Yes, Science-Based Medicine (SBM) used to be a respectable place, and, indeed, still has some good articles. But it also went “progressive”, as evidenced by its cancellation of the late Harriet Hall’s favorable review of Abigail Shrier’s book Irreversible Damage, its commissioning of a negative review to replace it (progressives aren’t allowed, you see, to deal with gender dysphoria in a rational manner), and then pushing upthe dumb claim that sex isn’t binary in humans or other species (see my post about the site and its views here).
SBM is back again with a woke-like and, frankly, blinkered and misguided take on a new collection of essays edited by Lawrence Krauss, The War on Science, which I describe here (note: Luana Maroja and I have a joint essay as one of the chapters). Here it is, click the cover to go to the Amazon page.
The book, which has been over a year in the making, largely describes the inimical effect of the “progressive” Left on science. The point, of course, is to keep science as pure as possible by keeping it unpolluted by ideology.
But the SBM take on our book, highly negative, is below; click the screenshot below to read it.
And that’s the rub for SBM. They have their knickers in a twist because it’s about the damage done by the Left, and, author Howard argues, we should have given all of our our attention to the palpable damage that the Right is doing to science. In other words, he wanted both-sideism and didn’t get it. As I wrote in my description of the new volume, it’s pretty clear that, right now, Trump and his minions are indeed doing more serious damage to science, though that will hopefully be undone when we finally (fingers crossed) get a Democratic administration. But the Left also continues to damage science, and that is what the book is about.
And it’s not that we have neglected Trump’s depredations on science either (just see my Nooz this a.m. for one of many examples in which I’ve gone after Trump’s attacks on science!) It’s just that the book is about what the Left is doing to science (the authors, by the way, come from all parts of the political spectrum. And we can’t have that.
The most curious thing is that the author of the SBM screed—neurologist and psychiatrist Jonathan Howard—didn’t even read the damn book! He’s going by the table of contents alone as well as by the authors, whom he seems to despise en masse. Not only that, but he adds that he doesn’t think that other people should read the book, either. As he says.
So no, I wont [sic] read The War on Science. Even if contains some valid points, they are completely irrelevant, like being warned about a broken taillight as my car careens over a cliff. There is no reason why anyone should care about the flaws of DEI trainings, real or imagined, in 2025. None of it matters.
And though I don’t think anyone should read this book, its mere existence has great value. It both explains and memorializes how we got to this sad moment. Many renowned scientists and scholars, some of whom should have been valuable allies, were blind to the real danger until it was too late.
As if our criticism could have stopped Trump! But yes, plenty of us have criticized what Trump has done; it’s just that we didn’t put that stuff in the book assembled a year ago–before Trump did the heavy blackmailing.
At any rate, did Dr. Howard even contemplate that reading this book might teach him something, even if only to hone his arguments? Nope. He just thinks we needed to write about something other than what we wrote about. Granted, had I been editor I would have not chosen every single essay for publication, but a lot of them are pretty damn good. Pity that Howard won’t read them and tries to dissuade others from doing so. Check out the table of contents here and decide for yourself if it’s worth reading—or if parts of it are worth reading.
Here are some of Howard’s criticisms of our “one-sideism”:
The War on Science is best thought of as a work of science fiction, dispatches from a parallel universe where MAGA doesn’t exist, Wokism is all-powerful, and science was obliterated by DEI and trans people. It’s a complete inversion of what’s actually happening.
. . .However, it’s not just that these renowned scientists and scholars created a fantasy world, their imaginations provided fuel and ammunition to the people who are currently taking a wrecking ball to things in the real world. Many key Trump officials, past and present, got into power by portraying themselves as woeful victims of censorship and cancel culture (Marty Makary. Vinay Prasad,JayBhattacharya, and Kennedy). These Trump officials weaponized their perceived victimhood to distract from their disinformation, attack respected scientists, and bash the institutions they are now trashing.
Predictably, these renowned scientists and scholars were happy to lend their legitimacy to this feigned victimhood. Jordan Peterson and Gad Saad recorded podcasts with future Trump officials about “silencing the opposition” about “academic freedom“. Now that they are in power, these same Trump officials are leading the way, purging, censoring, and defunding scientists. Saad’s chapter is titled Universities as Dispensers of Parasitic Ideas. As Trump crushes universities, Saad wants people to think these ticks, leeches, and mosquitoes deserve their fate.
