The Left's Vicious Intolerance in Science

Many scientists and science teachers took part worldwide in the March for Science, not only for the sake of promoting science but also to protest the incursion of politics into science to the point that it is either being warped or suppressed. The organizers made it a point not to make the march partisan and to some degree they succeeded -- politicians were thankfully not invited -- but some of the participants had anti-Trump signs and the liberals media focused on these individuals. No surprise there. There have been some elected politicians who have made pronouncements on science as to make any rational, intelligent, person cringe: “All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell,” said an imbecile by the name of Paul Broun, who was, yes, a member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. You read that right.

But the media has deliberately downplayed, or altogether ignored, the vicious attacks on science by liberals. And these attacks have been going on for decades. And while the attacks on science by certain conservatives has been limited to braying, the attacks on science by liberals have been more vicious and systematic, consisting in vituperation, suppression of facts, fraudulent research, transforming previous scientists into “unpersons” as well as physical assaults on scientists. For example, it is a fact that certain behaviors are inherited by both animals and humans. But liberals don’t like this. So any scientist that carries out research on this topic and comes to these conclusions is (as usual) called “racist,” “fascist,” “Nazi,” etc. E. O. Wilson, the father of biodiversity, is also known for his theory of sociobiology, the theory that states that social behavior is a result of biology, and draws upon ethology, anthropology, archaeology and, of course, biology to support the theory. Liberals went ballistic on hearing of this theory and insisted that it be suppressed. While delivering a lecture on the subject, the International Committee Against Racism, a front group of the Marxist Progressive Labor Party, invaded the stage and attacked him. They were very brave in doing so, since the man is blind in one eye, is elderly, and at the time one of his arms was incapacitated. Stephen Gould, who was there, stood up to start spouting Lenin (Wilson, who is also the world’s leading authority on ants, would later state, "Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species.") It is also a well-established fact that intelligence is inherited to a very large degree. But liberals do not like this fact, either. Nonetheless, the studies that have been carried out on this subject span over a century and are very diverse and very ingenious (for instance, twins reared in different environments have nearly the same IQ) and run into the hundreds. But, as I said, liberals do not like this so they engage in what they think is their equivalent of scientific debate: vituperation, character assassination, chanting slogans, suppression of facts and, recently, physical assaults. One of the attacks on IQ tests is that it was designed for the purpose of imposing racism because blacks (as a group!) score lower than whites (as a group!), but if this was indeed the case why is it that Asians (as a group!) score higher than whites (as a group!)? Another line of attack was that IQ tests are culturally biased; it is hard to see how memorizing strings of numbers, copying squiggles and solving jigsaw puzzles are culturally biased. Unless one is a liberal, that is. The otherwise obscure Middlebury College in Vermont very recently had the distinction of having its cadre of liberals physically attack (in, as usual, a mob) Charles Murray, who was going to deliver a lecture there, and another professor (who had to be hospitalized). Murray is the author of The Bell Curve (a massive, data filled, tome which liberals years before agitated to suppress and but ironically shot up in sales as a result of their attempt at censorship). The attack on Murray was simply the latest in a series of attacks on the subject and on scientific researchers. Back in the 1970s, there was the attack on Arthur Jensen, who also pointed out that there was a racial component to IQ and concluded that programs such as Head Start were useless. The attack then was even more vicious and overwhelming than was the case with Murray although it never got the opportunity for a physical assault. Addressing the claims of Jensen, Stephen J. Gould wrote a masterpiece of deliberate intellectual fraud in his The Mismeasurement of Man, which needless to say rewarded him with awards from the National Book Critics Circle and the Outstanding Book Award. Of Gould, Wilson would say that "I believe Gould was a charlatan. I believe that he was ... seeking reputation and credibility as a scientist and writer, and he did it consistently by distorting what other scientists were saying and devising arguments based upon that distortion." Then, there is the case of Paul Cameron who has been a constant critic of homosexuality and of adoption by gays. He has gone against the grain by writing that homosexuals are not normal, as we have been told by those in authority, and, that adoption by homosexual couples is detrimental to the adopted child. He has additionally pointed out that the American Psychological Association has deliberately engaged in fraud in order to promote a Politically Correct agenda. Needless to say that he, too, has been the subject of persecution. For one thing, he published his research in the journal Psychological Reports; the journal editor was contacted and it was demanded from her that she retract and denounce his research. She refused and suggested that the complainant submit an opposing research paper, subject to peer review, whereupon a short-lived campaign against the journal ensued (referring to it as a “vanity press). Now, we come to the psychotic world of radical feminists whose “research” is a source of comedy to people in the scientific field. However, I would like to, very briefly, address the issue of “repressed memories.” First, let me mention that in the late 1980s and 1990s, the departments of psychology in various universities began to be invaded by feminists and they engaged in the usual intimidation and accusation that they are so well known for. One must also remember that feminists at that time had declared that all men were rapists and child molesters. We then had a situation when women in therapy began to “recover” memories which had supposedly been repressed of having been raped as children by their fathers, brothers, uncles, cousins, neighbors, mailmen, teachers, fellow students, the football team and, for good measure, space aliens (no, really, I am serious!). When the accused finally decided to fight back, they did not do so in academic or journalistic settings, but by successfully suing the therapists; it soon became very evident during those trials that these memories had been planted by feminist therapists and that many of the rapes had been physically impossible (for example, the times of the rapes occurred when the supposed perpetrator had moved away, or, were vacationing in another city). At that point, there was an uprising against the psychotic feminists within the psychology departments; in many departments psychologists were successful to some degree in purging the department of the psychotics, while others neutralized them. Tim Hunt, Nobel Prize notwithstanding, became the target of shrieking hysterical feminists and lost his job. Then, there is the recently fashionable transgender issue, which the liberals are frantically promoting (ever since the former Brue Jenner decided to have his penis chopped off) in another effort to destroy masculinity, which they abhor. Kenneth Zucker and Paul McHugh, both psychologists who were scheduled to give lectures at conferences were invited because they are critical of the movement to promote transgender surgery. And while we are on the subject of disinviting scientists from giving their lectures in scientific conferences (although not pertaining to the transgender cult) Richard Dawkins was disinvited from a conference because feminists felt offended. The bottomless hatred of liberals is not confined to people. It extends to plants. Genetically modified foods are plants which have been tweaked genetically so that these plants can survive drought conditions, or render a bigger yield of crops. You know, just what farmers have been doing for centuries. Except now they are evil. They are “Frankenfoods.” It’s better for people in Africa to die from starvation than to give them Frankenfoods -- according to the all-knowing, wise, liberals. So why the objection? Simple. GMOs have superior genes. The Nazis claimed to be genetically superior persons. Ergo, genetically modified foods are vegetable Nazis. “Today the cornfield, tomorrow the world,” so think the liberals. Lastly, I must mention the tactic of rendering a scientist as an “unperson.” In Orwell’s 1984, a person who fell out of favor with the regime became an “unperson;” nobody would mention again his name and all records of his having ever existed were destroyed. Alexis Carrell and William Shockley, among others, have been declared “unpersons.” Who will be the next unperson? So, in conclusion at this point, let me categorically state that the overwhelming attack against science in the past half century has come principally from the left. Unfortunately, because liberals have a monopolistic stranglehold on the means of mass communication in this country (and in Europe), and they impose their censorship on fact and news stories, what we will continue to hear is how conservatives (who, according to them, are all ignorant troglodytes---hey, they voted for Trump, right?) are against science. Even with the pitiful means at our disposal we should, instead, spread the truth. Armando Simón is a retired college professor who lives in San Antonio and is the author of A Prison Mosaic, The U, and This That and the Other.