Politicized science

Politicized science is considered a problem by people on all parts of the political spectrum, yet they can rarely agree on whether a particular scientific issue has become politicized. All parties to the dispute agree that when political power, as of a government or church, is used to prevent scientific matters from being investigated or discussed objectively, this constitutes politicization. Even scientific bodies have been known to suppress results or theories which contradict the scientific mainstream.

• Most Americans take pride in our traditions of free speech, freedom of the press and open scientific inquiry and debate. However, if research is done in a biased way, it is not science, it is propaganda. When science becomes politicized, with unspoken hidden agendas, it loses its value as a trusted source of objective information to inform our country’s discourse and decisions. It becomes a political tool, a weapon to manipulate an unsuspecting public. [1]

Sallie Baliunas wrote

• The existence of nonscientific motives does not tell us which side is right; only careful consideration of the evidence can do that.

In the English-speaking world, conservatives and liberals agree that the Galileo and Lamarck episodes were both examples of politicization. The church was wrong to suppress Galileo's arguments against the perfect spherical shape of the moon (he saw proof of mountains) or against the idea that all heavenly bodies revolve around the Earth (he discovered the Jovian satellites). The Soviet Union was wrong to enshrine Lamarckism as official evolutionary doctrine.

Controversial examples

• Science journals were biased against DDT. Philip Abelson, editor of Science informed Dr. Thomas Jukes that Science would never publish any article on DDT that was not antagonistic. [2]

Education

What needs to happen and what happens are often entirely different. It's common for there to be a disconnect between a leading theory and the evidence.

What science education needs most of all is to help students tell the difference between a theory which relies on evidence, and one that does not. The Greenhouse Theory of global warming is a case in point. Students are being told that the evidence proves the theory; but they are not being told about contrary evidence. For example, they are told that a peninsula extending from Antarctica toward the equator is warming - but they are not told about the other 98% of Antarctica, which is cooling. Or they are shown the Hockey Stick graph but not told about the Medieval Warming and the Little Ice Age. And speaking of ice ages, what do the Greenhouse advocates think caused the interglacial periods between them?

That is politicized science, not science.

A theory which is good enough to take and keep the lead must be able to withstand any amount of scrutiny from an interested student. Merely asserting that "the evidence leans toward evolution" is not enough. We must present this evidence, along with all counter-evidence. Same goes for the global warming issue.

We cannot trust evolution advocates to be any more objective than Greenhouse Theory advocates are. Too many examples exist of scientists and teachers losing their positions or having their funding cut, for pointing out contrary evidence.

That is not science.

Science is an enterprise which requires openness and questioning. When a scientific organization takes up politics and advocates for one side of a scientific issue, it declares the theoretical and scientific dialogue closed. It smothers science.

Also See

ClimateGate