Science and democracy need each other

Episode Summary 

After language, the scientific method is probably humanity’s greatest achievement; it’s a veritable engine of invention that has allowed us to bend rivers to our will, split the atom and cure many diseases. But while scientific progress has given us the tools to reshape the world and even change our bodies, we haven’t yet figured out how to rewire our mental hardware. The same cognitive instincts that helped our ancestors survive in the wild are now making many of us vulnerable.

Although we think of them as separate today, science and superstition were one and the same. For the vast majority of human history, astronomy and astrology were together. Alchemy and chemistry were coeval.

Over the centuries, however, science separated itself from pseudoscience, but the old beliefs never went away; they just went underground. As science became increasingly specialized and isolated from the general public, however, these “undead sciences” began gathering political power, a development that far too many advocates of progress did not perceive.

In the second Trump administration, superstition has seized control of America’s executive branch in the person of Russell Vought, a Christian nationalist extremist who has been manically destroying as much of America’s scientific achievements as he possibly can, assisted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a deranged lawyer who has been slashing and burning medical research and treatment.

Let’s not sugarcoat it. There are a lot of terrible things happening in science today. But there are also a lot of courageous people standing up to tell the world what’s happening, and standing up for the reality that science and democracy depend upon each other.

I have two guests joining me in this episode to discuss: Jenna Norton is a program director at the National Institutes of Health, where she studies the disparities in urology and kidney health, and Mark Histed. He also works at NIH, where he is a senior investigator studying neural computation and behavior. Each is here in their personal capacity, and as members of the Science and Freedom Alliance.

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Related Content

—As science faces external attacks, it needs to look within to defend and reform

—The sociology behind why Donald Trump loves the ‘poorly educated’

—How ‘intuitionist’ thinking became political—and weaponized by the global far right

—Government has a duty to teach critical thinking and science literacy to both kids and adults

—Why tech billionaires decided to team up with creationists to attack democracy

—Right-wing pundits don’t generally try to make arguments, they try to affirm emotions

—How liberalism lost touch with the public, and its ability to defend itself

—Why Trump is attacking universities

Audio Chapters

00:00 — Introduction

12:16 — The importance of science communication and community-participation science

23:01 — Politics as the master science

27:54 — Jay Bhattacharya and the weaponization of objectivity

32:51 — Scientific truth and the Great Barrington Declaration

42:30 — Open versus closed epistemologies

47:53 — The destruction of American scientific leadership

52:59 — The value of curiosity-driven research

57:00 — The false promise of AI replacing human scientists

01:00:41 — Organizing scientists and the Bethesda Declaration

01:03:59 — Science and Freedom Alliance mission

01:07:12 — Building institutions for public engagement

Audio Transcript

The transcript of this episode is available separately.

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