Good evening, everyone.
So nice to see you.
Hi, my name is Richard Locke.
I'm a professor here at
Brown in political science
and international
and public affairs,
and I currently
serve as provost.
And it's really a great
pleasure and honor
to be able to introduce
tonight's speaker, Professor
Ken Miller.
This talk is part
of a larger series
on re-affirming
university values.
A series that was started by
the Office of the President
and the Office of
the Provost, but that
engages lots of different
departments and centers
across the university.
And the intention of this series
was to, basically, remind us
all as a community what we're
all about and what we do best.
And I would say,
that what we do best
is to engage in and apply
rigorous scholarship,
and to engage in thoughtful
discussions and debates
about some of society's
most pressing challenges.
And to do that work, both the
research and the discussion
of that research
of contested ideas,
in a calm, respectful,
and balanced way.
Now ultimately what we're
trying to do through our work,
whether it's
through our teaching
or through our
research, is to do
work that applies insightful
research and reveals truth.
Now revealing truth seems both
a very lofty and maybe even
a very straightforward thing.
But in practice it can
actually be quite challenging.
Not just challenging, in these
days of supposedly alternative
facts and things
like that, but also
sometimes just the way
that we talk about issues.
And not just the issues that
themselves has been something
that we've struggled over
here on campus, but not just
in this campus.
And I think it's
really important for us
to just remind ourselves
that as a community,
we have to come here, have
these kinds of conversations,
and learn from one another.
Even if at times,
we are learning
from people whose
original positions is
different from the
ones that we might
have engaged in initially.
This is especially
important, it seems to me,
in our current political
climate, where we're
very much a divided nation.
And it's all the more
important that we
learn to speak across those
divides, and with one another,
so that we can
engage in, hopefully,
a common understanding,
building bridges,
and to pursue progress.
Now the recent
election has certainly
highlighted these
incredible divides
that we have in our society.
But it also has challenged
some of our basic values
as a university.
Values like the
importance of science,
the importance of
scientific method,
the importance of knowledge
creation, et cetera.
Now science denial is not new.
In fact our speaker
tonight has been
on the forefront of defending
science for a decade.
And yet, science denial appears
to be increasingly widespread
and gaining traction, even
at some of the highest
levels of our government.
And just to give you some basic
facts to support this, in 2015,
there was a study on science
and society conducted
by the Pew Research Foundation.
And I'll just give you
some of the findings.
So for example, the survey
found that 98% of scientists
agree that humans have evolved
over time, but only 65%
of our country's
citizens believe that.
The survey demonstrated
a 33 point gap
between scientists
and the general public
when it comes to human
activity's impact
on climate change.
And while 86% of scientists
believe that vaccinations
should be mandatory,
their view is shared only
by 68% of the public.
And the study also found
that respondents did not
believe that scientists
were in agreement
about these different findings,
whether about human activity
and climate change
and things like that.
When in fact, more or less, they
are in agreement, and I think
this is important.
So in the face of these
findings, it seems to me,
very, very important for
universities, like our own
here at Brown, that we have to
really redouble our efforts.
And undertake, not only
the day to day work
of rigorous scholarship
and teaching
to create to advance
knowledge, but we
have to think more
creatively of how
do we translate what we do
into the general discourse,
into the general
public, so that we
can inform our fellow citizens.
This is something
that Ken Miller
has been doing for decades,
in public forums like this,
but also in his other
his other work as well.
He's the author of many articles
and several landmark works,
one, Finding Darwin's
God: A Scientist's Search
for Common Ground Between
God and Evolution,
and another book, Only
a Theory: Evolution
and the Battle for
America's Soul,
basically addressing
these issues
that he'll talk about
tonight and the ones
that I prefaced earlier.
He's been giving lectures
around the country,
writing, engaging
in media, et cetera.
And I think doing it
extremely effectively.
He's also, I think,
quintessentially Brown.
Ken is a 1978 graduate.
He left to get his PhD at
the University of Colorado,
and then to work at Harvard,
before returning here in 1980.
And he's a highly celebrated
teacher and a highly productive
scholar.
You can read a lot more
about his biography here,
so I won't rehearse it.
But when I say he is
quintessentially Brown,
I mean not just because
he's a fantastic
teacher and a fantastic
scholar, but he also
calls it like he sees it.
And I have sometimes received
some of that wisdom in my 20
months in this position.
And as I said, it's important
that people actually speak up,
they speak up
candidly and honestly,
and they give you feedback.
Because the only way that we
can, at least that I know how
to, do a better job is by
getting honest feedback
and trying to address this.
Many of the things
that we've been trying
to do this year, with this
re-affirming university values,
were based on a conversation
that I had with Ken,
and a few other colleagues,
probably in November of 2015,
trying to think about how we
promote this kind of climate,
and this kind of
dialogue, here on campus.
So please join me in
welcoming Ken Miller.
[APPLAUSE]
Rich, thank you for that
very generous introduction.
I want to thank all
of you for coming.
It's a real honor to
see so many of you
here, so many friends,
colleagues, students,
and other people, who
might be interested in what
I have to say.
I thought I would start tonight
with an origin story, which
is how I got interested in the
broad field of science denial.
And this goes back to 1982.
And as I put this
slide here, I'm
just an innocent cell biologist,
puttering around my lab,
very proud of the fact that--
I'm giving career advice here--
very proud of the fact
that in the very week
my department had to
vote on whether or not
I was going to be
given tenure here,
I had the cover story in Nature.
That photograph is
work from our lab.
So if I had to give a
career advice to anybody,
it's make sure you're
big science or nature
paper comes out
at the exact time
when your department is trying
to decide whether they want you
around or not.
But in any event, I'm
working in the lab, and all
of a sudden my phone rings.
And it's actually
a former student
of mine, who I had taught
briefly at Harvard,
a guy named Joe Levine.
And Joe Levine had
finished his PhD.
He had gotten a job at
Boston College, for which I
had congratulated him.
And then he said, how would
you like to write a high school
biology textbook?
And my quick response, in my
best New Jersey style, was,
what, are you nuts?
Forget about it.
Go away.
I'm coming up for
a tenure decision.
I don't want any part of this.
And I just turned him
down and turned him down.
And I said no for month,
after month, after month.
Bless his heart, he persisted.
And eventually, he
convinced me that this is
a project we might want to do.
In a matter of almost no time,
which is to say eight years,
that book came out.
It became known as
the elephant book.
It was an instant hit.
And for any of you who
might wonder whether or not
the author of a textbook
ever understands
the reaction to books and
so forth, I can tell you.
I've been blessed
with two daughters.
My oldest daughter, Lauren,
was actually my first editor.
Because she was
13 years old when
I was writing this
book, and this
is intended for 9th
and 10th graders.
So every time I wrote a
chapter I'd give it to Lauren.
If Lauren understood it,
I figured, cool, I got it.
If Lauren said, dad, I have
no clue, then I rewrote it.
Well, my younger daughter,
Tracy, not so lucky
Tracey had to
suffer the indignity
of using her old man's textbook
for freshman honors biology
at Dighton-Rehoboth Regional
High School in Massachusetts.
And you might think that's a
cool thing, and I guess it is.
But I have to tell you, about
a month into that school year--
and I should preface
this by saying,
that in Rehoboth, where I live,
a lot of people at the time
knew who I was.
But not because of what
I did for a living.
They knew who I was because
for seven or eight years
I was the commissioner of
the girls softball program.
I ran the spaghetti
suppers to raise money.
I trained our umpires.
I used to coach one
of our all-star teams.
So they knew me as the softball
guy, but that was about it.
So I'm driving up
to the high school
to pick Tracy up after
field hockey practice.
And there's a woman I know from
softball who sees me there,
and sees my little pickup
truck, and gets very excited,
and flags me down.
And her name is Bonnie Kelly.
And I roll up next to the high
school, roll down the window,
and said, Bonnie, what's up?
And she's very excited.
She says, Ken,
you wrote the book
they're using in
the high school.
And I got very proud,
and I took a deep breath,
and I puffed out my chest.
And I said, yes, I did.
And then she looked me straight
in the eyes, and she said,
funny thing is, you
don't seem that smart.
[LAUGHTER]
So I was never quite sure
what to make of that.
But in terms of the judgment
of what an economist would
call the marketplace,
that judgment of our book
was favorable.
And Joe and I rewrote
it a few years later.
And then we rewrote it again.
And then we rewrote it
one more time after that.
And one of the great
pleasures of being in science
is, science doesn't stand still.
And in fact, we're about to
bring out yet a new-- rewrite
a new edition of our textbook.
So it's an extraordinary thing.
And I always get a kick out of
when my freshman students come
into my office, and they
see one of these books
on my bookshelves.
And they say, I think
I had that high school.
What do you have it for?
And having a name like Miller,
which just kind of fades
into the background, they'd
never made the connection,
but eventually they do.
Well, how did I get
interested in science denial?
Well, one of the
editions of those books
was widely adopted
throughout the country
and actually in several
other countries as well.
And as it turns out,
a number of citizens
in Cobb County, Georgia, which
is the second largest school
district in Georgia,
became very, very concerned
about the treatment of
evolution in our book.
And they prevailed upon
the Board of Education
to slap a cigarette-pack-style
warning label on our book.
And this is the
actual warning label.
This textbook has
material on evolution.
Evolution is a theory,
not a fact, regarding
the origin of living things.
