Yves here. This is the sort of article that drives me nuts. It takes an oh-so-reasonable tone while being an exercise in stereotypes. And then it defaults to the Obama formula, that every problem can be solved with better propaganda, when the issues with science (or more accurately, The Science) are not likely to be so easily remedied.
First, the Trump attacks on the funding of major universities was not mainly about gutting science. That was a by-product. It was a campaign against ideological enemies, the promoters of wokeness. These institutions are also Democratic party strongholds. The huge adminisphere and capital spending bloat, whose increase in large measure was funded by ever higher levels of student loans, has done nada to improve the caliber of teaching and research. But it has greatly increased staffing as well as pay levels (well save for the precariat grad student instructors). So over time, they became a bigger and better heeled core Team Dem cadre.
And for Trump, this was personal. How many academics wrote op eds falling trumpeting Russiagate? The between first and second term lawfare?
And remember, Trump takes glee in making things go boom and does not care about collateral damage, save when instances when checked by someone bigger than he is, like Mr. Market with the Liberation Day tariffs, or Xi with the rare earths row.
Second, Trump gave Musk and his DOGE vandals free rein. They kept messaging, with no or shoddy evidence, that there was fraud and waste everywhere. Curious how they never mentioned the corrupt money pit to rule them all of defense spending. But that drumbeat appealed not just to Trump fans but also the much larger cohort of conservatives and libertarians who hate hate hate government spend and refuse to believe that there are many cases where the programs more than pay for themselves and were completed at lower cost than the private sector could have done.
Third, the author and those who engage in similar sorts of hand-wringing refuse to acknowledge the damage that was done to science as a brand by “Trust the science” during Covid. It’s now associated with dishonest authoritarianism. And positions on it remain polarized. It seems incredible that no one can maintain that the vaccines at a population level were beneficial yet had a very fat tail in terms of serious damage to many individuals, and worse, with very little ability to anticipate who might be at pronounced risk.
This underlying fact set was made much worse by coercion to get vaxxed, on the bogus justification that they would prevent getting Covid and therefore transmission. For instance, many young women, including nurses, were vaccine averse because there were many reports of menstrual irregularity, including cessation, after getting the shots. Any young woman who thought she wanted to have kids and heard credible accounts like that would be leery. Yet even after two med school profs started collecting reports and were shocked at the response rate, the medical establishment pooh poohed there concerns rather than investigating, with patronizing remarks like, “Women often have irregular periods, particularly when they are upset.”
And there were important issues where the officialdom was too lazy and stoopid to make an effective case. Start with “Masks don’t work.” Really? Why not take an anti-masker to factory that produces toxic chemicals, and ask them not to wear a mask there. It’s trivial to dismiss the “Masks don’t work” contention, and then work through what it takes for masks to work in medical contagion setting (above all, wearing them properly and consistently, which was the real issue).
Fourth, and this overlaps with the third point, the image of science has been severely tarnished by abuses in the medical industry, and the skepticism hardened and expanded as a result of Covid orthodoxy enforcement. For instance, one was a Sandernista whose father was killed by his doctors. She ran a leading tech-heavy auto/space industry supplier, refused to get vaxxed but masked and stayed pretty isolated. Another colleague here, a Brit, has been a uni prof on two continents in technology field, and refused to take any vaccines.
There has been effectively no accountability for deaths and serious harm at the hands of knowing abusers in suits and lab coats. Were there any prominent figures in the medical or science community calling for Richard Sackler to be prosecuted and receive a multiple-lifetimes sentence? Why is killing thousands and ruining lives in the tens of thousands for profit less heinous than, say, a rape-murder? How about Vioxx? I’m sure readers can add to this hall of shame. Yet there is consternation over the Cult of Saint Luigi for his vigilante action over another device for death by profit in the medical sector?
In other words, this piece assumes that right wing hostility to “science” which seems mainly to medical science for profit, can be solved by messaging. The real problem is elite corruption and the failure of those at the top to hold bad actors and idiots in their ranks to account. And this failure to punish undeniable, welfare-wrecking abuses goes back, and includes the offensive failure to even make a serious attempt at prosecuting bank and financial firm execs after the crisis. No one was even litigated into penury. So if you can nearly destroy the world economy for fun and profit, why get fussed about a little death and injury?
