In one of the most aggressive and misguided examples of “whataboutery” I’ve been involved with, quite a few people criticized Lawrence Krauss’s anthology The War on Science (in which Luana and I have an altered version of our Skeptical Inquirer paper), for we had the temerity to show that science was being injured by attacks coming from the Left. OMG! What we should have published, said the blockheads, was a book showing how the Right, instantiated by Trump’s attacks on universities and grants, was doing more damage to science.
And indeed, in the short term that may well be the case. But to exculpate the Left is ridiculous, especially because their attacks are not dependent on who is President. The “progressive” infection of science may last.much longer, especially since it’s being passed on from professor to student, and has now metastasized to many scientific journals and societies. “No, no!”, cried the miscreants, “You should have gone after Trump, and Trump alone!” Well, since this website has concentrated largely on the excesses of the Left, since I consider myself on the Left, readers already know the fallacies of this whataboutery. Everybody and their brothers, sisters, and comrades are already criticizing Trump’s attack on science, and I have been among them. But where else but in this book (and this website) will you find a compendium of criticism about how the Left harms science?
Enough said. I have paid little attention to the critics, for none of them have engaged with the book’s arguments. “Look!”, they shout, “There’s even a chapter by Jordan Peterson. That’s enough to make you throw the book in the fire.” Yes, I find the inclusion of Peterson unfortunate, and his message almost impenetrable, but you don’t damn an anthology because of one weird piece, or because you don’t like the politics of some of its authors. No, you must criticize its contents.
At any rate, Matt ‘Ridley has just mentioned the anthology in The Spectator, and actually seems to like it (cue the attacks on Ridley’s politics). But what really angers him is the Left-wing attacks on science, the very subject of the anthology.
You can read his original article here, but it’s paywalled. Clicking below will take you to a free archived version.
Ridley discusses several issues; I’ll concentrate on what he says about the book (not all that much) as well as the general “wokery” of science, one theme of the anthology that presumably got Ridley revved up:
My, how we all laughed. Thirty years ago the physicist Alan Sokal hoaxed a social science journal into publishing a paper ‘liberally salted with nonsense’ (in his own words) that ‘flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions’. Its title alone gave away the joke: ‘Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.’
Little did we in the truth-seeking enterprise which is real science realise that verbose and vapid social deconstruction was coming for us too. In a new book, The War on Science, edited by the astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss, 31 scientists and scholars lament the corruption of their field by left-wing ideological nonsense. Whereas once a book with this title would have raged at the conservative right pushing creationism and sexism in the teeth of truth, now it is exposing the woke left pushing identity ideology and intersectionality at the expense of reason.
In 2022, Nature, at the pinnacle of the scientific establishment, published an editorial stating that it would refuse or retract papers that ‘could reasonably be perceived to undermine the rights and dignities of an individual or human group on the basis of socially constructed or socially relevant human groupings’. The editors went on to reassure readers that they would consult ‘advocacy groups’ before doing this, just as they once had to consult popes before denying that the Earth circles the sun. This was an open invitation to activists to censor science they did not like. Sure, scientists always had their prejudices, ideological biases and blind spots, but almost by definition regarded those as bad things to be minimised. Here now was a manifesto for deliberately injecting bias into science.
. . . But surely biology was safe, let alone chemistry and physics? How naive we were! Gender became the new front line. Journals were falling over themselves to declare sex a spectrum, despite the fact that all animals divide neatly into a sex with large, immobile gametes and a sex with small, mobile gametes – and there are no other sexes, just some rare developmental anomalies. Deviate from this new Lysenkoism by saying there are two sexes and you will be excommunicated.
Richard Dawkins once pointed out in a tweet that a mostly white woman had been pilloried for ‘identifying as black’, which seemed puzzling given that race is a spectrum in a way that sex is not. Why is it all right for a man to identify as a woman but not for a white person to identify as black? Just for raising the issue, he was retrospectively stripped of his humanist of the year award by the American Humanist Association. They accused him of implying ‘that the identities of transgender individuals are fraudulent, while simultaneously attacking black identity’.