This material
should be approached
with an open mind,
studied carefully,
and critically considered.
And I can tell you a
lot of funny stories
about this warning label.
One of the favorite souvenirs
I have in my office,
is actually a sheet of peel off
labels with the warning sticker
on that a teacher I knew
in Cobb County sent me.
Because he had to put all
these on the front of our book.
Well, as it turns out, a number
of citizens in the county,
who had children
in the high school,
recognized this as an attempt
to undermine a scientific theory
for religious reasons.
And six of them, led by Jeff
Selman, a transplanted New
Yorker who lives in the
Atlanta area, very courageously
sued the Board of Education.
I had been down at Georgia State
giving a scientific seminar
right after the suit was filed.
And Jeff came up to me,
introduced himself, and said,
would you testify
when we go to trial?
I said, yes, sure, why not.
So in November 2004, I
flew down to Atlanta.
I was a witness in the trial.
The trial lasted for four or
five days in federal court.
And lo and behold, we won.
And I was very happy about that.
But because I had been
in the trial on the day
that the Associated
Press wrote up the story,
my name was in the
first line of a news
report that was reprinted
in about 1000 newspapers.
You have no idea
what my email inbox
looked like the next morning.
Many people suggesting
where I would spend eternity
and saying there was no
need to bring warm clothes
for a variety of reasons.
That was, in a sense,
a minor skirmish.
At about the same
time I was testifying,
something else was
going on that it took me
a couple of more months
to become aware of.
And that is, a school board
in the State of Pennsylvania
went a little bit
further, and they
decided to instruct the science
teachers in Dover Area High
School to prepare a
curriculum on something
called Intelligent
Design, which is
a relabelled form of creationism
as an alternative to evolution.
At the risk of
losing their jobs,
the teachers in
that school district
defied their board of education.
They said, we won't do it.
So the Board of
Education, I want
you to think of a board
of education doing this,
actually wrote an Intelligent
Design lesson of their own.
They handed it to the teachers.
They said, would you at least
read it to the students?
And once again, they refused.
So the school board
sent the superintendent,
the assistant superintendent,
into the biology classes
one day to, basically,
read out this lesson
and pass out books on
intelligent design,
while the teachers literally
stood outside in the hallway
and absented themselves.
Well, what happened
the next morning
was that 11 parents filed a
First Amendment lawsuit arguing
that this was an attempt
to impose religion.
Nine months later, the
case went to trial,
and in September
2005, the trial began.
I was the lead witness
on that trial as well.
At this point, I had street
cred as a court witness.
And it was covered extensively.
This is actually
the NBC TV courtroom
sketch of me being
cross-examined on,
I can't remember, it was
the first or second day
of the trial.
And I have to tell
you something.
I knew I would lead off in
the morning on a Monday.
And I figured I'd give my
testimony in the morning.
I'd be cross-examined
in the afternoon.
And then I fly home, and I'd
teach my Tuesday, 1:00 pm Cell
Biology class.
Well, it didn't
work out that way
because my cross-examination
went on for 9 and 1/2 hours.
So I actually had to cancel
classes the second day
when I came back.
And my colleague said, what was
that like, a 9 and 1/2 hours
cross-examination by a
very skillful attorney?
And I said, it's
no problem at all.
It was just like having the oral
exam for your PhD over and over
and over again.
That's the way it went.
And I wanted to
give you some idea
of what this extraordinary
trial was like.
Because it went on
for seven full weeks,
was extensively
covered in the press,
four books have been
written about it,
and two TV specials
have been made.
One by the BBC, and one by NOVA.
I want to show you the
teaser from the NOVA show.
It'll give you some idea
as to what was at stake.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- On NOVA.
- I believe there is
an intelligent design.
In the beginning God created.
- Saying that you don't believe
in evolution is almost saying,
we don't believe that the
Civil War ever took place
in the United States.
- An extraordinary court
case ignites a small town.
- It was like a civil
war within the community.
There's no question.
- It puts science
itself on trial.
- Very important
things were at stake.
One is the future of science
education in this country.
- NOVA reveals the story
behind the headlines.
- Anywhere you turn, we
were getting attacked.
- Witnesses started
dropping like flies.
- And probes the
question, is intelligent
design a scientific
alternative to evolution?
- Properly the subject
of science class,
- Or religion in disguise?
- It's a violation of
everything we mean,
and everything we
understand, by science.
- Judgment Day Intelligent
Design on Trial, on NOVA.
[END PLAYBACK]
Now I hope that was
dramatic enough for you.
[LAUGHTER]
That's the end of the
world narration style.
This is an
extraordinary program.
You can watch it
online if you want.
It won the Peabody Award
for Broadcast Journalism
and is just an amazing story.
Now what I haven't told you
is how the trial came out.
By the end of the trial,
anybody who had been there
knew what was going to happen.
But you've all
seen trials on TV.
And you know how the attorneys
for the two sides get up,
and they make their
closing statements
in front of the judge.
Well, the attorney for
the school board got up,
and he had one of those
dayminder calendar books
with him.
And he stood up in
front of the judge
and is thumbing through it.
Nobody really knew
what he was doing.
And suddenly, he looked up at
the judge said, your honor,
I'm not sure if the
court is aware of this,
but this trial has
actually lasted
for 40 days and 40 nights.
And the judge, a Republican
appointed by George W Bush,
leaned down from the bench
with a big smile on his face
and said, yes, but
it wasn't by design.
[LAUGHTER]
At that point, we had an idea
of what was going to happen.
The verdict came out just
before Christmas in 2005.
It was the lead story on
the nightly news everywhere.
The judge said, this stuff
is simply not science.
And his opinion
is extraordinary.
I had friends of mine, because
I roomed with law students
when I was in grad
school, I had friends
of mine I hadn't heard from in
years, who read that opinion,
and said, that's the
clearest, the most cogent,
and, actually, the
funniest legal opinion
they had ever read.
Because the judge came
right out and said that
the school board had acted, and
these are the judge's words,
with breathtaking inanity.
And I had no idea
that judges were
allowed to say such things.
But it was absolutely
extraordinary.
So that's the beginning of it.
And I would love to pretend
that the opponents of evolution
had their day in court.
In fact, they had their
three weeks in court.
They got every witness
they wanted to.
And they still
contradicted themselves,
fell on their faces,
and exposed their ideas
as clearly not
scientific at all.
But nonetheless, this
problem is still with us.
What's happening in
many legislatures
around the country,
is that bills
are being introduced,
basically, to tamp down
the teaching of
evolution to introduce
alternative forms of knowledge.
And we've all heard the idea
of alternate facts coming in.
There is an
alternative facts bill
in South Dakota that has
actually got quite a few people
in South Dakota worried about
what this means for science
education in the Trump era.
And this is a subject of
concern to me and, actually,
to scientists and educators
all over the country.
This is going to go on.
Now what's driving this?
A lot of things are driving it.
One of which, of course, is
religious fundamentalism.
The gentleman you see
here is an immigrant.
I should point that out.
An Australian immigrant,
named Ken Ham, who decided he
would come to the
United States, and he
would preach creationism.
He established the largest
anti-evolution organization
in the country.
It's called Answers in Genesis.
They opened a creation
museum in northern Kentucky
about 10 years ago.
It's an extraordinary place.
I've been there.
You've got to see it.
It is the quality of
Universal Studios or Disney
World dedicated to
misleading people
about the natural
history of the earth.
And that I find both
impressive and very sad.
More recently, he's opened what
he called The Ark Park, which
is a full size hand built
wooden replica of Noah's Ark.
Haven't been there yet,
but I'm dying to go.
It's absolutely extraordinary.
And the tactics involve
fundraising, of course,
but they also involve
shaking down the taxpayers
of the State of Kentucky.
Which I find absolutely
extraordinary that Kentucky
was willing to do
this for what is,
in fact, a religiously
themed attraction.
But this driving force
of anti-evolutionism
is still very much
with us, as you
heard when Provost Locke talked
about the Pew Foundation study
from 2015.
So I think evolution matters,
but it matters even more.
Because it's like
the cutting edge
of an anti-science movement
in the United States.
And you might think, there's
really an anti-science movement
in the United States?
Yes, there is, and it's widely
recognized internationally.
This is an editorial from
Nature from a few years ago.
The leading scientific
journal in the world saying,
in case you can't
read it in the back,
that the anti-science
drain pervading
the right wing in the US
right now is the last thing
America needs in a time
of economic challenge.
And I think that's
absolutely true.
So to document what
I mean by science
denial and
anti-science movement,
I figured I would go to
the ultimate authority
to show how broad
this attack is.
And it's that
scholarly authority
that I think most
of us defer to when
we need good source material.
And, of course, that
is The Daily Show.
And I want to show you a clip
that some of you may have seen.
Not about the current
presidential campaign,
that's a little bit
too close and, perhaps,
too raw for some of us,
but the one four years ago.
And again, I want to show
you the point that the Daily
Show made about that.
Here we go.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- Science claims it's working to
cure disease, save the planet,
and solve our
greatest mysteries.
But what's it really up to?
From global warming--
- I don't believe
global warming is real.
- To evolution--
- Absolutely not.
I don't believe in that.
- To the HPV vaccine--
- Her daughter suffered
mental retardation
as a result of that vaccine.
- It seems science
is up to something.
- There are a substantial
number of scientists
who have manipulated data so
that they will have dollars
rolling into their projects.