. . .As Christina Pagel wrote in her article Donald Trump’s ‘War on Woke’ is Fast Becoming a War on Science. That’s Incredibly Dangerous:
Donald Trump’s attacks on diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) initiatives since his January inauguration have been intense, indiscriminate and escalating. A tragic plane crash was baselessly blamed on DEI. All DEI programs within public bodies have been ended and private contractors face cancellation if they also don’t comply. Webpages that defend religious diversity in the context of Holocaust remembrance have been taken down.
Science and academia have been particularly targeted. Universities are threatened with losing federal funding if they support DEI. Government reports and government-funded research are being held back if they include prohibited terms such as “gender”, “pregnant person”, “women”, “elderly”, or “disabled”. Grants funded by the National Institutes of Health are being cancelled if they address diversity, equality or inclusion in any form.
This is what these renowned scientists and scholars enabled.
Sorry, but what Howard is arguing is what comes out of the south end of a cow facing north. We didn’t enable Trump; we criticized a threat coming from the other end of the political spectrum, and a threat that may be more permanent since much of it comes from scientists themselves. This book, which hasn’t yet appeared, did nothing to facilitate Trump’s election, nor did our previous writings. Howard is peeved because we didn’t write the book he wanted, and so, like a petulant two-year-old, he not only refuses to read it, but tells other people not to read it, either. Perhaps he should at least read it himself before he warns off others!
In a discussion about this with colleagues today, I got this reaction from Richard Shweder, a professor here in cultural anthropology and psychology:
It is a curious review seemingly assuming that the only threat worth attending to is the most salient one of the moment. The threat can come from the State. It can come from the administration of a university. And, with due respect to the founders of the AAUP who believed academic freedom would be well-served by a system faculty governance, the threat can also come from the faculty itself.
And my colleague Dorian Abbot in Geophysical Sciences added this:
In the context of this book, “War on Science” really refers to epistemological attacks on the scientific method, rigor, and merit. A society deciding it doesn’t want to provide as much funding for science as it used to is not a war on science in this sense. To deal with that problem we need to show the people that we are generating value for them, not political actors, and not discriminating.
Despite a long-running – and troubling – stereotype among some that intellectual freedom is solely a right-wing cause, many of us who think and vote on the left have cared about threats to open inquiry for a long time. While more on the left may now be getting active in this area due to new threats from the right, left-of-center scholars have long been concerned about restrictions on research, teaching, and expression, including those originating on the left.
. . .In the lively Q&A period, challenged by an audience member who raised the concern that too much intellectual humility could lead to doubting obviously real things, Studebaker reiterated his commitment to being open to different ideas, saying we must “leave open the possibility that some idea could emerge in a room like this subsequently in time that initially might be unimaginable to us but could lead us somewhere genuinely valuable.”
“I don’t think that that’s an abdication of a commitment to human values,” Studebaker concluded. “I think it is an affirmation of human potential.”
It’s not yet time to throw John Stuart Mill in the dumpster.
“The War on Science is best thought of as a work of science fiction, dispatches from a parallel universe where MAGA doesn’t exist, Wokism is all-powerful …”
Iron Law of Woke Projection never misses.
Here, an admission that the Weltanschauung of Woke Gnosticism is, in fact, the devil in the details.
Woke Left creates problems to draw combatants into the Left’s game of dialectical transformation. Hollowing out words and ideas to occupy them with redefinitions for an apparatus of tyranny as the dumbass Woke Right falls in and makes the mess the smart-ass Left needs to move the pendulum.
Two radical blades of one pair of scissors, is one model. Both are woke, and recognition of it defuses the Left’s dialectic.
The irony is that, within most American universities, wokism is indeed pretty much “all powerful”, and it is precisely that fact that has led to MAGA’s current onslaught.
And momentary success as folks with common sense find the far left’s excesses offensive, unintelligent and dangerous to children specifically and to a functioning and safe society that values individual accomplishments generally. Rereading my notion, I realize that it applies to the far right’s excesses as well. Duh.
Progressive attacks on science and the academy are universal (cf. New Zealand), but the Trump attacks on universities are purely American. In that specific sense, what Howard and SBM have to say about Jerry’s excellent book seems sadly parochial – a concern solely on the American left about other Americans not “lending their legitimacy” to the enemy. It begs the question (in the proper sense), “Who’s side are you on?”
