16.
Why are Politicians so Scientifically Illiterate?
A United States
policy that could find no other option, he suggested, was one of “indolent
short-term expediency.”
—Barbara Tuchman (Stillwell and the American Experience in China 1911-1945)
Elected
officials in general are scientifically illiterate for two reasons: first, they
often are either businessmen or–women, or attorneys, and neither one of these
professions requires or encourages scientific literacy; and, second, real scientists
and serious teachers, those who are most likely to be quite literate, typically
have neither the taste for, nor the resources to seek, elected public office.
In a pluralistic society such as ours, both reasons are fairly legitimate.
Later on in
this chapter I’ll come back to the business community and its scientific
literacy because this subject is a rich one to use in exploring the
interrelationships between science, technology, national security, and economic
health. The legal profession, however, has little or no reason to be
scientifically literate except in cases involving modern forensics or
industries that are heavily dependent on technology. Lawyers and businessmen
can, however, and often do, hire their scientific literacy in the form of
consultants and expert witnesses, either of which may be quite literate, but
neither of which is particularly constrained by the unwritten laws of real
science. In other words, consultants and expert witnesses don’t necessarily do science; instead, they are skilled consumers and users of science.
In a previous
chapter I defined “scientific literacy” and explored its several applications.
In this chapter I’m actually going to address the problems of science
education, but not necessarily what we typically think of as “science
education” in the public school sense. Instead, I will focus on what we might
call “deep” education, that is, the kind that changes the way we view the
world. For example, we might claim that having a vague sense of what a molecule
is, and perhaps even being able to define the term, counts as being at least
somewhat scientifically literate. After all, you have a word and an idea in
your mind and you’re not completely baffled when you hear the word spoken on
television or read it in the newspaper. Furthermore, you might actually be able
to use this word in a complete sentence, such as “I wonder whether the
molecules in these pills will make me sick if I swallow them with good Irish
whiskey,” or “I wonder whether some of the molecules in that bag of lawn
chemicals will kill my cat.” These particular sentences reveal an incipient
scientific-type curiosity, whereas the sentence “Don’t bother me with all that
talk about molecules, just give me something to cure this headache,” although
also a complete sentence, nevertheless expresses a naïveté typical of the
scientifically illiterate.
The deep
education is revealed, however, when you incorporate the idea of a molecule
into your daily decision making, regardless of whether the decisions are simple
easy ones (whether to put sugar or artificial sweetener on your cereal) or more
long term and difficult ones (whether to stop taking your prescribed medicine
because of a newspaper report on associated side effects in a small number of
cases). In the first instance, you feel comfortable making the simple decision
because you also have a third choice, namely neither, and you don’t know anyone
who’s actually been hurt by either sugar or artificial sweetener, at least in
single doses. Your molecular decision may be influenced by your weight on any
particular day, by your weight on previous days, on your desired weight, or on
the feeling of having achieved a goal relative to weight control. Although the
decision to use sugar or substitute is a pretty trivial one in scientific
terms, when that decision becomes part of an overall engagement with matters of
diet and weight control, especially for sound and healthy reasons, then the
decision indicates a fairly sophisticated engagement with biology as a science,
albeit at a highly personal level. And, if you actually read labels on food
products and understand most of what they contain, you’re well on your way
toward becoming scientifically literate.
The second
instance, namely, the decision to stop taking a prescription drug, is more
troublesome because you really don’t have much control over many of the factors
that went into your possession of this supply of molecules. You did not write
the prescription; your doctor wrote it based on observations that you might
know but probably don’t completely understand. You don’t have any information
beyond what’s written in the newspaper about the serious side effects cases or
from various web sites, some of them provided by the pharmaceutical industry
and others provided by kooks. In the best of all worlds you quit taking the
medicine and don’t notice much difference in your health because the medicine
wasn’t having any dramatic effects anyway (this actually was the case with me
and a drug prescribed for joint pain). In the worst of all worlds you start worrying
about the potential side effects and can’t seem to get a straight answer from
your doctor or HMO. So it becomes a relief when the company that manufactures
this drug pulls it from the market. The deep decision has been made for you.