- Could these Republican
candidates be right?
Tonight, we answer the question,
science, what's it up to?
[END PLAYBACK]
Now this clip goes
on for quite a while.
And those of you who've
seen it know how funny
it gets with a visit
to a science fair
and all sorts of other things.
But the reaction
that many of us have
in the scientific
community, I think,
is along the lines of
Andy Borowitz's reaction.
You can see his headline here.
Or this one, and I love this
on the anniversary of the moon
landing.
At some point, people believed
in science in this country
because they actually got
themselves to the moon.
But what I want
to ask is not, why
do the politicians that you
just heard believe these things?
Or I don't want to
go the Borowitz route
and say, how can
you be so stupid?
Rather, I want to ask
a deeper question.
And you might say I could
frame it in terms of science
in the age of Trump.
But I actually mean
something deeper than that.
If you want to know
what the difficulty is
that is facing this
particular political party,
I think, for all of his
own flaws on the subject,
I think a Brown University
graduate summed it up best.
And some of you may remember
this Brown University graduate.
It's Governor Bobby
Jindal saying,
we Republicans have to stop
being the stupid party.
But what I want to
talk about tonight
is not who's being stupid.
That's a trivial question.
The more important
question is, why
is it that depicting yourself
as anti-science has become
a viable political strategy?
Because every one
of the people you
have heard, I respect in terms
of their political skills.
That's the reason they
were in the public square
in the first place.
And I also want to make
something else clear.
And that is, this is not going
to be a diatribe against one
particular political party.
And there are lots
of reasons for that.
This is an article
in The New Republic
very recently, that
some of you may
have seen, making the case
that on the liberal side
of the spectrum
many people are just
as reluctant to accept
the findings of science
as conservatives are.
So this is a broader
problem than saying,
in the political
spectrum there's
a smart side and a dumb side.
That's naive, and it's
not realistic at all.
So let me start out with a
couple of specific examples.
And this one in
particular is from Canada.
Because anti-science doesn't
occur just in this country.
It occurs in other
places as well.
And this columnist
is pointing out
about a measles epidemic
in the Toronto area.
And it had help.
And it had help from a
local, liberal, progressive,
anti-vaccine movement of
people who didn't want
to get their kids vaccinated.
And it turns out this
anti-vaccine movement
has led to outbreaks
of several diseases
that we should have conquered
and completely eliminated
by now, including whooping
cough, pertussis, and measles.
And in fact, many
of you remember
there was a very large
outbreak of measles
that was centered,
of all places,
around Disneyland a
couple of years ago.
Predominantly among the parents
of kids who had not had them
vaccinated for one
reason or another.
That same Pew
Foundation report found
something very interesting.
And that is that in the
last decade and a half,
the number of
Americans who think
it's really important to
get their kids vaccinated
has dropped by 10%.
And guess what, the number of
measles cases in this country
has gone up dramatically.
And that's going to
continue to be the case
as long as we have
so few parents
recognizing that
vaccinations are important.
Now why do people
oppose vaccines?
And you could say, well
they're wrong on this,
and they're just being stupid.
There are, I think,
deeper reasons.
So I want to give you
a couple of examples.
One of them is my
friend Rush Limbaugh.
I used to make a
habit, when I had
a few minutes, of listening to
Rush Limbaugh's radio program.
And a few years ago,
when we had an outbreak
of a particular
isotype of the flu,
there was a nationwide
vaccine effort.
And Limbaugh
resented that effort.
And he resented it because he
associated with the government.
He was addressing here--
this is an exact transcript,
and I apologize
for his language--
he was talking about
Kathleen Sebelius, a Cabinet
Secretary at the time, and he
started out in a charming way.
Screw you, Ms Sebelius!
I'm not going to take the
vaccine because you're
telling me I must.
It's not your role.
It's not your responsibility.
You do not have that power.
I don't want to
take your vaccine.
I don't get flu shots.
Now when I heard that, my own
feelings were mixed at the news
that Mr Limbaugh does
not get a flu shot.
[LAUGHTER]
But he saw this as a government
effort, which he opposed.
Now it turns out, many
of the other people
who oppose vaccines oppose
them for what you might call
politically the opposite
reasons, which is they
associate them with big business
pharmaceutical companies.
They think companies are putting
defective vaccines out there
for no reason, that
have very little use,
and put kids in danger
just to make money.
And if you doubt that, just
do a little Google searching.
And you will find website after
website telling you about this.
In fact, this extends
to what we might
call the progressive side of
the political spectrum as well.
RFK Jr, who's a well-known
environmentalist, and who
has many, many political points
of view with which I completely
agree, stepped
forward proudly to say
that he would be glad to
herald a committee established
by President Trump to
look into vaccine safety.
And we all know what look into
vaccine safety means, which
means, basically, to exercise
these suspicions that vaccines
are some sort of a
capitalist plot being
foisted upon us by big pharma.
What are the facts?
Come on.
The facts are that
vaccinations save lives.
There was a supposed link
between vaccines and autism.
It was a fraud.
It's the only study that's
ever been published.
It's been retracted by the
journal that's published it,
and the doctor who
published it has
been thoroughly discredited.
And I want to show you
something personal.
I was a kid in the early 1950s.
And we lived in a semi
industrial suburban area
of New Jersey.
And there was a vacant lot with
a stream running through it.
We called it the brook.
And I, and all the
other kids around there,
we used to love on a warm day
to go down play in the brook,
build little dams, look
at the little fish,
and stuff like that.
And our parents, in
particular our moms,
got really, really upset with us
coming back with soaked pants,
and muddy sneakers, and
all sorts of other stuff.
So my mom's ace card
was to say, if you
play in the brook
you will get polio.
And that was really scary.
There was nothing
scarier that you
could tell a kindergartner in
1953 than you might get polio.
It was a terrifying disease.
When the polio vaccine came
out, I was in third grade.
I practically ran to
the elementary school
where the vaccinations
were, rolled up my sleeve,
and was delighted to have
a needle stuck in my arm.
Not because I was
actually afraid of polio.
But because I knew my mom
could no longer tell me,
you can't play in the
book because you're
going to get polio.
There were periodic episodes
of polio in the United States
right up to the point
where the vaccine
was introduced, and look
at what happened since.
And it's a similar
story for other diseases
for which we have vaccines.
It's an extraordinary
record of success.
And for those of you
who are young people,
and are not sure what exactly
is the seriousness of this.
Again, do a Google Image
search for iron lung and you
will see exactly what I mean
about the horror of polio
for young kids.
However, looking
at this data, I am
absolutely convinced that
neither Limbaugh nor Kennedy,
when they looked at this, would
be convinced of vaccine safety
and effectiveness.
And why am I pretty sure that
they wouldn't be convinced?
That's because both of them
are looking beyond the science
itself to something else.
And I want to explain what
the something else is.
But I want to do so by taking
on another example of science
denial, and that has to
do with climate science.
What you see here are
land temperature records,
northern and southern
hemisphere, individual years
and five year running averages,
put out by that noted left wing
organization NASA.
And what you can see
as we go through,
is a very steady
signal, especially
in the northern
hemisphere, but also
in the southern hemisphere, of
increasing global temperatures.
The scene is very clear.
And in fact, NASA
put out that 2014
was the warmest year on record.
But 2015 beat it, and
2016 has beat it again.
We are now at the very
end of the warmest decade
ever recorded.
And that's an absolute fact.
And you can go on to any of
the governmental websites,
and you will find this.
That last year really was the
hottest year ever recorded.
It wasn't the hottest
year everywhere,
but we're talking about global
climate and global averages.
Now I have actually
confronted teachers,
who basically told
me, oh, that's
all nonsense because
global warming actually
stopped in 2003.
See how there is a plateau here?
So it's leveled off, and
it's not happening anymore.
And we don't have
anything to worry about.
So everything is cool.
The only problem
with that is that you
can find these
periodic pauses, if you
want to call them that,
almost anywhere you
look in this record.
So the real question is,
what is happening now?
And if you look at
the latest data,
this is what's happening now.
These are those
last three years.
So the notion of a pause
is absolutely bogus.
But as someone who is trained,
not as well as I would like
to be, in physical
science there's
something that's always struck
me about recordings like this
of atmospheric temperatures.
And that is, the atmosphere
is the wrong place
to look for an indicator
of climate change
even though we can see it.
We can see it
very, very clearly.
This is NOAA data from the
Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration.
Do you know where you
should look for it?
Well, let's do some
basic physical science.
The heat capacity of
air is 3/10 of a calorie
per degree Celsius.
The heat capacity of
water is 1,000 calories
per degree Celsius.
And again, if you don't
speak scientific lingo,
it means that to take
a liter of water,
basically, you need
1,000 calories of heat
to kick it up by
1 degree Celsius.
So that's basically
what a calorie is.
That's how calorie heats.
What this means is that water
has 3,000 times the heat
capacity of air.
This planet is mostly water.
So if it's really
warming, we ought
to stick a thermometer
in the ocean
and see what's going on there.
So what is actually
happening to the oceans?
Well, it turns out every single
organization in the world,
there's a Japanese
study, an American study,
and an Australian
study here, has shown
a very, very clear signal
of global climate change
in the oceans.
And in fact, I can go further.
I can flood you with more data.
I can tell you about glaciers.
I can tell you about
reductions in arctic sea ice.
