How Progressives Cherry-Pick Science They Like from Mona Charen at National Review

Science, however, to be respected, must be purely the search for truth. The organizers of this “March for Science” — by acknowledging that their demonstration is modeled on the Women’s March — are contributing to the politicization of science, exactly what true upholders of science should be at pains to avoid.

A true “march for science” might tackle problems like the “replication crisis” or “confirmation bias.”

It’s a vanity of the Left that they stand for science, “fact-based” policy, and sweet reason as opposed to conservatives, who support superstition, “alternative facts,” and denial. Jeffrey Anderson, an associate professor of radiology and bioengineering at the University of Utah, explained to the Times that he would fly to D.C. for the march because of what he regards as “the wholesale disregard of truth and fact by the president and his close advisers. Their devaluing evidence and the scientific method, is so extreme that I can’t be silent.”

Now, where is the acknowledgment that there is plenty of hostility to science among progressives? Who objects to nuclear power (despite its potential to combat global warming)? Who rejects evidence of male/female brain differences? Who stands in the way of genetically modified organisms — but also argues that children should be hormonally and surgically modified if they say that they are of a different “gender” from the sex listed on their birth certificate?

When progressives are ready to admit that they sometimes cherry-pick the science they like and disregard the science that confounds their worldview, they will have taken a key first step toward the scientific method.

print