The decisions
that I’ve called “deep” are ones that involve both a breadth of scientific
knowledge and a propensity, derived from an understanding of science as a way
of knowing, to evaluate evidence supporting an assertion and to think in
comparative terms. Deep decisions accept the fundamental nature of science,
namely its dependence on observations, the independence of those observations
from your desires or beliefs, and the fact that to be relevant, observations
must function to test a testable assertion. Such decisions also accept the idea
of probability and the fact of statistical variation instead of demanding
certainty. In the case of the sugar substitute decision, you may well have
shown a high level of scientific literacy if you engaged in all the label
reading and diet design activities intended to keep you healthy and actually
knew why you were doing these acts. In addition, such literacy probably primed
you to acquire further scientific knowledge and understanding if needed, e.g.,
when faced with a significant environmental issue affecting your property
values.
Furthermore,
if you’re convinced that your dietary awareness, exercise, and label reading
keeps your weight and cholesterol under control, then you’re sort of a walking
experiment but with a sample size of one and no control group with which to
compare yourself. Nevertheless, you have a testable assertion regarding your
own body and through your activity based on scientific literacy you are testing
that assertion about weight and blood chemistry, and probably also self-esteem.
Regardless of the sample size and lack of control group, you are making
decisions that affect yourself and perhaps others, such as family members,
using knowledge about the natural world, and using that knowledge in a rational
way consistent with scientific practice.
The alternate
version of this assertion, that if you consume large quantities of certain
kinds of molecules you will become heavier and less healthy (as revealed by a
bathroom scale and the blood work at annual physical exam time), is also well
within your power to test, but your decision not to test it is an example of
one based on a meaningful relationship between desire and nature. In other
words, nature will allow you to fulfill your desire, provided you interact with
nature in a way suggested by scientific knowledge about how nature—your
body—works.
As indicated
in a previous chapter, testable assertions are the hallmark of science, and
I’ll expand on this scientific property within the context of political action
later in this chapter. But for the moment, we should remember that in the
political arena, assertions are testable only within an historical framework.
In other words, politics is an historical discipline with its own rules of
evidence that may not match those of proximal or normal science, i.e., the kind
of science that does experiments with material amenable to experimentation.
Within the realm of history, you can’t really do “experiments,” as we properly
define the term; you can only assess the validity of some assertion by looking
back on what actually happened when you acted as if that assertion was true.
There is no
better example of this kind of historical assertion testing than the Iraq war
that began with the invasion of that nation by a group of other nations, led
mostly by the United States, in 2003. The assertion that Iraqis were developing,
or had, and intended to use “weapons of mass destruction,” the assertion that
Iraqis would quickly adopt an American-style democracy once their dictator was
overthrown, and the assertion that Iraq would be a business-friendly working
environment shortly after hostilities ceased, all were tested and shown to be
false. But unlike a real experiment, say involving bacterial metabolism, you
can’t go back and start over with Iraq.
The vast
majority of all politicians rely on public approval to sustain their
employment. In addition, once in office, the trappings of power can become
quite seductive. These two facets of political life are among the main reasons
that politicians are so scientifically illiterate, or at least act as if they
are. Nevertheless, most if not all positions occupied by politicians also
involve major responsibilities, compliance with various laws, ceremonial
activities, and nowadays, public scrutiny of religious beliefs and behaviors
demonstrating “faith.” Nobody who professes to be an atheist should be so
stupid as to spend money running for public office in the United States of
America, no matter how lowly that office might be or how qualified the
individual. Elected membership on the Lancaster County, Nebraska, Weed Control
Authority comes immediately to mind; no self-proclaimed secular humanists need
apply. Thus politicians are scientifically illiterate, or act as if they are,
because the demands of public office, the need for public approval, and the
constant scrutiny of their faith-based behavior, all job-related phenomena that
work to make such literacy a liability instead of the asset it should be.
Besides the
factors of responsibility, approval, and scrutiny, it is also important to
remember that mobs want answers and solutions, not questions and problems, from
their leaders. In general, science tends to produce more questions and problems
than answers and solutions. This tendency derives from the fundamental nature
of science as an activity. Elsewhere in this book I use the metaphor of an
island of understanding in a sea of ignorance to explain why science produces
more problems than solutions. Remember that as an island grows in size
(increase in understanding), its shoreline (the boundary between understanding
and ignorance) also grows. All the questions and problems lie along this
boundary. In addition, to continue with the metaphor, the larger an island
gets, the more geographically diverse it tends to become. If that geographic
diversity involves mountains, then we have a high perch from which to observe
the sea of ignorance. Routinely such observation shows that sea to be much
larger than we imagined when we were only down on our hands and knees in the
sand studying nature at the [metaphorical] shore.
