Notes on McIntyre

The stakes of even considering this question are high, so it is important to be clear what it might mean to say that liberal science denial exists. Would it be enough to show that there were some liberal deniers on some scientific topics? That would be too easy, and it has already been established. Simply to show that 16 percent of Democrats do not think that climate change is a serious issue—or 33 percent have doubts about evolution—is enough to show that there is (some) liberal science denial.14

14. Shermer, “The Liberals’ War on Science.” Note that in his 2013 essay, Shermer uses somewhat older polling data, which shows that 19 percent of Democrats doubt that the Earth is getting warmer and 41 percent are young Earth creationists.

But that does not seem to be what Shermer had in mind.15

15. That does not mean, however, that this is not an interesting question. As Tara Haelle points out, even if there is no actual “liberal war on science,” it is troubling that there is any left-wing science denial at all. As she puts it, “The issue isn’t whether the Democrats are anti-science enough to match the anti-science lunacy of Republicans. The point is that any science denialism exists on the left at all.” Tara Haelle, “Democrats Have a Problem with Science Too,” Politico, June 1, 2014, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/democrats-have-a-problem-with-science-too-107270

We shouldn't let them off the hook just because Republicans are worse.

When news of the rapidly melting Antarctic ice sheets came out a few weeks ago, I braced myself for what was sure to be a flood of right-wing commentary questioning the supposed climate alarmism, followed by the inevitable left-wing mockery of those anti-science Republicans going at it again. But neither happened. In fact, Fox News covered the story with—dare I say it—fairness and balance, actually reporting this was “settled science.” Long the punching bag of moderate and liberal pundits, conservatives might finally be learning not to make themselves such easy anti-science targets.

Still, given the objections to climate science and evolution heard so often from the right, articles lamenting those anti-science views remain commonplace. Less common, though, are those pointing out the donkey in the room: that, when it comes to certain issues, Democrats, too, conveniently ignore science or promote agendas that contradict the scientific consensus. Those examples just aren’t as easy to see.

In fact, I will freely admit I had trouble at first finding examples. Concerns about vaccine safety and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are often held up as evidence of anti-scientific beliefs among liberals. But opinion polls about those two issues rarely ask about political affiliation the way polls about climate change and evolution do. The exception is a 2009 Pew Research survey, which indicated that Democrats and Republicans appear to support child vaccination equally (71 percent of both favor it). Interestingly, the same survey reveals that there is less difference than one might think between political affiliations on views about evolution. More Democrats (36 percent) than Republicans (23 percent) believe in natural evolution, but Republicans lead by only 4 points in believing in evolution by “supreme guidance.” Only 9 points separate Republicans (39 percent) from Democrats (30 percent) in believing the earth has always existed “in its present form.” These results undermine the common assumptions that vaccine hysteria is limited to the left, and creationism is limited to the GOP.

The few times writers have attempted to point out the left’s problems with science, they have gotten shot down for “ false equivalence”—for holding up both parties as equally anti-science so as not to seem biased when one of those parties is in reality more anti-science than the other.

But such cries of false equivalence miss the point. The issue isn’t whether the Democrats are anti-science enough to match the anti-science lunacy of Republicans. The point is that any science denialism exists on the left at all. If there is grime in my bathroom and grime in my kitchen, I don’t stand there and contemplate which one has more filth; my house won’t be clean until I have scoured both.

The fact is, there’s plenty of anti-science grime on the left that needs to be cleaned up. To understand why we don’t hear about it, consider the different styles of the parties, which illustrate why denial percolates differently through each. The more centralized, top-down Republicans regularly push for unity, and their platform, on issues ranging from abortion to taxation, is clearly recognizable. Even if there’s not a plank specifically about climate change in the Republican platform, it speaks for itself that whenever a Republican bucks the party trend to say climate change is man-caused, he makes news.

One might argue, rightfully so, that the rise of the Tea Party is responsible for much of the Republican anti-science craziness. But that argument only drives home my point: The Republican Party has— until very recently—moved further and further to the right to accommodate Tea Partiers. Party unity trumps rejecting ludicrous ideas. And today, Republicans’ anti-science views—from embrace of creationism in schools to climate “skepticism”—are front and center.

