cientists in academia don't care too much about social issues. They're
mainly interested in whether government funding for science will increase
or decrease. They are, after all, utterly dependent on and subservient to
the federal government. Thanks mainly to the unhinged hysteria about
President Trump in the press, they're also worried that the reputation
of science will decline. But they shouldn't be.
In a post-election editorial, Jeff Tollefson at Nature mag gives us a nice mixture of conspiracy theories and issues that worry the left. He says that in a poll of Nature readers who answered the phone,
Eighty-six per-cent of the more than 2,000 people who answered the poll said that they favoured Harris, owing to concerns including climate change, public health and the state of US democracy.
I'm not entirely sure what is this “answering the phone” of which Tollefson speaks; maybe it was something B.T., before texting. That barrage of annoying text messages, most of which called me Robert for some inscrutable reason, has slowed a bit since the election. However Nature did it, finding 2,000 people who still answer their phone was quite an achievement.
Nature, of course, is a prominent voice in denying science's role in Covid and in promoting the climate crisis hypothesis, which has produced more computer predictions than actual evidence. It is science's affiliation with big government and its defensiveness about its mistakes, and its willingness to follow fads like DEI, climate change, and gender ideology that have harmed science's reputation. If Trump succeeds, these things will undoubtedly change.
Appearance vs substance
Today the real difference between the two parties is between appearance and substance, pretense and practicality, which began in the days of political correctness. Those in Big Entertainment, where the ability to pretend is at the top of everyone's résumé, remain the most vocal advocates of appearance over substance, but the American news media are not far behind. In my conversations with Democrat voters, their opinion of Trump followed the same pattern, Trump, they'd say, is narcissist, misogynist, racist, sexist, anti-science, and so on—all pejoratives that describe how a person sounds rather than what he does. Republicans more frequently used objective criteria: he stopped the influx of illegal immigrants even without a wall; he cut taxes and boosted the economy; he created peace in the Middle East with the Abraham accords.
This is why Trump's strongest supporters are those who make their living by doing and making things rather than by talking and writing. Of course Democrats also had concrete ideas, like their idea of destroying the Supreme Court by “packing” it with activists, and Harris's threat to apply the capital gains tax to unrealized gains, thereby crashing the stock market and stealing people's retirement funds.
Nature's editorial on Oct 28 also praised the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, which dedicated a trillion dollars in pork to pointless green projects, and promised to start up the printing presses to match.
DEI “at risk”
By contrast, Science mag has been almost sedate and generally has tried to tamp down on partisan rhetoric, maybe taking to heart the suggestions of their readers that they ought to “stick to the science.” They seem mainly worried that RFK Jr might clamp down on fetal cell research and that extramural grants might be shifted to block grants to the states as Project 2025 recommended. To the extent NIH funded creation of the Covid virus, it is clear that some kind of shake-up at NIH is needed, certainly in its leadership but maybe also in how it funds grants. Until the science establishment comes to terms with the role of NIH extramural funding in the deaths of those seven million people who died in the Covid fiasco, its reputation will remain under a cloud.
Another concern is that DEI in science is at risk. DEI, which libertarians and conservatives consider to be the latest incarnation of government-mandated racial discrimination, has thoroughly infested NIH and corrupted the funding process. DEI will undoubtedly be Trump's first target. Its eradication from American life and culture is essential and long overdue.
Please fix the FDA before they kill us
Academia, which revealed itself after the October 7 massacre to be a bastion of anti-semitism, will feel a well justified whack on the tuchus as well. But it's the FDA that really needs reform. They've been approving drugs that neurologists refuse to use because they're so toxic they trade one neurological disorder for another. And they showed with their laxity toward Pfizer that cooperation with big Pharma takes precedence over patient safety at the FDA.
Maybe Trump could create a new government agency dedicated to ensuring that the drugs companies make are safe. He could call it the “Food and Drug Administration.” Oh darn, that name's already taken.
nov 07 2024
