from the site:
Starts with a Bang
You NEED more science in your politics!
(Yes, YOU!)
Posted by _Ethan_ (http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/author/esiegel/)
on June 14, 2013
“One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you
only if they already agree with you. You do not change people’s minds.”
-Frank Zappa
One of the most difficult things to talk about, for any self-respecting
scientist, is politics. Like all of you, I have my preferences, my opinions,
and my vision for what a better world would look like. I’m also well aware
that if I talked about all of them, there probably wouldn’t be a single one
of you out there who agreed with everything I had to say.
And it would be completely unreasonable to expect you to. After all, our
politics are informed by our experiences, our ideals, and the limited amount
of information we have at our disposal. But there are people out there with
more information than you on pretty much every topic, political or
otherwise. When it comes to those topics, if your political opinions aren’t
informed by not just an expert, but by the consensus of experts in that field,
then your politics cannot be said to be based in science.
And that’s what I want you to consider today.
I like to fancy myself an above-average adult as far as being informed in
general goes, and in particular about a plethora of aspects concerning
science, health, and the environment. But the reality is that — with the sole
exception of physics, astronomy, and cosmology in particular — I am simply
nothing more than a somewhat informed non-professional. Because you know
what I am (and am not) an expert in, you might lend more credence to my
opinions on spaceflight, on superconductivity, or on variable stars than you
would to 99% of people, and that’s reasonable, I suppose. But that’s not my
true area of expertise; there are likely thousands if not tens of thousands
of people worldwide who have more (and better) information than I do about
those topics.
But you might still trust what I have to say.
Why?
It shouldn’t be because you think that I know better than the thousands or
tens of thousands of people whose expertise lies in those particular
sub-fields. I don’t. You should trust me because you think that:
1. I know enough to understand the details of what’s going on, how it’
s happening, and I’ll be able to break it down in an understandable way
for you, but also because
2. You trust that I’m going to inform myself as to what the
scientific consensus is on an issue, and that’s what I’ll present to you as a
scientific truth.
So why is it, then, that we shouldn’t demand that same level of rigor —
when it’s available — when it comes to all of our information?
If we’re talking about an environmental issue such as the acidification of
the oceans, why wouldn’t you immediately wonder what the scientific
consensus among marine biologists or NOAA was?
If we’re talking about the theory of evolution, why would you trust anyone’
s opinion over the consensus of evolutionary biologists?
And if we’re talking about the _origin of the stars, planets, and
galaxies_
(http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2013/06/12/what-is-the-big-bang-all-about/)
in the Universe, why would you dream of trusting anyone other
than theoretical cosmologists, the people who study this in gory detail for
a living?
Yes, there are some people who don’t do this, but the vast majority of you
know that if you want to inform yourself about scientific truths, you need
to go to the body of scientists who study that particular question or field
as their area of expertise. And you don’t want to just pick out a handful
of fringe scientists who disagree with the consensus; if there is a
consensus, that’s what you go with. If the consensus model turns out to be
wrong,
incomplete, or otherwise inaccurate, science will figure it out.
So we want to go with the best that we know when it comes to making
informed policy decisions, right?
If we want a better society, we can’t pick-and-choose when we do this. We
should be listening to the science even when it offends our sensibilities
or preconceptions. And — as I’ve learned the hard way — science does this
all the time.
But so does health and medicine.
I was disappointed, but not surprised, when I did my own research into _the
fluoridation of drinking water_
(http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2013/04/21/weekend-diversion-fluoridated-water-science-scams-and-society/)
and its effect on both dental and medical health, to find that fluoridation
is safe and effective, and also to find that not only did my city fail to
fluoridate our drinking water, we failed by more than a 3-2 margin in
voting.
Here’s the thing that I don’t get. I talked to a doctor I knew and trusted
once, someone who was a practicing M.D. for more than 30 years. Over that
time, this doctor had seen thousands upon thousands of patients, and kept
up impeccably with the latest research and developments in the field. “How
can I apply the latest findings to my practice” was a question this
professional often asked. And while keeping up with the literature, sometimes
there
were articles or studies that suggested that the recommendations of the
CDC — the Center for Disease Control — might not be the optimal
recommendations.
Sometimes those recommendations did actually change over time, most of the
time they didn’t. I asked this doctor if he ever recommended anything
contrary to the CDC’s recommendation for patients in general, and he got very
serious. Under no circumstances, he said, was he or any other M.D. he knew
qualified to even be a member of the CDC, much less challenge their
recommendations. He explained to me what it took to become one of the
professionals
involved with the CDC, and how that would be a lifetime’s worth of work in
and of itself, and that wasn’t how he chose to spend his life. But there
were people who did, and making the CDC recommendations was their job; they
were the experts, not him. Furthermore, he said, any doctor who didn’t
follow the CDC’s recommendations was a doctor who simply wasn’t doing a good
job, and if I cared at all about my own health, public health, and following
medicine’s best practices, I would never frequent or recommend a doctor
who held otherwise.
Now, that doesn’t mean that science and scientific truths should be the
only consideration when it comes to crafting policy. The Earth is getting
warmer, the climate is changing, and humans are the cause: these are
scientific truths. But that doesn’t mean that Al Gore’s cap-and-trade is the
best
policy, or even a legitimate solution. _GMOs are a safe technique for
modifying crops_
(http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2012/12/30/weekend-diversion-my-love-letter-to-winnie-cooper/)
that we eat for food, but that doesn
’t mean that our agricultural system and business/farming practices are
just fine, and that they don’t need to be overhauled. And vaccinations are
not 100% safe, but as far as we understand public health, everyone who doesn’
t have/need a medical exemption should receive the full CDC schedule of
vaccines on time; they save literally tens of thousands of lives per year, and
religious/personal-choice exemptions kill people, period.
More science, please, all the time, even when it disagrees with my own
politics. Because as science learns and as better and more fundamental
scientific truths are revealed, I want that understanding incorporated into my
society’s policies. So should you.
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