[edit to add: I find this stuff fascinating, and I’m grateful to our host for writing about it, and I’m a devoted reader of this content. But I also find American cultural hegemony kinda exhausting sometimes. Progressives like Howard and the SBM crowd have watermelon flags in their bios, and they are internationalists when it pleases them, but they save their most white-hot fury for domestic heretics who violated purely American cultural expectations that directly affect no one outside the USA. Sometimes I wish guys like Howard would take it outside where nobody else has to hear him ranting.]
The tunnel vision Mike refers to is utterly characteristic of the “Progressive” Left: the human institution of slavery always ascribed only to the US plantation system; blatant aggression by Russia ascribed to US provocation (involving NATO and one Victoria Nuland); Islamist terrorism (in the 1990s) blamed on the much later US invasion of Iraq, etc. etc.. Even some dopier “Progressives” outside the US copy this US-centric rhetoric. Come to think of it, the very subject of “The War On Science” in the US is itself mimicked abroad, as in some BLM drolleries in the UK and Canadian groves of academe. It is rather like the international mimicry of US pop music, hence my label for the entire tendency: the pop-Left.
Heretics and apostates are seen as very serious insider threats by authoritarians, anywhere, at any time, of any stripe.
Thank you Mike.
I’m in Italy, everybody is against Trump, Meloni government notwithstanding. Almost nobody has even realized yet how pervasive wokism is, because you don’t see it in the streets, but you pretty much have to deal with it in the academia and if you work for any big company, in journalism, etc.
So this book is pretty much relevant and useful because an average guy like me can quote it to his HR and DEI department.
I’m glad I already received my copy yesterday.
Finally, if the woke left had heard what the authors say, the likelihood of Trump winning would have DECREASED.
There could be no better justification of the need for this book than the attitude and disposition of this reviewer.
Exactly right!
It’s quite a statement about our political discourse at the moment that a reviewer would write a review of a book he hasn’t read and that a publication would publish it.
+infinity
I completely agree. You absolutely can’t review a book you haven’t read.
Horrifying. Howard seems rather dense, as do Gorski et al, for advocating that people stay ignorant.
Just because my house is being burgled, it doesn’t mean I should ignore the arsonist approaching it with a can of petrol. We should speak out about all injustice all the time, whoever is behind it.
I remember the days when the sceptic movement encouraged anti vaxxers and flat earthers to read science books before debating those topics. It seems that some ‘skeptics’ and now becoming a cult with closed minds, just like chemtrailers who prefer to stay ignorant of the truth.
Yeah — I guess “intersectionality” is not considered to apply in these matters.
Those days are gone, as debating and convincing take energy and intelligence. It’s so much easier to refuse to debate on the grounds that it grants some kind of status to your opponent: it takes no effort and does not disrupt one’s serene sense of utter infallibility. This is consistent with reviewing (and condemning) a book you have not read. But when you make a habit of behaving this way, people will begin to notice that the emperor has no clothes of argumentation and evidence, just naked certainty. Such facile behaviour has perverted the meaning of skepticism, replacing evidence with ideology, questioning with acceptance and proof with emotion. It is beyond time to change the name SBM to the far more accurate SJBM.
Sadly, you are correct. I used to think that skeptics, were better than that, but it turns out that they aren’t.
When I saw that someone at SBM criticized a book without reading it, I wasn’t surprised. Of course, they’d disparage the book and its authors.
Crowds at sites like SBM, Pharyngula, and other humanist, skeptic, or atheist platforms rarely have anything positive to say about anyone that can be labeled transphobe, agreeing with Trump about anything , critical of DEI, anti woke…..
“it’s pretty clear that, right now, Trump and his minions are indeed doing more serious damage to science”
This would assume that many of our academic and affiliated organizations are not terminally ill from years of self-inflicted abuse. It’s not yet clear that this is a safe assumption.
Yes, I was trying to be charitable here and admit the thesis of this misguided article.
It’s ironic that what are now called “progressives” tend to be largely the enemies of the movement that originated the modern idea of progress: the Enlightenment.
Also, they seem not to realize that Trump’s attacks on science are a direct response to their excesses and ideology going too far into science, and that Krauss and colleagues are the ones who are really trying to solve that problem.
By the way, I strongly believe that Howard’s review is performing the role of signaling blind loyalty to his ingroup. By saying that he hasn’t read the book, and that he firmly believes that nobody should read the book, he’s making it very clear that his opposition to it has nothing to do with reason and logic, but with blind loyalty to his “progressive” coalition.