Liberals are far less coordinated. Why would we expect to see Democrats unified around any anti-science beliefs when they rally around little else? The lack of unity within the more fragmented, bottom-up left, alternately a strength and a weakness, dilutes the anti-science views that are actually thriving among their ranks. As one of those who claims science denialism is more egregious among Republicans than among Democrats, the journalist Chris Mooney has argued that the small amount of anti-science views found on the left does not drive policy. But digging a little deeper reveals plenty of bills that ignore the scientific consensus. Sure, they are mostly at the state level. But then, so are the Republicans’ bills pushing creationism into schools.

Take anti-GMO sentiment, for example. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) notes in its statement on the issue that “25 years of research involving more than 500 independent research groups” has found genetically modified foods to be no riskier than foods resulting from conventional breeding. Eating a GM tomato is just as safe as eating a non-GM tomato. The AAAS therefore opposes GMO labeling because it could “mislead and falsely alarm customers.” Though some polling has shown GMO labeling support to be about equal among Republicans, Democrats and Independents, looking at GMO-related legislation tells another story.

The most publicized anti-GMO bill, California’s Proposition 37, was  officially supported by the California Democratic Party and officially opposed by the California Republican Party. If you look at the sponsors of the various  anti-GMO bills making their way through state legislatures—I’ve looked up every one—the vast, vast majority of sponsors are Democrats, with just a few Republicans sprinkled in. Even at the national level, anti-GMO sentiment is dominated by Democrats. It was Democratic Sen. Mark Begich, of Alaska, who called genetically engineered salmon “Frankenfish” in a  2011 letter, signed by seven Democratic senators, urging the Food and Drug Administration not to approve an application for the salmon.

Another form of science denialism, or at least alarmism, is “ chemophobia,” an irrational fear of “toxic chemical” exposure in situations where there is no scientific evidence of danger. “Chemical safety” laws attempting to ban bisphenol A (BPA)—a synthetic compound used in canned-goods packaging and in hard plastics such as water bottles, whose removal is leading to the use of  less tested alternatives—and  formaldehyde lack any scientific basis. There is no evidence that either of these chemicals is harmful to human health in  the amounts they are used in common household products. Yet  99 percent of Democrats voted in support of the state laws banning them, according to one advocacy organization. While that number seems hard to believe at face value, it’s not far off: A look through the sponsors of various  chemophobic bills reveals, once again, that all but a handful come from the left.

Sometimes it’s not so much that liberals deny science as simply ignore it when it’s convenient. Consider Senate Majority Leader Harry  Reid’s opposition to the storage of nuclear waste underground at Yucca Mountain in his home state of Nevada. No doubt this opposition is more NIMBYism than anything else, but it’s couched in the words of “safety.” While underground nuclear waste storage is not without risk, the alternative—  storing waste on site at nuclear reactors—is hardly a safer route than a national repository that can be monitored.

Speaking of nuclear power, that same 2009 Pew Research  poll shows a wide divide on the issue between Republicans and Democrats, with 62 percent of Republicans and 45 percent of Democrats in favor of expanding U.S. nuclear power capabilities. Though 70 percent of scientists support nuclear power, left-leaning organizations such as  Greenpeace and the  Sierra Club strongly oppose it. That’s despite the fact that it’s  largely safe and using  more of it would enable the United States to leave behind more coal, which  kills thousands of Americans every year and continues to warm the planet at an alarming rate.

One area of science denialism where the political bent is, in fact, a bit more equivocal, at least these days, is anti-vaccination sentiment. This dangerous concept was once a darling of the left, as evidenced by early  proponents such as  Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and by the poor immunization rates in historically liberal areas, such as the Pacific Northwest and much of California. (Speaking of California, the  largest donor to the anti-GMO bill is also one of the Internet’s biggest  anti-vaccine advocates.) And let’s not forget that even  candidate Barack Obama, in 2008, offered up the incorrect and misleading idea that the “science is inconclusive” ( it’s not) regarding a possible link between autism and vaccines ( there’s none).

