Gary Saul Morson: Partisan Science in America

I say this is exactly right.

   One can often tell that an appeal to science is unwarranted without knowing anything about the science in question. If science is treated as a solid block, each part of which is as indubitable as all the others, then science has been misunderstood. Science always contains some propositions less firmly grounded than others: on the frontier, newly discovered, based on experiments not readily replicated.
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   It is now regarded as an open question whether the Covid virus escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. But when the virus first appeared, dozens of scientists published a statement in the Lancet expressing “solidarity” with Chinese colleagues. “The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumors and misinformation around its origins,” the statement declared. “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.” How could epidemiology discern that ideas were not only ill-founded but conspiratorial?
   Now that new evidence has come to light, have these conspiracy-denouncing scientists acknowledged they overstepped? No. In another statement to the Lancet in July, they assert: “We reaffirm our expression of solidarity with those in China who confronted the outbreak then.” Solidarity is a social, not scientific, category, and a judgment as to whether scientists in an authoritarian regime have been pressured is also not a scientific one. Anyone who has studied Marxist-Leninist regimes knows that it is possible that the “solidarity” is not with the scientists but with the authorities supervising them.
   To explain their earlier statement, the scientists remind us that “we have observed escalations of conflicts that pit many parties against one another, including central government versus local government, young versus old, rich versus poor, people of colour versus white people, and health priorities versus the economy.” To justify a scientific claim with such socially charged considerations is, again, partisan science. To the extent that scientific claims are informed by political considerations, they are no more well-founded than purely political ones.
   If scientists expect their statements to be trusted, they must themselves be trustworthy in making them. One had better be scrupulously honest before asking people to surrender their own judgment and simply believe what they are told. Scientists should be especially careful not to misrepresent political or policy judgments as being scientific. And they must protest vigorously and loudly when other influential people claim to speak in the name of science while misrepresenting it.

   "Lysenkoism" (or: prope-Lysenkoism) is the term we really want here, of course. One problem is that scientists are irresponsibly speaking on political (social, cultural, philosophical, etc.) issues about which they have no special epistemic authority--but they are, in effect, claiming to speak with the authority of their expertise--expertise that is either irrelevant to the political issue, or only marginally relevant. Since their expertise is not relevant, you don't have to share it to see that bullshit is afoot.