And above all, for anybody
living on the coast,
I can tell you about
sea level rise.
People in New York City, people
in North and South Carolina,
people in Florida see
this very, very clearly.
All these indicators are here.
So the question is, why
doesn't this convince people?
In fact, why do voters
in many of the places
that actually are affected
by this very directly,
why do they consistently
support climate change deniers
at the polls?
So for example, we
now have, basically,
a Chair of the House Science
Committee being a climate
change denier.
We have the governor of
Wisconsin, who was re-elected,
survived the recall
petition, everything else.
I think of Wisconsin as
a very progressive state,
but he keeps winning.
He's actually ordered,
and this was marked true,
to remove all
references to the word
climate on the
environmental websites
of the state of Wisconsin.
So the question is why?
What's going on?
And if you look into the
literature, or propaganda
if you want to call it that,
of climate change denial,
some of it is shown
here on the web,
you're going to find something
that I think is revealing.
And that is the literature
of climate change denial
doesn't just go
after the science.
It focuses on what it regards
as the pro-government,
pro-regulation
motivations of scientists
and public activists.
So essentially,
climate change denial
comes out of an aversion
to government interference
with business in a lot of ways.
And there are a lot of people
who are not directly involved
with profits from business who
nonetheless worried about that.
So here's the insight that
I would suggest to you.
And that is, deniers
seek to protect the group
with whom they identify.
And that's private enterprise,
employment, business, industry
from attack by what they
regard as anti-business forces,
collectivist forces.
And that in many respects is
at the root of climate change
denial.
You remember, Mr Limbaugh
was against vaccines
because he saw the
government's hands in them.
Other people were
against vaccines
because, on the other
side of the spectrum,
they saw the fingers of
big business in them.
And in each case you have
people looking past the science.
Here's another example.
Genetically modified
organisms are routinely
attacked by people
who would identify
as being on the political left.
And they see them as tools
of corporate agribusiness.
And once again, go on the web.
You'll see these
awful chilling images
of what biotech companies are
doing to our food and so forth.
This is an opinion piece with
which I completely agree.
GMO opponents are the
climate skeptics of the left.
And I can go into
that if you want.
The notion that genetically
modified organisms, GM crops,
are dangerous is simply
not true scientifically.
And there are lots
of ways to show that.
We've been eating
them for 30 years.
And if there was
anything dangerous
about genetic modification
of crop plants
we would have found it.
And in fact, in the
Pew Foundation study
that Provost Locke cited,
the single biggest gulf
between the opinion of US adults
and the opinion of scientists,
a 51 point gap, came on
the question of the safety
of genetically modified food.
And this is one in which
scientists who know the data
are not the least bit
concerned about these.
Now I have absolutely
no doubt that I've
irritated some of you who would
like to see GMOs labeled, who
don't really want them in their
food supply, and so forth.
And what I want to
say is that there
are very legitimate issues
regarding genetically
modified organisms for food.
Who owns the seed?
Do they lead to the overuse
of chemical herbicides?
Do they promote the
evolution of pest resistance?
And these are important
things to talk about.
But the argument that these
foods are dangerous absolutely
has no scientific foundation.
And I often tell my own
students that I really wish that
30 years ago, when the first
GMO foods appeared in the food
supply, that the biotech
industry had decided,
you know what?
We're going to label these.
We're going to tell everybody
why they're a good thing.
They enable farmers to grow
more food on less acreage.
They mean the farmers
don't have to use
organophosphate
pesticides, so they're
more likely not to
have residues that you
don't want in the food.
And we're going to charge
you 10% more because these
are such good products.
Now it turns out,
finally, there is
about to appear
in the marketplace
a labeled genetically
modified organism.
Because the genetic modification
is going to be its selling
point.
And this is something
called the Arctic Apple.
The Arctic Apple
does not turn brown.
And therefore it
stays fresher longer.
Now the only way to
market this is not
to pretend that it's
a regular apple,
but to pretend that it's
a super duper apple.
And this is the
sort of thing that I
wish that big pharma had
done in terms of genetically
modified organisms.
And in fact, as soon
as I see it out there,
I'm going to go ahead
buy these, pass them out
to students in my class, see how
they like them, and so forth.
I hope it tastes better than
the so-called Flavr Savr
tomato, which was a dud.
But the other
thing about this is
there's been an enormous change
in bioengineering technology.
And increasingly,
we are going to see
genetically modified
organisms that
don't have foreign
genes added to them,
but simply have their own genes
tinkered with or inactivated.
So there's nothing
put into them.
But rather, genetic
modifications
are made by some new
techniques in biotechnology.
So again, this is
a second point.
Science denial even crops
up in very liberal places
like San Francisco.
This is one of my
favorite silly examples.
At one point the
Board of Supervisors
was so concerned about
bogus anecdotal studies
about cell phones
causing brain cancer,
that they actually
passed an ordinance
to put a brain cancer
warning on every single cell
phone sold in San Francisco.
I just imagine the warning
label right there on my iPhone.
But there really was
no scientific support
for that action, and
they got over it.
So what's the political point
that I want to make here?
The political point is
that science is powerful.
And science can be misused by
people on the right and people
on the left.
And I think you will
agree with me that there's
a tendency on the political
left to impose regulations
based on fears that are
not supported by science.
And GMOs are a good example.
And I think vaccines
are a good example.
On the right, there's
a tendency to oppose
regulations that
are based on facts
that are supported by science.
And I would talk about pollution
regulations, climate science,
and so forth.
So what you see
playing out here are
the political predispositions
of right and left,
based on whether they
like government activity
or whether they
don't, played out
as an overlay on the
scientific findings.
And that to me is the
heart of science denial.
Now the reflexive way
that most of us in science
want to overcome science denial
is with a torrent of facts.
And during the Kitzmiller
trial that I talked about,
we had six expert witnesses
to present our case.
They included in the
mid-range a theologian,
a philosopher of science,
a science education expert,
and an expert in
information theory.
But we started our six
experts with a scientist.
I was the lead witness.
And then we
concluded, wrapped up,
with the great
Kevin Padian, who's
a paleontologist
from Cal-Berkeley.
And Kevin had the best
line of the whole trial,
which is at the very
end of his testimony.
The attorney, our
attorney, asked him,
Dr. Padian, why would you
object to your children
being told about Intelligent
Design in biology class?
And Kevin thought for a minute,
and he broke into a big grin.
He said, I oppose
intelligent design
because it teaches
kids to be stupid.
And what he meant
by that is, it tells
you don't ask any questions
about what this adaptation is
for, why these genes are
arranged the way they are,
why this structure
does what it does.
It was designed that
way, end of story.
It teaches kids to be incurious.
And indeed, what Kevin and
I did during the trial,
because we were
talking to a judge,
was to flood the judge
with the facts supporting
the theory of evolution,
just one after another,
after another.
And the judge, whom I've
had contact with since,
has said he was just
overwhelmed by the integrity
and the strength of the science
on the side of evolution.
But that doesn't always
work in the public sphere
even though it worked in
the environment of a trial.
And in particular,
very often, we
run up against something
that, quite frankly,
has its roots in academia.
This is our fault. And
what I mean by our fault,
I don't mean at Brown, but I
mean in academia in general,
there's a certain way of
thinking that comes out
of academia that would
discount the very existence
of objective fact in science.
Paul Gross and Norman
Levitt wrote a book
about this subtitled, The
Academic Left and its Quarrels
with Science.
And the essential argument
that you hear from time to time
is, that science is not a
privileged way of knowing.
It's not a search
for objective truth.
What science does, and this is
the sociological explanation,
is science constructs
explanations
of nature to support a dominant
social or economic group.
The slogan that I heard a
few times at various seminars
was, science exists to support
the hegemony of the ruling
classes.
And therefore, one constructs
one's own personal truth, which
means, in effect, your
fact is as good as mine.
And what is lost is a
common understanding
of the nature of reality.
Why is that a problem?
It's a problem for
a number of reasons.
Here for example, there's an
article talking about Americans
increasing distrust of science.
And not just climate change,
all sorts of science.
The science that I do and
many other people in this room
do as well.
And there was a
marvelous article
about this written by
Sean Otto in Scientific
American a couple
of years ago called,
American Science Problem.
You ought to look it up
if you're interested.
There is a great
cartoon here, and I
want to call your attention
to the details of the cartoon.
We have the icons of the
Democratic and Republican Party
sitting here.
And what they are doing is
sweeping symbols of science
under the rug, like they want
to get them out of the way,
while the portrait
of Thomas Jefferson
looks down disapprovingly
from the wall.
What are you doing to science?
And what Otto pointed out,
was that science denialism
among Democrats, false
belief vaccines cause autism.
Republican science
denialism falsely
denies climate change
and evolutionary biology.
These are points
I've already made.
Why is this dangerous?
It's dangerous for
this very simple reason
that Otto pointed out.
When facts become opinions,
the collective policy
making process of a
democracy breaks down.
Because gone is the common
denominator, knowledge,
that can bring opposing
sides together.
We see this today, not
just in science but even
in things like the
number of people
who attended the inauguration.
It's just an
extraordinary thing to see
alternative facts presented.
But certainly, when
this happens in science
it's a genuine and
absolute tragedy.
Now what do we do about this?
Again, do you flood
people with facts?
Well, by and large
that doesn't work.
This is an article from the
New York Times not too long
ago pointing out the
work of Dan Kahan, who
is a psychologist, who also
teaches at Yale University Law
School.