But thanks to the libertarian upsurge on the right, this issue  crosses the aisle far more than it once did.  One study that looked at the political affiliations of those who oppose vaccines found the sentiment strong among progressives but also among libertarians, and about equal numbers from each party sponsor  anti-vaccine bills. With vaccination rates dropping and  outbreaks of vaccine-preventable  diseases increasing, arguing over which side is “more” anti-science hardly solves the growing public health problem.

So, is there a “liberal war on science?” No, there’s not. And perhaps those on the left are wise enough not to go on the record as much about many scientific topics beyond climate science and evolution when they already have the  majority of scientists on their side. But from anti-GMO and chemophobic legislation to exaggeration of nuclear power risk, the left does have its share of problems with science. Instead of debating who is worse, the focus should be on cleaning out the grime from the whole house.

Mooney’s primary concern is (rightly) one of false equivalence. Even if we found some area of science denial that skewed left, this would not mean that we had balanced things out against the onslaught of science denial that has come from the right.17

 17. Though it might mean that it would be wise to rethink the hypothesis of whether science denial can be completely explained by politics, Cf. Lilliana Mason, “Ideologues without Issues: The Polarizing Consequences of Ideological Identities,” Public Opinion Quarterly, March 21, 2018, https://academic.oup.com/poq/article/82/S1/866/4951269

 18. Even so, as Mooney points out, there might be a difference between the extent to which examples like anti-vaxx and anti-GMO can be found among liberals, versus whether it has been institutionalized as part of the Democratic Party platform, as has been the case with climate denial for the Republicans.

...

These days, anti-vaxx seems not only bipartisan but nonpartisan.25 Maybe the issue hasn’t been politicized at all. Indeed, recent scholarship has found that, to the extent that liberals and conservatives make up roughly equal shares of the anti-vaxx universe, those shares are drawn from the extreme wing of each party.26 As one commentator put it, “It does not matter what your politics are, the more partisan, the more likely you believe vaccines are harmful.”27

27. Charles McCoy, “Anti-vaccination Beliefs,” The Conversation, August 23, 2017, https://theconversation.com/anti-vaccination-beliefs-dont-follow-the-usual-political-polarization-81001.

...

Yet there has been virulent and well-organized resistance to any genetically modified foods, including golden rice. Greenpeace in particular has come out against golden rice (for fear that its adoption would pave the way for acceptance of other genetically modified foods).44

44. Weller, “What You Need to Know”; Lynas, “Time to Call Out the Anti-GMO Conspiracy.” Other environmentally oriented nonprofit organizations that have questioned various aspects of GMOs include Friends of the Earth and the Union of Concerned Scientists: https://foe.org/news/2015-02-are-gmos-safe-no-consensus-in-the-science-scientists/; Doug Gurian-Sherman, “Do We Need GMOs?” Union of Concerned Scientists, November 23, 2015, https://blog.ucsusa.org/doug-gurian-sherman/do-we-need-gmos-322; Keith Kloor, “On Double Standards and the Union of Concerned Scientists,” Discovery Magazine, August 22, 2014, https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/on-double-standards-and-the-union-of-concerned-scientists.

The science is quite clear: crop improvement by the modern molecular techniques of biotechnology is safe … the World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the British Royal Society, and every other respected organization that has examined the evidence has come to the same conclusion: consuming foods containing ingredients derived from GM crops is no riskier than consuming the same foods containing ingredients from crop plants modified by conventional plant improvement techniques.50

50. “Statement by the AAAS Board of Directors on the Labeling of Genetically Modified Foods,” American Association for the Advancement of Science, https://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/AAAS_GM_statement.pdf.

58. In some quarters, the assumption seems to be that anything “natural” is good, so anything unnatural must therefore be bad. Yet formaldehyde is naturally found in milk, meat, and produce, and is a known carcinogen that our bodies both manufacture and metabolize. Other hypotheses include the idea that (1) it “just makes sense” to think that genetically altered food is bad for us, or that (2) GMOs somehow offend our “moral” sensibilities and cause a sense of “disgust.” Sarappo, “The Less People Understand Science the More Afraid of GMOs They Are”; Roberto Ferdman, “Why We’re So Scared of GMOs,” Washington Post, July 6, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/07/06/why-people-are-so-scared-of-gmos-according-to-someone-who-has-studied-the-fear-since-the-start/; Shermer, “Are Paleo Diets More Natural Than GMOs?”; Jesse Singal, “Why Many GMO Opponents Will Never Be Convinced Otherwise,” The Cut, May 24, 2016, https://www.thecut.com/2016/05/why-many-gmo-opponents-will-never-be-convinced-otherwise.html; Stefaan Blancke, “Why People Oppose GMOs Even Though Science Says They Are Safe,” Scientific American, August 18, 2015, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-people-oppose-gmos-even-though-science-says-they-are-safe.

