Scientific Pretense vs. Democnacy - Florida Gulf Coast...

Scientific Pretense vs. DemocnacyArrogance and intolerance in the name of superior expertiseare antithetical to popular governance and the requirements

of honest argument. But that hasn't stopped them frombecoming a central feature of our political life.

By Angelo M. Codevilla

''We will restore science to itsrightful place,,/'

—Barack Obama

NPACKED, THIS SENTENCE MEANS: " U n d e r m y

administration, Americans will have fewerchoices abouthowthey live, and fewer choicesas voters because, rightfully, those choicesshould be made by officials who rule by theauthority of science."

Thus our new president intends to accel-erate a trend a half-century old in America but olderand further advanced in the rest of the world. There

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is nothing new or scientific about rulers pretendingto execute the will of a god or of an oracle. It's a tool topreempt opposition. The ruler need not make a casefor what he is doing. He need only reaffirm his statusas the priest of a knowledge to which the people can-not accede. The argument "Do what we say becausewe are certified to know better" is a slight variant of"Do what we say because we are us."

An Old Story

T HE i-'HENCil REVOLUTIONARY INTELLECTUALS a n d

merchants who founded the modern statespoke of political equality. But they knew that

if the masses governed, they might well have guillo-tined them rather than nobles and priests. And so

they set up, and Napoleon perfected, a system ofgovernment that consisted of bureaucracies. In prac-tice and in theory, the bureaucracies defined themodern state in terms of efficient administration,which they called scientific. In 19th-century France,Prussia, and their imitators, the state set standardsfor schools, professions, and localities. While electedassemblies might debate abstractions, they did notdeal with the rules by which people lived. Politicalequality and self-rule were purely theoretical, whilepersonal latitude was at the discretion of the bureau-cracies. This is the continental model of the state,best explained by G. W. F. Hegel in The Philosophy ofHistory and by Max Weber in his description of theRechts.staat, the "rational-legal state." Access to thisruling class is theoretically equal, typically throughcompetitive exams, and its rules should apply equal-ly. Just as in the ancient Chinese imperial bureau-cracy, decisions should be made by those who knowand care best: the examination-qualified bureau-crats. In modern governance, in addition to embody-ing the state, the bureaucrats are supposed to be thecarriers of the developing human spirit, of progress.

Only in Switzerland and America did the theoryand practice of popular government survive into themodern world. But note: they survived because theywere planted on older, hybrid pre-Enlighten mentroots.

Because the pretense of rare knowledge is thesource of the modern administrative state's intel-lectual and moral authority, its political essence isrule of the few, by their own authority, over the many.Ancient political theory was familiar with this cate-gory, distinguishing within it the rule of the money-makers for the purpose of wealth, of the soldiers forglory, or of the virtuous for goodness. But modernthought has reduced government by the few to therule of the experts. Expert in what? In bringing allgood things, it seems. This was so when Mexico's dic-tator Porfirio Diaz (1876-1911) justified his rule byclaiming that he was just following the impartialadvice of "los científicos," the scientists, about eco-nomics and public administration. Never forget thatthe one and only intellectual basis for Communistrule over billions of people since 1917 is the claimthat Karl Marx had learned the secret formula forovercoming mankind's "contradictions," especiallyabout economics. How many millions genufiectedbefore the priests of "dialectical materialism"! To alesser degree, the "brain trust" and "the best and thebrightest" were important sources for the authority

of the Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedyadministrations, respectively.

The scientific subject matter to which the rulersclaim privileged access matters little. Three genera-tions ago it was economics, in our time it includes

Whether the objective be rain-making, the avoidance of piagueor faliing skies, the fuifiiiment of

fond wishes, or the affirmation ofidentity, the ruler's incantationsestabiish the presumption that

he and his class know thingsthat others do not.

everything from environmentalism to child rearing.But whether the objective be rainmaking. the avoid-ance of plague or falling skies, the fulfillment of fondwishes, or the affirmation of identity, the ruler'sincantations establish the presumption that he andhis class know things that others do not or cannotknow; that hence he and his class have the right torule, while the rest must accept whatever explana-tions come from on high. In our time, such knowledgeis called science, and claiming ownership of it practi-cally negates political equality, if not human equalityaltogether. Claiming it is a political, not a scientific,act.

Knowledge and Equaiity

T HE CLAIM THAT PUBLIC AFFAIRS (and as Well

many matters heretofore deemed private) arebeyond the capacity of citizens to understand

and too complex for them to administer, and hencethat only certified experts may deal with them, mustbe cynical, at least to the extent to which those whomake it realize that only theoretically does it trans-fer power to "the experts." In practice, the powerpasses to those who certify the experts as experts.Surely, however, the polity's ordinary members ceaseto be citizens.

