I have a horrible feeling sometimes that heavily promoted crap research on space aliens, cold showers, mind-body healing, schoolyard evolutionary psychology, extra-sensory perception, magic golf balls, air rage, himmicanes, subliminal smiley faces, etc etc etc, has softened the ground so that the seeds of more evil trees could then be planted and take root.

Dale Lehman sends an email with subject line “A new low in science”:

I watched part of the painful hearing and here is a story on it.

It is a new low in both statistical studies, policymakers reactions, and public reactions. Of course, the study could be correct, but without any review and without any data, it is simply out of line with many other studies. And, in the hearing the explanations amount to a vast conspiracy where thousands of scientists and clinicians are in a grand scheme (mostly out of fear for their jobs – an irony, given how this administration has used fear about employment as a tool against government employees) to prevent the truth from getting out. The hearing itself was a travesty with virtually none of the subcommittee members present – only Ron Johnson (who outdid himself) and Blumenthal who left (I think out of frustration). I don’t know what bothered me the most – the tone of the witnesses, Johnson’s tirade, or the public applauding the conspiracy statements.

I replied that the bit about “the study could be correct” reminds me of the distinction between evidence and truth which we’ve discussed on the blog.

I’m not sure that this is “a new low in science.” Some other recent lows in science have included members of the elite media promoting ridiculous UFO-as-space-aliens speculation, and celebrity academics here and here promoting junk-science claims of mind-body healing.

The vaccine crap is much worse from a policy perspective—space aliens and mind-body healing are mostly just a waste of time—but, as we’ve discussed, I have a horrible feeling sometimes that heavily promoted crap on space aliens, cold showers, mind-body healing, schoolyard evolutionary psychology, extra-sensory perception, magic golf balls, air rage, himmicanes, subliminal smiley faces, etc etc etc, has softened the ground so that the seeds of more evil trees can now planted and take root.

All that junk science over the past twenty years has been promoted by leading academics. Prominent professors from Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Chicago, etc. have been promoting magical thinking under the guise of science. Perhaps no surprise that politicians and non-academic hucksters want to get into the game too.

P.S. I asked Lehman whether it was ok for me to quote him, and he said, “Sure. But if it is delayed by 6 months, there will probably be worse examples to come.” I replied that I’ve been doing less blogging lately and the lag is only 4 months now.

P.P.S. Between when I wrote the above post and when it appeared, I posted something else with a similar theme: 25,000 lives saved per ship sunk, $100,000 per citation, a probability of 10^-90 of a decisive vote . . . Is there a through line from B.S. numbers in junk science to B.S. numbers coming from the government?

Part of this may just be me trying to justify my own existence: I write about bad science and I’m concerned about bad policy, so it’s natural for me to see a connection. But I do see something real here. Many of the celebrated leaders of our pop-science establishment–professors with elevated titles at major universities, members of the National Academy of Sciences, PBS and Ted stalwarts, etc.–have at best a tolerance and at worst an active taste for junk science. And many of our political leaders will say the most ridiculous, immediately refutable things. I can’t do much about this, but I can scream. Oh yes, I can do that.