59. Sarappo, “The Less People Understand Science the More Afraid of GMOs They Are”; John Timmer, “On GMO Safety, the Fiercest Opponents Understand the Least,” Ars Technica, January 15, 2019, https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/01/on-gmo-safety-the-fiercest-opponents-understand-the-least/.

In one study out of Oklahoma State University, researchers found that 80 percent of Americans supported mandatory labeling of foods containing DNA, despite the fact that all foods contain DNA!60

60. In another result from the same study, 33 percent of respondents thought that non-GMO tomatoes contained no genes at all. Ilya Somin, “New Study Confirms That 80 Percent of Americans Support Labeling of Foods Containing DNA,” Washington Post, March 27, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/05/27/new-study-confirms-that-80-percent-of-americans-support-mandatory-labeling-of-foods-containing-dna/

Like other forms of science denial, GMO denial is fed by a healthy dose of conspiracy-based thinking that has little to do with scientific evidence. The most interesting claims here are made by historian Mark Lynas, who is a self-confessed one-time anti-GMO activist. Lynas has now changed sides and started giving talks intended to call out anti-GMO resistance. He writes:

I think the controversy over GMOs represents one of the greatest science communications failures of the past half-century. Millions, possibly billions, of people have come to believe what is essentially a conspiracy theory, generating fear and misunderstanding about a whole class of technologies on an unprecedently global scale.64

    64. Lynas, “Time to Call Out the Anti-GMO Conspiracy.”

Indeed, Lynas wrote a book, Seeds of Science, in which he offers a full account of his conversion along with the details and evidence to support his case.65

65. Lynas, Seeds of Science. For what it’s worth, note that Bill Nye (The Science Guy) has also done an about face on GMOs in recent years. Ross Pomeroy, “Why Bill Nye Changed His Mind on GMOs,” Real Clear Science, October 16, 2016, https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2016/10/why_bill_nye_changed_his_mind_on_gmos_109763.html.

In a 2013 speech that went viral on the Internet, Lynas did a full mea culpa in front of a group of farmers, some of whose crops he said he had likely destroyed during his past anti-GMO activism.67

67. “Mark Lynas on His Conversion to Supporting GMOs—Oxford Lecture on Farming,” YouTube, January 22, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf86QYf4Suo.

This marks one of the most amazing denialist conversions on record, but the method by which it came about was equally remarkable. No one from the “other side” befriended Lynas to patiently give him the facts about GMOs. Instead, through his own work on climate change, he became a different person and began to identify more with scientists. As Lynas put it, the main factor that accounts for his conversion was that “[he] discovered science.” More reflectively, he admits that:

I was probably primed to change my mind on GMOs only because I had begun to shift my loyalty from one group, the greens, to another, the scientists. Receiving the Royal Society Science Books Prize in 2008 I took, rightly or wrongly, as a trophy of affirmation from the scientific community. If I’d been a tribal headhunter this would have been the equivalent of bringing back the scalp of an enemy chief. And it was only when my reputation was threatened—because my writings on GMOs was shown to be perilously unscientific by the sorts of people I now felt aligned with—that I had to seriously reconsider my position. In other words, deep down I probably cared less about actual truth than I did about my reputation for truth within my new scientific tribe.… It wasn’t so much that I changed my mind, in other words. It was that I changed my tribe.68

Lynas here favorably cites Jonathan Haidt’s work on how most people hold their beliefs on “moral” grounds, though they try to dress it up in rational language. As we saw in chapter 2, perhaps this is why it is so hard to get people to change their minds on the basis of facts: because beliefs aren’t about facts in the first place. Haidt writes: “If you ask people to believe something that violates their intuitions, they will devote their efforts to finding an escape hatch—a reason to doubt your argument or conclusion. They will almost always succeed.”69