Aristotle teaches that political relationships—that is, relationships among equals—depend on per-suasion. Conversely, persuasion is the currency ofpolitics only insofar as persons are equal. Whereasequals must persuade their fellows about the sub-stance of the business at hand, despots, kings, oraristocrats exercise power over lesser beings by

APRIL 2009 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 33

S C I E N T I F I C P R E T E N S E V S . D E M O C R A C Y

pointing to their status. But do those who rule onbehalf of superior knowledge really know things thatendow them with the right to rule? What might suchthings be? What subjects, what judgments, qualify as"science," meaning matters so far beyond the hori-zon of ordinary human beings as to disqualify com-monsense judgment about them? What can anyhumans know that the knowledge of it rightly placesthem in the saddle and others under it? What are the

matters on which the public may have legitimateopinions, and on what matters are their opinionsillegitimate, except when expressed by leave of certi-fied experts? Moreover, how does one accede to therank of expert? Must one possess a degree? But nei-ther Galileo nor Isaac Newton had any, never mindThomas Edison. Moreover, possessors of degrees dodiffer among themselves. Must one be accepted byother experts? By which ones? Note also that scien-tists are not immune to groupthink, to interest, todishonesty, to mutual deference or antagonism, nevermind to error.

The problem is patent: Because it is as plain inour America as in all places and at all times that somemen do know the public business far better than oth-ers, it follows that the people in charge should be theones who best know what they are doing. Hence,inequality of capacity argues for political inequality.To the extent that the matters to be decided rest onexpertise, any nonexperts who claim a civil or natu-ral right to refuse to follow the experts in fact abusethose rights. At most, nonexperts may choose amongcompeting teams of experts.

But on what basis may they choose? If the ques-tions that the experts debate among themselves are

fundamentally comprehensible by attentive laymen,"science" would be about mere detail and citizenswould be able to decide the big questions on the basisof equality. But if the "science" by which the polity isruled disposes of essential questions, then citizen-ship in the sense of Aristotle and of the AmericanFounders is impossible, and the masses should bemere faithful subjects. And if some voters dig intheir heels or place their faith in scientists who areout of step with "what science says"—quacks, bydefinition—then they undermine the very basis ofgovernment that rests on expertise. Such inequalityis compatible with some conceptions of citizenship, butnot with the American or démocratie versions thereof.

Because Americans believe that "all men arecreated equal," they tend to identify the concept ofcitizenship with that of self-government; the Ameri-can commitment to equality means equality in themaking of laws. Even more, it presumes laws underwhich persons may live as they wish, that the peoplehave the flnal say on any restriction ofthat freedom,and that even popular assent—never mind scientificdecision-making—cannot alienate the rights to "life,iiberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Unlike Hegel and Napoleon, who saw nations asorganisms to be organized scientifically, Americansview public life as an arena of clashing interests thatmust be adjusted to their general satisfaction. Hencefrom the American perspective, removing the poli-ty's business from the arena of politics to the cloistersof science just restricts the competition among thepolity's factions and changes its rules. Whereas pre-viously the parties had to address the citizenry withsubstantive cases for their positions and interests,now translating those positions into scientific termsexpressed by certified persons means that the fac-tions must fight one another by marshaling contrast-ing scientific retinues, by validating their own anddiscrediting their opponents' experts. It follows thenthat the modern struggle is over control of the processof accreditation, and that the arguments the masseshear must be mostly ad hominem, seldom ad valorem—not least because the experts deem the masses inca-pable and unworthy of hearing anything else.

Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal" revolutionizedthe relationship between ordinary Americans andtheir government by introducing a new kind of leg-islation: thenceforth, the people's elected represen-tatives would delegate to "independent" executiveagencies the "quasi-legislative" and "quasi-judicial"power to invent and administer the rules in their


A N G E L O M . C O D E V I L L A

field by which people would live. The citizen'srecourses against these powers are mostly theoreti-cal. The notion that they are "independent" and ruleby impartial expertise is on the level of stories abouttooth fairies.

Scientific Pretense Comes to America

AMEHiCA GOT ITS FIRST Straight dose of scientificgovernance in the 1950s. In 1954, the U,S.Supreme Court decided the case of Brown v.