. . . Hilariously, the ideologues have painted themselves into an awkward corner in their attempts to decolonise mathematics. They demand non-western slants on algebra and algorithms, which are words of Arabic origin, while rewriting exam problems to replace adding up grocery bills (which ‘carry the ideological message that paying for food is natural’) with calculating how many aboriginal people can fit in a tipi, which is patronising to the point of racism. One right-on mathematician admitted this change was insulting, but only ‘because indigenous people would not divide themselves in the way stated in the word problem. Relational and spiritual factors would dominate’. Meanwhile, New Zealand now requires schools to teach indigenous Maori ‘ways of knowing’ as equivalent to scientific ones. So creationism is fine if brown people do it?
. . . Many scientists continue to do good work unperturbed by this revolt against critical thinking. But the sheer volume of funding, publishing and attention that is being siphoned off into this pathology represents a massive opportunity cost. Grants are being spent, papers retracted, scientists sanctioned, hiring practices altered and peer reviews corrupted, while scientists are self-censoring to prevent their cancellation. Four-fifths of students say they self-censor, many more than at the height of McCarthyism.
. . . Science has always behaved like a cult to some extent, enforcing dogma and persecuting heretics, but it has grown far worse with wokery. Science as a philosophy is still great, but science as an institution is about as true to its philosophy as the church was under the Borgias, and as ripe for reformation.
I have crossed swords with Ridley before, in some critical review I wrote of one of his books (I can’t even remember what it was about), but I’ll cut him a break. Not because he’s on our side, but because he’s right. I’ll let the blockheads go after hm because he doesn’t engage in “whataboutery” in this review. Note that he doesn’t discuss the book’s contents much, but uses it as a springboard to vent his own take, which is what book reviews often do, and, said H. L. Mencken, was really the purpose of a book review.
Wow – that is a strong piece but yeah, all I know about the book from it is that … well, not even that Jordan Peterson is in it!
Fun fact – since “cult” was, boldly (..?..), specified in the piece : a known cult manipulation to be aware of is DARVO – stands for :
Deny
Attack
Reverse
Victim and
Offender
This manipulation can be spotted out there. DARVO can look like “whataboutery”, specifically the RVO part.
Sometimes saying “but what about” seems legit though. I guess conditions matter.
Leftist complaining about the Trump admin’s assault on science, some of these complainers are practicing DARVO given that leftist scientists first declared war on conservatives. Science should first pursue social justice they told us. There is no agreement on what exactly social justice entails (beyond commonplaces like slavery is wrong, etc.). So privileging social justice over the pursuit of truth had to mean some leftist version of social justice. And then the fact that academic leaders could not stop talking about how important diversity was while simultaneously academia became ever more an ideological monoculture.
So leftist scientists started the war on science.
Now they are getting all excited about the importance of free speech, Jimmy Kimmel, etc. – while academia has become more and more hostile to free speech and academic freedom over the last 25 years.
There’s a lot of DARVO coming from the progressives.
The key distinction that the Left should use to distinguish itself from the MAGAs is the ability to critically evaluate itself. Otherwise it is validating the Right’s criticisms, of which some are justified.
I appreciated many of the chapters in “The War” and my hat is off in appreciation and recognition to all of the authors and Prof Krauss. Because of my background with teaching and analysis of K-12 Mathematics curriculum content and interactions over the many years with the educationalists at the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), I am particularly appreciative of the two mathematics chapters by professors Armstrong and Klainerman. In reading their references, I was further assured that most of the noise is the same old thing regarding pedagogy: you should teach to various cohorts ofkids in a language and with examples they can relate to…duh…any good teacher does that. Of course in some of the hype, things are characterized in Kendi-esque language, so that guilt runs wild through white math teachers, but beneath it all is simply to use common sense to communicate with your students. They do also take down any silliness regarding mathematics itself suffers from racism or colonization per se and I, not a PhD in mathematics, very much appreciated these subject matter experts taking that on. These chapters and the references to the authors’ original papers are worthwhile reads for any k12 math or science teacher and for any parent or citizen thinking about entering the fray over math content being racist.