When this sort of murder for money is made clear in the form of a Harry Lime in a movie, it’s easy to deplore. But how in elite organizations have been witnesses or enablers and said nothing out of inertia or fear of career cost? It’s not just the Mafia that observes the code of omerta.
In other words, the anti-science types have grievances. The fact that they may be misdirected does not make them less real.
By Paul Sutter, a cosmologist at Johns Hopkins University and author of “Rescuing Science: Restoring Trust in an Age of Doubt.” Originally published at Undark
t’s not quite burning-scientists-at-the-stake bad, but it’s close — or at least feels that way. President Donald Trump’s administration is openly waging war against universities, closing independent science review panels, funding fewer grants, and shutting down or raising concerns about the closure of important centers of government research (even though in some cases, they’re probably not supposed to). The evidence is now clear that the modern American structure of science can no longer survive as an apolitical entity that enjoys consistent, bipartisan support. Science is now suffering a generational catastrophe, not just in terms of funding, but in terms of political and public support.
Ever since World War II and the stunning success of the Manhattan Project, the United States government has poured money into universities through numerous competitive federal grant programs for the purposes of advancing basic research science. This had led to the American scientific system becoming the envy of the world, and the creation of innumerable technological marvels — not to mention significant boosts to our present-day wealth. Only large government agencies have the stomach for the kind of persistent, long-term thinking that it takes to turn fundamental research into enablers of economic prosperity.
That era is over — and the only chance for survival is to adapt. What does that mean?
In the short term, scientists and institutions will likely need to acclimate to a persistent feast-or-famine funding cycle. According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, levels of confidence in scientists among Republican voters are still far below pre-pandemic levels, despite a recent small uptick. And while Democrats in Congress seem more likely to fight to maintain research funding, GOP lawmakers have publicly expressed little interest in preserving science as a national institution even as some have raised concerns more locally.
As such, the odds that the sort of consistent, decade-over-decade support once enjoyed by American institutional science might soon be restored are vanishingly small, at least in the near term. We will see fewer big-science achievements, like the launch of fancy new telescopes, or the development of new climate-friendly technologies. And with fewer new grants being awarded, even the smaller, less splashy but crucially important incremental advances unfolding across the academic landscape will wither, as scientists everywhere scrounge for fewer available opportunities.
Researchers will also need to learn to swallow their pride and engage with Republican leadership — including Trump’s most die-hard MAGA loyalists. That won’t likely be easy, given that Republican political and popular leaders have levied several criticisms against modern science and academic institutions. They have decried, for example, the lack of conservative voices in academia; the intrusion of scientists into policy discussions; and persistently weak justificationsfor scientific endeavors, among other complaints.
Those criticisms may be tough for researchers to hear, but they are also valid. For too long, research fraud and junk science have gone unchecked. We also don’t do a great job of communicating our results to the public, and we are too often averse to exploratory risk for the sake of securing funding. As long as the scientific community ignores these very real problems, it will only work to serve the arguments of our harshest critics. There will always be those who seek to destroy science, of course. But we can effectively blunt anti-science rhetoric if we are willing to admit and address these persistent problems within the research enterprise.
Success on that front will also require scientists to radically revamp their messaging to the public — which in many cases means actually talking to the public. After all, despite creeping distrust within certain factions of the political right in recent years, most people enjoy and support science. That recent Pew Research Center poll, for example, found that 76 percent of Americans are confident that scientists do act in the best interests of the public.
That should be deeply comforting, even in these troubled times, given that it’s difficult to get three-quarters of Americans to agree on a salad dressing.
But trust in science doesn’t necessarily translate to vociferous support for funding, especially when many of those same Americans are struggling to pay their mortgages or rent. In times of economic pain, perhaps science can be viewed as an extravagance rather than a necessity. And that’s what makes the Republican retreat from science under Trump such a potent force — one that scientists everywhere will need to confront and engage with head-on, with new approaches to messaging.
