Professor Michael Blake thinks a March for Science is needed because basic scientific knowledge is under attack - especially from the right. But Blake told KUOW's David Hyde that liberals are partly to blame, and that the problem goes way beyond science: listen to interview on KUOW.org
My worry is not just that science is under attack but that a whole bunch of good things that depend on science are at risk. Among those is the very possibility of doing democratic politics in a way where we respond to each other’s evidence, we give reasons based on facts. Now increasingly we disagree not only about our values but about the facts that we cite in support of our values. And that means we’ve lost touch with the ability to argue with each other.
Instead we retreat into our bubbles, we listen to our own news sources, and the other side starts to look to us not like a loyal opposition but a set of demons in human shape. The right wing in particular seems to me to have more whole-heartedly endorsed the thought that news that is unwelcome is fake. So liberals should point the finger, but they should also reserve a small finger for themselves. We live in a town that has a fairly high rate of non-vaccinated children and tends to believe weird things about GMOs.
Science doesn’t care about your ideology. Science should be used to inform your ideology. But things go awry when science has an ideology.
Story by Bill Radke originally published in KUOW.org