Do not miss Andrew Ferguson’s droll and brilliant essay “The New Phrenology/How liberal psychopundits understand the conservative brain“ at the Weekly Standard. It begins:
We are entering the age of the psychopundit (we can thank the science writer Will Saletan for this excellent word). Thomas Edsall, for example, is a veteran political reporter widely admired by people who admire political reporters. He has become very excited by social science, as so many widely admired people have. Studies show—as a psychopundit would say—that Edsall is excited because social science has lately become a tool of Democrats who want to reassure themselves that Republicans are heartless and stupid. In embracing Science, the psychopundit believes he is moving from the spongy world of mere opinion to the firmer footing of fact. It is pleasing to him to discover that the two—his opinion and scientific fact—are identical.
Now go read it. You’ll feel better.
Did read it earlier today. Remarkable and excellent article, and very complex.
I have a few quibbles with some things Ferguson says, but mostly along the lines of him not going far enough.
Are these social pseudo-science articles really just about Democrats reassuring themselves or perhaps, on an unspoken level now but later maybe more visibly, an attempt to make a case for a “benevolent dictatorship” of sorts. In the former USSR and probably others, the government was so benevolent and wonderful, the only people who could be opposed to it must be insane. Can you envision a future Edsall using the “scientific” evidence provided by these “studies” to “prove” that conservatism is a disease that needs to be treated by the benevolent state?
Ah, the inimitable Theodor Adorno. The one intellectual equally detested by conservative newshounds and fanfiction writers. That takes some kind of originality.
Seriously, Big Science (cue Laurie Anderson from her Eighties heyday) has been openly burning its credibility for at least a decade now, at a time when it is more foolish than ever to be doing so. I remember the waves of medical/scientific quackery that crested and crashed over Russia in the wake of the fall of “Scientific Socialism”: “Science” still had some prestige as the Only Guide to Truth, but very few still had any sense of what actually constituted science. Meanwhile, huge numbers of people rejected the whole idea of science as another scam by elites to exploit them, and turned wholesale to some very unpleasant mutations of religious mysticism and magical thinking. Do these arrogant Laputans think it can’t happen here?
As EVERYTHING becomes politicized in these perilous times, the “well-meaning” had better not come crying to those of us who wanted to keep the State and its control within some kind of limits. Now almost every field of human endeavor needs its own Breitbarts and such to push back against the all-devouring totalism of power. It’s a rearguard action, thankless, exhausting, and quite probably doomed.
Oy. Sleep well tonight.
But science is always hard, always has been, always will be.
We live in a remarkable age, over the last 100 years or so science and technology have jumped more than in the 10,000 years previously. But then you get the bloated gasbags (Algore, excuse me) who pretend they can even talk science, and they can’t. It’s just jumping on the bandwagon. So I always wince when I hear anybody talking as if (“big”) science were “losing its credibility”.
Sturgeon’s Law holds just as much for the very best scientific journals as it does for everything else in the world … and you should just *see* some of the stuff that gets submitted and rejected, omg. Like they say about democracy, it’s the worst system in the world – except for all the others.
In the abstract and in the long run, Josh, you are probably right. But I’m concerned about the cultural and human wreckage in the shorter run. The best example that comes to mind is the currently growing anti-vaccination movement. How can we reason with people who feel misled by one too many incidents of arrogance and/or cupidity dressed up as reason?
I did it all because of my love for my countrymen.
Josef Stalin
Same old stuff. Political opposition must be a case of a psychiatric condition. Off to the re-education camps for you. If that doesn’t work, well, “Ve haf vays!”
There is nothing these vile people do not corrupt when they touch it. You can see the embodiment of this in Obama. He has the Mierdas touch: Everything he touches turns to crap.
So, they embrace science, and it rots.
“Liberals Peer Inside the Conservative Brain”
That’s a good opportunity for lefties to see how a fully functioning brain works.