Traditional arguments about financial returns, technological advancements, and unlocking the wonders of the natural universe are now ringing hollow, in large part because science doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s one facet of a wider and finite economic pie that comprises largely public funds. If scientists don’t learn to speak to the societal needs of the moment, they risk compounding losses in cultural relevancy and public support.
The good news is that new strategies within the research ranks are already being explored. We’ve known for some time that political and cultural values play a large role in support for science, and that speaking across ideological lines, rather than exclusively within them, is vital.
In past years researchers have launched pilot studies, for example, seeking new ways to effectively reach skeptics — especially around hot-button issues. One study, for example, used a video compilation of Donald Trump speaking about vaccines, and discovered that exposure to his accumulated remarks was associated with increased vaccine uptake. Earlier research has also shown that trusted messengers like evangelicals and retired members of the military can successfully shift perceptions on climate change. And the liberal think tank New America found that climate messages focused on innovation and energy reforms, rather than protecting the environment, resonated most strongly with conservatives.
All of this suggests that understanding the language, values, and trusted figures within conservative circles will be key for scientists going forward. Otherwise, the value of their work risks both public and political indifference. We can no longer assume that conservatives will blindly support science, or that they’ll come to our lectures and museums.
Instead, we have to redouble our efforts. We have to meet them where they are with a message that connects to their deeply held beliefs and values, to convince them that what we’re doing as scientists is worth it.
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I don’t distrust science. After the last 6 years, I distrust the CDC and the FDA sensing both govt organizations appear to me to be corrupted by big pharma money.
When I’m told “stop questioning” when I know the essence of science is to question then a red flag goes up for me. When I’m told that questioning one person’s statements is the same as “questioning ‘the science’ ™” then another red flag goes up for me. When I’m told “don’t do your own research”, (I’m well versed in reading tech and science papers), another red flag goes up.
In some ways this post is a perfect example of what I’m trying to say. I’ve always been a left-liberal and I had many, many questions. Nothing I was told by the govt science experts made sense to me. This article implies only the T voting MAGA people are skeptics. This post is politicizing science once again. Politicizing science is a huge red flag for me. / ;)
Well said. I join you in this.
It was the incredible level of censorship of any questioning of the sacred “vaccines” that did it for me. Two Drs discussing a peer reviewed paper. Censored on YT. Kirsch, Malone, and Weinstein. Up for less than a day. FB group of the vax injured. Disappeared overnight.
You only need to do this if you can’t stand the truth.
To this day no one in the vax industry will debate Kirsch even though he will put a bag of $$ in escrow. It appears they are afraid they will lose.
“This underlying fact set was made much worse by coercion to get vaxxed, on the bogus justification that they would prevent getting Covid and therefore transmission. For instance, many young women, including nurses, were vaccine averse because there were many reports of menstrual irregularity, including cessation, after getting the shots. Any young woman who thought she wanted to have kids and heard credible accounts like that would be leery. Yet even after two med school profs started collecting reports and were shocked at the response rate, the medical establishment pooh poohed there concerns rather than investigating, with patronizing remarks like, “Women often have irregular periods, particularly when they are upset.”’
They’re simply “hysterical”
Tour de force, one of the best things you have written recently
I’d say that there has been a lot of intellectual dishonesty floating around since, say, early 2020. Just one observation.
Thanks flora!
I do not understand why our leaders refuse to treat Americans like adults, and just state something like “We’re doing the best we can given the circumstances, and although these are not perfect vaccines for the pandemic, these are the best we can develop in such a short time.” Then a big data dump.
What they chose to do is going to reverberate thru American science and especially healthcare for decades. So stupid. But by then, our leaders were so use to lying to it’s citizens about everything that this became their default go-to method I guess.
riffing on your point, “also require scientists to radically revamp their messaging to the public — which in many cases means actually talking to the public” which is what St. Fauci was doing daily, though it had little truth in it.
I think most people believe in the scientific method, but what gets called science and published is where people start to get skeptical. There is too much research being funded by parties that have reason to benefit from the outcome of the work they are paying for, and people know this even if they don’t know the details of who’s actually writing the checks.
On top of that there are cases of crazy fraud that go unnoticed for years – like the faked Beta-Amyloid data in Alzheimer’s research.
