Science Fights Back. : Is It Winning? The Answer Is Not in the Stars

In the battle for the American mind, a colonial-style office building nestled in ivy-covered Princeton, N.J., is a fortress. Inside, behind a white door with a brass nameplate, the National Association of Scholars functions like a command and control center. And Rita Zurcher, the research director for the NAS, serves as a front-line officer, defending science and reason against paranoia, superstition, ignorance and politics.

“The entire scientific endeavor is under attack from both the Right and the Left,” Zurcher explains as she rifles through a stack of reports, news clippings and academic papers. A middle-aged woman with graying blond hair and blue eyes, Zurcher’s soft voice takes on a hard edge as she contemplates her amorphous foe. “They promote the image of the scientist as evil and talk about myths and conspiracy theories as if they help us understand the world. Someone has to stand up and say this is not only wrong, but dangerous.”

Zurcher’s opponents include truly dangerous extremists such as the murderously anti-technology Unabomber and citizen militia members who see conspiracy everywhere. But in the main, she is worried about more subtle threats: New Age religion, alternative medicine, religious fundamentalism, left-wing academics. A flurry of recent books and academic papers have described these ideas as part of a large social phenomenon--modern man’s flight from reason. Last summer, 200 scientists, doctors and philosophers gathered in New York City to discuss the crisis. Many at the conference called for a counterrevolution. “It’s time to get nasty--to launch a crusade against quackery,” declared one biochemist.

As part of this crusade, the National Association of Scholars has launched both a newsletter and a quarterly journal dedicated to the defense of science. The NAS also sponsors conferences such as the one held last summer at the New York Academy of Sciences. The academy will soon publish a book on the decline of reason. The National Center for Science Education has begun to challenge the spread of Bible-inspired “creation science” into public schools around the nation. And the National Council Against Health Fraud has begun to take on alternative medicine in courtrooms and other forums around the country.

To a casual observer, the alarm now rippling through certain corners of science and the academy may seem premature, even hysterical. The decline of reason isn’t the subject of radio talk shows and political debates. It doesn’t keep many of us up at night. But a close examination suggests that this problem is real. Environmental disasters have made many Americans wary of technology. Medicine’s limitations--in fighting cancer, AIDS and other diseases--have dimmed the promise of science. And a general disenchantment with authorities of all types has made millions of people receptive to ideas that were once beyond the pale.

The effects of all this skepticism are serious. They range from the murders linked to the Unabomber to the huge popularity of faith healers and unproven cures (Americans now spend $13 billion a year on alternative medicine). Last summer, a national conference for state officials was canceled when too many delegations pulled out in the erroneous belief that it was part of a “one world government” conspiracy. And all across the country, irrational notions about science, history and the paranormal are being taught in many big city schools.

The decline of math and science education--the pillars of rational thought--can be quantified in irrefutable terms, argues Zurcher. According to a study by the NAS, science and math composed almost 16% of a typical college graduate’s training in 1914. Today science and math make up less than 6% of a student’s work. “Math and science literacy are a real problem,” says Zurcher, “and facts have become something to be avoided, something students are to be protected from. Of course, the truth is, there are ways of understanding the world that are superior and there are people who are simply smarter and better equipped to solve problems.

“We should defend the idea that there are elites. That’s what students should strive to be.”

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Harsh as they may sound, these attacks on certain forms of education are mild compared with the loud complaints made by the critics of alternative medicine. Opponents of therapies that lack the seal of official approval are outraged by the growing popularity of medicines, diets and hands-on techniques that they define as quackery. About one-third of all Americans use alternative treatments. Alternative medicine practitioners are the object of especially harsh criticism from those sounding the end-of-reason alarm.

“There are a lot of people who hate the establishment, hate the Food and Drug Administration, hate insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies,” says Saul Green. These people, Green suggests, become like Ponce de Leon, searching endlessly for a medical promised land. If the NAS is a fortress of orthodox science, Green is its Rambo. For more than a decade, the retired biochemist has waged a one-man campaign of journal articles and media appearances attacking alternative medicine. Green points out that questionable treatments are especially popular among people with conditions that are simply beyond conventional treatments, especially cancer and AIDS. Nowhere is the flight from reason, and rejection of medical science, more evident than it is in the HIV/AIDS crisis.

