The cartoon below, created by Jay Tanzman using Chat-GPT, came from the single (as of today) one-star Amazon review of the Krauss-edited volume The War on Science. As expected, the book, which is largely a collection of essays about the Left’s unwarranted attacks on science and academia, has been criticized by blockheads as useless and outmoded, because the real threat to science is from the Right. In fact, I agree with that contention, but in the end the long-term damage may come more from Leftist scientists who are working within the system to imbue everyone with a progressive ideology. I’m hoping of course, that the Trumpian damage to science will be largely reversed; but progressive scientists are training progressive students, and so the ideological rot will persist.
But I digress. All of this is by way of explaining this cartoon, which Jay made after he read the review on Amazon, which says, in part:
I could only get through 7 of these essays before I tossed this book in the trash. A better title would be, “A handful of superannuated right-wing scientists stomp their feet because their influence is waning fast.” Let’s see, which side of the political spectrum is currently posing the biggest threat to science right now? smdh.
I don’t know what “smdh” is, but I respond with “LOL, you numbskull!”
Here’s what Chat-GPT threw out under Jay’s instructions, quoted by Jay (with permission):
I had Chat-GPT do it. The background is a review of the book on Amazon was by someone who called the authors a bunch of “right-wing has-beens.” I only half-jokingly said to Krauss that I want a “right-wing has-been” t-shirt, and that maybe we should sell merch.
I was curious as to how Chat-GPT would depict a group of “right-wing has-beens.” Anna [Krylov, Jay’s partner] had the idea to use the five of us, so I gave Chat-GPT the query, “Create a graphic depicting Anna Krylov, Jay Tanzman, Lawrence Krauss, Luana Maroja, and Jerry Coyne as right-wing has-beens.” I had it add the text/images on the clothing. For your shirt, I told Chat-GPT to put [Jerry] in a sweatshirt with an image on it that suggests he is an evolutionary biologist.
The characters, in order from left to right are Anna, Jay, Krauss, Luana, and I. Luana said she’s proud of her “XX-XY” hat, and somehow I have acquired a moustache. But the emblem on my sweatshirt may come from my frog, Atelopus coynei.
This figure should be handy for our many critics to use, but it is copyrighted, so they better ask permission first!
Oh, and when I told Jay, “we all look so haggard” he responded that of course we do: we are “has-beens”!
I’d like to hear more on why you believe long-term damage is more likely to come from the Left than the Right. I’m not saying I disagree with you, but I will say that right-leaning, anti-science people have some long-term beliefs as well. I see three things: a) that evolution isn’t true, b) that global warming is a “hoax,” and c) vaccines are dangerous. Maybe there are some lefty people who sign on to these three, but it’s my guess that these three criticisms come mainly from the right.
Then again, I haven’t read the book but plan to (I gotta buy it first!), so maybe my request is answered in the book.
Evolution opposition is dead, and I think that most scientists now accept global warming. However, more damage may be caused by vaccine opposition, which can cause death (I think that economics, not science, is responsible for the failure to address warming). However, even if most danger is coming from the right, that doesn’t mean that we should just shut up about the Left. I, for one, see plenty of people making your points, and I see my own brief as dealing with the less-criticized area that constitutes my own end of the political spectrum.
Left-wing denialism is more pernicious and pervasive. This includes the notions that reality is socially constructed, the science is just the social construction of white males, and that other ways of knowing are equally valid, that humans are blank slates, with genes being merely decorative, that all differences in group outcomes result from oppression, and in particular that notions of sex and race and similar categories are not real but were invented in order to oppress people. A big reason why all of this is way more damaging to science than the antics of the right is that this is coming from within science since the left has twenty times the influence within science while the right has none. All the right can do is deny funding, and a large part of the reason that the right wants to do that is precisely the left’s subversion of science.
Which is “worse” is kind of a philosophical point.
However, Feynman was adamant that a scientist needs to take special care not to fool himself/herself, and this applies to us all.
I agree with this. “Left-wing denialism…that humans are blank slates, with genes being merely decorative, that all differences in group outcomes result from oppression, and in particular that notions of sex and race and similar categories are not real but were invented” is evolution denialism. Or some kind of wild human exceptionalism.
In a recent ask-me-anything Jesse Singal noted this as one of a few important upcoming points of conflict between progressive cultural beliefs vs. scientific or medical reality.
https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/some-of-your-july-2025-questions
Hollowing out science and our civic culture: Coel, come on up, you have a good bingo.
Right-wing evolution denial (creationism) may have declined over the years. However, left-wing evolution denial has taken off. Stated in different terms, leftists embrace human evolution from other primates as a way of attacking religion. But they get very religious if anyone dares to suggest that evolution produced sex differences. The term is “left creationism” and it was coined (to the best of my knowledge) by Razib Kahn.
And the same denialism exists if anyone suggests that there are evolutionary differences between any other human groupings.
SMDH = “shaking my damn head”
The ‘stache gives you sort of a Francis Collins-adjacent visage I think. I had read that review this morning when I was about to order the book and had to just laugh … except of course that statement goes into the global database and will show up somewhere as a probably small but serious weighting in an AI (sic ‘cause it ain’t intelligent) definition for any of you.
Right wing my tuchas!
I guess too much SMDH could induce a numb skull, so your riposte is appropriate.
That’s a weird looking frog. No frog has upright posture, not even Atelopus coynei. It looks more like Ichthyostega. I do wish that you all weren’t so haggard, as that is far from accurate.
