Here’s one of the anti science comments dropped off at my place after Charles linked the other night, notice they drag in every bit of kookspiracy about science from eugenics to engineered food, slam science for having no morals, and then characterize some subset of humanity as “parasites”:

The real problem here is that science was once granted great respect and authority and credibility, and threw it all away.

Forget attacking the religious. Science needs to get its squandered credibility back. As soon as it does, the religious people become irrelevant. But as long as science ignores why people are “voting with their feet”, the problem will continue to grow.

All those grand promises science made? Instead of curing disease, we still die - but now we’re alone and without dignity, in a ridiculous little hospital gown, in a cold industrial room. Instead of feeding the world, our food supply is tainted and untrustworthy. Drug company profits are soaring but our drugged kids aren’t thriving. Marriage counseling doesn’t save marriage.

The scientific community likes to claim credit for miracles, but it acts like the unintended consequences arising from those miracles “just happened”. Drug resistant TB? Global warming? Traffic jams? Pollution? Can’t imagine where THOSE came from!

Credibility starts with listening to all the people who are screaming at the top of their lungs that they do not like the decisions being made by “experts” on their behalf.

If people do not want to eat engineered foods, maybe it’s worth actually considering that people have a right to care about what they put in their mouth. The one trying to change the world should always be the one who carries the burden of establishing trust. (I personally changed my mind about whether “food engineering” people could be trusted when someone started adding chemicals to beef, to keep it red even after it goes bad.)

And even when science does seem to know what it’s doing, it seems to be putting all that knowledge and technology to use helping the parasites instead of making the world better. Science likes to pretend it has no moral responsibilities, but let me ask you, are these drugs really safe for kids? Are the economists really helping America stay economically strong? If scientists can’t be expected to provide us with the truth, who can?

Science needs to either stop pretending it has the right to make ethical decisions (for instance, having an opinion on who or what does or does not qualify as “human”), or it needs to start taking that ethical responsibility seriously, and stop arguing OTOH that ethics is somehow outside the realm of science, as if science were merely about gathering data. If science is merely about gathering data, then scientists aren’t qualified to make ethical determinations. If scientists want to be treated as having more clout than ordinary citizens, then they can’t be amoral anymore - they have to understand and accept that the power of science cannot be allowed to do harm.