They will almost always succeed.”69 Lynas admits that, back when he was an anti-GMO activist, this certainly applied to him. He recounts a story that happened after his “conversion,” when he was asked by a genetics professor at Oxford “if there was anything he could have said differently at the time to convince me. I told him I didn’t think so. It wasn’t that their [scientific] arguments lacked force. Their mistake was to think that their arguments mattered much at all.”70

    70. Lynas, Seeds of Science, 248.

Fueled by such moral certainty, opponents of GMOs were not asking for further scientific study; what they wanted was a total ban. And the way to get there was through lawsuits, publicity, and direct action. The latter meant destroying GMO crops when they were still in the field, which is what Lynas took part in. Other activists created a full-press publicity campaign, including newspaper ads in major media outlets that warned about “the perils of globalisation, criticising advanced technology and denouncing the ‘genetic roulette’ of crop biotechnology.”73 This was incredibly effective, especially in Europe in the 1990s, where people at first had been either generically in favor of GMOs or didn’t care (or know) much about the issue. But by the time the scare tactics had spread, “the percentage of the population opposed to GM foods rose by 20 points.… In total only a fifth of Western Europeans remained supportive of GM foods.”74 And this was achieved in the absence of any scientific evidence that suggested GMO foods were unsafe to eat.75

In conversation with one of his previous comrades in anti-GMO activism, Lynas reports that George Monbiot conceded the point that “it is absolutely true that there’s a scientific consensus on GMO safety [but] for me it was all about corporate power, patenting, control, scale and dispossession.”77

77. Lynas, Seeds of Science, 211.

The anti-GMO campaign has … undoubtedly led to unnecessary deaths. The best example … is the refusal of the Zambian government to allow its starving population to eat imported GMO corn during a severe famine in 2002. Thousands died because the President of Zambia believed the lies of western environmental groups that genetically modified corn provided by the World Food Programme was somehow poisonous.82

When we hear free-floating claims that GMO researchers are suppressing their data, that the invention of GMOs was deliberately done to cause food shortages, that it is intended to make our food more vulnerable to pests (so that Monsanto can sell more Roundup), this begins to sound like the conspiracy theories we heard from Flat Earthers and anti-vaxxers.84

As we have seen, science denial thrives under the conditions of

1. low information
2. propensity toward conspiracy theories, and
3. lack of trust.

All of these are met by those who insist on the dangers of GMOs, despite scientific consensus to the contrary. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, some of the most common anti-GMO arguments fit the science denier script.

• Cherry-Picking
• Belief in Conspiracy Theories
• Reliance on Fake Experts or Discredited Research
• Illogical Reasoning
• Insistence That Science Must Be Perfect

90. Sheldon Krimsky, GMOs Decoded: A Skeptic’s View of Genetically Modified Foods (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2019).

The starting point for risk assessment differs significantly between the United States and the European Union. The FDA assumes that foods developed by the addition of foreign genes are generally regarded as safe (GRAS) … unless proven otherwise, whereas in Europe, the designation GRAS has to be demonstrated after testing is complete.94

94. Kriimsky, GMOs Decoded, 75.

Krimsky raises the question of what it might mean to say that there are “GMO deniers”:

It is too easy to say that one group follows the science and the other group follows an ideology. That leads some observers to embrace the idea of “GMO deniers,” referring to people who leave the science behind in favor of an irrational (or groundless) opposition to genetically modified food. But there is a scientific record of studies that support honest skepticism. Also, European and American scientists see the issues and the risks differently, which can explain why their respective regulatory systems are distinct.95

De conclusie dat *links* activisme de mensheid als geheel, de derde wereld in het bijzonder, schade heeft toegebracht door GMO planten verdacht te maken, lijkt onvermijdelijk. Tevens ben ik overtuigt dat het slordige denken dat de weerstand tegen GMO voedt vergelijkbaar (wellicht zelfs identiek) is aan die van de weerstand tegen vaccins, klimaatverandering, geloof in een platte aarde, etc. 

