On-Call Scientist(-Activists)

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is here to help. At least, that’s the message the group’s On-Call Scientists program wants to convey to callers seeking human rights advice through a scientific lens.

Ostensibly, the hotline serves a noble purpose: human rights groups in need of research assistance on specific issues (e.g. coal mining) can connect with a vetted AAAS expert for reliable answers. But is the AAAS really the defender of disinterested science it claims to be?

The AAAS is the oldest general science organization in the United States, and the world’s largest. Since the 1930s, however, the AAAS has been wrapped up in a number of singularly unscientific controversies thanks to its close association with the American Association of Scientific Workers (AASW)—a political group formed during the Cold War that was denounced as a “Stalinist Outpost” by the socialist Sidney Hook. The AASW had its roots in a 1936 convention hosted by the AAAS and its British counterpart in the United Kingdom, where radical members called for a “Magna Carta of Science” and an international “Supreme Court of Science” above national governments. Illustrating the close connection between the AAAS and AASW, at least seven AAAS presidents between 1931-1951 were also AASW members, and three even served as presidents of the far-left AASW.

Today’s AAAS continues to flaunt left-wing politics under the guise of promoting unadulterated science. In April, the organization co-hosted the March for Science in Washington, D.C.—a series of nominally nonpartisan protests “powered by community organizers and individual advocates” as “a force for science advocacy.” In practice, it looks altogether more pointed.

The sentiment of the marchers is decidedly anti-President Donald Trump. Last month, activists bore signs depicting the Earth underscored by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign slogan: “I’m With Her.” And while the group stressed that its participation meant “advocating for science. . . not for a particular political ideology,” then why did AAAS CEO Rush D. Holt, Jr. then point to the President’s temporary immigration restriction as its cause d’action for marching?

This is why President Trump’s recent immigration ban has been a jolt across the global scientific enterprise. Although the ban may not become permanent, its effects are already being felt, even in the world of science. . . . The denial of entry is a detriment for the individuals, and it is also an affront to science.

In fact, the entire March for Science against so-called “science deniers” seemed eerily… religious, noted physician Jeremy Faust in the left-leaning website Slate. “Being ‘pro-science’ has become a bizarre cultural phenomenon,” Faust wrote, “in which liberals (and other members of the cultural elite) engage in public displays of self-reckoned intelligence as a kind of performance art, while demonstrating zero evidence to justify it.”

Faust’s is an interesting observation, particularly in light of the AAAS’s sometimes troubled history with religion. In this vein, the AAAS maintains a Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion (DoSER) program aimed at “engaging scientists in the science and religion dialogue.” Certainly, greater collaboration between the religious and scientific communities is a welcome development, and ought to be applauded if it strengthens ties between Americans of varying backgrounds.

But the words of longtime AAAS CEO Alan Leshner throw DoSER’s august quest into doubt. Leshner, a psychologist by trade, has called laws which allow schools to teach intelligent design alongside evolutionary theory “an assault against scientific integrity, leaving students confused about the fundamental nature of science and unprepared to excel in a work force that increasingly requires science-related skills.”

To be fair, Leshner has also said that the claim that science and religion are rivals is a “myth,” noting that science can forge “common ground” among Americans. Yet Leshner’s common ground apparently consists of opposing religious freedom in the classroom. He decried one Texas law which outrageously requires schools to teach students to “analyze and evaluate different views on the existence of global warming”—in a word, to study.

As Leshner puts it, “the science of climate change is clear, and a basic tenet of many religions is the call to be good stewards of the planet.” According to Leshner, that means teaching policymakers and students about “reducing greenhouse gas emissions.” In other words, religion and science are free to coexist—so long as religion knows its (subservient) place.

What Leshner (and many in the AAAS) fail to grasp is that his demand for compromise between evolution and intelligent design is uncompromising. Barring schools from teaching opposing understandings of science isn’t scientific; it’s tyrannical. Preaching that religious piety means adhering to the highly controversial dicta of global warming theory only underscores this clinical disdain for the beliefs held by millions.

The civic-minded Leshner—who apparently believes the Book of Genesis is calculated to prevent students from becoming engineers—might consider the words of the pioneering 17th century mathematician and devout Calvinist John Wallis, who summed up his life and work thusly:

It hath been my Lot to live in a time. . . And [I was] willing whatever side was upmost, to promote (as I was able) any good design for the true Interest of Religion, of Learning, and the publick good.

Leshner might also reflect on the words of the deeply pious Robert Boyle—the brilliant physicist, inventor, and the first modern chemist—in his 1685 book shockingly entitled Treatises On The High Veneration Man’s Intellect Owes To God:

For there are divers truths delivered by revelation. . . that not only would never have been found out by mere natural reason; but they are so abstruse. . . they do nevertheless surpass our dim and bounded reason.”

DoSER’s seminars examining topics like “Neocolonialism and Contested Spiritual Landscapes in Modern American Astronomy” as well as efforts to “curb anti-science influences” on topics such as “evolution or ancient Earth history,” suggests that the AAAS is just as left-leaning as ever.

It’s this political agenda which makes the AAAS’s hotline for human rights groups so troubling. It’d be unfair to claim that everything AAAS and its members advance is motivated by a political agenda. But the association’s history of advancing political activism in the name of impartial science is dishonest and undermines the scientific method.

Human rights groups should think twice before seeking out an On-Call Scientist: spreading politically-tinged information to otherwise well-meaning organizations only threatens their mission and effectiveness.