So anyways, I was reading Chris Mooney’s essay “The Science Adviser,” about the poor luck Jack Marburger has had so far (getting appointed after the President had already made a host of bad decisions, having to defend said bad decisions, etc.) and what the next Presidential Science Adviser will have to do. One item from the second page warrants a discussion of its own:
Or consider another idea for elevating the science adviser positionâ€”and making it relevant to the modern media age: why not name a true science celebrityâ€”a Steven Pinker, say, or an E.O. Wilson?
Are we worried that Pinker might sabotage the President’s information on math education for little girls? And OH NOES! What if the Science Adviser converts the President to TEH GROUP SELECSHUN?
. . . Sorry.
Continuing onward, then:
The latter presents an intriguing choice both mediagenically and politically. With his most recent book, The Creation, the Southern-born Harvard biologist has sought to reach out to evangelicals and stoke their nascent concerns about preserving the environment. At a time when the science world finds itself riven over just how far to go in advocating atheism and secularism, Wilson represents a less divisive approach, one with far broader appeal.
I wonder how “riven” the “science world” really does find itself. Yeah, I’ve got that scarlet A on the sidebar of my blog, so I know I’m automatically disqualified from talking about this, but still, let’s try to get a little perspective: you’ve got a handful of people saying one thing, a handful of people saying something else, and everybody else just hunkering over their lab bench and hoping their grants get renewed. Maybe “science world” isn’t the best term to apply here; “fractious cabal of science popularizers” might be a better descriptor.
But anyway, just how un-divisive is E. O. Wilson, really? First of all, he’s an environmentalist (no duh), and any environmentalist appointed to any position in government will draw the wrath of half the punditocracy (no duh, squared). Second, even if Wilson can reach out to people who like green trees and clear skies and furry animals, what about the stem cells?
Third, how trustworthy a person appears depends not just on what they say, but on where they stand in relation to one’s social group and hierarchy of authority. Even two authoritarian followers will clash with one another, if they are plugged into two different authorities. Just imagine how the chorus of the Right would treat Hillary Clinton, say, if she parroted the Right’s own talking points. Closer to the issue at hand, consider the case of “creation care,” the term employed by Evangelical Christians who have taken up environmental causes. Is simply doing a find-and-replace on your speeches good enough to make you a trusted friend of the creation-care family? Not according to the people close to the situation. Speaking “evangelicalese,” says Jim Jewell of the Evangelical Environmental Movement,
means politicians are talking about their own personal faith in some way. But they donâ€™t hit on the political issues, like a pro-life platform, that have been important to evangelicals over the years. And when a politician just uses words to connect with the public, people will eventually find out that the candidateâ€™s platforms are not really in line with what they believe.
As Blaine Harden of the WaPo discovered back in 2005,
evangelicals themselves — not such groups as the Sierra Club or Friends of the Earth, with their liberal Democratic baggage — are the only ones who can do the persuading.
It’s easy for an intellectual to see only the words on the page; the temptation is then to believe that a rearrangement of words will produce a friendlier message. But we see every day evidence that human beings are not so rational, that divorcing the content of a message from the speaker requires practice (else why would anyone attack evolution by smearing Charles Darwin?).
MORAL: Don’t expect to find a mediator.
POSTSCRIPT: If you ask me, the most mediagenic science communicators around these days are folks like Natalie Angier, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Danica McKellar, Phil Plait and Carl Zimmer. Which would you send to Washington?
POSTSCRIPT 2: Well, we certainly can’t rely on Mike Gravel to be our mediator. Just look at what this carbon-tax-advocating, stem-cell-supporting, Democrat of French-Canadian descent says about creationism:
Oh God, no. Oh, Jesus. We thought we had made a big advance with the Scopes monkey trial . . . My God, evolution is a fact, and if these people are disturbed by being the descendants of monkeys and fishes, theyâ€™ve got a mental problem. We canâ€™t afford the psychiatric bill for them. That ends the story as far as Iâ€™m concerned.
It looks like Richardson has disqualified himself, too.
(Tip o’ the fedora to Phil Plait.)