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.
