Last night, oil tycoon Harold Hamm addressed the Republican National Convention. Since this post was written before his speech, we won’t address what was said (though here’s the link to the video.) Instead, we’ll provide just a bit of history on Hamm and the wider sociopolitical history that has led us to a campaign season where facts have fallen by the wayside and emotional rhetoric have risen in importance.
Hamm is the billionaire CEO of the oil company Continental Resources. Before being identified as a potential candidate for a cabinet position and “Trump’s energy whisperer,” Hamm was in the news a year ago for his attempt to silence scientists who were linking Oklahoma’s massive uptick in earthquakes (from one-ish a year in 2009 to over 500 in 2014) to the massive uptick in fracking operations. Hamm apparently tried to get a University of Oklahoma scientist fired for doing their job in pursuing the science that might interfere with his profits.
This brings us to the larger point of science as a counterbalance to power. It’s the major theme in Shawn Otto’s newest book, The War on Science: Who’s waging it, Why it matters, What we can do about it. Otto traces the history of science and politics, starting with the “self-evident” nature of our rights within the Declaration of Independence. Science’s search for the underlying truth of nature, Otto writes, has always been a political force. Not in the partisan sense, but in the power sense. “Science is the great equalizer,” Otto told us via email. “It underpins the whole argument for democracy. But it’s also political, because it either confirms or disrupts somebody’s vested interests, and those people tend to fight back when science suggests certain laws or regulations they don’t like."
[Continued after the jump!]
Fast-forward to the 20th century, when science ended World War II with the power of the atomic bomb. In the ensuing years, science enjoyed the financial support of the military and retreated from the public sphere, as it no longer needed public engagement for funding.
At the same time, the public was growing increasingly wary of science, the cause of their children’s pointless “duck and cover” drills in case of nuclear attack. Meanwhile, in the humanitarian departments of academia, the postmodernist movement was questioning the fundamental nature of science as a way to discover objective truth, portraying it as just another “metanarrative” -- a story told by the ruling class in order to retain power. This thinking worked its way into journalism schools, where reporters learned that there is no such thing as objectivity, and creating the conditions where false balance thrives and industry spokespeople are given equal time and consideration as real scientists.
This postmodernism, mostly a leftist concept, provided the intellectual underpinning for the larger war on science by the axis of industry and religious forces who coopted that language to insist we “teach the controversy.” Those who derived their power from religion found evolution and stem cells to be affronts to the sacred notion of a creator. Those who derived their power from profits found science-based health and environmental regulations an affront to their business models. Exploiting the postmodern concept that there is no objectivity enabled authoritarians to push their public policy agendas with PR instead of relying on scientific evidence to justify their positions.
Which brings us back to this election cycle and the celebration of a man who has attempted to use his power to silence the science that threatens his profits. Instead of being run out of democratic society for this blatant display of authoritarianism, Hamm’s been given direct access to a candidate, a prime time speaking slot at the convention, and possibly a cabinet position.
Unlike most books of its type, The War on Science offers up a robust battle plan to restore science to its rightful place as an objective arbiter of the reality we all share, and upon which policy decisions must be made.
It won’t be an easy fight, but it’s one we can’t afford to lose. As the government scales of checks and balances are increasingly tilted in favor of the rich and powerful, science offers the strongest anti-authoritarian weapon available to restore power to the people.
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