The War On The War On Science?

  

Otto, 2016, Krauss (ed.), 2025. Well, you can't copyright a title.

 

From SBM: ScienceBasedMedicine:

 

I am a long-time devoted daily reader of SBM. A relative grasshopper. I have long made it clear that "I Am Not A Scientist."

Nonetheless, my empirical / scientific chops are OK, and I remain plugged in.

 

I exhort you to read the entire SBM article fully and carefully—inclusive of the lengthy, worthy comments section.

 

EXCERPT 

The fact that I didn’t waste my time reading the book before advising others not to waste their time reading the book generated emotional responses from several of its contributors. Professor Jerry Coyne, for example, didn’t defend the book or address the objections to it, but rather scolded me in the comments of my SBM article saying:

Perhaps the author might READ the book before he starts beefing about it and telling other people that they shouldn’t read it. He might learn something, or at least get material to sharpen his arguments.

Perhaps Professor Coyne is right. Maybe I am missing out on a truly impressive work scholarship that will upend my superficial understanding of the threats to science in 2026. So, here’s my question for the authors of The War on Science– why should I, or anyone else, read it?  

As a doctor, I know the first step is to make the right diagnosis, and to convince me their book is worth my time, the authors must first convince me they correctly identified the forces currently waging the war on science, which we all agree is being fought. I won’t be persuaded by scattered examples of wokeness gone amok. Those of us who broadly agreed with the efforts to make STEM more inclusive wouldn’t argue that its implementation was flawless. Rather, the authors need to make the affirmative case that trans people, “cancel culture”, and DEI were existential threats to science, while MAGA/MAHA wasn’t dangerous enough to warrant even a single chapter. I’d love to see them do that.

Fortunately, nearly a year after the publication of The War on Science we have some real-world data, which scientists should value above all else. It sure seems to me that the authors of The War on Science won their war and should take a well-earned victory lap. They’ll never again have to write a dreaded DEI statement or feel threatened by an 18-year-old with pronouns in their bio. Thanks to their efforts, trans people are literally on the run and research into topics our government deems “DEI” is verboten. This is exactly what they wanted, and if their theory of the case is right, we should be entering a golden era of open scientific research and discovery. 

So, let’s see them make the case that science is flourishing today, having been unleashed from wokeism’s punishing shackles. If they are able to take into account everything MAGA/MAHA has done since gaining power and convince me that science is better off for it, I’ll read their book and recommend it to everyone I know.

Ouch. Again, read the comments. I read the entire 2016 Shawn Otto book but only the Amazon (fairly generous) download sample of the 2025 Krauss et al book.

Do we all hew to the same definition of "Science?"