
authority. Science fed a new vision of democracy as one based on reasoned
citizens, using argument and debate to shape their common lives together.
The Enlightenment cemented the foundations of this modern conception of
democracy where human beings were first becoming viewed as universal
bearers of rights and reason could be employed for the public good. Science
and modern democracy, it was understood, share certain basic ways of
thinking: the idea that reasons are universal, in the sense that they apply
to everyone; the idea that we should be skeptical of received ideas about
the world that makes claims to truth; the idea that our ideas about the
world should evolve as new evidence emerges; and the idea that we find
these truths through participating in a community of others who searching
for what is correct and true. All of these are features that science and
modern democracy share with one another. Together they constitute a culture
of political reason that should be seen as a standard for our political
institutions and the culture of our citizenship.

The entwinement of science and democracy informed and strengthened the idea
of human rights, of universal political and moral principles, and ideas
about pluralism and equality. It rooted our political institutions in a
rationalist, objective framework where reasoned argument and debate would
be the core nucleus of political change. It also informed citizens’
movements, from the labor movement to the civil rights and feminist
movements, to question the ingrained prejudices and authority of their
time. Social divisions based on race, class and gender that once rested on
false ideas about biology and tradition soon revealed their intellectual
bankruptcy.

But in recent years, the emergence of anti-science attitudes has led to a
devolution of democratic mindsets and to a populist — and perhaps more
sinister — openness to submitting to authority. The modern democratic mind
was cultivated by the ethos of modern science. Its openness to new ideas
based on evidence, its skepticism of traditional authority, and its
penchant for universal, rational principles in law and morality remade the
modern world. But anti-science attitudes are remaking this mindset. Now, a
resentful backlash against “elites” masks the entrance of a cynicism about
reason. In place of reflective thought and reasoned debate, we have the
expression of emotion and rage. The individual, now weakened by decades of
economic inequality, social anxiety, a loss of personal direction amid
technological complexity, now reaches out for an external authority that
can grant clarity and strength. In place of questioning authority, we now
seek out its comforts. This can take the form of anti-establishment
political leaders, internet “influencers,” or the soothing hum of
tradition, ethnic identity or religious orthodoxy.
One source of this condition has been the war on science from conservative
political corners. Historically, science was a means, especially in the
decades that followed World War II, to unmask abuses of corporate power.
From Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring*” *to questioning the science on
nicotine in the tobacco industry to the impact of fossil fuel and other
industries in the destruction of the environment, it became imperative for
economic and corporate elites to cultivate a hyper-skepticism about science
– a hyper-skepticism that would be pushed to outright cynicism. If
corporate power was to be maintained, then the critical use of science had
to be side-lined, if not totally eliminated. Hence, legislation passed to ban
the funding or facilitating of the social scientific study of gun violence
<https://www.salon.com/2013/01/07/five_federal_policies_on_guns_you%E2%80%99ve_never_heard_of/>.


Another source of our current anti-science culture has been the resurgence
of tradition and traditional belief systems that proliferate in times of
economic and social distress. As the world becomes increasingly complex,
there has been a movement inward, back to forms of traditional belief
systems that grant the believer psychological comfort. Science, for these
people, is the purview of elites, “know-it-alls” who in, their view, really
know nothing even as they insist that others must change the way they live
their lives. Anti-science now takes on a political valence that meshes with
populism: with the emotional embrace of simplicity, “common sense,” instead
of complex analysis and thought.

Here is where things become particularly dangerous: for now we have
precarious cocktail of populist politics and anti-science attitudes that
threatens to reshape modern democratic societies. As populist leaders stoke
rage and rejection of elitism, they also throw out the value of expertise
and the requirements of logic, objectivity and reason. We can see this
happening now in the United States, with the current administration’s
attack on institutions that rest on these values, from science, to
regulatory agencies, the law courts and the press. As social insecurities
rise due to widening gaps of inequality, technological unemployment, so too
has anxiety, stress and rage. This new reactionary mix of anti-science and
populism will not merely reshape modern democracy, it rather looks like it
is regressing it to a more primitive state where emotion leads to the
celebration of authority and the yearning for strong, decisive (read
irrational) leadership.

In our ever more technological society, science has bizarrely become
divorced from its anchor in the principles and procedures that first
animated the thinkers of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment.
The Internet, itself a product of the progress of science, was initially
hailed for the promise that it would democratize knowledge. On the
contrary, it has become a tool for, at best, the increasing isolation of
individuals and, at worst, the spread of disinformation. Those who are not
using their smartphones to escape the daily grind in a video game or to
binge watch a TV show use them to forge communities with people across the
globe who share their insular beliefs. Such forces pervert our capacity to
exchange ideas and debate with others upon which vibrant democratic life is
premised.

