A much needed read

If you’re interested in science and policymaking, you probably know about Mark Lynas. If not, just a short recap: during the 1990s, Mark Lynas participated in the rise of the anti-GMO movement, and not just by giving talks, but also by destroying crops fields.

However, while writing an award-winning book on climate change, and meeting with scientists involved in climate science, he got exposed to the way science is done. He then came to realise that his outlook on GMOs and their supposed danger might be wrong. For his involvement in the anti-GMO movement, he made a public apology in Oxford in January 2013. His talk earned him much hate among the environmentalists.

Far from bowing to the bullies, Mark Lynas is calling them out as conspiracy theorists. Read it! It’s worth it.

The danger of unwarranted reverence: the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine and Charles Windsor

You know that there is a problem in a country when personality cult is so obvious that everybody considers it normal for the object of this cult to wander in areas it shouldn’t. I’m not talking about the usual suspects here: Russia or North-Korea. No, my concern here is the UK, where a prince publishes an article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, despite the fact that he has no credentials in medicine — or life sciences. Yet, this isn’t the first time that this snake oil salesman peddle his anti-science, evidence-free drivel. What’s new is that he is doing that in a journal that should be wary of such things.

But the shame isn’t resting with Charles Windsor here: the one who should be ashamed of himself is Dr Abbasi, the editor of the JRSM who finds Charles views about medicine “engaging”, which, to me reads as “I abdicated any critical thinking in front of royalty”. And Dr Abbasi ignores an important thing here: by allowing Charles to publish his bullshit in the JRSM, he gives credence to any charlatan out there. It is even worse when you call views of a loon (whose only achievement in life has been to born in the right family) “engaging”.

Slippery slope of “decency” dictatorship in the UK

The incriminated picture, which led Kent police to arrest a man on Sunday.

On Rememberance Day, a man was arrested for posting a picture of a poppy he burnt. I won’t go into details, as the Guardian has a very good piece on that. But that, guy, quite simply, didn’t hurt anybody. He just burnt a poppy. His poppy. Now, that burning such a symbol might be offensive to some, I can conceive to that. I don’t really understand it, but I can conceive to that. But here’s the thing: if you don’t want to be offended, don’t discuss with anyone: there’s a good chance that, at some point, you’ll be offended.

Atheism +: a chance to widen the scope of american atheism

The recent months (or should I say years) have seen a bitter feud developping among atheists — american atheists first and foremost. As far as I understand, the divide rests between those who think that atheism should limit itself to the critic of religions and those who assert that a coherent atheist movement is bound to concern itself with social justice, feminism and gender issues. In short, atheism + ambitions to be more than a philosophical movement: it wants to be a social one.

I do think this is a good thing: atheism seems to me to be a pretty narrow subject. In fact, born and raised in France, I always associated skepticism and atheism with the left, and I always thought that an atheistic discourse without any political consideration on social justice was missing something. Dawkins wrote in “The God Delusion” that instead of looking for explanations in a deity, people should marvel at what life is and enjoy the fact of being alive (I won’t bother browse it, if you want to find the exact quote, read it). I read this book in 2007 and since then this type of affirmation always bothered me: I find it quite hard for the vast majority of the population of the planet to “enjoy life”. This sentence struck me as typical from someone quite remote from everyday struggle. And indeed it is: as an Oxford professor, Dawkins certainly cannot complain about his life. He certainly has little to worry about and enjoys  it. Good for him.

His point, though, is moot for most of the people on the planet: for them, life is anything but enjoyable. This is certainly true of the Afghan population, stuck between the taliban hammer and the NATO anvil, but there is no need to go that far: Brixton and Stockwell show all too well that life isn’t necessarily a day at the beach in the UK either. While Dawkins’ argument is rational, it is not really audible for this reason. In fact, even for me, who cannot really complain about life, it seemed weird, a bit like the word of a beardy ermit in its ivory tower. This is what “pure atheists” don’t seem to understand: the evil influence of religions in society isn’t that obvious for most of the people. In fact, given the actions of charities, a lot of people, even unbelievers, do actually think that religions hold a moral high ground. Nevermind the child molesters or murderous fanatics. Most of the people don’t actually see that the principal supporters of social conservatism — which help to maintain them in poverty or a kind of submissive state — are religions. Therefore, holding an atheist discourse without defending social justice won’t help atheism to spread, quite the contrary: it will limit it to close, sectarian circles which will end up like an army retirement house: all old, all white, all male. This is all the more true when a part of this movement works hard to dismiss the concerns of some of its members on harassment or the way they feel at conferences.

