A Little Knowledge… Is a Dangerous Thing

Posted on Saturday 16 November 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Imagine that you work for a company that does any kind of specialty work, anything at all — urban planning, furniture making, aerospace design — and for some reason the company’s owner dies and his aunt inherits the entire company (it’s a small company). She’s a kindly aunt but knows nothing about urban planning, furniture making, or aerospace design, but she’s a “common sense” person who is sure that smarty-pants people don’t understand efficiency, and she’s determined to set the company straight and make more money. She finished high school, perhaps, but never college, but is sure she knows better than you; she’s chatted with people in coffee shops about the sorry states of traffic lanes, dining table chairs, and the small seats on passenger jets. Never mind those safety regulations, nobody wants to pay for those, and her friends will repeal the safety rules. Never mind the new designs each year, what was wrong with the basic ones from when she grew up? Why, she can cut $2 trillion and fire most of the staff, and everything will be fine! And if you talk back, or try to point out facts that kindly aunt doesn’t want to hear, you’ll be the first to get the axe. This is where we are.

Today’s items:

  • RFK Jr threatens one of civilization’s greatest achievements: modern public health;
  • RFK Jr is not qualified because he’s an activist, not a scientist;
  • If you don’t understand why science is inherently inefficient, you don’t understand science, or appreciate its discoveries;
  • Free Inquiry’s Ronald A. Lindsay on “The Suicide of the Nation”;
  • Short items about how Trump is picking cabinet appointments on whim; how the pick of RFK Jr is somehow payback for Covid; how a prominent Christian Nationalist would simply shoot anyone trying to cross the border; how evangelicals are pushing to rescind LGBTQ protections; and how Bannon’s promise to burn institutions to the ground sounds like a foreign invasion bent on destroying the US;

NY Times, Opinion by Zeynep Tufekci, 16 Nov 2024: How Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Could Destroy One of Civilization’s Best Achievements

Modern public health is one of civilization’s great achievements. In 1900, up to 30 percent of infants in some U.S. cities never made it to their first birthday. Since that time, vaccines, sanitation and effective medications have eliminated many previously commonplace illnesses and consigned others to extreme rarity. It’s easy to take much of that for granted, especially as those days have receded from living memory, but those achievements are fragile and can be lost.

The danger isn’t merely that Kennedy — who has almost no experience in government or large-scale administration, and who has shown a sometimes breathtakingly loose connection to the truth — would be incompetent or misleading. At the helm of a department with over 80,000 employees and a $3 trillion budget, one that oversees key agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, he would have control over the nation’s medicines, food safety, vaccines and medical research. With that power he could inflict significant harm to the public health system — and to the public trust that would be needed to rebuild it once he’s gone.

With examples of the idiotic, and inconsistent, things that RFK Jr has said.

Some Republican senators may be tempted to approve Kennedy’s nomination simply because they, too, are angry, or think that some agencies are overdue for a good shake-up.

That would be a grave mistake.

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And again.

Washington Post, Leana S. Wren, 15 Nov 2024: Opinion | The main reason RFK Jr. is unqualified to serve as HHS secretary, subtitled “RFK Jr is an activist, not a scientist. That should be disqualifying to head HHS.”

There are many reasons to strenuously oppose President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services. But this one matters most: his willful disregard for the scientific process.
…

The reason Kennedy is uniquely unfit compared with past nominees is that his approach to scientific inquiry is as an activist, not a scientist.

The clearest example of this is his repeated assertions that childhood immunizations are harmful. Kennedy is one of the most prominent promoters of disinformation that vaccines cause autism, despite dozens of rigorously conducted medical studies that have debunked the claim. In July, he stated on a podcast that “there’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective” and suggested that vaccines might kill more people than they save. In fact, a Lancet study this year estimates that vaccines against 14 common pathogens have saved 154 million lives globally over the past five decades and cut infant mortality by 40 percent.

…

The deeper problem is that, in the face of overwhelming evidence, he is unwilling to change his views. Instead, he doubles down on his advocacy and asserts opinions as facts.

He is either unable to understand the scientific process that forms the basis of modern medicine or he purposefully ignores the research when conclusions don’t support his preconceived notions. Either explanation is disqualifying for someone overseeing the nation’s health and science.

I’ve noted again and again that many people resist scientific conclusions that challenge their religious or nationalistic narratives, but also because people prefer intuitive “common sense” to the rigors of the scientific process, which they simply don’t understand.

