Science Abuse

Boyce Rensberger considers the question of science abuse in his review of The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney. The online review is at

Scientific American: Science Abuse
Subverting scientific knowledge for short-term gain

The reviewer sees the US Republican Party's attack on unfavourable scientific research as a means of increasing profits for the large corporations in the short term. This is done through encouraging the general public's ignorance of the scientific process by playing up on the lack of consensus by exaggerating disputes within the scientific community.

I think that the problem is more of wilful ignorance by the US public. Jim Kunstler expresses this as a Land of Make Believe where he concludes that:

Another unpleasant truth about the situation is that the US public wants to pretend that everything is okay as much as its leaders do. The public is not so much being misled as demanding that its leaders in government, business, and the news media continue a game of make-believe -- that we can still run a cheap oil economy without cheap oil.

What we are witnessing the death throes of Capitalism in the USA. (Capitalism looks likely to survive in EU and PRC). Science was the rationale for Capitalism. It was not a coincidence that the rise of Science coincided with the rise of Capitalism. Both of these ideologies are materialistic and humanist in their outlook. Both believe that humans could understand and control their environment. This revolutionary idea blew away millenia of religious ignorance to give us the society and associated freedoms that we have today (for the time being at least).

The fight against the rise of religious intolerance under the guise of so-called Christian Fundamentalism is the fight for the very existence of Capitalism. Capitalism requires the intellectual ferment of Science to advance. When Capitalism stagnates or stalls, it dies. It is a dynamic system for dynamic people not for those who want an unchanging world.

Should then Communists cheer on the destruction of Capitalism by this means? NO! We should remember that Socialism evolves from Capitalism under the conscious direction of the Proletariat. We need to defend Capitalism against those who would tear the living heart of Capitalism out and replace it with the cold, dead stone of religious bigotry.

We must throughly understand the nature of Capitalism and see that the next logical step is Socialism where the enthusiasm and drive of the capitalists infuses the Proletartiat and the solidarity of the Proletariat infuses the capitalists so that these two classes merge into one. Workers become owners, and owners become workers.