And he wrote, this is
a summary of his work,
that more information
is probably not the key
to winning public acceptance.
It may actually harden
anti-science views.
There are studies that show
that when people are presented
with contrary
opinions, they actually
harden their position against
those contrary opinions.
So how do you do this?
And this is a paper that you
can find online by Dan Kahan.
And he's studied
extensively communication
on climate science,
and what it takes
to change somebody's mind.
And he says, to get beyond
debates over science itself,
he looks for the roots of those.
And that's what I've been
trying to do when I asked,
why do certain people
oppose this, or that,
or the other thing.
And he points out that he
thinks the problem is something
he calls cultural cognition.
And that is an unwillingness
to identify culturally
with the scientific community.
And the way he
writes it is this,
and this is from his paper.
Telling people 97%
of scientists agree
doesn't diminish polarization.
It makes it worse by
amplifying the association
between competing identities
and competing positions.
This is what the
scientists believe.
Well, I'm not a scientist,
and I have different interests
from them.
What needs to be changed, and
I agree with this completely,
are the circumstances
that make recognizing
scientific information hostile
to the identity of reasoning
citizens.
Now how can you do that?
And I love this line.
Can you do it?
Sure, ask a good high school
teacher to show you how.
Because in a sense, this is what
the educators of young people
are involved in.
And that is getting
them to identify
with the scientific community,
with the literary community,
with the artistic community.
This is the very job
of education itself.
And therefore, winning
people over to science
isn't so much a matter of facts.
It's really a
matter of identity.
Now I want to show
you something.
How do you win people over to
evolution in terms of identity?
That is an image that I have
found very useful in terms
of winning over religious
groups to the idea
that science doesn't
threaten religion.
We have a pope
right now in Rome,
who said not too long
ago that, of course,
evolution and the
Big Bang are real.
Why is that?
Well this pope was originally
trained as a chemist,
which some of you may know.
He's a Jesuit, which
is historically
the group within
the church that has
been the most science friendly.
And if any of you
read his encyclical
on the ecology and the earth,
which I urge to all of you,
it will be very obvious that
this is encyclical was actually
written by somebody who knows
what an infrared absorption
spectrum is, which is
a very unusual thing
to say about a theologian.
But he appreciated
the depth of it.
He was extraordinarily
successful in making
that argument.
Now I grew up, as I mentioned
before, in the 1950s.
The high school
I attended is now
in the lowest quarter of
academically performing
high schools in that state.
And when I went to school there,
it was probably there too.
Nonetheless, I always felt
like I got a tremendous science
education.
And I want to show you who I
owed that great education to
in that underperforming
public school.
Anybody know what that means?
I owed my science education,
god bless them, to the commies.
[LAUGHTER]
And the reason for
that, and young people
pay attention to this, in 1957
the Soviets beat us into space
with the first earth satellite.
That was Sputnik 1.
The shock waves in this country
that reverberated on this
were unbelievable.
People were terrified
that our kids were behind
in math and science.
I remember reading
articles, Why Does Ivan Know
Science, and Johnny Doesn't?,
in terms of what's going on.
So what happened
was new textbooks,
new curriculum,
new lab equipment
just flooded into schools.
Some of it was government.
Some of it was private.
That grimy town
in which I grew up
was the headquarters of the
Merck Pharmaceutical Company.
They took our schools
under their wing.
They bought us
new physics stuff.
They bought us new
chemistry stuff.
It was sensational.
I also think I benefited from
the culture of the 1950s.
I watched a lot of TV as a kid.
Now for those of you
who unfortunately
were born to recently, I want to
tell you who this gentleman is.
This is an actor.
His name is Don Herbert.
Every Saturday
morning where I lived,
he was on TV in a program
called Mr. Wizard.
Let me explain to you the
premise of the program.
Mr. Wizard is a single
man living alone
in the neighborhood.
Every Saturday morning, he
invites two or three children,
unescorted, to come into
his house to do experiments.
Nobody thought that was strange.
It was a more innocent age.
But the cool thing
about Mr. Wizard,
is just about everything he
did, when the show was over,
I could go into the kitchen,
or the garage, or the workbench
in the basement, and
I could reproduce
those experiments for myself.
He gave a whole
generation of scientists,
talk to anybody my age,
he gave a whole generation
of scientists the confidence
that they could do science.
That this wasn't something
you needed advanced degrees
and fancy equipment to do.
That science was cool,
and you can do it.
I also think I benefited from
the culture of amateurism.
I used to go to toy stores and
lust after the science kits
that were for sale in those.
So I went back on the
internet to get some pictures
of chemistry sets and stuff.
And quite unintentionally
I discovered a sociological
change.
All the chemistry sets and
science kits from the '50s
only show boys.
And I thought, wow, that is
really, really different.
And I have two daughters,
one of whom is a scientist,
and therefore, that
struck me very strongly.
But again, the notion that
you can do science yourself
was powerful.
And just in case you
think I'm kidding you
about the personal influence
this had on my life,
this is a picture of me on my
11th birthday in the basement
of my house in New Jersey.
And this is my first
laboratory, and that
is my first microscope.
And if you watch the
NOVA clip, you'll
know that I sit in front of
a much larger microscope now.
But that was the beginning.
And I grew up in this
culture that science was
the coolest thing you can do.
I didn't think it was political.
I didn't think that it was
liberal or conservative.
I just thought it was neat.
Now in the 1950s, I
think it's fair to say,
we might have over
romanticized science.
There were wonderful
science programs on TV.
I thought I was going to
be a nuclear physicist when
I read a Walt Disney
book, Our Friend the Atom.
But then I picked up Microbe
Hunters by Paul de Kruif,
and from that point on I
wanted to be a biologist.
If you've never read this book,
Microbe Hunters, it's romantic
and it's corny, but
it will make you want
to be a research biologist.
Trust me.
If we romanticized
science then, I
think today we politicize
it and demonize it.
And that's the problem.
There has been a
cultural shift in what
we think about science,
the scientific enterprise,
and scientists.
So how does science
reclaim its innocence?
And by innocence
I mean the notion
that science really
is a search for truth
in a very compelling way.
Now I don't know if
what I'm going to show
you is the answer.
But I do know I'm going
to reveal the low brow
nature of my own
taste in entertainment
by showing you my
favorite TV show.
And there it is.
It's Big Bang Theory.
And I have to tell you,
this is a ridiculous show.
And for all the sexual
innuendo, and all the nonsense
that goes on there, what I
absolutely love about the show,
and it now has some very strong
female characters who are also
scientists, what I
love about the show
is the absolute purity of
their interest in science.
Whether it's string
theory, whether it's
the structure of
the nervous system,
whether it's drug discovery,
just about everything.
And I'm absolutely
convinced that this show
has begun to give science a more
positive image in our culture.
And I'd like to see more of it
because cultural connections
to science matter, and I think
they matter a great deal.
And I also think that the
scientific establishment,
of course of which I'm part,
has to change its approach.
And by that I mean organizations
of scientists and educators.
And I'll give you one
glaring example of that.
This man was the most effective
communicator of science
that I have ever
seen in my lifetime.
This is the late Carl Sagan.
I should tell you something.
I mentioned that low
performing high school
in New Jersey, where I went.
Carl Sagan went to
the same high school.
He even took my aunt
to his senior prom.
[LAUGHTER]
It didn't last though.
I wasn't planning
on saying this.
But at one point, I was about
to debate a creationist,
and I needed some
astronomical data.
And I talked to the people I
knew at Harvard-Smithsonian.
They couldn't answer.
I spoke to a few
people at Brown.
They didn't know.
And I figured in
desperation, I'm
going to write a letter to Carl
Sagan, who was then at Cornell.
And I asked him the question.
And I said by the way, I believe
you know my aunt Doris Hamill.
He's blah blah blah,
and so forth, and so on.
What I didn't know
at the time, was
that Dr. Sagan was at
that point between wives
number two and number three.
And he wrote back
two days later.
And the first line of the
letter was, how is Doris anyway?
[LAUGHTER]
But Carl Sagan had the
incredibly successful Cosmos
series on TV.
It won a Peabody, an
Emmy, many other awards.
It shaped the public
perception of science.
But within the
scientific community,
Sagan was looked down on.
He was denied tenure at Harvard.
He was denied membership
at the National Academy.
A lot of his colleagues
were jealous of him.
A lot of them
basically said, he's
more recognized by
Hollywood than science.
That was a terrible mistake.
He was the best promoter
we ever had in science.
Well, we now have a new Carl
Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson,
and he is sensational.
I can't get enough of this guy.
I want to see him on TV more and
more precisely because of this.
And I'm very happy to
say that Dr. Tyson has
been widely honored
and recognized
by the scientific community.
So I think the
scientific community
is beginning to learn it's
lesson in that respect.
Now what can a university do?
This is after all, a series
about re-affirming university
values.
And when I look at the titles of
the other talks in the series,
the one I'm giving tonight
stands out a little bit
differently.
Because it hasn't concerned
yet what we should do, and how
we should conduct
ourselves within the halls
of the university.
So I might make a couple general
suggestions that tie-in to what
I'm talking about.
One is a university can embrace
the open intellectual culture
under which science thrives.
There are many societies
in many countries
around the world,
which, over the years,
have tried to push science
in a particular direction,
to stifle certain areas
of science with which they
were not comfortable.
