What Happens When a Country or Culture Becomes Science Blind?

May 4, 2016 – It is increasingly clear that the United States will face a fall election with science a potential victim in the outcome. Of course I am talking about two phenomena: a Donald Trump presidency, and a Congress filled with Republican climate-science deniers.

The United States has been the center of the world for scientific discovery and invention throughout the 20th century. But there is another side to America that fears technology and is anti-science. Much of that America has voted in primaries for Mr. Trump, fed lines by the candidate that makes them feel comfortable with their ignorance.

For example:

• Mr. Trump calls climate change a “Chinese-driven hoax.”
• Mr. Trump believes the Environmental Protection Agency hurts business and should be eviscerated.
• Mr. Trump has stated that vaccines cause autism.
• Mr. Trump doesn’t believe Planned Parenthood is evil but nevertheless wants to cut much of the organization’s funding.
• Mr. Trump doesn’t believe in keeping the Affordable Care Act.

For Mr. Trump science is useful as an adjunct to business strategy. No doubt American know how in weapons development will be extolled by him. But even worse Mr. Trump has stated that nuclear weapons should be put in the hands of those the United States currently protects if they don’t pay protection money. That means he will give nuclear weapons technology to countries like Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Japan and non-nuclear European Union nations. So much for nuclear non-proliferation.

What Mr. Trump and his supporter suffer from is science blindness. What is it?

Anti-intellectual thinking that reflects a dumbing down of the general populace. The United States has been particularly susceptible to it in the past. The strong religious freedom fundamental to how America started has never gone away. Yes there are MIT, CalTech, Harvard, Stanford, UCal and other prestigious scientific and technical institutes but through America’s history the anti-science culture has remained strong. Look no further than the anti-evolution mindset that has pulled the plug on science textbooks in many states, and that has led to the teaching of “creation science” in some school districts. The “Monkey Trial“ may date back to the 1920s but don’t kid yourself, anti-Darwin thinking persists.

I’ll give you an illustration. Back in 2014 a young girl in South Carolina noticed that her state with its 50 symbols didn’t have one for a fossil. It had a state bird, flower, tree, gem and even an insect. So she proposed a fossil mammoth because teeth of one had been dug up back on a plantation back in the 1700s, and it represented one of the earliest pieces of evidence in North America for the presence of the now extinct animal. It seemed like a perfect fit for the state. And after all, 43 other states had official symbol fossils. So this Grade 2 student said why not South Carolina and got a member of the legislature to sponsor a bill. Well the anti-evolution, anti-science and religiously imbued crowd turned this request for a state symbol into a raging debate about teaching “Darwinism” in the schools.

A second illustration with far more sinister results is the anti-vaxer movement of which Mr. Trump is a member. Although the science behind vaccinations has been proven over the more than two hundred years since the smallpox vaccine was first given, anti-vaxers have created a movement that defies reason or logic. The smallpox vaccine saved millions in Europe. The polio vaccine ended infantile paralysis. Vaccines for measles, mumps, whooping cough and other diseases continue to save millions of children’s lives every year. And yet there is a palpable anti-vaxer movement afoot shored up by people from my generation who all received publicly administered vaccinations while growing up but have conveniently forgotten about them. Privileged and high income earners from the 1% to the middle class have refused to let their children be vaccinated. It appears to be woefully ignorant of the proven science is a virtue. They have forgotten that complications from measles can lead to many other problems including deadly encephalitis.

Public vaccination policy found in most Developed Nations today is suddenly in peril. The proven science is now seen as a freedom issue. One of Trump’s most devoted followers, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, has claimed the right not to vaccinate is inalienable. This is downright funny since when he was growing up he was a vaccination recipient, a beneficiary of science-based, evidence-based public policy.

The worst non-science that supports the anti-vaxers is the nonsense that came from Dr. Andrew Wakefield, a British gastroenterologist, who in 1998 published research in the esteemed medical journal, Lancet, stating evidence of a causal link between measles vaccine and the increase in incidents of autism. The research was bogus. Wakefield was discredited by his peers. The Lancet retracted his published research, and the good doctor lost his medical license. Now the woefully ignorant may argue conspiracy but Wakefield when faced with peer review could not produce supportable evidence, just the manufactured kind. Despite this the legend lives on in people like Mr. Trump who bandy the non-science as undeniable evidence-based fact.

The consequential link between religion and anti-science in the case of anti-vaxers occurred in Philadelphia in 1991 when two fundamentalist church-operated schools were hit with an outbreak of measles leading to nine deaths in children under their charge. None were ever immunized.

In this second decade of the 21st century, the nation with the science and engineering capacity to put humans on the lunar surface, has indeed seen a failure of reason. Uninformed opinion is replacing factual based evidence and no one more than Mr. Trump is its purveyor. His anti-climate science rants on Twitter are evidence that opinion is the only thing that matters to many of those within the ranks of the Republican Party who have voted for him during the primaries. For most of these folk the Big Bang is fire crackers on the 4th of July. The Earth isn’t 4.5 billion years old because the Holy Bible tells us different. We are not responsible for climate change because the weather is always changing. And ignorance and irrationality have become “badges of honor” supported by people seeking power. That’s why Mr. Trump states he loves the “poorly educated.”

So science blindness, the deliberate effort not to consider evidence, to build suppositions based on opinion, is a disease infecting the United States today. America isn’t alone. Throughout human history there have been episodes of this type of behavior. Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union held back science in that country for decades. The Nazis created Aryan science filled with bogus race theories. Shinto nationalism in Japan led to scientific experiments on Chinese victims that had no research basis. All of these dogmas ultimately came crashing to the ground because it’s hard to build a future inside a bubble of willful ignorance. Let’s hope that America and all other nations choose evidence or belief in addressing the global challenges humanity and the planet face in the 21st century. Otherwise our species is in for a very bumpy ride.