In their book “Higher Superstition,” a sweeping review of anti-science trends, authors Paul Gross of the University of Virginia and Norman Levitt of Rutgers University show how conservatives and liberals have embraced irrational ideas about AIDS. On the Right, some conservatives deny the scientific evidence and hold a paranoid view about how AIDS is transmitted. This has led to virulent homophobia and outright attacks on some people with AIDS. On the other side of the political spectrum, some AIDS activists and African Americans believe that AIDS is the product of a sinister conspiracy targeting gays and minorities. Others believe that the government has willfully blocked treatments and research with evil intent. Levitt and Gross quote a statement by AIDS activist Larry Kramer to illustrate this view:

“In this country our enemies include our President, our Department of Health and Human Services, the Hitlerian Centers for Disease Control, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Public Health Service, the self-satisfied, iron-fisted controlling, scientific Frankenstein monsters who are in charge of research at the National Institutes of Health and who, with their stranglehold grip of death, prevent any research or thinking that does not coincide with the games their narrow minds are playing.”

Though Kramer’s anguish and grief are self-evident, it is difficult for a reasonable person to accept that science and medicine have the means and the will to conspire against gays and blacks. But in the face of terribly complex science, it may be easier to believe in a conspiracy, explains Levitt. “People accept a lot of these ideas because it’s very difficult to study and understand what’s really going on,” he says. A self-defined “old grouch” with a graying beard and hair the color of steel wool, Levitt is impatient with what he views as ignorance and sloth. “Even people who are educated have a diluted understanding of science,” he complains. “Someone had to stand up and say these ideas are ridiculous. We want people to understand that we don’t suffer fools gladly.”

Among those who are criticized by outspoken scientists such as Gross and Levitt is the U.S. Congress, which has ordered the National Institutes of Health to study alternative medicine in earnest. Since 1992 the Office of Alternative Medicine at the NIH has spent about $10 million looking at therapies ranging from acupuncture to prayer, but no definitive results have been published. Critics say that too many of the studies are a waste of money and that the very existence of a federal agency devoted to alternative medicine grants legitimacy to illegitimate practices.

“Quackery and pseudo-science have made an organized effort to gain legitimacy and the OAM is a result of that,” argues Dr. Wallace Sampson, chairman of the National Council Against Health Fraud. The 24-year-old organization, whose 1,400 members include health educators, doctors and dietitians, offers advice on the efficacy of therapies and warnings about potentially harmful new treatments and often testifies at congressional and state-level public hearings.

A cancer specialist in Santa Clara, Sampson says that many cancer patients supplement or even replace conventional care with folk remedies or unproven techniques. Those who reject conventional medicine entirely die sooner and suffer needlessly, he argues. Others may find the unconventional treatments soothing, but they do not alter the progress of their disease.

“It all has something to do with personal beliefs,” Sampson adds. “They know someone who says they were cured of cancer by some herbal medicine even though they were getting chemotherapy at the same time. Or maybe they are just disaffected from conventional medicine. I also think a lot of it has to do with the anti-scientific streak in American society. There’s a tradition of not trusting authorities and that has grown worse. There’s no question that people are more skeptical and more willing to believe they aren’t being told the whole truth.”

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Any fair consideration of the flight from reason must acknowledge the legitimate criticisms lodged against the scientific, academic and technical elites. It was science, after all, that once taught the inferiority of blacks and women. Conventional medicine gave us DES, Dalkon shields and other treatments with disastrous side effects. And high technology, wielded by the intellectual elite, has been indispensable in the production of toxic and radioactive pollution.

Sandra Harding, a feminist historian at the University of Delaware and an author of several books on science and women, says that environmentalists, feminists, health activists and others have all pointed out the failings of modern science and the Western version of rational thought. These groups saw the biases of experts who, as a group, were predominantly white males trained in traditional ways of thinking. Through the generations, these biases have affected who becomes a scientist, which subjects are deemed worthy of study and even how data might be construed. Much like priests guarding religious truths, scientists too often defend conventional wisdom in spite of the evidence against it. One example of the danger in this can be seen in the history of the polio vaccine. Development of an effective, practical vaccine was delayed for years because leading scientists refused to accept that an effective, killed-virus vaccine could be safely produced.