Or the mistakes that never get fixed – how do you trust the work when people are asleep at the wheel. I recently learned that the Recommended Dietary Allowance for Vit D of 600 IU was incorrectly calculated originally. The mistake was caught and published in 2014, but 21 years later the RDA is still 600 IU per day, yet the corrected value would be 8,895 IU per day… that’s a radical departure.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4210929/
Thank you! And I thought my 5000 IU daily dose was more than enough.
NC has the best commentariat.
To readers, the first few paragraphs are worth the time. Money quote from this section:
“The correct interpretation of the lower prediction limit is that 97.5% of study averages are predicted to have values exceeding this limit. This is essentially different from the IOM’s conclusion that 97.5% of individuals will have values exceeding the lower prediction limit.”
This is a profound error in interpretation of the statistics. I think it’s similar to Terry Flynn’s point that you need to know the variance as well as the mean when interpreting poll data.
We’re basically reaping the harvest of 50 years of soft nepotism at this point.
The article I linked posits that tenure track professors who had parents with graduate level degrees had a socioeconomic leg up, but other advantages those parents could have provided were social network effects (Knowing academic peers who would be willing to work as an advisor) as well as untaught skills (Here’s what decision makers are actually looking for when writing a grant proposal), or even institutional benefits (Legacy admissions and tuition assistance for parents’ children going to the same school as them.)
This is not to say all current professors are the product of nepotism, but getting a tenure track slot is highly competitive, and the competition is far from being fair and fully meritocratic. There are definitely professionals and academics today who should not have their job, because their politicking and ability to network edged out others who were more hardworking or competent.
Even if Paul Sutter is correct that messaging is important, it’s a lot easier to talk to friends and family and at least convince them how whatever scientific and medical work one does is important and carries positive impact than to convince strangers. If those who were professors were far less than 25x more likely than the general population to have parents with a PhD, they would already have a larger support base.
One other real issue was making sure people understood the differences between various types of masks. The “masks is masks” attitude by much of the disease control establishment caused needless strife within the masking community and rendered much of the effort on masking ineffective by clouding the statistics and allowing a lot of mask wearers to nonetheless catch and spread covid.
Hopefully this is something we will do much better on in the next pandemic.
Next pandemic??? You know something we don”t???/s
You doubt Billy G’s word? This is video is 2 years old, and the date pegged for the start is 2025. Might be off by one year. / ;)
From Redacted, utube, ~13+ minutes.
2025. It’s starting, Bill Gates announces the next pandemic date and outbreak location | Redacted
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk9Nd4uhJQg
What? Too cynical? / ;)
once “science”, which used to be shorthand for the search for understanding how the world around us works, became “Science” – an authoriarian voice from on high for secular types who think the increate is hocus pocus but still need daddy to tell them what to do – the game was over. if we in the western world can’t separate science from faith, we’re cooked.
Perhaps the single incident most damaging to the reputation of science was the summer 2021 change in messaging about mass gatherings. The messaging from health professionals and scientists flipped from Don’t Gather Outside to Racism is the Real Pandemic.
I think the biggest hit was to climate science. The conclusion drawn by many: climate change is another fake justification for authoritarianism.
My confidence in climate science dropped from near certainty to maybe the 90% level, and my belief that actions taken to combat climate change would genuinely be in the public interest went negative. For me the trigger was not the BLM protests but the flipflop on masks. I never believed the initial lie that they did not work. Public health professionals propagating a lie that threatened the lives of myself and my family is unforgivable.
The pandemic response did for the reputation of scientists what the Great Financial Crisis did for the reputation of bankers. Perp walks or no trust. It will take a generation.
OP – Article + Yves’ Intro – ignores the deeper background. Decades of GOP propaganda (FOX + Think Tanks) created Trump’s Mob long before Trump descended from Heaven on the Golden Escalator in 2016.
The GOP’s Culture War strategy was [always/mostly] aimed at voters with little or no college education; it included an anti-egghead component, amplifying the natural resentment rooted in the income and status differential between college graduates and others.