Board of Education—whether schools segregated byrace fulfilled the 14th Amendment's requirement for

"equal protection of the laws" to all citizens—not byreference to any legal or political principle on whichthe general population might pronounce themselves(one such principle was available in Justice JohnMarshall Harlan's dissent in P!e.ssy v. Ferguson, thecase that Brown overturned), but rather by referenceto a "study" by sociologist Kenneth Clark concludingthat "separate is inherently unequal." This was afinding supposedly of fact, not of law. Whereas ordi-nary citizens were supposedly competent to agree ordisagree with the legal and moral principles on eitherside of these cases, the Court decided Brown on abasis that could be contested only by sociologists aswell credentialed and funded as Mr. Clark. Debateswithin the Court and in society at large subsequentlyhave been focused not so much on what is lawful ason contendingstudiesaboutthe effects of competingpolicies.

The scientization of American political life wasjust beginning. Between the 1950s and 2000 socialpolicy slipped away from voter control because the

courts and the "independent agencies" took themover. Beginning in the 1970s, courts and agenciesbegan to take control of economic life through thepretense of scientific environmental management.In Massachusetts v. EPA (2007), the Court agreedwith what it called predominant scientific opinionthat human emissions of carbon dioxide cause "glob-al warming" and hence ordered it to regulate thoseemissions—essentially America's economy. TheAmerican people's elected representatives had notpassed and were not about to pass any law concern-ing "global warming." No matter.

It should be superfluous to point out that "scien-tific" briefs submitted to courts, as well as the innu-merable contacts between expert "independent"agencies and the interest groups in the fields theyregulate, are anything but impartial, bloodless, dis-interested, apolitical. But in fact the power of scien-tific pretense rests largely on the thin veil it castsover clashes of interest and political identity. Let uslook further.

In his 1960 Godkin lectures at Harvard, C. P.Snow, who had been Britain's civil service commis-sioner, told Americans that "In any advanced indus-trial society...the cardinal choices have to be madeby a handful of men: in secret and, at least in legalform, by men who cannot have firsthand knowledgeof what these choices depend upon or what theirresults may be." In short, public figures must be fig-ureheads for scientists who arc formally responsibleto them but whose minds are beyond common under-standing and scrutiny. Snow concluded that society'sgreatest need was for change, and that scientistswere "socially imaginative minds." While scientistsshould not administer, he said, they should be part ofthe Establishment along with administrators. Heillustrated this point by contrasting the clash inBritain between two scientists. Sir Henry Tizard,innovative, progressive, and very much a member ofthe administrative-scientific Establishment, and F. A.Lindemann, a scientist close to Winston Churchillbut outside the Establishment. According to Snow,Lindemann polluted science and administrationwith politics, while Tizard's contrary scientific andadministrative opinions were supra-political. Tizard'smembership in the Establishment made them that.

But in the same year. President Dwight Eisen-hower's farewell to the American people after eightyears in the White House and a lifetime in the U.S.Army argued that government's embrace of sciencewould corrupt itself and science. Whereas Snow had



taken pains to identify science with public policyand to call true scientists only those who got alongwith colleagues and especially with administra-tors, Eisenhower pointed to these things as sub-versive. His oft-cited warning about the dangersof a "military-industrial complex" was part of theaddress's larger point; the danger that big govern-ment poses to citizenship:

...a government contract becomes virtually asubstitute for intellectual curiosity. For everyold blackboard there are now hundreds of newelectronic computers. The prospect of domina-tion of the nation's scholars by Federal employ-ment, project allocations, and the power ofmoney is ever present and is gravely to be regard-ed. Yet, in holding scientific research and discov-ery in respect, as we should, we must also bealert to the equal and opposite danger that publicpolicy could itself become the captive of a scien-tific technological elite.

The prospect against which Eisenhower warnedhas become our time's reality. One accedes to therank of expert by achieving success in getting grants,primarily from the government. Anyone who hasworked in a university knows that getting gov-ernment grants is the surefire way to prestige andpower. And on what basis do the government's grant-ors make the grants that constitute the scientificcredentials? Science itself? But the grantors are notscientists, and they would not be immune to humantemptations even if they were. Personal friendship,which C. P. Snow touted, is not nearly as problematicas intellectual kinship, professional and politicalpartisanship. In sum, as Eisenhower warned, politi-cians are tempted to cast issues of public policy interms of science in order to foreclose debate, to bringto the side of their interests expert witnesses whoseexpertise they manufactured and placed beyondchallenge.