The Scientific Revolution provided the catalyst for a questioning of belief
and dogma that, during the Enlightenment, developed into a project that
questioned all forms of authority that were indefensible when submitted to
the light of reason. Today, the progressive impulse toward skepticism has
been replaced by a hollow skepticism. The great clarion call of the German
Enlightenment philosopher, Immanuel Kant, to have the courage to use your
own reason has been perverted. Those who wish to turn people against
science and reason – from the populist politician to the anonymous Internet
troll – urge their audiences to question everything as a mask for
encouragement to reinforce dogmatism and petty bigotries. Abandoned is that
central commitment to the universality of reason. Skepticism, which in
modernity was grounded in scientific method, is promulgated only to devour
itself.

What the right-wing provocateur and the postmodernist university lecturer
share is the rejection of establishing rational grounds for belief and
policy. The right has never made any secret of its attachment to the
authority of established tradition. Ironically, in the abandonment of the
attachment to reason, the left forces itself into a position where it
appeals to its own folk wisdom and truisms from which it risks never
extricating itself. Across the globe, right wing populists have risen to
power, while many on the left call for their own brand of populism. Both
claim to know the authentic will of some quasi-mythical “people”. The
extremes meet. Indeed, as the poet Matthew Arnold once observed, ignorant
armies clash at night. In this we see the feverish gnawing away of the very
foundations of our already fragile democracy.

What can be done? Enlightenment thinkers could take some comfort in the
stubbornness of reason and that good ideas eventually find receptive minds.
Our situation is direr as our modern pollutants destroy the planet and once
defeated ancient diseases reemerge to kill people. We cannot afford the
luxury of another dark age.

There is hope as more and more people demand solutions to climate change.
As we write this, in the United Kingdom, people are rightly taking to the
streets. Activism is invaluable. Yet, even if necessity compels us to
address climate change or an outbreak of disease, the illness of the mind
that bred these problems requires the ever more dogged reclamation of
reason as a political resource. In the United States, the candidates for
the Democratic Party’s nomination for President are committing to
overturning the Trump administration’s regressive abandonment of climate
change as an issue. They have a good chance to defeat Trump. Still,
democracy’s problem with science runs deeper than merely correcting policy
missteps. Hostility to science has become too deeply embedded in our
culture. And, hostility to science breeds hostility to democracy.

The defense of democracy against its populist perversion will, at least in
part, necessitate reclaiming the ideas that made the modern democratic
impulse possible. We have pointed to the important role played by the
methods, principles, and practices of scientific inquiry in inspiring
resistance to accepted belief and authority and its inherent
egalitarianism. Without these, not only will a perverted conception of
democracy continue to have a science problem, but, in addition, a perverted
democracy will lead to the greater endangering our planet and our health.
Radical action is not enough on its own. What is necessary is a *rationally
grounded *radicalism. Moral outrage at the way political and corporate
elites have turned a blind eye to the environmental crises of our time is a
good starting point. Yet, it will ultimately be empty if it is not grounded
in a renewed commitment to reason.

At the same time, we should guard against a dogmatic belief that a
hyper-rationalism is the solution to all of our political ills. This is why
we have emphasized the anti-authoritarian principles that undergird science
over the naïve view that technology – a product of science – alone can
yield progress. Fetishizing technology, as we have indicated, can itself
wreak violence on the environment and subvert democracy. Silicon Valley
elites, such as Elon Musk, have acquired a celebrated status as potential
defenders of science. Yet, this is to confuse the production of
technological innovations with a principled commitment to science. We have,
for instance, witnessed the disastrous effects that the absence of
accountability on the part of technocratic elites, like Mark Zuckerberg or
Peter Theil, has had on our democracy. Yet, science, as a self-critical
practice that questions authority on rational grounds can provide
inspiration for questioning the status these elites have acquired. A truly
democratic culture, founded on the challenge scientific reason poses to
authority, can challenge this new oligarchy and renew our democracy.

The challenge we face is daunting. It will require activism and policy
reform. We cannot eradicate irrationalism and the threat it poses to
society and nature. We can, however, resist the extent to which it has
become embedded in our society. Yet, Galileo faced greater odds when he
challenged the authority of the Church. But we have greater resources at
our disposal than Galileo, and we must make use of them.

# # #

Michael J. Thompson is Professor of Political Theory at William Paterson
University and Gregory Smulewicz-Zucker is a PhD candidate in Political
Science at Rutgers University. Both are editors of a new volume, "Anti-Science
and the Assault on Democracy: Defending Reason in a Free Society
<https://www.amazon.com/Anti-Science-Assault-Democracy-Defending-Society/dp/1633884740/?tag=tkazmtk-20>"
(New York: Prometheus Books, 2018), from which this essay is adapted.