As a scientist, I expect the Trump presidency to have a curious familiarity.
Why? Because the relentless of Trump’s campaign mainstreamed disinformation tactics that biologists, immunologists and climate scientists have come to know and despise.
Trump has embraced and its accompanying conspiracy theories. He’s tweeted that climate change is a and .
, whose 1998 study kickstarted the modern anti-vaccine movement. And he has just appointed a to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.
These pseudoscience communities are nothing new, and they haven’t even bothered to rebadge themselves as “alt-science” (yet).
It’s critical that the broader community learns from the grim experience of scientists when dealing with these attacks. Often scientists failed to appreciate that many public arguments about science are actually political battles, rather than evidence-based discussions. Raw political battle isn’t about seeking truth and reasoned argument. It’s about winning news cycles and elections.
Debate
By definition, scientific argument is methodical, technical and slow. Perhaps this is exemplified by the biggest scientific announcement of 2016, the , which were a century ago.
I’m engaged in a scientific argument right now about how rapidly galaxies form stars. My key points are in a 10,000-word manuscript detailing the data, methods, comparison with prior studies, and conclusions. An anonymous astronomer is reviewing that manuscript, and I expect my article to be published in 2017.
First, don’t ignore the adjective “honest”, with its veiled implication of dishonesty. It can be the starting point for conspiracy theories, with scientists and organisations around the globe .
What kind of debate is being sought? Are both sides going to face off by undertaking years of research and submitting 10,000-word manuscripts to scientific journals? Not likely.
Einstein was at the centre of political debates about German science in the 1920s. Suse Byk
Often a very literal debate is being sought, either on , or . We find such debates, with their rhetorical flourishes, provocative and entertaining but they rarely advance science.
When in 1920, Einstein wasn’t the clear winner. Perhaps the audience and newspapers that dutifully reported the debate didn’t appreciate that Lenard’s arguments about were wrong.
Demands for debate – such as the recent call for one by One Nation Senator – are often seeking formats where even Einstein couldn’t win an argument about relativity.
They provide theatre and column inches. And critically, they provide equal billing for scientists and those who’ve never truly engaged in science. They embrace false equivalence.
Who am I?
I’m a scientist, but people have some strange ideas about who I am. I’ve been accused of being a “warmist” and “alarmist” who is on the “gravy train” with a “”. (For the record, I prefer people not to wet their beds.)
I’ve encountered these accusations , and they’re a means of derailing discussion. “Warmist” and “alarmist” are attempts to frame scientific findings as extreme political positions. Creationists can play this game too, preferring “” to “evolutionary biology”. This tactic falsely reframes the argument as a debate between competing and equivalent ideological positions.
It doesn’t matter if the accusations have no factual basis, embrace conspiracy theories or are insincere. That’s not the point. I’ve been accused of using and on the same day. Donald Trump has never provided evidence that climate change is a “”, with its accompanying global conspiracy of scientists.
This isn’t reasoned argument; it’s disrupting discussion of evidence. It’s about what needs to be true to reject scientists, not what is actually true about scientists.
Political debating tricks and conspiracy theories sidestep the science of climate change.
Evidence
Scientists slowly accumulate evidence to test their hypotheses, but in political fights evidence only needs to survive the news cycle. Robust methodology, statistics and hypothesis testing be damned.
I was reminded of this recently when the tweeted a link to a Breitbart article claiming that global temperatures are falling:
Breitbart wasn’t reporting the findings of a new peer-reviewed study with new data and a compelling analysis, but rather was quoting the .
While the accumulation of data, from satellites and weather stations, shows the globe , Rose had a different focus. He highlighted a few months of data, from a , that excluded , to suggest the “run of record temperatures are at an end”. This is misinformation, as there’s no evidence to show an end to long-term global warming.
Of course scientists , but by then the news cycle had moved on.
Despite the long-term rise of sea levels, some media reporting emphasises temporary dips. CU Sea Level Research Group
Such articles are a feature, not a bug, in the politicised climate debate. In 2008, Bjorn Lomborg in The Guardian noted “” in sea levels, and concluded that we “urgently need balance.” In 2012, the Australian’s Graham Lloyd reported on sea level falls that supposedly “.” Of course, those were blips in the long-term trend of sea level rise, but those articles did effectively spread doubt about climate science.
Trump has embraced pseudoscience and its tactics, and will be bringing it to the White House. I expect the of Trump’s campaign to continue, and like many scientists I will find it all too familiar. To argue with today’s politically expedient statements as if they’re evidence-based and carefully reasoned arguments embraces a false equivalence of fact and fiction. It is a time for true scepticism.
Michael J. I. Brown receives research funding from the Australian Research Council and Monash University, and has developed space-related titles for Monash University's MWorld educational app.