Power by Pretense

T ESTIFYINfi TO A JOINT CONGRESSIONAL COmmit-

tee on March 21, 2007, former vice presidentAl Gore argued for taxing the use of energy

based on the combustion of carbon, and for other-wise forcing Americans to emit much less carbondioxide. Gore wanted to spend a substantial amountof the money thus raised to fund certain businessventures. (Incidentally or not, he himself had a large

stake in those ventures.)But, he argued, his pro-posal was not political,and debating it was some-how illegitimate, becausehe was just following"science," according towhich, if these thingswere not done. PlanetEarth would overheat andsuffocate. He said: "Theplanet has a fever. If yourbaby has a fever, you go tothe doctor. If the doctorsays you need to inter-vene here, you don't say,'Well, I read a science fic-tion novel that tells meit's not a problem."' ButGore's advocacy of "solu-tions" for "global warm-ing" was anything butpolitically neutral accep-tance of expertise. As vicepresident until 2001, andafterward, he had done much to build a veritableindustry of scientists and publicists who had spentsome $50 billion, mostly in government money, dur-ing the previous decade to turn out and publicize"studies" bolstering his party's efforts to regulateand tax in specific ways. Moreover, he claimedenough scientific knowledge to belittle his opposi-tion for following "science fiction." But Gore's workwas political, not scientific. Not surprisingly, some ofhis opponents in Congress and among scientiststhought that Gore and his favorite scientists weredoing well-paid science fiction.

Who was right? Gore's opponents, led by Okla-homa senator James Inhofe, argued that the sub-stance of the two main questions, whether the Earthwas being warmed by human activities, and what ifanything cou Id and should be done about it, should bedebated before the grand jury of American citizens.Gore et al. countered that "the debate is over!" andindeed that nonscientific citizens had no legitimateplace in the debate. Yet he and like-minded citizensclaimed to know enough to declare that it had ended.They also claimed that scientists who disagreed withthem, or who merely questioned the validity of theconclusions produced by countless government sci-ence commissions to which Gore and his followers


A N G E L O M . C O D E V I L L A

had funneled government money, and which theycalled "mainstream science," were "deniers"—illegitimate. Equally out of place, they argued, werecalls that they submit to tests of their scientific IQ.Whatever else one may call this line of argument, onemay not call it scientific. It belongs to the genus "politics. "But, peculiarly, it is politics that aims to take mattersout of the realm of politics, where citizens may decideby persuading one another, and places them in arealm where power is exercised by capturing thecommanding heights of the Establishment.

Thus on July 28, 2008, Speaker of the HouseNancy Pelosi explained to journalist David Rogerswhy she was right in forbidding Congress to vote onproposals by Republicans to open U.S. coastlines tooil drilling. Using fossil fuels, she explained, causesglobal warming. Forbidding votes that could result inmore oil being used was her duty because, she said,"I'm trying to save the planet. I'm trying to save theplanet." No one would vouch for her scientific exper-tise. But she was surely saving an item in the agendaof her party's constituencies, which rightly feareddefeat in open debates and votes.

In the same way, in September 2008 Secretaryof the Treasury Henry Paulson and chairman of theFederal Reserve Board Ben Bernanke told Congressand the country, backed by many in the bankingbusiness, that unless Congress authorized spending$700 billion to purchase the financial assets that thebanks and investment houses considered least valu-able, the entire financial system would collapse andthe American people would lose their savings, jobs,homes, and so on, and that authorizing that moneywould avert the crisis. But none of those who pro-posed the expenditure explained why the failure ofsome large private enterprises and their subsequentsale at public auction would cause any of the above-mentioned catastrophes. There was no explanationof how the money would be spent, how the assets tobe bought would be valued, or why. The argumentswere simply statements by experts in government aswell as finance—whose repeated mistakes hadbrought about the failures that were at the center ofcontention, and whose personal interests wereinvolved in the plan they proposed. The strength oftheir arguments lay solely in the position of thosemaking them. They were the ones who were sup-posed to know. And when, a month later, the samePaulson, backed by the same unanimous experts,told the country that the $700 billion would be spentotherwise, and as they committed some $8 trillion

somehow to shore up the rest of the economy, thearguments continued to lie in the position of thosemaking them, combined with the clamor of thosewho would benefit directly from the government'soutlays. In practice, expertise—or science—has cometo be deñned by a government job or commission.Truth and error are incidental.

The confiuence of political agendas with theattempt to describe political choices as scientificrather than political, and the attempt to delegitimizeopponents as out of step with science, is clear inthe 2005 book by journalist Chris Mooney. TheRepublican War on Science. Typically, Mooney dis-claims substantive scientific judgment and claims

Caught in the confluence ofcorporate interests and conserva-

tive ideology, Republicans have"skewed science" on every

important question of the day,from stem cell research to""global warming, mercury

pollution, condom effectiveness,the alleged health risks ofabortion, and much else."

only the capacity and right to discern the "credibility"of rival scientists and their claims. Note well, how-ever, that propositions or persons are credible—thatis, worth believing—only to the extent that they arecorrect substantively. Arguments such as Mooney's,Paulson's, Pelosi's, and Gore's most certainly aim toconvince citizens about certain substantive proposi-tions, but—and this is key—they do so indirectly, bypretending that they find certain propositions credibleand others not. Credible are the ones of which theyapprove, coming from persons the places of whichthey approve: the government bureaucracies or uni-versities. Judgments of authoritative provenance,they argue, need not refute the opposition's argu-ments, or even refer to their substance becausescience—meaning the Establishment—supposedlyhas settled the arguments intellectually to its ownsatisfaction, the only satisfaction that matters.