Given this history, notes Harding, today’s skeptics are right to question the wisdom of science. Critics also have a right to have their say when tax dollars are used to fund scientific endeavors. “The status of science is in real trouble right now because a lot of people are challenging the whole clerical culture of science,” she notes. “A lot of public funding is involved, and people are beginning to think that it’s unreasonable to allow such a small group that much unconstrained power in a democracy.”

Harding’s high-flying rhetoric, matched against opponents such as NAS, reveals the emotional power that undergirds this seemingly esoteric debate. Harding is tired of attacks that she feels are unfair and unduly personal. “It’s McCarthyism tactics and overblown rhetoric,” she adds. “We’re not all Unabombers or science bashers. But we are saying that science has consequences, consequences that it has to be responsible for.”

The consequences of science were starkly illustrated when atomic physics led to the development of weapons of mass destruction. Critics of the scientific tradition would say that physicists bore the moral responsibility for their creation. Similarly, the medical establishment must take responsibility for treatments that fail and be open to innovations, argues Dr. Wayne Jonas, director of the federal Office of Alternative Medicine. “X-rays and digitalis were considered part of the medical fringe when they were first proposed,” he says.

Rather than take a stand on alternative medicine, Jonas says that his office will separate the promising from the fraudulent. The OAM receives about 1,200 inquiries each month from citizens wanting advice about specific treatments. The office currently refers these calls to state medical societies. In a few years, when its research projects begin to reach conclusion, the OAM may actually be able to proclaim which alternatives are sensible and which are not. “In a way, we may be able to help people return to a sense of reason and certainty about these practices,” insists Jonas. “We might turn out to be part of the solution to all the confusion.”

Nevertheless, Jonas admits that his office answers to an advisory board that is packed with alternative medicine practitioners and advocates, and owes its existence to the political pressure applied by similar true believers. There are, he allows, many thousands of healers and unconventional practitioners who relish the prospect of the government finding that their treatment or technique has merit. No doubt many are already claiming some kind of imprimatur based on the fact that federally funded research is underway. But this is the way that science functions on a political level.

“A lot of scientific endeavors are driven by politics and society rather than what is of pure scientific interest,” adds Jonas. “Generally a lot of alternative medicine isn’t backed by science at all. But clearly there’s enough harm being done by the abuses of alternative medicine, and enough potential good in a few areas, to merit the public’s interest.”

But what if the general public is so ignorant of science that rational decision-making is impossible? This is the fear that drives those who sound the alarm about the death of reason. Christina Hoff Sommers, a philosophy professor at Clark University in Massachusetts and author of “Who Stole Feminism,” is among the more widely quoted defenders of intellectual orthodoxy. In her writing and speaking, Sommers focuses on what she calls the excesses of feminism and political correctness. In their rush to criticize the scientific establishment, she says, the academic Left has created a series of rhetorical gimmicks that lead to the argument that nothing in the universe can be regarded as a steadfast fact. Fact, as well as beauty, lies entirely in the eye of the beholder.

To illustrate this problem, Sommers points to the New Jersey Project, a state-funded effort to reform education. The project has published guidelines that challenge the whole idea of scientific objectivity. The language used by the New Jersey project and other feminist critiques can be extreme. Science is described as the rape of nature, which is feminine. Reformers insist on respect for the “women’s way of knowing.” All of this strikes Sommers as an attempt to replace truth and objectivity with a political analysis.

“I agree that it was a mistake to leave women and others out of science,” Sommers says. “But to then say that there is no such thing as objectivity or truth, that everything is dependent on point of view and all points of view are equal is going too far. That’s why I have students who have contempt for ideas that should make them humble. They think that they are superior to Aristotle--and his ideas are not valid--because he was a sexist. If I ask them if they had to choose between the life of a person and the life of a pet, quite a few choose the pet. That’s how far it’s gone.”