The aspiration of social justice and religions always clashed because social justice threatens the privileged churches and their members. I’m surprised that some atheists don’t see that. Then again, religion isn’t the only undercurrent of society, sexism is another. And while atheists are supposed to be devoid of religion, the account of Rebecca Watson clearly shows that some of them can count themselves among the worst bigots when it comes to feminism. The set-up of anti-harassment policies at conferences seems to have sparked another wave of unabated douchery. Now, on harassment, there is one take I find particularly interesting: that of Dawkins. Here’s what he had to write when Rebecca Watson decided to tell guys to behave at conferences:

Dear Muslima
Stop whining, will you. Yes, yes, I know you had your genitals mutilated with a razor blade, and . . . yawn . . . don’t tell me yet again, I know you aren’t allowed to drive a car, and you can’t leave the house without a male relative, and your husband is allowed to beat you, and you’ll be stoned to death if you commit adultery. But stop whining, will you. Think of the suffering your poor American sisters have to put up with.
Only this week I heard of one, she calls herself Skep”chick”, and do you know what happened to her? A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee. I am not exaggerating. He really did. He invited her back to his room for coffee. Of course she said no, and of course he didn’t lay a finger on her, but even so . . .
And you, Muslima, think you have misogyny to complain about! For goodness sake grow up, or at least grow a thicker skin.
Richard

What strikes me here is the common way of thinking we can find whenever we read critics of social movements: people shouldn’t complain about spending cuts, frozen wages and the like because “it is worse in Africa” (or everywhere you might find it convenient to point out). Well… That’s just the kind of stuff a person in a dominating position would say, no? This goes along the lines of: “Be happy with what you’ve got, because it’s worse, much worse, somewhere else — Don’t you dare complain about your situation”. That’s nothing else than a way to try to silence people who point out that there me be some problems with an underlying sexism at skeptics conferences (an underlying sexism no doubt imported from the wider society). If you do so, you’re just admitting that to you this isn’t much of a problem, or not a problem at all. Maybe because you’re a man, maybe because you’ve been brainwashed into justifying the bullying of women as a way to help them “grow up” (ironically the author doesn’t seem to see that an appeal to men to help women grow up is sexist: this means that men are — by default — grown up but women aren’t). Or maybe you’re just a flaming mysogynist moron who thinks women should submit to whatever “project” a man has for them, as harassment, or rape and deaths threats to some feminists in the atheist movement made clear. Jen McGreith isn’t the only one who to put up which such a despicable attitude: Rebecca Watson, Surly Amy, Greta Christina and a 15 year old girl had to undergo the “jokes” or the ire of scumbags for being women. And women, mind you, who dare to think and speak for themselves.

Sexism has been infused in the western societies for a very long time, indeed, in Europe or in North-America, it used to be justified by the Bible, much like the Qu’ran or the Torah justify it elsewhere. It is a direct product of religiosity. Yet, some atheists refuse to see that as a problem. To such an extend that anti-harassment policies sparked a controversy in the american atheist movement (here is a timeline). Given the links above, I came to the conclusion that most of those who oppose these anti-harassment policies are indeed mysogynists who seek to exploit women by any means necessary. No need to deny it folks: your actions speak for themselves. A civilized debate about how best to put anti-harassment policies in place would have been acceptable, but as soon as you threaten women to rape them, kill them or try to trigger a rape survivor (an account here, mild compared to the full thing), that’s it, you’re a sexist moron. No need to deny it.

Now, most of the controversy, especially the one on the creation of the ‘Atheism +’ network happened on the other side of the pond, I read one opinion piece here branding Atheism + as “divisive”. An opinion piece that is flaming with hypocrisy, in my opinion: while citing jen McGreith reasons to call for a third wave of atheism, the author omits to explain why there is a passion about that among A+ members: the abuse that some feminists underwent when they wanted to voice their concerns. This was the reason to found A+ in the first place. Refusing to acknowledge that, forgetting the reasons why A+ has been founded; and, mostly denouncing atheism members as “rude” without examining the behaviour that caused some atheists to look for a place where people would have more in common than just atheism is just hypocrite. At best. There is another interpretation, less indulgent to this author, but I’m not really financially able to sustain a libel suit in the U.K. Well… You get the gist, anyway.

People might say — in fact some did — that they’re “just about atheism” and call for atheists just to concern themselves with it, and forget all the rest. To be clear, while an atheist myself, I do not feel closer to an atheist who would be homophobic, sexist, racist and conservative than to a liberal theist. My atheism isn’t the cause of my social views but a consequence of them. Being a proud leftist led me to reflect on power as means to maintain the working class under the thumb. And while the courts, the army and the police are certainly one edge of the sword (together with a more sophisticated domination system encompassing the media, the property market, etc…), religion is definitely another. In every country where the state and the churches have not been separated, there has been suppression of gay and women rights. More broadly, churches allied themselves with right-wing dictatorships almost systematically. This has been the case in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Chile, to name but a few. Some libertarian atheists might even recognize that, while they won’t buy in religion, it might be a good tool to maintain the population under the leash.