After the Clintons peeled off some Wall Street money, Western Extractive Industry donors shouldered more of the costs of the GOP’s network of Think Tanks. Those Donors stood to lose $Billions if Government actually took Global Warming seriously, so they spent $Millions to undermine the science and the scientists. Al Gore became the poster child ‘Science Hippie’, out of touch with Real Americans; Oil/Gas/Coal get [s]elected President in 2000.
McCain & Romney pretended that they cared about AGW, but the GOP base had moved beyond that. The Tea Party mob required successively larger doses of Outrage to keep themselves happily mad; by 2016, the Mob was ready for something louder than dog whistling, and Trump gave it to them, good and hard. Facts were for Losers; Science was for Muslim Commies like Obama.
Of course, Yves isn’t wrong about the failings of our Institutions of Science. Regulatory Capture has always distorted Governments’ attempts to harness Science for the public good. American Academia got fat & happy, and therefore lazy. Humans often succumb to corrupt influences. Financialization undermined everything, including Science and Medicine (see: Big Pharma). The Democratic Party abandoned Labor, and their Technocrats ran the Government for the benefit of Zillionaires, with a little gloss of Liberal Social Policy to make it all seem better than the open viciousness of GOP rule.
We went too long without a Real War to force us to focus on Reality. (Ugh…)
Democrats – and ‘Liberal’ Media – reacted to the ‘success’ of FOX ‘news’ by mirroring their style, becoming more dogmatic, ‘canceling’ people who weren’t ‘politically correct’. Reasonable people were shocked by the depth of Obama Derangement Syndrome displayed by many on the Right, then fell into TDS (of course, Trump’s anti-social tendencies make that easy…).
When Covid came along, our Institutions of Science and Medicine reacted imperfectly; Trump’s Mob reacted stupidly, rejecting ‘good’ science along with the ‘bad’. Democrats over-reacted to /that/, doubling down with ‘Follow the Science’, forgetting that ‘Science’ doesn’t work that way. ‘Science’ is always about successive approximations, not some granite set of Facts.
Still, the Right Wing Noise Machine IS a very real thing; they had lotsa fun (and made lotsa money!) picking apart the various failings and imperfections of the scientific and medical responses to Covid, making sure that “Trump supporters distrust Science”.
IMO, it’s not ‘wrong’ to suggest that “We need ways to reach them”, though it does sound gob-smackingly naive in the current social-political environment. OTOH, it /is/ exactly what Democrats/Liberals have been moaning for /decades/ now, while continuing to lecture working-class voters about ‘Science’…
Not a USian but I wonder if this isn’t one of a series of rods that progressives have made for their own backs. They have done a huge amount to undermine the validity of science as a field of study (most famous scientists of course are white and male so can having nothing to say), by casting doubt on the very concept of truth, and by insisting, for example, that universities teach students that gender differences are purely in the mind. But while they were playing silly games for political and careerist reasons, their enemies judged that if they now started kicking the whole structure down, no-one would mind. I wonder if they are right.
I don’t think the idea that all of this happened because scientists weren’t paying attention to the interests of the public holds water. Scientists have never really cared about anything except for their own particular field of study. Some, like pure mathematicians, make a perverse kind of virtue out of it. That’s always been true, and it didn’t stop the US from becoming a world leader in science and research and holding that position for many decades.
I think the more fundamental problems are structural. As Yves points out, universities have become less and less accessible to regular people over time, and turned into bastions of elite privilege as a result. That puts them on the front lines of the class war, and makes them a political target. I’m pretty sure that woke culture (at least the American version, involving performative virtue-signalling and ruthless social pressure to conform) is a product of this as well. I’m willing to bet that if there was still a strong free or low-fee public university system in America, or even just some of the larger states, we wouldn’t be seeing this problem to anything like the same degree.
If you want the broader American population to support science, make it easier for them to attend university. Get them invested by giving them a stake and some personal ownership.
IMHO, the greatest impediment to low/no cost upper education is the Pentagon recruiting office.
As Pres Eisenhower warned:
” Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocation, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet in holding scientific discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
A most pertinent quote; and the how-to manual for what came after was James Burnham’s ‘The Managerial Revolution’, in 1941.
Covid definitely shook my faith in the science infrastructure. I discovered how big money influences all levels: grants, gatekeeping publishing of research journals, and references for jobs in academia.