The folks who criticize Krause’s anthology because it didn’t focus on the excesses of the right are not, well, offering criticisms of the right. If they want so badly to criticize the right, they should write their own book.
I have only read two of Ridley’s books; The Red Queen and Viral. I found both interesting. It may have been one of his others that Jerry didn’t like, some are about evolution. Many do not know that he is the 5th Viscount Ridley, and was one of the hereditary peers elected to sit in the House of Lords until he retired, as he does not use his title otherwise.
Yeah, and he was deeply involved in a bank failure, or so I’ve heard. I don’t know the details. I don’t recognize either of those two books, so the one I criticized must have been another.
I really liked Genone and Viral. I think he’s a good writer. He’s, as he describes it, a climate change luke-warmer (he believes CC real, but that the prophesied apocalypse is somewhat over-egged. I’m unqualified to adjudicate).
I’m a bit unconvinced by his current argument: a rehabilitation of Darwin’s idea that females have an aesthetic sense, and that’s what drives sex-selection, rather than that conspicuous male traits advertise good genes. His argument largely seems to rest on bird species (he’s a birder). I don’t think it holds so well for mammals (not as much sexual dimorphism, other than size), or lizards or insects. Are we to expect that invertebrates (with very rudimentary nervous systems) are capable of deep aesthetic sensibilities? Is a female peacock spider capable of deliberating on the depth of beauty of the male’s display? Or is she responding to a conspicuous display that advertises his fitness?
It seems to be this review in the LRB: https://archive.is/aAZTv
I don’t know of that bank biz, but he’s a powerful man in the UK, and powerful men collect scandals that aren’t relevant to the entire person. Or even correct I’ve learned.
Like you, I wasn’t wild about Ridley – he can seem abrasive – and some actual points I had, but I’ve been much more open to him in more recent years (two books and two podcasts). And the instant essay here is excellent.
D.A.
NYC
D.A.
NYC
It may have been Ridley’s book ‘The Rational Optimist’. Ridley has a long history of incorrect claims on topics such as anthropogenic climate change, nutrition science, origins of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, COVID-19 pandemic severity, etc. That’s been detailed in a recent video from Dave Farina (‘Professor Dave Explains’):
There’s also a recent review of the anthology:
I’m not keen on people telling me, “Look, here’s a terrible review of your anthology” or “Look, somebody said horrible things about you.” It’s almost as if some people get pleasure about letting me know that. Believe me, I do find out about these things from other sources, but often I’d just as soon not know, like about that ridiculous FOUR HOUR VIDEO.
I can’t remember if that’s the Ridley book.
Just got scolded on a leftist site (again) for saying Lia Thomas should not compete against women. I called him a “he” and was accused of “bashing” trans people.
Another observation: several people on the site have trans kids, a few are trans themselves.
Apparently Canada is now taking in trans refugees from Trump! Ceiling Cat help us.
Yes, one recently received political asylum in Calgary, having flown there from Minnesota. (You can’t make an asylum claim at our land border because the U.S. is a safe third country, but you can make one at an international airport even if arriving from a safe third country like the U.S.) Our Immigration Review Board dismissed his claim on the (true) grounds that the United States does not persecute its citizens or produce refugees. However he appealed the ruling to Federal Court which overruled the Board and so here he is. There must be activist-group money behind him because denied asylum claimants almost never avail themselves of an actual Court with judges because of the expense. (Cheaper to just disappear and ignore the order to self-deport.)
