Dan Rather, of all people, has written a surprising and pointed editorial at Mashable pointing out that skepticism about scientific consensus isn’t a GOP problem but an issue that criss-crosses the aisle with a helpful shove from the news media. I’d say that it also shows how little we value real leadership in our electoral candidates and real information in our news.
We are, Rather says, a nation that gets suckered by the media’s presenting of false balance, a consistent problem with how we report news. We are, he suggests, a nation of people who would rather hear a soothing, falsely comforting equivocation to deal with our anxieties than accept the risks that, say, come with the benefits of vaccines.
And he’s right. But that’s not going to change anything.
In what has become an almost archetypal example of how easily we follow what we want to hear and see and how the press plays right along, Rather writes:
In a TV news story over science, what if the charlatan in the video is more charismatic and camera-friendly than the person backed by the preponderance of science? That was the case in the infamous 60 Minutes piece about a link between vaccines and autism, which featured a now thoroughly discredited British doctor with a smooth accent.
That British doctor with the “smooth accent” is, of course, Andrew Wakefield.
And those shenanigans are the reason we heard false information, once again, yet again, again and again, from not one but three GOP presidential candidates in the last debate.
These are men who are supposed to have the intellectual wherewithal to be leaders of our nation, the guts to make tough decisions that directly weigh benefits against risk.
Yet among them, they became instantly noncommittal over vaccines, repeating garbage about “too much, too soon” and “autism epidemics” instead of doing what they should have done: show that they have the backbone to look at a situation, recognize how the benefits far outweigh any risks, and come down on the side of the evidence.
You know, like a leader should do.
Presidential candidates (presumably) want to convince you that they have what it takes to lead, that they can take difficult problems in hand and sift them until they reach the right decision. But these candidates can’t even come down on the side of the evidence for the most effective and safest life-saving public health success in human history.
What does that augur for how they’ll deal with issues with genuine grey areas?
Rather didn’t confine his comments only to what is to date the premier anti-science debacle of this century. He also called out Bernie Sanders, saying that the press should ask him about his criticisms of GMOs. He mentions climate change. And he asks, “Why has science become so political?”
The answer’s obvious. It’s always been a political and social tool. We wield scientific discovery like a weapon and a reward, allowing access to those with the most, withholding it from those with the least, using it to manipulate emotions, gain clicks, and gather followers, to push buttons and engender fear so that we can assuage it—or sell you something for it.
From the virulent eugenicists of the 20th century to the climate deniers today, people have used exaggerated and cherry-picked claims about science to get people’s money, votes, or passionate adherence to their cause. It is a fantastic tool for their purposes because it makes passionate people feel like they're being rational.
Science is a rational creation of the human mind, a way of studying and understanding the world empirically. But we are not robots or, sadly, even Mr. Spock. While scientific facts exist, what we do with them is all too human.
Unlike a religion with a deity imposing rules, science is a great democratizer in its way: It allows people to do what they want with the facts. No one who denies the safety and efficacy of vaccines, for example, is under threat of eternal damnation from science.
The opposite pole to science is politics, the manifestation of the human collective, swayed by our fears, confirmation biases, a pretty face, and the occasional smooth British accent. And as we demonstrate again and again, we’re not the sort of species to let facts get in the way of our opinions. Especially not during an election season.
Sorry, Dan.