Even as Sommers’ philosophy students claim their moral superiority, a professor at Wayne State University in Michigan says he sees students with equally bizarre notions about science and anthropology. “They will tell me that ancient magic is another way of knowing the truth and is equal to Western science and philosophy,” explains Bernard Ortiz de Montellano, a professor of anthropology who specializes in the role of minorities in science. “In public schools they have been taught that ancient Egyptians flew in full-size gliders, that they discovered all the knowledge that led to Western civilization and that this proves the superiority of black Africans. Of course this ignores the fact that there’s no evidence that what they claim is true or that the Egyptians were black to begin with.”

The object of his indignation is an extreme version of Afrocentric education that has taken root in some urban school systems. Born of concern about real gaps in school curricula, mainstream Afrocentric teaching makes certain that students learn about the accomplishments and contributions made by people other than white Europeans.

“I’ve been working all my life to get more minorities interested in science and I know that these neglected facts are important,” he says. But he is distraught over the disservice done when Afrocentrism runs amok. He is especially critical of the African American Baseline Essays, a series of texts published by the school district of Portland, Ore., and used in cities across the country. The Baseline essay on science implies that astrology is scientific and that ancient Egyptians developed evolutionary theory.

“This material is used by teachers in many big urban areas,” he notes. “Then the students who take it in are humiliated when they finally go to college and are in a real science course. The real problem here is that it accomplishes the opposite of what is intended. Instead of giving minority children a way into the sciences, it handicaps them. Students who should be given the very best in science are instead getting massive amounts of garbage.”

The garbage flows in part because too many educators mistakenly believe that student self-esteem can be built with lessons that create ethnic or racial pride, even at the expense of the truth, he adds. “That’s not how you create pride and self-esteem,” he says. “The way to do it is to present students with challenges that they can meet. When they do this, they start to feel good about themselves because they see they are mastering real course material.” *

Extremists and conspiracy theorists have existed in every age. Their success depends, in large measure, on the state of the public mind. A people content with its leaders and a nation’s course will not be receptive to suspicion and doubt. But a disillusioned public is fertile ground for skeptics and worse. Disillusion with all sources of expertise and authority--from clerics to clinicians--motivates many in the flight from reason. Of course, disillusionment begins with unrealistic expectations. And in the immediate post-World War II era, American science seemed to promise a cure for every disease and a solution for every problem. “Science was sold as a priesthood. Give them lots of money and they will go solve our problems,” explains Paul Grobstein, a biologist at Bryn Mawr University. The son of a research scientists, Grobstein came of age in this period of scientific optimism. “For me, as with a lot of people, science took the place of religion when it came to faith,” he recalls.

As an adult Grobstein has witnessed the nation’s loss of faith in science. Dramatic events like the Three Mile Island nuclear accident and slow-moving disasters such as the AIDS epidemic have fueled public antipathy toward science and technology. Many people think it’s time to cut science down to size.

“My grandmother always asked my father, ‘Did you cure cancer today?’ ” Grobstein says. “She was teasing. But for a lot of people, the fact that we haven’t cured cancer has led to real resentment.

“Science was oversold, and that has led to some deep disappointments.”

Public frustration with science can be traced to something as mundane as the national obsession with dieting and the flow of conflicting nutritional advice coming from researchers and the media. Just recently Americans learned that beta carotene vitamin supplements do not reduce the risk of cancer. This after a beta carotene craze and the evolution of a large beta carotene industry. That scientists cannot seem to provide consistently reliable advice when it comes to something as basic as food contributes to anti-science sentiments.

“People worry a great deal about the food they eat, and it’s frustrating to hear that something is good for you one week and bad for you the next,” explains Thomas Hoban, a sociologist at North Carolina State University who specializes in public attitudes about food. “People want certainty and stability. But we have so much information to deal with and so much is changing so fast that no one can understand it all.”

Confronted with so much uncertainty, some fall prey to conspiracy theories that offer easy explanations for social problems. A peculiar example recently arose in Indiana, when believers became convinced that reflective dots printed on the back of highway signs were in fact instructions for invading United Nations troops. The state changed the design of the signs.

