As usual, disputes over science are not, as it turns out, about science. The Washington Post reports on some interesting research regarding the biases of liberal-to-radical sociology professors regarding evolution, which the Left embraces as unchallengeable dogma when it is used as a cudgel for rhetorically knocking around knuckle-dragging Evangelicals while rejecting it when it comes to questions much more germane to public policy, such as the origins of behavioral differences between men and women.
It is no surprise that “a substantial minority of these scholars are resistant even to the least controversial evolutionary explanations, such as those involving hardwired tastes for certain foods or innate fears of poisonous critters.” The most intense resistance was to questions related to sex.
The Post’s Chris Mooney is eager to assert that this does not establish an equivalency between left-wing anti-science types and so-called climate deniers: “None of this is to say that a few sociologists’ views about evolution can be considered proportionate with global warming denial, in either the volume of those holding the belief or the belief’s consequences. But it does suggest that 100 percent objectivity doesn’t exist on any side of the aisle.”
But surely that is a defective comparison. If volume were the relevant metric, then we’d want to inquire into the beliefs of the general public, not those of academics alone. Comparing the general popular skepticism of global-warming claims with the biases of sociology professors is lopsided. Indeed, one suspects that if we inquired into the views of credentialed climate scientists who are skeptical of the policy prescriptions put forward by global-warming activists, we would see a very different sort of picture. That’s because the global-warming debate is not mainly a debate about science; it is mainly a debate about politics and policy.
At any rate, it seems to me that we should be more concerned, rather than less concerned, about entrenched biases when it comes to academics and intellectuals vs. the general public, inasmuch as the general public tends to harbor some generally loopy beliefs about almost everything. Maybe the guy on the barstool next to you has some fascinating views on climate science, what really happened to JFK, etc. That does not necessarily mean that they are views to be taken seriously.
Another factor that Mr. Mooney does not consider is that the question here is probably as much about turf as it is about ideology. As the evolutionary model of human behavior grows in sophistication and influence, the relatively weak explanations offered by sociology inevitably will be rendered even less relevant than they already are. And, of course, if we were really all deeply committed to the highest intellectual standards, nobody would care very much what even the smartest sociologists think about questions in biology, any more than we care what the top investment bankers think about neurolinguistics or disputes in the field of pre-Columbian archeology. If you are giving special weight to the opinions of highly credentialed experts in fields outside of their areas of expertise, you are not exploring science — you are exploring status. And status is what is at play when a politician says “98 percent of scientists agree with me.”
And the next time somebody tells you that progressives are the ones who really value science and evidence, inquire as to why we’re subsidizing such witch-doctoring pseudoscientific remedies as homeopathy and acupuncture under Obamacare.