Both Conservative & Liberal Extremists Have Issues with Science

Julia Butterfly Hill

How soon we forget” is a term that I must sadly apply to myself. I’ve been living in the bible belt for five years now, so the political dangers of the “religious right” are front and center in my thoughts most of the time. I have lost a couple of friends here because I’ve found that I am intolerant of people that are intolerant of muslims, atheists, gays, democrats, etc…) You get my point.

I was, however, reminded recently that scientific ignorance is abundant on the “extreme left” as well.

I wanted to slap myself in the head as it was brought to my attention recently.

In the town where I lived in Northern California (I am not making any of this up), there were three industries … Timber … Dairy … and Pot. We had people living in trees - Julia “Butterfly” Hill - among many others. Pot farms (Grows) throughout the Redwoods, clear cuttung of “old growth”, and palm readers on just about every corner. A lot of the people just plain stunk because they never showered. Kids didn’t graduate high school, not because of gang indoctrination and/or fear of violence, but because they were often too stoned to care.

Activists protest the timber industry because they scar the earth and yet they themselves have ill-maintained diesel generators scattered throughout the forest (to maintain their illegal pot grows) that leak pollutants in to the ground.

This statement from Mr.Kevin Folta is what got me thinking about this subject:

“One of the ironies here is that biotech is so staunchly opposed by the political left, evolution by the political right. I have people in my classes that rally against GMO crops but then say how stupid people are to believe creation.

Both positions come from scientific illiteracy and just fall depending on what is politically expedient.”

and then more clarification on the subject from Mr. Michael Suttkus:

“Yup, every semester when I teach about recombinant DNA technology there’s at least and handful of students that will irrationally discard facts and reason in favor of belief. Especially when thisdiscussion goes to GE (genetically engineered) food, science goes out the window.

“Tamper with our food? HOW DARE YOU PLAY GOD?”

I’ve run into this a lot, too. Both sides of the US political spectrum have their pet anti-science idiocies. It isn’t really about one side being smarter or better for science than the other, but about which particular form of anti-science they favor.

Conservatives tend to favor religious nonsense, creationism (including ID), healing prayer, historical revisionism (The US was founded on Christianity, is great, has always been great, how dare you suggest we did bad things!), etc.

The liberals favor healing crystals and other new-age nonsense, mother nature is good fallacies (and anti-tech as a result), complaints that science is just another way of knowing, no better than the others” and encouraging students to create theories that are valid for their paradigm”

(I really love that one, apparently 9.8 m/s^2 is optional, if it doesn’t work for you, change it!).

Both sides love “mysterious ancients” stuff (atlantis, pyramid nonsense, etc ) and UFOs, but have different flavors.

For instance, Conservative UFOs tend to be full of cattle-mutilating, human-raping, evil scientist aliens. Meanwhile, liberal UFOs are full of alien benefactors spouting helpful things like, “Protect the environment” and “Avoid GE foods!” And everybody loves astrology. (Carl Sagan once quipped that one of the surest problems with the UFO encounter stories was how dumb the aliens seemed. Not once did they tell us anything useful that we didn’t already know, but, you know, AFTER we found out CFCs were destroying the ozone layer, THEN the aliens started to tell us about it all the time.)

These aren’t hard and fast rules, of course. Humans never fall into hard categories, but they are trends I see. These folks are typically politically left-of-center and certainly understand the scientific data concerning climatechange and otherissues, I’d be surprised if that was true. They’re politically left of center and HAVE ACCCEPTED the climate change conclusions proffered by sciencists, but they don’t really understand the data.

That’s the real problem here, the central core of the problem in all the anti-science issues in this country. You have two groups of common people, those who accept the scientific story not because they understand the data and evidence, but because it is acceptable to their worldview and authorities tell them so, and another group of people who reject the science because THEIR authorities tell them differently.

The public does not know and does not care about the data, evidendce and facts. The average person on the street who accepts evolution would be hard pressed to name a single transitional fossil (with the possible exception of Archaeopteryx and a vague refence to {insert foreign sounding name} Man) and has no clue about the genetic data. Even if evolution wins the day, it won’t be the victory of the knowledgeable over the ignorant, but the ignorant who agree with us over the other ignorant.

We have GOT to make science something the public actually cares about. We have GOT to make scientists heroes again, something kids dream about growing up to become. We have GOT to make knowledge sexy. Otherwise we’re just doomed to keep fighting these same battles over and over again. “

Well said.

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