Mooney writes that because "Americandemocracy...relies heavily on scientific technicalexpertise to function [public officials] need to rely on



the best scientific knowledge available and proceedon the basis of that knowledge to find solutions."Modern Republicans, he argues, have put themselves"in stark contrast with both scientific informationand dispassionate, expert analysis in general."Caught in the confiuence of corporate interests andconservative ideology, primarily religion. Repub-licans have "skewed science" on every importantquestion of the day, from stem cell research to "glo-bal warming, mercury pollution, condom effective-ness, the alleged health risks of abortion, and muchelse." They have "cherry picked" facts and, most omi-nously, even cited scientists to back them up. Mooneyworries: "If the American people come to believethey can find a scientist willing to say anything, theywill grow increasingly disillusioned with scienceitself."

Against the Grain

T H.vr WORRY IS SERIOUS. Convincing people thatwhat you may teach your children, what taxesyou should pay, must be decided by the "scien-

tific" pronouncements of members of a certain classchallenges the American concept of popular govern-ment all too directly. To succeed, any attempt toimpose things so contrary to American life mustovercome political hurdles as well as human natureitself.

Government by scientific pretense runs againstthe grain of politics in two ways: First, since thosewho would rule by scientific management eschewarguments on the substance of the things, insteadrelying on the cachet of the scientists whose mereservants they pretend to be, their success dependson maintaining a pretense of substantive neutralityon the issues—the pretense that if "science" were topronounce itself in the other direction, they wouldfollow with the same alacrity. But this position isimpossible to maintain against the massive evi-dence that those who hawk certain kinds of social orenvironmental policies in the name of science arefirst of all partisans of those policies, indeed thatthese policies are part of the identity of their socio-political class.

Second, it is inherently difficult for anyone whofancies himself a citizen to hear from another that heis not qualified to disagree with a judgment said to bescientific. Naturally, he will ask: If I as a layman don'tknow enough to disagree, what does that other lay-man know that qualifies him to agree? Could it bethat his appeal to science is just another way of tell-

ing me to shut up because he is better than I, and thathe is justifying his presumption by pointing to hisfriends in high places?

The most important claims made on behalf ofscience often run against human nature, none moreso than its central claim about the nature of human-ity. On December 20, 2005, deciding the case ofKitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, federal dis-trict court judge James Jones prohibited the Dover,Pennsylvania, schools from teaching the possibilitythat human beings are the result not of chance but of"intelligent design." To partisan applause, he ruledthat science had shown, proved, that all life, includ-ing human life, is the result of chance, that it ismeaningless, that entertaining the possibility of theopposite is religion, and that doing so in a publicschool amounts to the "establishment of religion,"and hence is prohibited by the First Amendment.Leave aside the absurdity of maintaining that theauthors of the U.S. Constitution entertained anypart of this reasoning. Consider: since everyoneknows that nobody really knows how life, particu-larly human life, came about (cf. the legal meaning ofthe word "knowledge"), any attempt to impose asofficial truth the counterintuitive proposition thathuman life is meaningless discredits itself. It isimpossible to suppress the natural reaction: "Howthe hell do they know?"

Human nature rebels especiallyviolently againstthose who pretend to special knowledge but whothen prove inept, whose prescriptions bring misery.When politicians lay out their reasons why some-thing should or should not be done, when the publicaccepts those reasons, and then the ensuing mea-sures bring grief, the public's anger is tempered by itsown participation in the decision, and is poured outon the ideas themselves as well as on the politicianswho espoused them. But when the politicians makebig changes in economic and social life on the basis of"science" beyond the people's capacity to under-stand, when events show them to have been wrong,when those changes impoverish and degrade life,then popular anger must crash its full force only onthose who made themselves solely responsible. Thefailed sorcerers' apprentices' excuse "science mademe do it" will only add scorn to retribution, 'i

Angelo M. Codevilla is professor of internationalrelations at Boston University. This essay is adaptedfrom the second edition of bis The Character of Nations,forthcoming from Basic Books.


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