Science without a capital S
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 31: Ways of Seeing
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Robyn Williams
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SCIENCE is one of the few human constructs designed to test its own veracity continuously. There is no point in time at which we all nod, wise men with beards, women with six-figure IQs, and say: ‘That’s settled...next!’ All aspects of scientific enquiry are always under review.
But it’s not as simple as that.
When I was an ABC cub, in the early 1970s, I was regaled by History Men and Counter-Culturists with the view that Science had lost its capital S. Science was, like everything else, conditional, even if we agreed that most of it was considered settled, more or less: the earth is round, dinosaurs are dead and duodenal ulcers are caused by germs, not stress.
Popper did not apply universally. In many fields, not only Freud's, you couldn't do experiments to prove or disprove a theory. Powerful interests, the wise men cautioned, governed research; and if the military-industrial complex didn't like it, it didn't happen.
Accordingly, during the 1970s and ’80s, my colleagues gave science a hard time. I did it in a slightly frivolous manner, running hoaxes and satires. Norman Swan did it by exposing fraud and duplicity. The late Peter Hunt did it by showing how partial the use of scientific knowledge was in the management of forests and mines. Matt Peacock did it by exposing the horrendous effects of asbestos on human health.
Science was another ‘self-perpetuating priesthood’, and to get a fresh idea expressed the old professor had first to die. You might wait for decades. And, finally, in some benighted nations, if the tyrant didn’t like it, the field lapsed: in the 1930s Joseph Stalin had Trofim Lysenko, and crops failed; decades later Thabo Mbeki had Peter Duesberg, and too many people died from AIDS.
We wanted our audience to think twice when authority was wheeled in on its throne to pronounce the infallible truth. The Academy wasn't quite the same as the Vatican, we implied, but there were resemblances. It was often political, always complex.
Such is youth.
The more I saw of the ‘fringe’, the more annoyed I became by their self-seeking, often deeply anti-intellectual intransigence. While the crystal-stroking, herbalist folk in chunky cardies and ponytails (as Mike Carlton notoriously described them) got massively ripped off, so science itself became more self-critical and professional in the best sense. What worried me was the political naivety.
IN THE 1990S and the present century the world changed dramatically. Yes, there were internets and webs, and almost instant and universal communication. This meant that the longevity of scientific falsities shrank. At least, in academia. But science communicators also flourished, freed up by the new willingness of institutions desperate for funds, to maintain profile: they let their boffins speak. Paul Davies, Tim Flannery, Mike Archer, David Suzuki, Jane Goodall, Sylvia Earle, Brian Cox, Stephen Hawking and others became famous. There was plenty of science on TV. It was often over-produced to within a nanometre of its life, but you got the point. It was there.
Science seemed secure, even popular. There were embarrassments, such as the disarray in physics, which couldn’t get its quanta and its relativities in one box, and had to wave red-faced at all that dark stuff – but scientists had a terrific tale to tell about the natural world and were listened to with respect.
By 2007 all this had changed. There was no explosive event, no tipping point that anyone noticed. But the consequences have been enormous. It’s as if a thought bomb went off in Dr Who and half the globe’s brains turned to custard. Governments have wobbled, prime ministers (actual and potential) have fallen and the President of the United States is threatened by the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.
It is another consequence of the new communication technology, in tandem with the old: say anything you like, tell any lies you fancy, and they can have as much currency as the sayings of any old-fashioned sage. Instantly.
Three main areas bore the brunt of the new politics: health, evolution and climate. The journal Nature, shocked, put it this way in March 2010: ‘Climate scientists are on the defensive, knocked off balance by a re-energized community of global-warming deniers who, by dominating the media agenda, are sowing doubts about the fundamental science. Most researchers find themselves completely out of their league in this kind of battle because it’s only superficially about the science. The real goal is to stoke the angry fires of talk radio, cable news, the blogosphere and the like, all of which feed off of contrarian story lines and seldom make the time to assess facts and weigh evidence. Civility, honesty, fact and perspective are irrelevant.’
That last line is crucial: ‘Civility, honesty, fact and perspective are irrelevant.’
I have been producing and presenting The Science Show on ABC Radio for thirty-five years. The change in tone – when civility, honesty, fact and perspective became irrelevant – was chilling.
When Ian Plimer’s Heaven and Earth (Connor Court) was about to be published, in 2009, I knew it would make a splash. Accordingly I sent it to three professors hoping that one of them would find the time when not up a mountain or locked in committees to record a review. All three were climate experts of high standing.
Within days of my deadline all of them suddenly delivered. I decided to put their comments to air, in different programs. One, Kurt Lambeck, then the president of the Australian Academy of Science, appeared on Ockham’s Razor; the other two, David Karoly from the University of Melbourne and Malcolm Walter from the University of NSW (an old friend of Plimer’s), on The Science Show. The reviews shredded Heaven and Earth.
After they were broadcast I received an email from Plimer demanding airtime for a response. I replied that it wasn’t customary for book reviews to be followed by replies from disgruntled authors but he could have an Ockham’s Razor to himself. ‘Immediately?’ he demanded.
‘Well, no,’ I replied. I was in Corsica, wouldn’t be home for three weeks and our science programs don’t have locums, so they were already pre-recorded. He would have to wait until Ireturned.
A couple of days later Plimer appeared at the Sydney Institute. He announced that the ABC was refusing to have him on. His comments, via the institute’s podcast, went around the world.
On my return from Europe I duly recorded his scripted talk. He repeated his main lines from Heaven and Earth debunking climate science, ignored the arguments his three critics had presented and attacked the ABC for keeping him from its outlets. Ian Plimer had, however, on the publication of his book, appeared on most of our frontline programs. At length.
I was astounded that the man I’d been instrumental in awarding a Eureka Prize to, for his campaign against creationists, was now willing to emulate Rush Limbaugh. He knew what I had promised. He knew the ABC had been generous to him.