Anti-Science Zealots, Know-Nothing Politicians A Plague on the Nation
Last night Seattlest was at the second of the UW's Allen Edwards Psychology Lectures, as promised. (The series will air later on UWTV and TVW.) Speaker Judith Auerbach, the evening's "prominent Ph.D." from amfAR, began with a disclaimer that the talk represented her personal views and not those of her employers, past or present, so we perked up at that.
Then she launched into a scientific jeremiad on the state of government-funded science, focusing on Bush Administration (and Republican-controlled Congress) plan to fight HIV/AIDS infection primarily with abstinence-only programs, while "informing" the public that condoms aren't 100% effective and forbidding federal funding for syringe exchange programs.
Neither do they much want to fund studies of HIV/AIDS transmission behavior in the gay community, or among illegal drug users or commercial sex workers. The supposition in the latter two cases is that working with populations engaging in illegal behavior only encourages that behavior, just like condoms encourage kids to have sex before or outside marriage. [ED: No, it doesn't.]
It's almost as if the administration was trying to fix the facts around a pre-set ideological plan of action. While condoms are not 100% effective, they can be as much as 95% effective -- while a longitudinal study of adolescents found that of those in abstinence-only programs, a full 88% had vaginal sex before marriage. (Many chose to observe the letter of the law, and engaged in oral and anal sex instead.) So abstinence has a 12% success rate, and is promoted as the primary strategy in dealing with HIV/AIDS infection because it is potentially 100% effective. (Seattlest can't wait for this line of thinking to extend to vaccines that might potentially be effective, if only they weren't.)
The problem with Kanye West's epiphany (Seattlest editorializes), is that it doesn't extend far enough. The Bush Administration doesn't care about people who don't behave the way they're told to behave. It refuses to respond to health and safety issues as if health and safety is the immediate goal, rather than obedience to moral authority. And truthiness in science is paying the price.
More legitimate moral outrage after the jump.
Auerbach listed four practices that the Bush Administration and Congress use that strike at the heart of reliable scientific inquiry: 1) control of information, 2) ignoring expert advice, 3) assault and restriction of researchers, and 4) managing the process to produce desired results.
For evidence of the Bush Administration's unsafe behaviors, Auerbach cited the federal government's consistent reluctance to mention condoms except in reference to their "failure rate." (Here's the CDC fact sheet which instructs you, really, on all the reasons not to use a condom. Maybe it's reverse psychology.)
Then there's the refusal to fund syringe exchange programs, when dirty needles account for some 24% of HIV/AIDS transmission. We can't afford to look soft on drugs; there's a war on (drugs), after all. Apparently drug addicts may break the habit if only they're not offered the prospect of shiny, sterile needles.
Scientists whose grants have been funded by the peer-review process are now being interrogated by Congress and threatened with defunding, thanks to lobbying by groups of dubious scientific standing. An amendment to defund four NIH-awarded grants was defeated by only two votes. Rep. Toomey couldn't see the "sense" in the research, so he thought the legislature's time was best used as a deliberative scientific body, to provide oversight for the rubes at the NIH. (The second half of the lecture featured a UW professor whose study was one of those targeted for defunding, but we couldn't stay -- just imagine that there was another hour of steadily infuriating testimony here.)
Finally, there is the appointment of manifestly unqualified people to leadership positions based on ideological affinity (*cough Great job, Brownie*). Scientific institutes' suggestions are rejected; candidates are asked for their "views" on abortion and whether they might have voted for Bush in the presidential election. To Auerbach, this simply reflects the administration's philosophical (to use the word loosely) belief in a unitary executive function, in which all government must reflect the executive viewpoint.
As the Union of Concerned Scientists argues, that's a real problem when it comes to the scientific method.
Next up in the lecture series:
Wed, Mar 8, 2006: Brain Science as a Means of Understanding Delinquency In this lecture Drs. Beauchaine and Tapert explore risks and results of delinquency and substance abuse in youth. Dr. Beauchaine discusses the importance of understanding the brain mechanisms associated with impulsivity, which allows us to identify at-risk children early in life. Dr. Tapert addresses the extent to which heavy alcohol and other drug use during the teenage years might affect brain development and cognitive performance into young adulthood.Register to attend (it's free) here.
For more on UW Alumni-sponsored offerings, stop by their calendar of events. Here's more on UW lectures.