People living in rural areas are more receptive to conspiracy beliefs, according to an analysis by Lawrence Busch, a sociologist at Michigan State University who specializes in studying rural communities. There the ideal of American individualism exerts its strongest hold--”It’s a kind of radical individualism that you don’t really see in other Western democracies,” he says.

Rather than recognize the power of social changes--the economy, technology, politics--stridently independent Americans “come to view the world as a collection of individuals, each making his own way.” Someone holding this view may find it difficult to explain something as complex as global politics without falling back on conspiracy beliefs.

“Instead of seeing that the interests of large groups of people are being expressed, you suspect that there are just a few people conspiring to change the world for themselves,” Busch explains. “It’s one way to explain the pace of change and the feelings of insecurity that many people have.”

Further fuel for skepticism is supplied when big business or big government fail. Recent revelations of pollution and secret medical experiments conducted by the government’s Cold Warriors might support anyone’s conspiracy fears. “Even the increase of salmonella in chicken--which is caused by the speed-up of disassembly lines--makes people question the value of big technologies,” Busch adds. “And then they question the proposed solution, food irradiation, because it’s just another technology they don’t understand being applied to a problem.”

This skepticism knows no political boundaries. “I go to a lot of organic food festivals, places where people who bake their own bread and grow their own vegetables get together,” Busch says. “You might find that people at one table are from the hippie movement of the 1960s and at another you have the Michigan Militia. The same people don’t trust the public schools, so they are into home schooling too. They have the illusion that they can control things if they are more isolated from society.” The biggest danger in this isolation is that it allows extreme ideas to flourish. “There’s a lot of anti-Semitism in these quarters,” he says, “and a lot of racism.”

One antidote to the stress of change and technological burnout might be found in the comfort of reliable experts. Unfortunately, the credibility of expert opinion has been broadly devalued by both scandal and the proliferation of opinion available in the mass media. According to a poll issued by the National Science Foundation, more than half of Americans believe that “many scientists falsify research results to advance their careers.” At the same time, the media present a countless number of authorities, with widely varying credentials, who sometimes offer stunningly contradictory advice. In the media age, a faith healer may get as much air time, and seem every bit as authoritative, as a Nobel laureate in medicine.

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Science has always been forced to contend with myth and magic, but those who worry about where American intellectual life stands insist that something is seriously amiss. Science and technology have extended our life spans, produced food in abundance and created pleasures once beyond imagination. More people live in freedom and with broader rights than ever before. Yet millions are hostile to technology, and nostalgia for the pre-technological era is rampant.

“We have an entire culture that focuses on the individual, on individual control, but a real sense that things are not in control and resources are running out,” says Alan Marcus, a historian of science at Iowa State University. “There is no common sense and there are no groups left that can control standards and determine what is acceptable. This is a world that is fundamentally different than the 1950s, when we believed that certain people had expertise. Nowadays, each individual decides which expert is right, and all of them are considered equal, even if they are saying opposite things.”

In many ways, science itself has created the confusion that sends the public into the embrace of quacks, charlatans, myth-makers and magicians. The recent cold fusion scandal and the steady display of dueling doctors to be seen on TV are evidence enough that science cannot police itself. “It’s really the end of expertise as we knew it in the past,” Marcus adds. “Now we have to wait to see what will come along to replace it.”

For now, the struggle over science and reason remains focused on academia, where young adults learn the habits of mind that guide them through life. Pro-science organizations are becoming more active in their crusade. For example, the National Center for Science Education was instrumental in 1994 in defeating an effort by some school board members to introduce creationism in the schools in Merrimack, N.H. In the following year, the town’s voters elected a more moderate school board.

On the college level, Levitt, Gross and their allies seem determined to raise the subject on more campuses. They find inspiration in the intellectual outrages that crop up with regularity. One of the most recent--a conflict at Williams College--illustrates why the defenders of reason are inspired to keep up their alarm. The subject of the argument at Williams? A student’s assertion that the historical fact of the Holocaust is open to individual interpretation.