I don’t really get the problem with the creation of ‘Atheism +’. Atheists have already plenty of organisations across the U.S., one more won’t change much about that. Besides, there is kind of a freedom of association principle, here, and I do get that Jen McGreith or Rebecca Watson do not want to be in the same room (however big) or on the same network than people calling them names or, worse, threatening to rape and kill them.

Vested interests in science: a problem not likely to go away quietly

Examples of scientists who bent their results to make them fit their theories are countless. Mengele in Nazi Germany or Lyssenko in stalinist USSR are prime examples. The anthropogenic global warming “controversy” also has its wealth of scientists doing away with scientific principles (shameless self-citation). This, sadly, isn’t limited to anthropogenic global warming. Nearly every scientific result of importance to the economy or the society is scrutinized. And this is good, as long as it doesn’t lead to distortion of these results, manipulation of the public or threats to scientists raising an issue of public interest.The tendency to make scientific results stick to whatever ideology is around is strong, as the behaviour of the Reagan and Bush II administration showed (Oreskes and Conway have a few examples of this in their book “The Merchants of Doubt”), there seem to be more actors arising on this front. The “debate” on climate change is an example of this: while the Bush II administration did everything it could to silence the scientists, going as far as modifying one of their reports, other organisations tried to obscure the science of climate change. As such, Freedom of Information bills are abusively used by right-wing think tanks to harass –and try to discredit– scientists working on anthropogenic climate change, and the journalists who report on this issue.

But one more worrying trend is various companies trying to get to scientific results to subvert the research at large, as BP was suspected of when it subpoened scientists who worked on the Deep Water Horizon leakage. Gaining access to the private e-mails of these scientists might lead to what happened with the “climategate”: misunderstanding or misrepresentation of the scientific process. Generally speaking, economic interests are a threat to the public expression of scientific knowledge. It is particularly evident in healthcare, where the tobacco or the asbestos industries tried to play down or cast doubt on the experiments showing that their main products were a threat to human health. Food industry can also try to remove any data that might damage its reputation, as a French scientist experienced when he denounced the risks associated with a high salt diet. Fortunately, the industry representing body lost, but you get the gist: to defend against libel accusations, one has to engage a substantial amount of money, an amount that a scientist can rarely afford. And, lastly, but probably most worryingly, the pharmaceutical industry tends to refuse clinical trials which might shed light on the harmful  secondary effects of their star drug, push a publisher to present advertisements as a “journal” (no active lobbying is needed here, the ads revenue is in itself a motivation to do that). Worse still, conflicts of interest in the agencies charged to evaluate and authorize medicines lead to public health problems, as the mediator scandal in France showed last year. In the UK, the organism which does the job, NICE, has been subject to an intense lobbying as well, leading to a change in its appeal procedures – change demanded by the British Pharmaceutical Industry Association – that will effectively end its independence and might open it to more conflicts of interest (en).

On the other side of the spectrum, activists are keen to prevent research on GM crops or GM organisms in general. While I feel there are reasons to be vigilant and maintain companies like Monsanto, Novartis or Limagrain under tight scrutiny, I would not necessarily discount the possibilities offered by GM organisms in various situations. The fraction of the environmental movement involved in this has obviously other reasons beyond profit (although it would be interesting to study the input of the organic industry in this movement): they stem from a distrust of intellectuals and scientists in general (pretty much akin to what can be found in populist movements like the Tea Party) but also from a certain myth of Nature… Anyway, while this might presents itself with more noble goals than simply preserving a company profit, it uses various methods of intimidation to prevent scientists to actually identify potential problems linked to GM technology and its spreading into the environment. In 2010, 61 persons destroyed an experiment conducted by the French agricultural research instute (the INRA) to test the feasibility of a GM strategy to fight the fanleaf virus — a virus leading to vast amounts of money being lost and for which no treatment exists. What is interesting here is that the research was public and that a consensus was reached between the grape owners, the INRA, the environmental agency and the local environmental movement. The process was so unique that it was published in PLoSBiology. Despite this broad consensus, the grapevines were destroyed. One might ask whether this is due to an ideological position rather than anything else: my personal experience is that the activists do not object to a use of the GM technology, they object to the technology itself. The irony being that here, according to the INRA, the study was set up to validate, or not, the use of GMOs against fanleaf virus. The wine industry is really important in France, as one might think, and the losses incurred by this virus are enormous (from 0.3 to 1 billion of euros a year), which brings a huge interests from various firms to develop a treatment against it. The INRA press release published during the trial of these individuals states that without public research, there is no way to know whether the claims of companies like Monsanto are sound (the press release, in French, can be found on Sylvestre Huet’s blog, here). A good point, I think, and one worth meditating by these activists.

