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This Guy
Like the global warming debate itself, the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Treaty Protocol Pact Civil Union Accord has generated more heat than light. This will surprise no one familiar with science’s virtue-signaling wing known as scientism and its smug, self-righteous star, Bill Nye. Last April’s March For Science helped propel the hysteric in a bowtie to become the face of what its advocates call “science-based policymaking”.
The great conceit of science-based policymaking, of course, is that science can substitute for values. As if tradeoffs are anything less than the very medium in which policymakers operate. And what does science have to say about tradeoffs? Nothing. Consider what Jonathan Newman of the Mises Institute has to say on Neil deGrasse Tyson’s special brand of magic:
Consider these questions, and what sort of approach is appropriate to answer them: What is 17 divided by 3? All else held equal, what are the effects of an increase in demand for blue jeans? Who should I invite to my party? What are the effects of expansionary monetary policy on employment, prices, incomes, production, consumption, and borrowing? How should I treat people?
More than most casual climate observers, progressives take it for granted that anyone donning a white lab coat and reciting the climate rosary is incapable of doctrinal error. In reality, scientists are just like the rest of us: ambitious, jealous, corruptible, political and sexist. But of course they are: to suggest otherwise would unexplainable by science. (One shudders at what our politics will look like when all science is settled.) Is anything more romanticized than the image conjured in the minds of liberals by the words “climate community”? A world where gender is less settled than climate? Where computer models substitute for experimentation? But such is the world that Nye sits atop of.
How long before Nye grows reassured that the climate is actually trans?
Nye’s journey has taken him from a popularizer of science to children to a climate prophet to baby boomer politicians. A promotion? I’m not so sure. But what’s clear is that the climate is a sufficiently complex issue that it easily blurs the lines between science and scientism, allowing low-information voters and other progressives to look at Bill Nye and see Niehls Bohr.
© 2017 David Deeble
Bohr was a theoretical physicist, interested only in how things work. On the other end of the spectrum are men like Thomas Edison, who possessed little desire for fundamental understanding but great consideration for practical applications. Others, like Pasteur, performed basic research with a practical aim. Nye, on the other hand, combines Bohr’s indifference to utility with Edison’s nonexistent desire for fundamental understanding.
Elaborating on my Nye’s Quadrant meme at her blog, climate scientist Judith Curry elaborates on attributes of Nye’s ilk:
- Second order belief – allegiance to consensus. Individual has not done primary research on the relevant topic or has not conducted an independent assessment of the evidence and research.
- Shutting down scientific debate; science as dogma
- Alarmism as a tactic to influence the public debate
- Political activism and advocacy for particular policy solution
- Scientism: a demand that science dictate public policy
Sound familiar? It should: it’s Nye’s patter. In a world where loving science doesn’t quite virtue signal, hence the popularity of I f*cking love science, Bill Nye appears to be the right man at the right time.
Published in Environment
Well, that was not funny at all. Needs work if you’re planning to use it in your routine.
Nice post David, although it’s somehow just kinda “wrong” to include Nye on the same graph with Bohr, Edison & Pasteur, isn’t it?
There is nothing scientific in the statement “the science is settled.”
Then there’s the Mike Chen Quadrant, which adds a very different dimension.
As if science is nothing more than a couple of sad, busted cornflakes.
That’s more like it.
Sound familiar? Yes, Lysenkoism.
I’ve been rereading Richard Rhodes’s excellent history of the Manhattan Project, The Making of the Atomic Bomb. It has reminded me of something I’ve noticed before: no matter how smart scientists are (and I’m talking about real scientists, not pretenders like Bill Nye), as a rule they need to keep their mouths shut on questions of policy. Many of the atomic scientists from that era did brilliant work in developing the atomic bomb, but had naive and unrealistic ideas about how it should be used. Why these scientists imagined that they were qualified to formulate military policy is beyond me. That’s what we have generals for.
Something in the way scientists think makes them prone to utopian visions that have nothing to do with reality. In the modern era we see this sort of thing in the area of climate science. Whatever might be true about climate change, scientists should confine themselves to discovering the facts and reporting them; they have no credibility when it comes to policy, so when they veer into advocacy, I don’t know why anyone listens to them.
It gives you a new appreciation for Captain Kangaroo, doesn’t it?
Very true. I frequently two related attitudes among my fellow scientists—the idea that science is the only reliable source of knowledge (that’s scientism, as David pointed out), and that scientists ought to be the ones to make policy decisions in government. Neither is right.