While there are great scientists, universities have turned into what Gabriel Rockhill terms the “marketplace of ideas”. Instead of truth being the goal, researchers want to succeed in a kind of marketplace – being published, referenced, and having a secure income. Until you have tenure (which is very hard to get now), you need to play ball and follow the unwritten rules. There’s plenty of examples of scientists who published that a money-making treatment doesn’t work or does more harm than good, then are essentially blacklisted.
Add to that factors behind the Reproducibility Crisis. While the very hard sciences are harder to fake, there can be many options in statistical analysis, and scientists pick the best one to get the result they want, to have significant p-values. This isn’t exactly lying, just fudging, but it is one example of what goes into the “publish or perish” atmosphere. In addition, private companies can run as many experiments as they want privately and only publish the ones that give the result they want.
While RFK Jr is controversial, I admire his desire to try to clean up the system. All the opinion hit pieces are more of a sign big money is concerned.
Science has lots of problems, and the closer they are connected to moneyed interests, the worse.
The sad problem is that there are too many scientists chasing too few funds for an overly financialized economy. NSF grants are about the same as they were 20 years ago, but now a professor needs 3-5, each producing multiple papers within two years to generate the next round and to support a few grad students and a technician. And inflation in costs in scientific endeavors in the West has been rising faster than grant size – my personal anecdotal observation. So more expensive students – a US grad student (who mostly takes classes, spending maybe 30% time on research the grant requires) loaded costs are ~60k per year or ~240k for a three-year 500k grant that admin takes 54% – a grant likely split with co-investigators (teams are more likely to get funded).
Success rates are ~10% until you are well established, late in your career, which means you need to write 10 grants (each taking several weeks of weekends and nights) – its just not sustainable.
And how many science adjacent jobs are available for those students? Most end up in finance or starbucks. real motivation there.
Note, there is a very different dynamic in China where papers I have reviewed have massively improved in quality in the last decades – but all their leaders are engineers (applied science) and US leaders are lawyers (and not sure how to characterize the current Eurocrat leaders?).
Yves is right, most of this adversity to science stems from medicine.. Obviously honesty and sincerity should go a long way while manipulation and profit seeking cause mistrust. So much money to be made in these vaccines, Moderna being a good examp[le, sadly poor policy and communications. I find looking back, its really hard for people to take a middle ground, where understanding at the poulation levels these vaccines statistacally were good, while also understanding at the personal level poor results happened. Its really hard for people to wrap their heads around the macro picture where hamful effects were less likely from the jab than the harmful outcomes for those caught ill by the pandemic, without a vaccination. So in grand total taking the vaccines was a better option or gamble if you will. People just became for or against and never really took a more nuanced aproach. Still the same. Too much good old money on the line to be upfront and honest. Sad. Also what ive found with many cohorts, their lack of a science education or exposure leaves them unable to understand the scientific method, where absolute truths dont exist , and theorys offer best explanations for nature or phenomenons, always ready to be falsified with better explanations for the data or problem that can be repeated while offerring dependable predicabilities. . Unfortunately often science is indistinguishable from magic or influencers chanting their latest bunch of nonsense concurred through anecodotes. especially when those claims concur with biased belifs. In a way maybe we are going backwards socially, accelerated through social media’s targetieneg. I have a dear friend dying from colon cancer stage 4, he says hes feeling better with a keto diet and supplements, doctors only want money, their confidense in the latest oncology treatments and targeted radiation therapies, in his opinion are no differrent then the covid vaccine claims. It is so sad. His decisions to forgoe medical standard of care are supported by his friends and family as well , for same reasons. Again he has no formal education, comes from a religous background, and has identified with many right wing talking points. At heart hes the sweetest guy youd ever meet. Not a bad bone in his body. But easily manipulated, and believes whole heartedly in the American exceptionalism creed. MAGA, and quite frankly has very little understanding of government and political economy, science or history, while his ability to read and write is probably ninth grade level.. He is 65. It is so difficult for me to politely change his mind on anything. Obviously I have begged him to listen to MD Anderson oncologists and the other medical advice he hand waves away. I feel like I live in a clown show at every level.