It really is pretty much the purest form of virtue signaling, isn’t it?
I call it servile toadying, like never being the first one to stop clapping after a Stalin speech. (There are films of these events; not pleasant to watch.)
But what is the realistic alternative if one is threatened by a sufficiently dangerous bully?
I’m reading it now. It’s very good. Dawkin’s intro is super…..haven’t gotten to yours yet, but I read the original. Dr Howard is a disgrace.
“Doctor Howard, Doctor Fine, Doctor Howard: ….”
(A cheap shot I admit, but few will be offended.)
Sadly this is all too predictable. When I heard, early in the year, about this book coming out in the summer, I remember saying it was a shame publication was being delayed so long, since by the time it came out we’d all be overwhelmed by Trumpian nonsense and the book would be seen as addressing yesterday’s problem. I predict that SBM’s approach will be taken by all the captured media, as it provides them with a perfect excuse for not actually engaging with the contents.
You “triggered” me with Harriet Hall – what an excellent person, sorely missed.
I don’t want her excellent riposte to acupuncture to ever be forgotten.
Witnesseth, friends:
Harriet Hall: Puncturing the Acupuncture Myth (2015)
My own (modest) contribution to the battle against nonsense:
https://democracychronicles.org/traditional-chinese-medicine/
(variously syndicated, here w/o ads and aesthetically pleasant)
D.A.
DavidAnderson_JD_NYC
@DavidandersonJd
That was a great video! Thanks for posting that.
+1
Thanks, I hadn’t seen that before. I had the privilege of meeting Harriet at TAM in 2013. She was wearing her ‘not a skepchick’ tshirt I was too shy to converse, so I just asked if I could shake her hand. She was an amazing woman with an amazing life. I recommend her biography.
Incidentally, that meeting had an interesting speech by Prof Jerry Coyne about science and religion….
Howard didn’t read the book, and we’re supposed to take his criticism seriously?*
*BTW, I did read his article.
Yep. Starts to illustrate the difference between critical thinking and critical theory.
What kind of publication prints a book review by someone who refuses to read the book? Really, people should simply refuse to read the review.
But if I didn’t read it, how would you know?
What Jonathan Howard and his editors at Science-Based Medicine don’t realize, or refuse to acknowledge, is that the left’s war on science, culture, education, and business, all in the name of DEI and critical race theory, contributed, in no small way, to the election of Trump and the takeover of the Senate by the Republicans. Apparently Howard can’t see the irony: he is consumed with the Republican Party’s assault on science when, in fact, he and his ilk had much to do with giving Trump the electoral college win.
Yes agree about the causation. I’ve posted this from the psychologist Lee Jussim at least once earlier this year. I think it bears repeating: the prelude to this moment of Republican vandalism was long and obvious.
https://unsafescience.substack.com/p/we-tried-to-warn-you
Jonathan Howard complains bitterly about their attributing Trump’s excesses in part to the excesses of the critical social justice attacks on merit and knowledge. He says he considers that to be intolerably misdirected and it appears that has a central role in driving him to tell everyone to not read it. I would think, as an adult, he could read the criticism of some aspects of the influence of critical social justice while also rejecting that attribution of blame. I continue to read Science Based Medicine even though I have disagreed with some of its content and disagreed with their forcing out Harriet Hall who once cited my written testimony against a state bill for being good.
Rick Shweder! I was surprised to see that he has apparently not retired, at 80 years old. He was on the U of C faculty when I was a PhD student there in the early 70s, and I know much of his excellent work.
SBM’s response here sounds suspiciously like a “Yes, but…” Yes, the criticisms are just, BUT good people pointing that out gave bad people an opportunity to seize power.
If they don’t think the criticisms are just, then they ought to argue that point.
If they do think the criticisms are just, then the real problem wasn’t anybody pointing it out.
Now I want an embroidered sampler to hang on my wall reading, “It is not yet time to throw John Stuart Mill in the dumpster.”
I was flabbergasted to discover yesterday that the Science Based Medicine site is blocking me from me submitting comments. Although I have been a continuous follower of their site for a long time, I do not remember when I last submitted a comment on the Science Based Medicine site, I rarely have done so. It is not plausible that anything I posted a long time ago was inappropriate or offensive.