People frequently write about academic political bias but
rarely about the degradation of academic scientific capacities. Nevertheless,
the signs of this degradation are everywhere. One example is embracing the
pseudo-science of climate alarmism. The degree of enthusiasm has varied from
Caltech’s tacit approval to the full-throat fervor of Harvard University
president Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust. Another sign is a chronic failure of the $300
billion-dollar-a-year post-secondary educational system to produce enough
computer specialists. Lastly, there’s the academia’s failure to distance itself
from the Union of Concerned Scientists (Disclosure: the author has a pending lawsuit against the Union of Concerned
Scientists, the Ford Foundation and other defendants.) and the ongoing
“Bill Nye the Science Guy” media
hoax.
In hindsight, over the period from the late 1980s to 2016,
many factors had contributed to the downfall of the academic integrity and
scientific capacity. The major factors were:
1. Unnatural, politically-spurred growth of college enrollment without regard to the economic or
social demand for the increasing number of college graduates and even the
supply of sufficiently prepared and motivated college applicants. This quantity
instead of quality approach has been known to be harmful, and it was.
2. The takeover of the universities and colleges by
the New Left. Apparently,
many radicals of the 60s hadn’t learned from the fall of the Soviet Union and
continued to think of the U.S. as an evil “system” that needed to be
overthrown. By trusting the good will of its faculty, the university system
presented the New Left an excellent opportunity to sabotage scientific
development. Not all radicals went into social disciplines to poison the minds
of the new generation. Some of them went into science, and corrupted scientific
institutions through environmental studies and other means. Their impact was
amplified by big money from the Ford Foundation and its ilk.
3. Foreign influence. Science, as a pursuit of knowledge, is international. But
scientific recognition can be influenced by politics. Environmental politics of
the European Union in the 1990s heavily impacted scientific processes in the
U.S.
One of the most important things for a scientist is the
ability to publish in peer-reviewed journals. Consequently, editors of the
prestigious scientific journals wield enormous power. But most English-language
scientific journals have international editorial boards. Furthermore, most
scientific journals are owned by foreign publishers. The three largest
scientific publishers are: Reed-Elsevier (UK), Springer (Germany), and Holtzbrinck
(Germany). The latter two merged in 2015. EU-centric scientific publishing has
allowed EU politics to infringe on American science without people noticing.
American academia also corruptly promoted scientists for
collaboration with the International Panel on Climate Change and other UN
agencies.
4. The rise of "studies" with predetermined
results, as opposed to the normative
sciences, valued for their understanding of the laws of nature. Certain
political developments caused this. Then confrontational environmentalism and
tort litigation requested scientists to back their claims, no matter what, and
generously paid. This went against all norms. Science starts with empirical
facts (observations or experimental results) and arrives to conclusions based on
them. “Post-normal science” starts with conclusions (provided by politicians or
activists) and contorts itself accordingly to justify these conclusions.
Demand for such “science” came from many places. The
Environmental Protection Agency was one of them, while increasingly wealthy
environmental organizations were another. During the 1980’s to the 1990’s, we
saw the plaintiff bar tearing apart manufacturing industries using tort and
product liability laws. Asbestos litigation alone yielded tens of billions of
dollars. Some of the loot went to Democratic Party politicians who created and
expanded those laws. Even more money was paid to expert witnesses. This money
incentivized academics to advance scientifically unsound theories, supporting
dubious plaintiff claims.
5. Al Gore! Bill Clinton had an unusual arrangement with his vice
president, where he granted Al Gore full responsibility for some functions of
the government. Clinton used to say that his VP Gore was the most powerful VP
in the history of the country. In fact, Al Gore received an absolute power in
science. But Al Gore was incapable of understanding physics and had an almost
religious hostility toward modern science and technology. From Rupert Darwall,
The Age of Global Warming: A History: “…Gore argued, Bacon and the scientific
method thereby contributing to the extreme evils perpetrated by Hitler and
Stalin. Gore’s accusation against science shows an extraordinary misreading of
history. … Yet Gore’s assault on the Scientific Revolution met with silence
from leading academies and societies.” (Kindle Locations 5278-5279, 5283-5285).
6. Affirmative action and diversity policies have come into deadly synergy with environmentalist
agendas, successfully tearing down American science. In the 1990s, affirmative
action appointees didn’t need any qualifications and bore loyalty to nobody but
those who appointed them. Thus, they could be used to carry out any policies,
no matter how extreme. For example, Al Gore fired eminent physicist Will Happer
from the position of the Director of Research in the Department of Energy for
merely proposing measuring effects of postulated ozone layer depletion. Martha
Krebs, a Ph.D. without any scientific jobs on her CV, was appointed in his
place.
7. Academic scientists’ blindness to these developments seems amazing in hindsight. One
explanation is that they supported Democrats and were conditioned to believe
that a danger to scientific research and academic freedom comes from
conservatives and Republicans.
They were further desensitized because the changes were
additive; environmental studies and other nonsense were added as the
universities grew, until their influence drowned out that of the hard sciences.
If biology professors were fired to let environmental activists take their
place, the response would be quite different. In academia, fake scientists
prevailed over real scientists and speak on behalf of science now. Fake news media believe
them or act as if they do.
8. Suppression
of the independent science. The Left and then mainstream Democrats have been ranting
about since the 1990s, calling it “corporate science”. The combined litigation
and legislation campaign painted as a fight against Big Tobacco is still not
sufficiently recognized for what it became. It targeted a highly unpopular and,
possibly, evil industry to set the precedent that the Democrats might silence
independent scientists by going after the businesses that make them independent.
9. Universities’ abrogation of their duty to prepare new generations of American scientists and
engineers. Whether driven by their elitist contempt of preparing specialists
demanded by productive economics or by ideological preference, the universities
have been churning out radicals in place of skilled graduates able to live in
mutual harmony with society. Feminism played its role by demanding a decrease
of male faculty and students in science and engineering.
And there was also market dynamics at play. Successful
graduates in economically demanded fields have found jobs outside academia,
while unemployable “studies” majors stayed in the system and outside
nincompoops entered it, staying true to the saying, “Those who can, do. Those
who cannot, teach.” This was a recipe for disaster -- more useless faculty
generated more useless graduates, many of whom stayed in academia, inflating
size of the departments producing more of their kind, and so on. The politics
of the National Scientific Foundation also caused exodus of the best scientific
minds.
The remaining vacuum has been filled by immigration. More
than half of faculty in science and engineering departments of most
universities are foreign-born and raised, mostly not from Western countries. I
don’t doubt their qualifications, ethics, and loyalty. But, there is one thing
they are totally incapable of doing (with few exceptions) -- defending the
academic freedom of scientists and the integrity of science. Almost by
definition, this means a successful integration of an immigrant working in a
university means an acceptance of the Leftist oppression as a norm.
Academia seems to have been allowed to employ an
immigration policy of its own. Nearly one million foreign students currently
study in the U.S.; the top countries are China, India, South Korea, and Saudi
Arabia. Unlike their American counterparts, most
foreign students study sciences, math, and engineering.
I know that thousands of outstanding scientists work and teach
in academia. Academic
institutions are to blame for
suppressing or ignoring their contributions.
Thanks to H.J. for collaboration in writing this article.
Leo Goldstein researches and writes about climate alarmism, and
its interconnection with other social ills. Until recently, Leo Goldstein wrote
under the pen name Ari Halperin.