While a better understanding of the inner workings of the scientific process might help to limit these practices, scientific results will always strengthen some vested interests while going against others and there is no reason that data distortion, manipulation or threats on scientists stop. No reason for the people who hold these interests, that is. The public, on the other hand, has every reason to support a full, independent scientific process.

An epic fail of the EU commission and a victory for tweeter “citizens”

Last Friday, there was an uproar in Europe about an overtly sexist –and therefore stupid– video posted by the European Commission Office for blahblah. According to the PR surrounding the launch of this campaign and the ad posted on Youtube (it has been taken down since then), this video was aimed at creating a buzz (link, twitter). It certainly did, as the #sciencegirlthing hashtag shows. If you consider negative coverage as a positive buzz, that is. It even got scientists from other parts of the world involved. The uproar was so loud that it even caught the attention of a LA times blog. And it all boils down to one thing: how a sexist ad could ever interest women to do science? The people at the EU commission answer that this ad was aimed at girls aged 13 to 17. This makes sense if you wanted to promote a career path among teenagers. Yet, promoting this path by presenting a completely irrealistic view of a career science, full of clichés about how women should look and behave in society is probably not the best way to do so. In fact, the evidence shows it is not. The implicit message carried by this ad is plain wrong, in my view: it implies that to be a happy successful female scientist, you need to look good… This message is wrong because the way careers are recognized in science has more to do with the relevance one has as a scientist: is the science you are doing sound? Are your hypotheses reasonable when the available evidence is considered? Are the experiments well conducted, with the appropriate controls? The way you look shouldn’t play a role at all in this, but this ad suggests otherwise. In a society where a lot of pressure is put on the appearances, to such an extent that some teachers think it might become a problem for youngsters, recapitulating the clichés of submissive women hell bent on seduction rather than competence is unfortunate… At best.

Given the kind of stuff that the company hired by the EU commission to advertise for this campaign did before, the disgraceful video shouldn’t come as a surprise. Obviously the EU Commission didn’t really do their homework on this agency. Still, it bears most of the responsibility in my view: it’s hard to think that such an ad could be posted on Youtube without the assent of at least a European Commission official. It is to be noted, however, that a “gender experts” panel was set up by the EU Commission. One of them, Curt Rice, tweeted (see the top of the list) that the advertisement company completely ignored their advice.

The EU Commission caved in, eventually, and vowed to get inspiration from another tweeter thread (#realwomenofscience) to continue their campaign. This might prove a good inspiration: who can better talk about science and the experience of being a female scientist than, well… female scientists?

Two French journalists awarded for their fight against AGW deniers

Stéphane Foucart (I couldn’t find a blog for him but here’s a search for his articles in Le Monde) and Sylvestre Huet (his blog, in French, is here) have been awarded a price for their exposure of Anthropogenic Global Warming deniers’ lies on the 30th of May. I don’t have much to comment on this award: it is well deserved in my opinion. However, the comments of the president of the jury, the physicist Étienne Klein are worth noting for their hindsights on how science is at risk from the type of behaviour displayed by AGW deniers. Here’s a rough translation:

Moreover, I would have liked to make a live [this is a written comment as Étienne Klein had to give a lecture] comment on the fact that this year, the Diderot-Curien Award was given to a pair of scientific journalists. You probably have read, like I did, a book entitled ‘1984’ in which the author –George Orwell– shows that the truth is always questioned in totalitarian regimes. It’s not only that politicians from these regimes lie more often than anywhere else: it’s more that the difference between truth and lies becomes fuzzy in the face of pragmatism and convenience. Orwell adds that in this regimes, even science isn’t immune to ideological attacks and the idea of an objective information loses its meaning: recent history is rewritten with the current needs in mind, and discoveries in biology or physics can be negated if they are judged inconvenient. When this happens, this state of things constitutes what one may call the “cognitive triumph of totalitarianism”: one cannot even accuse the regime of lying: it succeeded in abrogating the idea of truth in the first place…

Some time ago, I was thinking that this danger was only threatening totalitarian regimes. But recent developments, in the United States and in Europe, made me doubt –for instance the fallacy of the debate on climate change– because they just illustrated the fragility of the scientific discourse in democracies. This was due to two phenomenons: first, scientific truth can fall victim to what the philosopher Alexandre Koyré called the “broad daylight conspirations” (Alexandre Koyré, Réflexions sur le mensonge, (1943), Éditions Allia, 2004, p. 31), or lies pronounced in public; second, it seems that we are ready to use a host of strategies to be able to refuse to believe what we know, especially if the intellectual implications of this knowledge bothers us… Fortunately –and this reassures me– there are some courageous and competent scientific journalists who, tirelessly, track and expose the lies. I am happy that two of them, whose work is remarkable, are honoured this evening.

The original article is here.

I like this text because it sums up the challenges faced by science and scientific thinking nowadays. A worrying trend…