I agree that that the animal on the shirt resembles an early amphibian like Ichthyostega. In my schoolbooks, Ichthyostega was often depicted as the missing link between fish and amphibians. This would fit Jerry’s profession as an evolutionary biologist.
You have to suspend your disbelief!
Proves that actual human artists are still going to be in demand..!
I think this cartoon was secretly drawn by R Crumb.
Perhaps the “frog” is meant to be a fleshy version of the Darwin tetrapod one sees on cars.
Only a has-been would recognize that it resembles something by Crumb!
I wouldn’t rate it as a particularly interesting or entertaining caricature work.
Okay, fine.You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not the subject, either.
Bring your memory back, PCC(E), a spritely young W&M or Harvard student, long hair, a bit hippy maybe, possibly staring down the prospect of a jail term for protesting the VN War and draft.
And a future seeing angel (stay with me here…) appears and says, “Jerr (the 60s were informal times, Daddy-o)…Jerr… in 2025 they’ll be calling you RIGHT WING.”
Young Jerry Coyne’s reaction to the angel’s prophesy?
HAHAHHHA. Would love to have heard it!
D.A.
NYC
ps Liked the AI drawing but I’ve seen better similar style likenesses.
Seems four out of five have the same optometrist.
I like the tetrapod shirt design, maybe you can start selling it as merch!
Re: “This figure should be handy for our many critics to use, but it is copyrighted, so they better ask permission first!” For what it’s worth, the United States Copyright Office doesn’t recognize copyright for AI-generated artwork, unless there is significant human authorship beyond merely providing text prompts. So unless a human makes original human-created additions to AI output, works are generally considered to be in the public domain, as the algorithm, not a human, is the creator, and only humans can claim copyright. Similarly, paintings by animals cannot be copyrighted in the US. See: https://www.copyright.gov/ai/
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/19/ai-art-cannot-be-copyrighted-appeals-court-rules.html
I think the political right is becoming far worse. I mean just now a man allegedly targeted the CDC and killed two people, supposedly because he believed COVID vaccine had made him sick! I don’t know of any left-wingers shooting at scientists.
Phrases like “A handful of superannuated right-wing scientists” are reminiscent of the 1940s in the galaxy far away, where those who failed to worship the discoveries of Lysenko & Co. were denounced as right-wing, indeed fascist. Another hint that Left ideocracy, festering within academia, could be more dangerous to science in the long term than temporary limitation of some grant funding.
I do have one complaint about the mostly admirable “War On Science” book. The phantom footnotes and citations, due presumably to hurried, inadequate editing and production, may unfortunately lessen the book’s impact.
In his August AMA, Sean Carroll got the following question:
3:03:26.7 SC: Emerge Holographic says: “The other day I saw a video of Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss comparing gender identity to healthy obesity, as concepts nobody should entertain. I am transgender, in fact. Both of their work, Krauss and Dawkins, inspired me at points in my life, so needless to say, it’s frustrating to see influential scientists harming people who they don’t understand due to misplaced atheistic authority. We often see this happen disproportionately with marginalized groups, especially in indigenous practices. As you are someone who can see the world from multiple emergent levels, what do you think it is that empowers brilliant minds to reductively redefine and dismiss the human conditions of strangers?”
Carroll’s answer is more than 9 minutes long.
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/08/04/ama-august-2025/
Could you summarise Carroll’s answer for us? I’m guessing it’s basically waffle, not wanting to explicitly depart from woke ideology but also not wanting to depart from science.
There’s a “Click to show full transcript” at the link (scroll down a bit). Carroll basically apologizes for these dinosaurs who don’t understand the complexities of gender, race, and indigenous practices.
Re: the “never mind what the left does, it’s problems caused by science on the right that are more pressing!” claim—— The dismissal of sex differences and the sex binary comes from the pseudoscientific left and has been extremely damaging as we all know. Add to that the left’s pernicious and pervasive anti-white racism, even in science, and you get the recipe for someone like Trump getting elected. All people are blank slates except whites who are inherently evil. And it’s in large part because of these liberal attitudes and the bad science on the left — like uncritical acceptance of transgenderism — being translated into public policy that we have Trump and RFK Jr in power now in the US. Liberals used to proudly say, “Reality has a liberal bias.” Not anymore.
As one commenter mentioned, liberal scientists and liberals generally also staunchly deny the heritability of just about any behavioral trait. A great example is denying the heritability of IQ in humans and its importance in career success and socioeconomic standing. Even while liberals paradoxically believe that they are higher IQ than conservatives. Liberals deny evidence of racial and sex differences in IQ, athletic ability, impulsiveness, sometimes even in genetic disease risk. Liberals hate funding education for the gifted and encouraging or funding white and Asian males into science and mathematics careers. But I do get why this form of denialism exists; if we as a society admitted that certain racial groupings tend to have differing IQs (I personally believe there is legitimate and convincing evidence of this) or that women on average tended to have lesser ability in physics and mathematics, would those facts be used to help anyone? Or just used to deny people belonging to certain groups opportunities without considering the abilities of individuals? And yet we don’t encourage non-minority super gifted individuals or fund them as we should because of their alleged “privilege”.
Over on Amazon, the book has 10 ratings (as of 11 PM CST, 2025/8/9). The average is 3.0. However, that is deeply misleading. The book either get 5 stars or 1 star, with literally nothing inbetween. A typical negative review is titled “This is a right-wing political screed”.