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Here’s an example of the core issue: science is investigatory. It’s not “efficient.” You never know what scientific inquiries will prove fruitful and change the world, and which (the majority perhaps) will result in nothing. It’s an investment. Conservatives understand investments in other contexts, but not, it seems, in science.

Slate: Bethany Brookshire, 14 Nov 2024: Science Is Inherently Inefficient, subtitled “To cut spending on ‘wasteful’ experiments is to misunderstand where brilliant discoveries really come from.”

Fifty years ago there was William Proxmire, who would stand before Congress and belittle what he felt was wasteful government spending, especially for scientific work he was sure was pointless. There have been others since. Now we face Musk and Ramaswamy, who are sure they can cut all sorts of spending…

When it comes to “wasteful” scientific research, there are tons of examples to point a finger at. The government funded research that put shrimp on treadmills! The government funded a study spraying bobcat urine at alcoholic rats! The New York Post compiled a list of suggestions of things DOGE ought to keep our tax dollars away from, including cats on treadmills. (So many treadmills!) The outrage is palpable. How dare scientists do research without an immediate practical application! So inefficient. Science and efficiency should always go hand in hand.

But what these angry pundits truly reveal is how little they understand about how science works. For science to be effective, it simply cannot be efficient. Scientists do things they’ve already done, and do them over and over again, changing one tiny variable at a time. They do a lot of seemingly silly things in an attempt to re-create aspects of the world in a lab, where they can be monitored and replicated over and over and over. These studies might seem like a waste of precious resources. But this inefficiency is, in itself, efficient. It is the simplest, most clear way of coming to a true understanding of reality. (Would you rather researchers … try to chase shrimp around in their environments?) These seemingly silly studies provide proof of a phenomenon—and sometimes exercises in serendipity.

The world is complicated, in ways conservatives apparently simply cannot understand. And history is full of chance discoveries made by inefficient scientific experimentation (not to mention government funding on agencies like NASA). Examples:

Inefficiencies in science are important beyond replication. They also create an environment for surprising new discoveries, things scientists would never have dreamed of had they not been in the lab, conducting basic research. If Alexander Fleming had not left a bunch of petri dishes full of bacteria out in his lab (there for replication), he never would have gotten the blank spot in one dish. That blank spot was a mold—a mold that was producing the lifesaving drug penicillin. Two scientists studying metabolism accidentally discovered that removing a dog’s pancreas caused diabetes—paving the way for the discovery of insulin. The two discoveries were accidental, inefficient. They went on to save millions of lives. The line between basic research and discoveries is not always short. Science requires us to be patient. Ozempic? That started with lizard venom experiments in the 1980s. No one could have predicted where those experiments would eventually lead.

And a following paragraph explains why researchers have legitimate reason to spend money spraying bobcat pee on rats.

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The big picture.

Free Inquiry, Ronald A. Lindsay, 14 Nov 2024: The Suicide of a Nation

Well, the United States had a good run, but in a confused state and in unjustified despair—exacerbated by misinformation from various sources—the United States decided to end its life as a republic on November 5. The cause of death was ingestion of the lethal substance colloquially known as Donald Trump.

Exaggeration? With Matt (“she looked eighteen”) Gaetz as attorney general and Tulsi (“Ukraine provoked Putin”) Gabbard, the United States would have two grossly incompetent individuals slated to lead the agency responsible for enforcing our laws and the position responsible for overseeing all the nation’s intelligence agencies. The only qualifications these individuals have is absolute loyalty to Trump, which means the DOJ will now become an instrument for Trump’s petty vendettas, and any intelligence that might be inconsistent with Trump’s pronouncements and policies will be suppressed.

My focus on Gaetz and Gabbard should not be interpreted as implying Trump’s other picks are acceptable. Pete Hegseth’s credentials to head the Department of Defense appear to be the fact that he knows how to use a rifle and was a FOX TV personality.

He goes on about other Trump appointees, and concludes:

Before the election, there were plenty of warnings that Trump would seek to rule as an authoritarian, placing unqualified loyalists in key government positions who would do his bidding regardless of any constitutional or legal impediments. These warnings were discounted apparently—because, you know, as Trump’s ads hammered home, it is much more important to make sure transgender women do not compete in women’s sports.

RIP, United States, July 4, 1776–November 5, 2024.

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Short Items.

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