The first is a logical error. The second is the undemocratic idea of technocracy. Science, properly performed, can give us predictions and ways of understanding aspects of the physical world. It cannot make decisions between right and wrong, and even less to judge between competing interests. In a pluralistic democracy, that is the role of politics. And, contra the proponents of the elite status of expertise like Tom Nichols, even the common, non-expert people do get a say in it.
Zing!
I was just listening a stream the other day with a couple of guys talking about video games and pop culture and the like. One of them mentioned that he had attended the March for Science, and the other remarked how much he admired Nye and Tyson. They both congratulated themselves on relying on science and facts rather some bearded geezer who lives in the sky and wears a bathrobe.
It occurred to me that Nye and Tyson have become the scientistic atheist’s version of Jack Chick.
Nye is not only the physician that scoffs at anyone who eschews blood letting but he owns the leech farm as well.
Are you implying it’s not?
Sexist.
Did you just assume the climate’s gender?
I’ve said it before, but Rachel Dolezal is closer to being a black woman than Caitlyn Jenner is to being a white woman, and if you don’t think so too, you just don’t love science.
Technocratic rule by elites doesn’t seem crazy in the world that scientists live. My Dad is a General Practicioneer in the Medical Sciences and when I asked him how long it takes to see if something works, he says it takes two or three years. I impulsively said, “I want to punch you.”
In social science it takes decades if you are lucky to see if something works. Furthermore, even if you figure out what works. Getting through the democratic process is something else. Additionally, if you are a dictator or a monarch. Getting the government to carry out policies that work is a horse of a different color. Actually, scratch that. Good policy and the politics that can get through good policy aren’t even in the same Order. (As in the classification of animal between class and family)
Scientists just aren’t automatically equipped to think about social policy.
That man stayed in his lane.
What would the traffic on ‘I F*cking Love Science’ be if it were instead called simply ‘I Love Science’?….I would guess about 5% or less, since it would be considered as simply nerdy rather than cool-nerdy.
ST, this is Dave in Mort Sahl mode; maybe getting ready to take on Colbert/Kimmel/Mahr….Watching him take these guys down a peg would be hilarious, no? :-)
My dad used to tell this joke:
This post hits the nail on the head, I couldn’t have said it better.
I’ve spent the last 4 years of my life here in Berkeley working on a PhD in physics. I’ve recently come to the conclusion that I simply can’t finish the degree. Every single person I’ve interacted with in the department, from lowly maintenance man to department chair and Nobel laureates share the set of attributes Judith Curry compiled. The intellectual atmosphere is positively stifling, and your ability to get along in the department as a conservative or libertarian is in direct proportion to your ability to lie about and conceal any dissent. Coupled with dismal academic job prospects no matter how productive or brilliant I am and an increasing interest in what the common folk outside the ivory tower are up to, the hostile environment is reason enough for me to take the consolation Master of Physics and move on to greener pastures. When I can work up the wherewithal, I can make a detailed post elaborating the situation science departments across our leading universities find themselves in— if people are interested!
Interested.
Me, too.
Count me in.
Its the Sesame St game “One of these is not like the others”
A non-Ricochetti friend made the comment that, Nye excepted, the scientists in your diagram are all from previous generations. His concern is that one might get the impression that new scientists are bad, and old scientists are good. In an effort to disprove that idea, I’ll submit three (good, modern) scientists that could substitute for the three in your diagram: Steve Weinberg in the upper left, J. Craig Venter in the upper right, Marc Raibert in the lower right.
Whoa! Stop right there. Academia is not necessarily representative of what a career in physics can be. Things are undoubtedly worse than they were when I was in school but even back then I decided the academy was not for me. There are other career paths that do not include the drawbacks you find at Berkeley. All of my work colleagues are of the conservative or classical liberal bent; there’s not a leftist among them.
Unless you are absolutely set on an academic career, your concerns are misplaced. You just have to get through your thesis. And given that thesis work is fairly solitary, you won’t have to deal with the annoying leftists in your department too much. Can’t say the same for the rest of the residents of Berkeley (or as I refer to it, the Socialist Workers’ Paradise) but I’m confident you can tough it out. After you get your degree, get as far away from the Bay Area as you can.
Somehow I think bill nye the science guy and covfefe are kin.
The problem is, that current practicing scientists aren’t famous. The people who are famous for science, arent scientists. (like Bill Nye)
Its part of the hollowing out of pop-culture. I doubt most people could name a hard science noble laureate from the past 20 years.