And in every single
case without exception,
it has not worked out.
The greatest example of that was
lysenkoism in the Soviet Union.
Where it became, under
Stalin, the official policy
of the Soviet Union,
believe it or not,
to persecute Mendelian
genetics because it
was considered to be
a threat to the idea
of the new socialist man.
The result was the Soviet
Union lost at least one,
and probably two,
generations of biologists.
They produced very
good physical science,
but nothing in
the life sciences.
And that's what
happens when you try
to stifle intellectual
curiosity in science.
The rest of the
university should
think about that in
terms of attempts
to basically channel
intellectual curiosity,
not just in science, but
in history, and economics,
and political science as well.
Of all universities,
Brown, with its tradition,
should be the most open.
And I think that's the
lesson this university can
take from science.
And secondly, and this is going
to sound a little strange,
there is an attitude that I
often see among our students,
and I see very often
among our colleagues.
That science is kind
of like how to stuff.
If I'm going to
go to med school,
yes, I have to learn
biology and chemistry.
If I'm going to build
buildings and bridges
or design computer systems,
I have to learn engineering.
I have to learn
computer science.
But if I'm going into law,
if I'm going into business,
I don't need that.
I can hire a scientist
who knows the technology
to do these things for me.
That's a terrible mistake.
Science is a liberal art.
And what I mean by that
is, think of the horror,
and I mean this in a
tongue-in-cheek way,
think of the horror of science
and engineering majors who have
never taken a course
in literature,
who don't know the
plays of Shakespeare,
who cannot appreciate music, who
don't understand the difference
between Impressionism
and Cubism, and so forth.
How terrible that would be.
But think also of how
many of our students
major in the humanities
and the social
sciences, and
couldn't tell you what
the second law of thermodynamics
was, or couldn't tell you
what the bases were in DNA.
Science is a liberal art.
It forms part of our culture.
And to be ignorant of science is
as profound an intellectual gap
as to be ignorant
of the literature
or the history of our
country and its people.
And what I mean by
that is, science
has done extraordinary
things, even very recently,
in expanding our understanding
of who we are and where we are.
This is part of the wide field
image from the Hubble Space
Telescope.
Showing not stars, but galaxies.
And every galaxy contains on
the order of 100 billion stars.
The vastness of the
universe that we
know through modern science
is just absolutely amazing.
You can go down
to the very small.
This an image from
my own laboratory,
showing photosynthetic reaction
centers as individual particles
tucked into
biological membranes.
Is this important to you?
Probably.
Because this is why
you can breathe.
This is where oxygen is
produced on this planet,
within the mechanism of
these little structures.
Up here, we see a cell in
the process of cell division.
There's extraordinary
beauty within biology,
just as there is within
astronomy, and chemistry,
and earth science,
and everything else.
And to me, and maybe I'm
partial because I happen
to be married to a
RISD alum, all of this
is a kind of art that ties
into an artistic conception
of the unity of knowledge.
There's a wonderful saying,
it's part theological and part
philosophical, that
all knowledge is one.
And I believe that
with all my heart.
And I certainly believe that
science is part of that.
What is the beauty of science?
The beauty of science
includes, for example,
this tiny little graph
which you see here.
Which is the recording
of the very first gravity
waves ever recorded from the
collision of two black holes
many millions of years ago
finally getting to earth,
and confirming an essential part
of Einstein's Theory of General
Relativity.
How do I feel about
all this stuff?
How do I feel about the
issue of science denial?
I think there is something
in the psychology of people
who go into science, into
experimental science, that
makes them by nature optimists.
If you were not an
optimist, if you did not
believe that
knowledge was better
than ignorance, that your
own efforts and your efforts
of your colleagues
could not advance
the cause of human knowledge,
why would you do research?
Why would you
compete for support?
Why would you propose
controversial theories
and then test
them, often proving
that you, yourself, are wrong?
Which is something that
I've experienced that almost
every scientist has had.
And I think ultimately
the mission that I feel
is a scientist, and as an
educator, is very simple.
And that is to convey
a sense of something.
And I want to tell
you a very brief story
that I've told many times.
And that is, one of the
things I love about Brown
is that I actually know
people in other departments.
That doesn't seem surprising
to anyone in this room.
I made that remark once
to a lecture at Ohio State
University, and the
crowd was amazed.
Because the size
of the university
there makes it very
difficult to actually know
people in other departments.
But at Brown, that's
definitely not the case.
And not too long after I came
back here as a faculty member,
my wife and I had a number
of people over for dinner.
She had her old illustration
professor at RISD
over for dinner and
other painting professor.
I had a couple of
colleagues in other areas.
And we had a nice dinner, and
we probably drank too much wine.
And at the end of it everybody
started some really silly
conversations.
And the silliest
of them was, if you
could live at any time
in history, what would
be your favorite time to live?
And someone who is
philosophically inclined
said, well, I'm
interested in philosophy.
But I think since
Plato and Aristotle,
philosophy has gone
straight downhill.
So I would have liked to live
in Athens during the period
of the Academy, and
talked to those people,
and been in on those debates.
Another person,
actually my daughter,
who even then knew she wanted
to be a teacher of history,
said she would have
liked to have lived right
after the American
Revolution and talked
to people, seen what it's like.
My wife and one of
the RISD professors
said, are you kidding me
man, Paris 1870s, birth
of the Impressionist movement,
the most interesting time
in the history of art.
Blah, blah, blah.
This went on for a while.
And finally, somebody
turned to me and said,
there's a couple of you
in science in this room,
and none of you said anything.
So I looked at one
of my new colleagues,
and she looked back at me.
And we both smile.
We broke into laughter.
Because we knew the answer.
Which is for a scientist,
the most interesting time
in human history to
be alive is right now.
And I am absolutely
convinced that the key
to winning acceptance
for science
in the political and economic
sphere, and acceptance
in science among
our own students
within this university,
and within higher education
throughout this country,
throughout the world,
is to let people know this
is the most exciting time
in the history of science.
And all of us, whether we are
professional scientists or not
are, and can be, part of it.
Thanks a lot.
[APPLAUSE]
I know there are a
couple of microphones,
and I'll be real happy
to take questions.
One of the points you make
is that high school teachers
can be the best advocates
for, or the best people for,
helping students
identify as scientists.
So what do you think happens
between the time when someone
takes a high school
science course
and identifies as a
scientist and then later
is a denier of science?
So what happens in that time?
Why does a person stop
identifying as a scientist?
Well, I wish I could
answer on the basis
of careful longitudinal
psychological studies, which is
what that answer would require.
Which is to test people
or to interview people
all the way through.
So all I can tell
you is what I think.
And that is that I think
that science has become
so important in our society.
It's just remarkable how
many issues confront society
right now in terms of energy
use, land use, health care
policy, and so forth.
How many of these issues that
have a scientific component.
And I think very often people,
again, look past the science,
and that's the thesis
that I'm driving tonight,
and look towards their own
personal economic interest,
their own religious
points of view.
And I see this all the time
when I argue about evolution.
That people are
so tightly wedded
to the religious
beliefs, that I realized
I have to approach them from
a religious point of view
to explaining why
evolution is indeed
compatible with religion.
In fact, well I could go
into the details of that,
but I think,
basically, all of us
have different
interests in society.
No one can pretend that
they are without biases.
I certainly would not
pretend that about myself.
And let's say climate change
is a very, very good example.
One of the points
that I try to make,
and my co-author Joe Levine
has made this point in talk
after talk and many
essays, is that accepting
the reality of climate
change, and the fact
that human activity is
the driver of that change,
doesn't automatically say what
the political and economic
solutions should be.
And I hear from
so many people who
deny climate change
saying, well,
I don't want to
pay a carbon tax.
I don't want the government
to close the coal mines
and put those people in
West Virginia out of work.
All these are policy decisions.
However, the science
is still there.
So the point is that I think
very often when people become
science deniers,
they become deniers
because they see either
their own economic interests
threatened, or, as
Dan Kahan would say,
they see their group
identification threatened.
Taking evolution.
If you belong to a
religious group, and I'm
not just talking about doctrine.
I'm talking about people you see
every Wednesday night for Bible
study, and you see
every Sunday in church,
who teach your own children
Sunday school, and so forth.
To take an opinion
that would break
you, socially and
culturally, out of that group
takes tremendous courage.
And I think, ultimately, that's
that's what the problem is.
Hi, thank you for
that great talk.
I am in charge of hospital care
at Hasbro Children's Hospital.
And we see victims of
vaccine deniers all the time.
Geez, not two weeks ago, I
had a child with pneumonia
whose parents declined
the pneumococcal vaccine.
The question I have,
it relates to one
of the slides you had up
there, which was referencing
an article by Brendan Nyhan.
And he's a political
professor up at Dartmouth.
And he made an interesting
point in a study in pediatrics,
where he showed that
vaccine deniers were
less likely to listen to the
advice of a pediatrician,
but more likely to listen
to advice of someone
who they considered to be
at their level of society,
a colleague, or friend.
A peer.
A peer, exactly.
Who in the community is going to
espouse the benefits of science
if it shouldn't be scientists?
Who's going to be out
in the United States
saying science is important
who's not a scientist?
Well, that's a good question.
I think people like
you, physicians,
are on the front line
of this sort of thing.
And in fact having frank
conversations between doctor
and patient I think is very
important, particularly
among pediatricians.
