A bit of Trumpian perspective

Pundits have been having a bad time. They've been badly beaten up by the people. It’s been a bad time for experts too. Ignored and even mocked. Leading up to the EU referendum in the UK, we were told that Brexit would cost us all money. It would cost jobs. There would be political, educational and cultural costs. A majority ignored the advice. Some didn't believe if. Some didn't want too. Some wilfully listened to different voices that made carefully calibrated and worded, deniable, non-promises. We embarked on an uncertain course to an uncertain destination.

I remember waking with a palpable sense of déjà vu to something else that was scarcely believable right up to the moment it actually happened. One Donald Trump won the US Presidential election. The insurgency that wasn’t really, won again. A rich insider persuaded enough voters in the US (although not a majority) that he was an outsider like them, and that he would be their man if they elected him. Post-inauguration something approaching chaos has ensued, despite claims by the President to the contrary. The “Muslim ban” that wasn’t has been stymied by the courts. He claims that his executive order was good and its implementation smooth, but that the administration had encountered a “bad court”. Courts matter in the US. There will probably, eventually, be a more conservative Supreme Court. But even then, President Trump will have no control over Justices once raised to the Supreme Court. Given that reality has a way of reasserting itself over fantasy, it remains to be seen what the effects of a more conservative court will be. And what happens when the “Mexican” wall doesn’t appear? Or when a combination of tax cuts and infrastructure spending either doesn’t happen or does happen and cripples the economy? An uncertain course is unfolding towards an uncertain destination. And how will we know what’s going on? Bad news is likely to be constantly derided as fake news. And meanwhile it looks like real fake news will be used to distract and confuse.

What has any of this got do with science? Well, it's never nice to see facts trashed and experts ignored. Mind you for the sake of full disclosure I should admit that write from the perspective of an expert (if only in eye movement control). During the US presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton said in her stump speech that she 'believed science'. At the time she was referring to issues around climate change. But this was a risky thing to do politically. It probably contributed in a small way to her democratic demise. It suited quite a lot of voters to discount the science of climate change (complicated and nuanced) in favour of the much simpler idea that their jobs and standard of living, at least over the short term, were much more important. She was also drawing a contrast with someone who claimed to know better experts, whether generals, economists or yes, scientists. And with someone whose connection with anything resembling reality appears, at least on the basis of his public pronouncements, to be tenuous. Given the Trump presidential campaign, and the early weeks of the Administration, given the misinformation on a heroic scale, insults and fantasy we’re hearing and seeing, things are not looking good.

But facts matter, there is a reality that can be usefully contrasted with fantasy. You can get away with voting for comforting fantasy for a while. There are circumstances, after all, in which it is possible to deny the reality of gravity for a little while. But in the end the reality reasserts itself. Get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and the end result is unlikely to be pretty.

As an aside it’s interesting (and humbling) to note that a reality TV star and shady businessman, has had more effect on the world, than most scientists toiling away diligently will ever have. Time will tell whether the effects are good or bad. But it’s a reminder that science the institution is limited in its influence and heavily dependent on other institutions, including cultural and political institutions. Before my science chums get sneery about the 'ordinary' folk and their choices, it's worth remembering that those are the folk science serves. And they are also the folk that, at least in the UK, fund most science via their taxes. Science has its realm, and is spectacularly successful at dealing with certain kinds of questions. But they are not the only questions that bother people, and indeed may not even be the most important ones. Whether I should vote to leave the EU, or vote for a Trump or Clinton, or beyond that how I should live, science is only part, maybe just a small part, of the picture.