The familiar
case of New Orleans vs. Hurricane Katrina beautifully illustrates all these
points about breadth of knowledge, comparative thinking, observations, history,
and the basic properties of science. Breadth of knowledge is perhaps the most
important factor that should have been considered in the political decisions
involving the Mississippi Delta ecology. Thus a broadly educated politician
would never simply ask how much money an ecological project—for example, a
system of levees and an artificial river (the New Orleans shipping
channel)—costs, or how much money the public is willing to spend on such a
project. Instead, as a minimum, a broadly educated politician considers
history, socio-economic conditions, the probability of disaster, the quality of
expertise consulted, whether or not that expertise is in agreement with other
expertise from diverse sources, the nature of observations, the process of
analysis, and whether the process itself has obvious flaws or internal contradictions.
In other words, to really assess the adequacy of New Orleans levees, one would
have to study the Mississippi Delta using approaches that would be quite
familiar to any evolutionary biologist.
Research over
the past half century, i.e., activity increasing both the size of our island of
understanding and the length of its shoreline boundary with the sea of
ignorance, clearly revealed (produced) more questions and problems about the
Mississippi Delta region than answers and solutions. Such research involved new
technologies such as satellite imagery, geographic information system software,
and socio-economic analysis, as well as experience derived from study of the
Achafalaya River and its basin using more conventional methods—measurement of
stream flow, sedimentation and erosion rates, pressures on diversion dams and
gates, etc.
Over the
years, the scientific community came to realize that the initial problem and
its solution, namely, keeping water out of New Orleans by building levees, was
actually only a small part of a much larger problem, specifically, long term
management of the interrelationship between a nation’s economy and one of the
world’s largest rivers. This kind of collective activity, in which a truly
massive ecosystem is the primary player at the center of a highly integrated,
far-reaching, transportation and financial network, does not lend itself to
governance by mobs that want answers and solutions, not questions and problems,
from their leaders. Instead, this kind of system requires almost Jeffersonian
dignity, patience, foresight, and breadth, traits that don’t survive well in
our Third Millennium media-driven electioneering environment.
Such a broad
education, and its use in a public arena, is therefore a lot, indeed probably
too much, to ask of any modern politician. But then, of course, it is the job
of any newspaper reporter halfway qualified for his or her job to ask the right
questions of elected officials in order to reveal their breadth of knowledge,
in situations involving natural phenomena, or, in the best of all worlds, to
inspire those politicians to acquire knowledge, wisdom, and some decent honest
advisers who are not just sycophants. Sadly, perhaps for reasons that are
deeply embedded in the human DNA, as a general rule we are not patient with
careful analysis, complex interactions between elements of nature, varying
degrees of probability, and leaders who are honest about the chances that
disaster will befall us. Instead, we seem to admire leaders who are strong
advocates of actions based on our beliefs and desires, who inspire us to be
courageous, and who tend to simplify a complex universe down to issues and
explanations we can understand. And leaders who can convince us we are in
danger, and seem to be fighting that danger in an obvious way, are the ones we
seem to admire the most. None of this typical interaction between a population
and its chosen leaders promotes scientific literacy or honesty about the
relationship between nature and people.
I do not claim
that scientists, because they are scientists, are more honest or broadly
educated than politicians. In the realm of science, however, the honesty system
operates much more strongly and rapidly than in the realm of politics, mainly
because this system typically involves anonymous review of scientific work
before that work is made public, and it does not involve public
decision-making. If you are doing experiments on the sex life of some tiny
worm, and try to publish your results, i.e., make them public, then some well-educated
scientist will scrutinize your methods, including your experimental design,
your statistical analysis, your rationale for doing the project in the first
place, your interpretations of the results, the extent to which you have taken
existing knowledge into account, and even the quality of your writing. All this
review does not necessarily make you an honest person, but it does tend to pick
up flaws in your thinking and mistakes in your actions. But if you go to a
cocktail party filled with attorneys and elected city officials, the main
question you are likely to be asked about this research is: “Why is this kind
of stuff important?” The question really
means: “Why are you wasting time and money, maybe even tax money, on this kind
of activity, and why do you seem to be so interested in sex?”