By this point, I’d read Boghossian and Lindsay’s book How to Have Impossible Conversations,

...

... questioning the consensus (on any scientific topic) does not in and of itself make you a denier. But refusing to believe the scientific consensus and being unwilling to say what evidence—short of proof—would be sufficient to get you to change your mind is to be a denier.11 When anti-vaxxers or climate deniers or Flat Earthers insist on proof, that is surely unreasonable. Empirical inquiry just doesn’t work like that.

11. And of course relying on bogus or made-up evidence for your skepticism—or having no evidence whatsoever as the basis for your concerns—constitutes denialism too.

Where does that leave us with GMOs? The position that all current GMO foods are safe to eat is supported by overwhelming scientific evidence, and there is really no credible study that suggests otherwise. Is it possible that someone could make an unsafe GMO food at some point in the future? Yes … but it is also possible that they might make a killer vaccine. Or a self-crashing plane. Unless someone is uncomfortable with all scientific and technical innovation, it seems unreasonable to pick and choose based on suspicion rather than evidence. We need vaccines and air travel, but don’t we also need to feed starving children? And, as with the “debate” over climate change, there comes a point where trust has been earned. Where it’s unreasonable to doubt anymore. But skepticism must be earned too. To be a skeptic is not merely to doubt everything simply because one can, nor to be rendered catatonic by fear of the unknown; skepticism requires giving trust when the evidence is unexceptionable, even if (as fallibilism requires) we may end up being wrong. Warrant isn’t proof, but it’s the best that science has to offer. And if you disagree, please consider the question again: what would it take for you to give up your belief that GMOs are dangerous—and how is your position any different than that held by those who are climate deniers or anti-vaxx?

...

...how do we know that people who report “trust” in scientists about GMOs have any clue what scientists would say about them? Indeed, according to a recent Pew poll, only 14 percent of the general population understood that virtually all scientists agree that GMOs are safe.16

...

No matter whether you are a liberal or a conservative, if you’re a conspiracy theorist, you are much more likely to be a science denier. The science on that is clear.

... remember also the problem of identity-protective cognition. Once a belief threatens someone’s identity, they will reach for whatever they can to oppose it. And the only way to overcome this is to talk to them with as much empathy, warmth, and human understanding as you can muster.

29. An important 2017 study by Anthony Washburn and Linda Skitka examined precisely this question, and confirmed that both liberals and conservatives were equally likely to use motivated reasoning, when a scientific result conflicted with their existing beliefs. Anthony N. Washburn and Linda J. Skitka, “Science Denial Across the Political Divide: Liberals and Conservatives and Similarly Motivated to Deny Attitude-Inconsistent Science,” Social Psychology and Personality Science 9, no. 9 (2018), https://lskitka.people.uic.edu/WashburnSkitka2017_SPPS.pdf.

1. We need to increase the number of messengers for truth.
2. Find influencers who have greater credibility within [a] community.
3. Repeat the truth more often.

1. Confront the liars.
2. Heed history.
3. Resist polarization.
4. Recognize that .... deniers are victims. They have been duped.
5. Tune out BS.
6. Too slow to work: improve “better education”,“critical thinking”.
7. Do not think that there are easy fixes.
8. Prevent amplification of bad information.
9. Promote regulation of social media.
10. Expect resistance (trolls, authoritarian actions, etc.)

...continue to learn more about the problem of reality denial and its consequences for democracy. Just after the 2016 presidential election, I read Timothy Snyder’s brilliant manifesto On Tyranny, which was part of my inspiration to write this book. Another much longer and carefully researched analysis of the roots of contemporary radicalization in US politics can be found in Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, and Hal Roberts’s extraordinary book Network Propaganda, which shows how the “right-wing media ecosystem” has come to dominate so much of today’s information content—either in sharing it or responding to it—whatever the platform.19 Read also the work of Masha Gessen. Nina Jankowicz. Laura Millar. Andy Norman. Peter Pomerantsev. Jonathan Rauch. Thomas Rid. Jen Senko. Jason Stanley. These are the authors who saw this coming. These are the authors who can inspire the actions that will save us.