He gets medical single-payer benefits immediately as a refugee-permanent resident, which means he’ll get his bottom surgery paid for, on us, if that’s what he wants….as long as he doesn’t mind queuing for a year or two. Of course he can always visit the U.S. and have it done there out of pocket. If he plays his cards right, he might get it done in the U.S. at our expense if he demands a particular operation that no surgeon in Canada does. We don’t seem to hold it against peoples’ claims to be fleeing persecution if they return as tourists to the country that was persecuting them.
The best part is our media are celebrating these courageous people fleeing Trumpian and red-state trans persecution. I don’t want to take sides in the Tylenol business but it’s a bit like that. Trump said it or is doing it; therefore it’s gotta be wrong. All the measured discussion we have here in Jerry’s living room about transing children? Nah. Alberta is trying to erase trans children by denying their human rights to puberty blockers and leaving them to kill themselves. Canada is like the U.S. was in, oh, 2021.
“If he plays his cards right, he might get it done in the U.S. at our expense if he demands a particular operation that no surgeon in Canada does.”
One very particular operation.
Ontario must pay for surgery to give trans resident both penis and vagina: appeal court
The Court of Appeal says OHIP must cover surgery for a resident seeking to have a vagina constructed while leaving penis intact
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/ohip-coverage-penis-sparing-vaginoplasty
Nuttiness has been dialled up to 11.
We don’t seem to hold it against peoples’ claims to be fleeing persecution if they return as tourists to the country that was persecuting them.
Crazy! There’s an ongoing investigation into an Afghan asylum seeker in the UK who celebrated his claim being recognised by going on holiday to Kabul for eight weeks. https://archive.is/3jAbh
You couldn’t make this up. Well, authors like Lionel Shriver could.
I’ve read somewhat..reputably (and noticed anecdotally) that asylees visit “home” at a rate of… apparently 80p/c in the UK.
Which checks out when you see what countries they’re coming from. Just the numbers and knowing the countries and their political systems at home.
Definitionally – “Political persecution” now means “Poorer country”.
The asylum system was build for an earlier, less global, less…. information rich …era. It is utterly broken as a legal instrument.
D.A.
NYC
The Economist in a leader just a few weeks ago
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/07/10/scrap-the-asylum-system-and-build-something-better (paywalled)
called for the world’s rich countries to abandon the process of granting asylum to people who arrive from distant lands at our borders unannounced. Rather, they should put money into supporting people closer to home, which in many cases might be right next door to the conflict country. (This would also have the happy side effect of encouraging asylees to return home when things settle down and life in a refugee camp starts to wear thin.) If you’re fleeing persecution, fetch up in the closest safe country, not in the first country you reach after an 18 hour flight with a transfer in Heathrow or Schiphol or Dubai…which will be us.
The modern asylum process was a response by the Free World to harbour and nurture escapees from communist totalitarian utopias, such as Hungary in 1956. These folks were compatible with our own anti-communist values which is why they fit in so well and worked hard to maintain us as the Bulwark of Freedom against the USSR and the Warsaw Pact. We don’t get anything like that kind of payback from asylum claimants today. Few have economically useful skills because skills aren’t the criterion for accepting an asylum claim. A credible story of persecution is. We can’t piggyback our thirst for cheap labour on the asylum racket.
Actually a reply to Leslie below, but the thread is too indented and there’s no Reply button below his post.
That’s a really interesting article, Leslie – thanks!
Unpaywalled copy for anyone interested: https://archive.is/SpLl3
Jordan Peterson did excellent research on the genetics of alcoholism – some of which I cited in my dissertation long ago. Decades later he became a celebrity professor, in part for openly resisting forced use of weird new “nonbinary” pronouns such as ze and zir by the uber-woke Canadian government. Nowadays he is mostly known for his dense philosophizing on various topics. Most people today don’t realize that he was a widely cited researcher early in his career.
In a way, it would be unsurprising that attacks on science would come from the left. Look at the political leanings of faculty! Almost no Republicans around in many disciplines, and even in economics they are a clear minority.