There may be
two thousand good reasons why you are studying the sex life of obscure worms,
but these reasons probably involve the fundamental nature of science itself.
These worms could, potentially, become a model system for the study of hormone
action at the cellular level, thus serving to help explain developmental
anomalies in humans, livestock, and companion animals. The worms might be
extra-ordinarily beautiful creatures under the microscope, thus quite attractive
to students who in turn could easily become internationally renowned scholars
studying some global human affliction but who remember fondly their carefree
undergrad days back in the lab when all they had to talk about was worm sex.
The worms’ reproductive biology could easily shed light on the origin of sex
itself, or the evolution of pheromones, both subjects of enormous interest to
the scientific community. Pheromone action, as you might suspect, also could be
of substantial interest to the cosmetics industry. When a scientist hears that
another scientist is studying the sex life of obscure worms, then all of the
possibilities mentioned in this paragraph usually come to mind because
scientists typically understand how science itself works on a grand scale.
Politicians, however, like their constituencies, rarely get past the issues of
time, money (especially tax money), and sex, although sometimes, if not often,
there is a hidden disdain for people who would spend their lives studying
microscopic creatures with no immediate economic importance.
In our example
of the worms, politicians’ focus on time, money, sex, and utility is not
necessarily stupid, evil, or dangerous, although it has the potential for being
all three. In the previous paragraph, I’ve actually revealed all the reasons
why in order to remain economically competitive in a technologically
competitive world, any nation needs to have a strong, healthy, broad, and
active scientific enterprise. Flourishing
scientific activity, sustained largely by curiosity about the natural world,
breeds scientists, models, new ways of studying nature, and new applications of
existing technology. In other words, it is the human resources that are of prime importance to a highly developed
nation, not the discoveries themselves. Given enough human resources engaged in
research, techniques for studying heretofore mysterious aspects of nature will
be developed and the discoveries will be made. Furthermore, breadth of research
interest tends to produce transferable technologies, a critical factor in
sustaining a technology-based economy.
The laser
(light amplification by stimulated emission) is perhaps the best example of
this phenomenon from 20th Century science in the United States. A
brief history of this technological development can be found on the Bell Labs
web site (www.belllabs.com/history/laser/), but in essence, two
scientists—Arthur L. Schawlow and Charles H. Townes—developed the technology
from research that began in the 1940s. Schawlow was a researcher at Bell Labs,
and Townes was a consultant to the Bell Labs research enterprise. These
scientists’ primary interest at the time was molecular structure, and the laser
was intended to be a device to help them pursue their research in this area.
The commercial
development of this technology, along with its rapid spread throughout almost
all aspects of modern American life, can be traced to the publication of a
paper entitled Infrared and Optical Masers (in Physical Review, volume 112, pages
1940-1949, published December 15, 1958). You can read this original piece of
science simply by doing a Google® search using the title—Infrared
and Optical Masers—as your search term. Now we have laser pointers in
the classroom, laser surgery in the hospital, laser scanning in the grocery
story, etc. Although the laser may be the most easily understood example of
transferable technology, our daily lives are filled with other cases. And, of
course, science feeds on itself in this regard, with practicing scientists always
looking for new applications for new and existing technologies.
Another
history lesson—actually a rule of human resource development—that politicians
typically fail to understand is the following: Artists often spring quickly, even spontaneously, out of a population,
but scientists do not. Technological advances and economically important
innovations might periodically emerge out of the realm of basic science, but
the “realm of basic science” requires a vastly different cultural milieu than
does the intellectual soup that spawns artists. Any nation that does not
outright suppress or punish artists will end up with a good supply of them, but
to be economically competitive in the Third Millennium, nations need lots of
healthy, authentic, curiosity-directed, scientists and such individuals are not
guaranteed to arise, and become legitimate scientists, by virtue of their own
two hands and a paintbrush.
Nowadays,
science needs physical facilities, computational power, technology, ready
access to information on a global scale, time, and patience. To be economically
competitive in the Third Millennium, a nation does not need a bunch of ignorant
elected officials, afraid of science, afraid of the word “evolution,” and
afraid of anything that seems to support immoral behavior. A nation needs,
instead, a bunch of courageous and intellectually honest people who have the
interpersonal and verbal skills to help educate its citizens on scientific
matters, and especially on the link between economic health and a valid
understanding of how nature operates.
