Unscientific America: Mooney & Kirshenbaum reviewed in BMJ

Review of the Week

Trust me, I’m a scientist

David Colquhoun, professor of pharmacology, University College London

Unscientific America sounds like a fascinating topic, not least because the book is a follow-up from Mooney’s The Republican War on Science.  It is written entirely from a US perspective (the USA sequenced the genome and invented the internet, apparently unaided).  It’s reported that 46 percent of Americans believe that the earth is less than 10,000 years old.  That’s certainly cause for alarm and Mooney & Kirshenbaum are certainly alarmed.  They think that the public needs to be educated in science.  They identify the obvious problems, evolution, climate change and quackery and ask what can be done.  The problem is that they propose no good solutions, and some bad ones.   Their aims are worthy but sometimes the book reads like  an over-long and somewhat condescending whine about why science and scientists are not sufficiently appreciated.

I simply don’t think that it’s true that the public are not interested in science, nor that they can’t understand it at a level that is sufficient to be useful.  It’s true that they have been let down badly by some sections of the media.  Think particularly of the “great MMR hoax”¹.  The disastrous fall in vaccination is more attributable to talk show presenters and air-headed celebrities than to lack of interest from the public.  People are systematically deceived by anti-vaxers, climate change denialists, vitamin pill salesmen and a horde of crackpot alternative therapists.

There is one problem that Mooney & Kirshenbaum don’t talk about at all, yet it seems to me to be one of the biggest problems in science communication.  It isn’t lack of interest by the public, nor even lack of understanding, but lack of trust.  The tendency of real science to indulge in hyperbolic self-promotion is one reason for the lack of trust.  Sometimes this descends into outright dishonesty^2,3.  That is a tendency that is promoted by government and funding agencies by their insistence on imposing silly performance measures.  The public is quite sensible enough to take with a pinch of salt the almost daily announcements of “cancer cures” that emanate from university press offices.

On the face of it, one should be encouraged that ‘public engagement in science’ is the mode du jour.  It isn’t quite that simple though.  Only too often, universities regard public engagement as a branch of their own PR machine⁴. They even instruct you about what tone of voice to use when talking publicly. 

One reason why scientists need to talk to people outside the lab is precisely to counteract this tide of nonsense from PR people, who are paid to deceive.  The problem for academics is usually time.  We already do three jobs, teaching, research and coping with HR bollocks.  How can we find time for a fourth job?  That’s not easy, especially for the best researchers (those that do research themselves, not just lead a team).  Mooney & Kirshenbaum suggest that the solution is to create a “cadre of communication and outreach experts”.  I don’t think this would work.  They would, by and large, be outsiders, writing uncritical paeans, dictated by big name scientists.  A new cadre of PR hangers-on does not sound like a great idea. A better, and very much cheaper, solution would be to provide a course in free blogging software and we’ll do it ourselves.

The two chapters that I looked forward to reading, on religion and on “The bloggers cannot save us”, proved deeply disappointing.  The authors are firmly in the camp of what Richard Dawkins called the “Neville Chamberlain school of evolutionists&rdquo.;  They maintain “if the goal is to create an America more friendly to science and reason, the combativeness of the New Atheists is strongly counterproductive”.  They are particularly critical of  P.Z. Myers⁵, the University of Minnesota  developmental biologist who is splendidly clear in his views. Of the communion wafer, he famously said “It’s a frackin’ cracker”. But he, and Dawkins, are right.  When it comes to young earth creationists we have a war on our hands, and nowhere more than in the USA.  What’s more it’s a winnable war.  Mooney & Kirshenbaum are all for appeasement, but appeasement won’t work.  It might please the more moderate wings of the church, but they already believe in evolution and are regarded by fundamentalists as being just as big an enemy as Myers and Dawkins.  And, one must ask, who has done best at getting a wide public readership?  P.Z Myers’ blog, Pharyngula, has up to two million page views a month. Dawkins’ book  The God Delusion has sold three million copies.  In comparison the bland and often rather condescending corporate science web sites get tiny numbers of hits.

In Europe in general, and the UK in particular, young earth creationists are not the major problem that they are in the USA, despite being supported  by Tony Blair⁶.  Perhaps the nearest analogy in Europe is the threat to reason from various sorts of crackpot medicine.    The appeasers are widespread.  The Royal Colleges and the Department of Health are at the forefront of the Neville Chamberlain approach.  But appeasement hasn’t worked there either.  What has worked is the revelation that university courses are teaching that “amethysts emit high yin energy”⁷. Or, in a lecture on herbal approaches for patients with cancer, “Legally, you cannot claim to cure cancer.  This is not a problem because: ‘we treat people, not diseases’ “⁸.  This is shocking stuff but it has not been unearthed by the corporate media, but by bloggers.

I think Mooney and Kirshenbaum have it all wrong.  They favour corporate communications, which are written by people outside science and which easily become mere PR machines for individuals and institutions.   Such blogs are rarely popular and at their worst they threaten the honesty of science.  More and more individual scientists have found that they can write their own blog.  It costs next to nothing and you can say what you think.  A few clicks and the world can read what you have to say.   Forget corporate communications.  Just do it yourself.  It’s fun.  And think of the money you’d save for doing science if the PR people were just fired.

(1)   Goldacre, B. The media’s MMR hoax. 2008 http://www.badscience.net/2008/08/the-medias-mmr-hoax/

(2)   PLoS One. Ghostwriting documents now fully available on PLoS Medicine website. 21-8-2009 http://speakingofmedicine.plos.org/2009/08/21/ghostwriting-documents-now-fully-available-on-plos-medicine-website/

(3)   Colquhoun, D. Universities Inc. in the UK. The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education: part 2. 6-12-2007 https://www.dcscience.net/?p=193

(4)   Corbyn, Z. Nottingham raises eyebrows over definition of ‘public engagement’. 21-8-2008 http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=403234

(5)   Myers, P. Z. Pharyngula. 2009 http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/

(6)   Pyke, N. Revealed: Blair’s link to schools that take the Creation literally (Independent 13 June 2004). 13-7-2004 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/revealed-blairs-link-to-schools-that-take-the-creation-literally-732032.html

(7)   Colquhoun, D. Westminster University BSc: "amethysts emit high yin energy". 23-4-2008 https://www.dcscience.net/?p=227

(8)   Colquhoun, D. Herbal approaches for patients with cancer. 10-8-2009 https://www.dcscience.net/?p=2043