And I think very often
that first contact
of a parent with a young
child and a pediatrician
is absolutely essential
in terms of building
a relationship between
the health care
profession and the individual.
The other thing to recognize
is that vaccines R&D,
making a new vaccine for
disease, getting it tested,
getting it through stage
one trial, stage two trials,
everything else is
enormously complicated.
It takes an enormous
amount of money.
It's not going to be done
by a mom and pop startup.
It's going to be done by big
pharmaceutical companies.
Big pharmaceutical companies
in the United States
have not covered themselves with
glory in terms of standing out
as paragons of public interest.
You see behavior after behavior
of what an economist would call
rent seeking, which is buying
an asset, like a generic drug,
and then jacking up the price.
And this sort of behavior,
which you might say
is straightforward capitalism,
this behavior, I think,
reflects badly on
the entire industry.
And vaccines are part
of that industry.
So I don't know how to make
pharmaceutical companies behave
better.
But one of the things
that I can tell you,
is that their own
behavior, in terms
of seeking higher and higher
levels of reimbursement
for drugs over which they have
done absolutely no research,
basically has spread discredit
on the whole industry.
And I think that's
part and parcel of one
of the reasons why people
distrust vaccinations
among other things.
So I think ultimately,
the duty to speak up
for science is the duty of
everybody in the society
and certainly those
people who appreciate
the importance of vaccination.
I gave you that little
tongue-in-cheek thing
about the polio vaccine.
Everything I just
said, by the way,
with the book and the getting--
that was all absolutely
true in terms
of that extraordinary thing.
And I think also
because vaccination
has been so successful
in eliminating diseases,
like diphtheria, like pertussis,
like smallpox, like measles,
like mumps, people think
they're not there anymore.
And the reality is, as you
know, they are indeed out there.
And again the terror of a
summertime polio epidemic
was just--
I can tell you a
story about my wife.
She was about two years old.
She grew up in very rural
Northwestern Pennsylvania.
And there was a family wedding.
Family's largely
Italian, so they
were having a good old
time having a little party.
Everybody's there
on the dance floor.
A cute little two-year-old
Jodie is in a nice dress,
and everybody says
how cute she is.
And all of a sudden, in
the middle of the scene,
Jodie falls down on the
floor and cannot get up.
The only thing, and my
mother-in-law and father-in-law
told me about this almost
with tears in their eyes,
the only thing that anybody
could think about was polio.
She's going to be crippled.
Oh my god.
So they rushed her home.
They called the town
doctor, who came over.
The town doctor
with very grave face
came in suspecting the worst.
And he got down really close,
smelled her breath, and said,
this child is drunk.
[LAUGHTER]
But that tells you how fearful
people were of these diseases.
And that fear has largely gone.
And I think that's
one of the reasons why
people can be so cavalier
about vaccine regimens.
You stated that you grew
up with Mr Magician on.
And I think my generation--
Mr Wizard.
My generation grew up with
Bill Nye the Science Guy.
And he's actually
creating a show on Netflix
and coming back to talk about
science, and the denials,
and what is actually out there.
Do you think that
show is something
that is going to positively
impact the view of science
by society?
Or is it too political?
I love Bill Nye.
I think he does wonderful work.
I'd like to see
more of him on TV.
Same with Neil deGrasse Tyson
and several other people
who are really good
popularizers of science.
But one of the problems--
You said he's going to
be on Netflix, right?
Well, I don't get Netflix.
I'll find a way to see him.
But here's the thing,
Don Herbert, Mr Wizard,
I forget which
network he was on,
but he was on
network in the days
when there were exactly
three TV channels.
So even if you were
moderately successful,
you had an audience
of 30 million.
Today, it's the Super Bowl
that draws that many people.
So the fact of the matter is,
it's great to have him on.
The Cosmos series,
by Carl Sagan,
was watched by 10
times as many people
as saw Neil deGrasse
Tyson's series.
And it's not the
fault of Dr. Tyson.
It's the explosion of alternate
media channels that we had.
So he does good work, and I'm
glad he's going to be there.
But increasingly, anything you
do on any mainstream media,
you're just reaching a
tiny slice of the public.
And that's part of the problem.
Hello, I loved your talk.
I actually had a
two-part question.
One was just at
the very beginning
we heard how 96% of
scientists agree on whatever.
And I was wondering
if, as scientists,
we are so hesitant to just
unequivocally say this is true.
Because we know as scientists,
that we've been proved wrong.
That hesitation gives the
wrong impression to the public.
And also, is there
something wrong in the way
we are teaching science?
That people don't understand
the process, and the rigor,
of getting even a
single tiny finding out.
That they're so easily
able to point fingers
at decades of research
and say that's wrong?
Well, it was a
two-part question.
So first part is yes.
Very often in
science we understand
that all science is tentative.
Nothing in science
is ever proven
in the mathematical sense.
So everything is subject
to disproof, to revision.
And we can all think of
a whole series of ideas
that we once thought
were true that
have turned out to be wrong.
There are a lot in
the textbooks that I
studied in high
school in college
that I know are incorrect.
When I go into high schools that
are using my own high school
biology textbook, I
tell the students,
I'm going to tell you something
that you might find disturbing.
But I think you should
find exhilarating.
And that is at least 10% of the
stuff in this book is wrong.
But I don't know
which 10% it is.
And that's the thing for your
generation to figure out,
and that's also what
makes science exciting.
But I think very often,
in the tentative nature
of the conclusions
that we can make,
We lose sight of the fact.
Well it's a fact, which is that
science, while it doesn't prove
things, we can disprove things.
And very often, there are
suppositions and ideas
that are out there that
are just plain wrong.
And the idea that vaccines
are associated with autism
is exactly such an idea.
There's been study,
after study, after study,
and there's never
been a correlation.
And that idea is simply wrong.
It's just absolutely
not out there.
Oh my goodness I ran
it on the first part.
What was the second part?
[INAUDIBLE]
Well, a human being should
question scientists.
I think that's very important.
With respect to
science denial, it's
foolish and naive to
think that one should ever
go in front of an audience,
in a general or specific way,
and say, here all my degrees.
You should believe what I say.
Now get out there
and toe the line.
That's not how we work
and that is certainly not
effective in terms of
general public discourse.
And again, I think
ultimately what
you have to do is
you have to appeal
to people through their
own cultural value system
in order to get them to
understand why science
is compatible with that cultural
system and with those values.
Thank you for the talk.
What I'm curious about
as in this new age
of alternative facts
and echo chambers,
is how do we as part of
the scientific community
get out of our own echo chamber
and really get out there
and talk to people.
Because I think
especially here in Brown
it's such an open campus.
It's very easy to stay in your
own chamber unintentionally.
Well all of us
leave this chamber,
either when we
graduate, take a job,
go somewhere else,
or, in my case,
in the case of some
of my colleagues here,
we go home from work.
So I think the most
important thing that's
incumbent on all of us is to be
active citizens, to participate
in the community.
You're a graduate student.
You have absolutely no
idea how influential you
would be if at some point you
walked in to a school board
meeting during the public
comment period and you said,
I am a PhD student
in pathobiology.
Every head in the
room would turn.
The respect you
would command would
be absolutely astonishing.
And I think all too
often, those of us
who are in science,
or science education,
are reluctant to go
out in the community,
as ordinary citizens,
and communicate science
in ordinary language to people.
Scientists are
notoriously bad at doing
ordinary communication.
I am seriously addicted to
listening to Science Friday
on NPR every Friday afternoon.
I never miss it.
And I know Ira Flatow.
I've actually been on Science
Friday a couple times.
It's a great show.
But I'd say every other
guest that IRA Flatow has
on that show, Ira has to labor
to get a plain English sentence
out of them saying what
they are actually doing.
And that reflects how
poor we are very often
at scientific communication.
There's a friend of mine named
Randy Olson, who spoke here
at Brown not too long ago,
who's done a couple of really
hilarious movies.
One on Intelligent Design.
One on climate change.
Randy was a tenured professor
of ecological science
at the University
of New Hampshire.
He decided he wanted to get
into science communication.
No kidding.
He went out to California.
He took stand up comedy lessons.
He did improv.
He became quite an
accomplished comedian.
Then he produced these movies,
which were highly successful
and won awards.
And he's written a book called,
Don't Be Such a Scientist.
And it's a book on how
scientists can communicate.
So I would urge you, get
out there in the real world.
Talk to real people.
I like to tell people, actually
I don't because it's secret.
I have a secret career
in the spring time
and the summer is
a sports official.
So I mentioned
softball earlier on.
I graduated from that,
became an umpire,
and I now umpire NCAA fast pitch
softball all the way up to D1.
In the summer, I work
youth tournaments.
It will not surprise you, that
very few of my fellow sports
officials are academics.
Mostly they're schoolteachers,
they're plumbers,
they're people in construction,
they're all sorts of stuff.
And scientific topics come up.
And I don't pull rank on them
and say, hey I'm a professor
at you know where.
I talk to them about science,
and I try to represent science
in a very common sense way.
And I think that's
something we can all do.
Ken, great talk.
Thank you.
My question is really
just a follow up to that,
is how do we here at the
university train our students,
or teach our students, or engage
our students to be scientists
but to go into
the public domain.
And I think the fastest way
to effective this science
literacy is to have scientists
who become politicians.
There was an interesting
article in the New York Times.
