Chris Mooney debunks the “Liberal War on Science” hype

I am no fan of Chris Mooney. In fact, I would be very surprised to find myself siding with Chris Mooney over Michael Shermer in case of a disagreement between the two. But that is precisely what is happening.

Over at Mother Jones, Chris Mooney challenges Michael Shermer’s claim in the Scientific American that there is such a thing as a “Liberal War on Science” (unlike a conservative war on science which actually exists). I did the same when Shermer’s article came out. And Mooney is (on this particular occasion) spot on.

A few points deserve emphasis:

Evolution denial and climate denial on the right are much more politically problematic—because conservatives, not liberals, are going around trying to force these wrongheaded views on children in schools.

While liberal are wrong on science on a number of issues, they are less like to make those errors signature issues in politics.

As for denial of evolutionary psychology:

Shermer also says that some on the left are “cognitive creationists,” denying the evolution of the human brain (presumably out of some misguided PC desire to keep our differences in the realm of “nurture” rather than “nature”). The problem with Shermer’s argument is that while this more rarefied form of evolution denial may once have found a true home on the left—circa 1975, when Harvard’s E.O. Wilson was pilloried for his book Sociobiology, which defended the idea of a genetically based human nature—it’s pretty passé these days.

(Now, Mooney doesn’t mention Watson’s denialim, but I wouldn’t think of Watson as a heavyweight.)

And one very important point:

But what’s striking about each of these cases is that on the left, you fail to see a mainstreaming of anti-science views. Indeed, the Obama administration is very pro-nuclear! And that’s typical: What you get on the left is a heck of a lot of dissension and pushback against those who are making scientifically questionable claims—and, as has clearly occurred in the vaccine case, the ultimate banishment of these bad ideas from intellectually serious company. And what that means is that anti-science doesn’t shape policy in the same way on the left. Yes, you will find extremes—islands of ideology where, basically, Monsanto is the Great Satan and vaccines are causing autism. But there is no currently pressing issue (that I can think of) where the left is monolithically in denial of basic science, or where this drives mainstream political policy—e.g., drives the stance of most elected Democrats.

Indeed.