A March for Science? More a March for Meek Conformity

The great ways to celebrate the spirit of science are legion. It’s just that marching like a military regiment isn’t one of them.

By Jonathan Witt Published on April 13, 2018 • 2 Comments

The 2nd annual March for Science is Saturday in Washington D.C. And, yes, the name still needs scare quotes around it.   Study the Facebook and Twitter feeds on the event. What you’ll see is a grab bag of public policy issues. Some of those issues are ones reasonable people, including scientists, disagree on. But in the M4S subculture, dissent is a thought crime.

You see, the march isn’t mainly about science. It’s about marching — row upon row of obedient soldiers keeping lock-step time.

This is why the march’s social media feeds are marked by an atmosphere of smug insularity. “There is No Alternative to Scientific Facts,” a protestor’s sign reads in one photo there. But who beyond a tiny fraction of people wants to throw overboard all or even most scientific facts?

No, the debate is about what is and what isn’t an established scientific fact. It’s over what to make of those facts. It’s over which facts point to problems that merit public resources. It’s over which policy proposals best address those problems.

And notice, those policy questions aren’t themselves questions of natural science. They’re questions of public policy and economics. Alas, the M4S drumbeaters routinely conflate these questions with science — which isn’t very scientific of them............To Read More.....