And Mike Eisen, who's an
evolutionary geneticist,
is thinking of
running for the Senate
because he's so upset about
the way the world is going.
And he has his policy
will be liberty, equality,
reality I think.
Oh boy, do I love that.
That's great.
So what can we do
as faculty members?
There's often this
divide between you're
going to be really good
at science or really good
at political science.
And those are big divides.
What can we do to
teach our students?
Or teach is the wrong word.
To excite our students
to go in this direction.
So they can actually not
just be great communicators
with science but great
effectors of scientific change?
Well, I wish I had a
perfect answer for that.
But my short answer is basically
we keep reminding everybody
that we live, for
all its failings,
in a democratic society,
where the health
and vitality of the
scientific enterprise
depends upon public support.
And it depends upon public
support in many different ways.
And if you talk to science
students, you have to help them
to appreciate, that the
very fact that you are there
in the classroom, that you
have support for your research,
that you're able to bring these
research findings to them,
to welcome them
into your laboratory
to do independent study,
and all that other stuff.
All of these are
consequences that
flow from public
support for science.
And if we lose public support
for the scientific enterprise
in this country, none of
that's going to happen.
And I think that's why it's
important to make everyone
a citizen advocate for science.
This is looking like a
departmental meeting so far.
Professor Wessell go ahead.
Thank you very much.
Fear.
How much of denial may
be associated with fear.
Fear that the earth is going
in the wrong direction.
Fear that my
religion is fragile.
Fear of the next disease.
Fear that I don't
understand this stuff,
and therefore, I'm just
not going to believe it.
I think fear is one of
the strongest motivators
that we have.
I think fear motive motivates
more profoundly than love does.
And when I speak, for example,
to Christian audiences
about the theory
of evolution, which
I'm going to do at Samford
University in Birmingham,
Alabama in about two weeks.
I know that in the faces of many
of the people in the audience,
I will see a fear
that if they believe
the things I am telling
them, they are in danger
of losing their immortal souls.
That's a terrifying prospect.
And you basically have
to approach these people,
as I've tried to
emphasize, in a way that is
appropriate to their culture.
And what I tell
Christian audiences
is very straightforward.
And that is that the first
duty of any Christian
is to the truth.
No theologian
would dispute that.
So therefore, your first
question about evolution
ought not to be is it consistent
with the book of Genesis,
does it fit with
Paul's references
to Adam in the letters
of Paul, and so forth.
Your first question
about evolution
ought to be is it true.
And the answer to that is yes.
And from that all
else should follow.
And if you really
want to, I can quote
St. Augustine, writing at the
beginning of the fifth century,
basically saying why
Christians have a duty
to follow empirical truth.
The fact that I'm
a Christian myself
helps me make those arguments
with some conviction.
But the fact of the matter
is, that basically the way
you appeal to people is by
understanding their own value
system and by placing
science and other arguments
within the context
of that value system.
And I think that is the
way to overcome fear.
So Ken, as someone who
took your cell biology
class 25 years ago, and TA'd
BIO 20 for you a couple of years
after that--
You're making us
both feel old now.
And who now teaches the
vaccine science course
here at Brown, which was
founded by my PhD mentor, Paul
Knopf, who we just lost.
I spent a lot of time thinking
about vaccine rejection.
And so this thing
going on in politics
right now I recognize it.
Because I've been
seeing it in that sphere
for a very long time.
And what worries me sometimes is
the issue of false equivalency.
Especially when
I see topics that
are relevant to science
being covered in media.
And I am not trying
to harsh on the media.
There's enough of that
happening right now.
But I just worry that
sometimes the training that,
let's say, journalists have,
the very proper training.
They tend to want to look
at both sides of a story.
But at what point do we,
when it comes to science,
do we have to say to them,
no, this is not valid.
There aren't really two
points to this issue anymore.
Or there never were.
It's just not valid to present
it as if there is a debate.
What do we do?
First of all, you're
absolutely right about that.
And that is
journalists are taught
to find two sides to every story
so that they can be neutral
and can be not accused
of journalistic bias
or something like that.
I'll tell you one of the
best lines I've ever heard.
I think it was in the year 2002.
The Board of Education, the
elected Board of Education,
of the State of
Ohio was approving,
or perhaps
disapproving, a series
of lessons and laboratories
for their biology
curriculum K through 12.
And they were thinking about
incorporating a series of 12
lessons on Intelligent Design.
This is prior to the
Kitzmiller trial.
So this became so
controversial, that they
decided they would have
a public debate in front
of the Board of Education at
a big auditorium in Columbus.
So the board is
sitting in front.
And, no kidding, there's
1,200 people back there.
They invited two people to
speak for science, myself
and the astrophysicist
Lawrence Krauss,
who's now at Arizona State.
Lawrence is a very
well-known author.
If there's any Star
Trek fans in here,
Lawrence wrote The
Physics of Star Trek,
which is just a great book.
Then there were two people
from the Discovery Institute
in Seattle, Washington
pushing the pseudo science
of Intelligent Design.
So we're going back and forth.
And I'm focusing on data,
and I'm showing slides.
I'm talking about fossils.
I'm talking about DNA sequences.
I'm doing the things I do.
Lawrence gets up, and
he had the best line.
He said, ladies
and gentlemen there
are two people from the
Discovery Institute over there,
and there are two
scientists over here.
That's not quite
right there should
be one person from the
Discovery Institute over there
and 10,000 scientists
on this side.
And trying to get that across
in a journalistic context
is difficult. But
nonetheless it can be done.
And in fact, the first time
I was on Science Friday,
I was asked to do a
point counterpoint
with Michael Behe, of Lehigh
University, who's really
the only credentialed scientist
at a university pushing
Intelligent Design.
And it was like a little
debate Michael's a nice guy.
So we weren't name calling.
We were going back and forth.
The second time that Ira
called me up and wanted me on
to talk about evolution,
I thought who else are you
going to have on?
And Ira said, we're
not doing that anymore.
Those guys are wrong.
We're simply going to have
regular scientists on,
and that's what we're
going to talk about.
So I think that's an
important thing to get across.
For journalists who are
not trained in science,
this is a very, very
difficult thing.
The other thing that's
difficult is there used to be--
every large newspaper used
to have a science writer.
The Providence Journal had
a guy named Eugene Emory,
a very good science writer.
Gene still works for
the paper, but he
is like a part timer
freelancer, who
now is consigned to
write about high school
graduations and the
occasional sporting event.
So he's no longer a
regular science columnist.
The New York Times, even
the Washington Post,
doesn't have a regular
science correspondent anymore,
which is tragic.
I'm affiliated with
the News Hour on PBS.
It has a full time
science reporter
and does a wonderful job.
But again, that's just a small
sliver of the viewership.
So I think you have to find ways
to get across to journalists,
that in science, all ideas
are not created equal.
And in fact, what
science is involved
in is considering
alternative ideas
and rejecting the
ones that are wrong.
And it's important
to us to let people
know why these wrong
ideas have been rejected.
But the fact is
that we're certainly
sure that they're
wrong, and we shouldn't
be equivocal about that.
So good point Rich.
Having participated in the
women's march in Boston--
My daughters did too.
It was a little
crowded they said.
But it was a lot of fun
and very therapeutic.
And my husband and I are getting
excited about the science
march.
And I've been reading
some commentary, where,
of course, scientists want
to debate about, should we
do this, should we not do this.
Is this just going to create
a lot of anger towards us?
Are we sticking our necks
out in a way that this
isn't a political idea.
This is just the truth.
Is it dangerous to go out
there, and with our banners
and our anger, and
show that we really
want to change the world.
Is that a bad idea?
And is that going
to create wrath?
Or is it a great idea
because if we say nothing
we're not getting attention?
I'm just curious
what your opinion is?
I'm going to equivocate on this.
And I'll explain
to you what I mean.
First of all, I'm really
into sticking my neck out.
I'm cool with that.
And I have a whole file of
hostile e-mails and letters
and so forth based on court
appearances, TV appearances,
stuff like that.
I've been on a lot
of radio talk shows.
As soon as a talk
show host says,
this guy's going to
talk about evolution,
switchboard lights up.
People want to come
and they want to argue.
This is something that
everybody has an opinion about.
So I think that scientists
should stick their necks out.
We should make our voices known.
There's a danger
inherent in this.
And the danger is that
we in science do not
want to be seen as
promoting or opposing
a particular political party.
There is danger in science
associating itself,
to be very specific,
with the Democratic Party
or with the progressive.
And I say that as a Democrat
and as a political progressive.
If there is a march of
scientists, and I think
it's supposed to be on
Earth Day, April 22nd.
It will be dangerous to
make it an anti-Trump march.
As much as many of us in
the scientific community
don't like the
current president,
to say that scientists have
this particular political point
of view might even further
politicize science.
If the march can be
handled in such a way
that there's a positive message,
and the positive message is,
we are scientists.
We are doing great
things for this economy,
great things for public
health, great things
for the environment, great
things for everybody here.
We want people to know that.
And we petition the government
to continue, and the people,
to continue to
support us to do that.
Then I think this can work out.
But I really think there
is a political trap here
that has to be avoided.
That's one of the reasons why
I showed that New Republic
article thing.
Think the Democrats are
the party of science?
Not exactly.
There is no political
party that is precisely
aligned with science.
And I think if we can do it and
preserve scientific integrity,
then, by all means, we should.
And thank you all for coming.
[APPLAUSE]
