The Oil Drum

Brilliant comment about the double standards when it comes to the public "judging" science. Science is science. Funny thing is, "real science" is taken as a liberal conspiracy. Whereas The Bell Curve, et al is just trashy social science posing as "real science" is for a large part taken as accurate! (Well, mostly by racist conservatives, but lets not get off on a tangent).

One thing I'm curious about. People like Steve Sailer, who try to get their name plastered everywhere to spread their anti-racial-mixing/diversity-agenda actually get interviews with (supposedly) reputable scientists like Steven Pinker. These people seethed at the teeth to talk about this stuff, and trust me it's not my problem--I can't help coming across Sailer here there and everywhere, predictably because he uses his lame little website/blog and the turd of a website "VDARE" to promote his shrouding of science in racism, or as it is otherwise known "Scientific race realism". If that's not Orwellian I don't know what is! I like Steven Pinker's work, and am willing to go out on a limb and say that I find some conservative "principles" in generally to be virtuous--although I strongly despise the present incarnation of conservatives as they are represented in Congress by the GOP, the executive branch and in many respects the Judicial branch. And it goes without saying that the present bunch of Democrats are equally so pathetic, just not as highly regressive and backwards thinking as *some* components of the right.

Pinker has actually extended an interview to Sailer! Which is just unbelievable to me... I guess the point Pinker was trying to make is that he, the intelligent conservative scientist, is capable of pissing me off by giving an interview to a gun-toting racist with a bad taste in movies. My questions are the following:

1. Is associating oneself with tacit racism in fact a form of racism?

2. When a scientist does so, is that in fact room to worry about said scientists highly political works of popular science--which almost approach the category of social science in their scope? At least from the perspective of the scientific community, Pinker does begrudgingly acknowledge that there is no merit to "race realism" in his last book "The Blank Slate". He also cites his sources. However, his field "psychology", no matter how many just-so stories he tells himself, is still not up to the tasks of the hard sciences. He doesn't seem to like this, and his broad overriding message is along the lines of "social science listen up to real science here, it is inherently conservative!" I don't know about this, it is a little sketchy--and I'd rather have Richard Dawkins be at the helm of that boat... not one who associates with crypto-racists, like Pinker consciously chooses to do. Pinker and Sailer obviously have different agendas--Pinkers is obviously more honest, and he sincerely wants science to be taken seriously by everyone. But he is tinged by that aspect that completely overrides Sailer--the obsession with "liberals", or probably more appropriately communist, marxists types---who I'm sure they both think is really at the core of every modern liberal. How does science meld with the social sciences? It is bound to sooner or later, and probably has already begun a very slow process of doing so. Pinker might see his role as throwing the first pipe bombs in the social-science/science melding wars. He clearly wants the outcome to have a conservative philosophy--being a conservative scientist. Is this okay? I think not. Pinker, ironically enough, seems to be conducting himself much like Steven Jay Gould did, from the precisely opposite camp! How do we here at TOD, and the scientific community in general, eschew this type of melding of politics and science--when both sides are clearly guilty? And on top of that, when it takes at *least* one federal party to tackle the subject of multiple scientifically diagnosed disasters most likely on our way?

And three is a charm...

3. The problem seems to be in general not scientific, but political. This is the problem, and everyone knows it--that is why Pinker feels comfortable letting his conservatism flail in TBS. If in fact science is inherently political (as seen by the public!) then there either needs to be:

A) A hardcore scientific PR-attack squad on anyone who makes grave errors addressing scientific issues to the broad, general public. I always thought that perhaps an independent organization of "science" which has federal oversight oversights over any opinions expressed by the other branches of government when it comes to bras bones issues of science. Now, don't dismiss this right away! Imagine what this entails. This would be along the lines of the present system, except entirely reversed... This committee could censure the president, or his office, or any other body of the federal or state government when it falsely *uses and abuses* humanity's knowledge of science. Sort of like an ADL for science, which I always have thought is greatly needed. This organization/committee would be highly democratic among the top scientists and scientific institutions in the world--based on the input of all and established by brutal peer-review.

B) This committee would also be established as completely non-partisan, and would specifically "go after" anyone who used science for unwarranted political purposes. The problem here is that even people are "apolitical" still have some political tendencies in the closet...

Still, I think Science Magazine and Nature telling Dubya what could and couldn't come out of his mouth is better than Dubya telling apolitical and honest scientists what they can and cannot say. Imagine!