One of the most frequent (and perhaps most obnoxious) gripes from people like me (left-leaning and highly educated) is that the average person simply doesn't pay enough attention or lend enough credence to scientific discovery, or at least to information that has been rigorously derived. This is the New Atheism in a nutshell, for example: too many people cling in comfort to beliefs and superstitious, casting aside the contrary evidence that's staring them right in the face.
And yes, thanks to hot-button issues like religion and climate change, this kind of charge is typically made by the left against the right. So much so that when people on the left find cause to question scientific findings, it all of a sudden becomes a 'liberal war on science.'
In truth, this is one of the things that most aggravates me about my compatriots on the political left. Too often we treat science too lightly. We take it for granted in a most insidious way. We chortle at so-called religious nuts and climate denialists; and then the second someone like tenured UT Austin sociologist Mark Regnerus publishes findings from a massive data set that suggests that gay parents are less good for children than straight parents--in other words, that suggest something that we liberals don't like to hear--we pounce on the study like zealots.
Yes, I am convinced that, politics aside, Regnerus' study is flawed. Just as I am convinced that LSE evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa's infamous study on the objective unattractiveness of black women was also flawed. Just as I am convinced that former Harvard president and accomplished economist Larry Summers' offensive calculations about women in the sciences were also flawed. Need I go on?
It's one thing to claim that a scientifically derived finding that you don't like was nevertheless derived in a faulty way; but this still begs the question: had you liked or been perfectly neutral about the finding, would you (and everyone else who heard about it through the controversy-obsessed press) have looked deeper into the study before accepting its conclusion?
Sure, there's 'good' science and 'bad' science (depending on where you're sitting), rigorous science and less rigorous science; but ultimately the scientific method can and does yield conflicting, ambiguous, unpleasant, and difficult-to-interpret results. And this is the case not just for the social sciences. Climate change and group selection, to name a couple examples, have been sources of considerable contestation and politicization for a long time now.
Personally, I have no problem with any of this, not only because I understand quite a lot about the day-to-day work of 'doing science,' but also because I understand that science is a methodology, not an authority.
This brings us back to our liberals. We love science so much, and love sticking science in the eyes of 'common people' and right-wing extremists so much, that we've chosen to ignore what science really is and how science really works. More often than not, when I hear 'science' invoked in conversation, it's invoked with childlike inflection, as if science is somebody's daddy: 'Nuh UHH, you're wrong, SCIENCE says!'
See, by invoking science like a celestial daddy, we don't have to make logical or rigorous arguments about the things we value, the rights we hold dear, or the priorities we should set for ourselves and our nations. We just point at the authority and say 'DADDY SAID,' at which point someone else comes along, pointing to a different scientific authority, and, well, 'MY DADDY says YOUR DADDY IS WRONG!'
A funny thing happens when we forget that justifying our positions and values is a bigger project than simply pointing to a set of objective truths (to say nothing of what happens when someone else questions the objectivity part).
Hence, however many climate scientists proclaim with scientific certainty that we're all drilling our way to hell in an an Exxon-propelled handbasket (huh?), governments and societies will still have to make difficult policy decisions about whether to spend X on carbon reduction or on fighting Malaria, hunger, poverty, and so on. Just as if Richard Dawkins disproved the existence of God tomorrow, we'd be no closer (arguably we'd be even farther away) to solving the problem of inter- and intra-religious fighting and factionalism. No fact alone--and I mean this sincerely--will ever strip away the centuries of accumulated significance that certain beliefs and customs have forged. This isn't always a case of willful ignorance, as many liberals assume; it's a force as real as gravity.
When science tells us something we don't like--as it always has done and always will do--that's OK. That's one of the reasons that make the scientific method so useful and so important. The moment we start taking science as the only legitimate form of knowledge, and the ultimate authority, however, we set for ourselves a nasty trap. Whether we like it or not, if science is the ultimate authority, and unquestioned as such, we have to listen to it when it goes against our better judgment. And none of us really wants that.
Do we want a society that doesn't discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation? I, for one, do. And I don't need a scientific study to tell me why I should or should not want and value this. I don't need a scientific authority to tell me that gay people make good parents in order to justify my position in support of the rights of gay people to marry and to raise children; which means this position of mine also cannot be assailed merely by a scientific study that finds something that seems contrary to my position. Far from clinging to a belief which is not 'evidence-based,' my position is derived from a long and rigorous tradition of careful and reasoned thought on the subjects of natural and human rights, political philosophy, and jurisprudence. I don't need to be a zealot nor a denialist nor anti-science to hold my position; I simply recognize that there are legitimate and in some ways superior forms of knowledge that fall outside the scope of scientific knowledge.
In this way I am free to appreciate science for what it is, given its limitations, and for the very useful knowledge it produces. I don't have to submit to the authority of science when science is operating outside of its own jurisdiction.
Sadly, there are people who practice scientism--who believe that science has ultimate and unlimited jurisdiction. We should remember that, on the contrary, science cannot stand alone.
