Political ideology decides what “the science” is!?

About a  dozen years ago, I wrote [1]:

“It is politically incorrect for people on the political left to doubt human-caused global warming. It is politically incorrect for people on the political right to accept human-caused global warming. In other words, beliefs over a matter of supposed scientific fact are determined by political ideology.

This is absurd, yet the absurdity is being largely ignored in public discourse.”

Questioning whether human-caused climate change is an existential critical danger is so politically correct that even the most eminent individuals — for instance, Physics Nobel Prize winners John Clauser  and Ivar Giaever — get “canceled”, disinvited from giving lectures, if they question the orthodoxy’s most hysterical claims [2]; yet thousands of other informed individuals also question publicly the orthodox view [3].

Similarly with HIV/AIDS, eminent molecular biologist Peter Duesberg no longer received research grants or conference invitations [4] after he pointed out that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, even as several Nobel-Prize winners and thousand of others agree with Duesberg [5].

I continue to wonder, how and why political correctness has come to be such a powerful influence on science [6]. It first began to puzzle me after I had realized that HIV was and is not the cause of AIDS (Bauer 2007, 2009; https://hivskeptic.wordpress.com). Writings from that point of view, as with questioning of human-caused climate-change, seem to find publication only in politically right-leaning places (e.g., Wall Street Journal, Journal of the American Physicians and Surgeons, japs.org; lewrockwell.com). Peter Duesberg’s (1996) book was published by Regnery (https://www.regnery.com).

I’ve set out in considerable detail the facts on which are based my views about HIV/AIDS and about climate change, and I will continue to hold those views until it is shown which of the facts I cite are mistaken. In the meantime, I continue to try to understand why others ignore those facts, in particular, why left-leaning groups and individuals seem to ignore or dismiss those facts  while politically right-leaning groups and individuals see the facts more or less as I do.

My puzzlement is exacerbated by the fact that I have myself been life-long politically left- more than right-leaning, something like a European-style democratic socialist.

 The alternative to HIV as cause of AIDS, when AIDS was first recognized and defined in the early 1980s in the United States, was that it had something to do with the lifestyle of the AIDS victims, perhaps homosexual practices or drug abuse. That possibility is quite unpalatable to progressive left-leaning ideology, by questioning whether homosexuality is a normal human phenomenon, and for blaming victims themselves for their troubles.

Human-caused global warming is highly compatible with and readily believed by progressive left-leading ideology since the latter views any environmental damage as plausibly resulting from human activities.

 But I do not suggest that a left-leaning political stance works directly to accept that HIV equals AIDS and that human activities cause global warming and climate change; I think the influence is rather more subtle: The alternative possibilities are unwelcome, and therefore the factual evidence for those alternative possibilities is more easily not noticed by left-leaning minds: this is the well-attested psychological phenomenon of avoiding cognitive dissonance (Festinger et al. [1956] is the frequently cited source for discussion of cognitive dissonance; see also Festinger [1962]).

Right-leaning ideology, on the other hand, finds nothing particularly unpalatable about those alternative possibilities, so there is no barrier to acknowledging the facts and their significance.

Of course I am not suggesting that right-leaning minds always find it easier to recognize facts; obviously it depends on the specific issue at hand. Most generally, I think the left-leaning find it easier to recognize facts that support the possibility of favorable action by humans [“wishful thinking”] whereas the right-leaning may be more sensitive to facts about the possibility that potential actions, no matter how theoretically desirable, might be impractical or might fail or even be counterproductive [“harsh realities about human nature and society”].)

The relatively uniform state across the globe of these opposing viewpoints about HIV/AIDS and climate change may owe something to the role of the United States in setting a lead on many scientific matters, owing to the unrivaled copious resources for research available in this country.

In that connection, it is worth pointing out that AIDS was first recognized and defined in the early 1980s in America, even though it was supposed to have come there from Africa, possibly via Haiti [7].

At any rate, the empirical reality is that beliefs about HIV/AIDS and about human-caused climate change are influenced more by political leanings than by substantive disputation over the scientific data. Since both those matters are of very considerable human and economic importance, it would be much better if public policies and actions were based on the most impartial possible interpretation of the scientific facts. That is why we badly need something like a Science Court (Bauer, 2017: ch. 12).

Although political left and political right disagree on all sorts of matters, they are unfortunately agreed — of course without saying so — that they prefer to be able to claim that science supports their particular views rather than having some impartial body be the publicly acknowledged arbitrator; one sign of that is that the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment was disbanded in the 1990s, even as policy makers’ need for sound advice on technical matters was becoming more and more obvious.

A powerful reason for politicians wishing to be able to claim support from science is the widespread public confidence that “science” can be trusted. Before the need for a Science Court can become universally recognized, the inherent fallibility of science must become part of what everyone knows [8].

It needs to become universally understood that scientific understanding is not the product of some objective unbiased “scientific method” [9], it is an activity carried on by human beings and therefore is characterized by all human qualities and traits: Dishonesty as well as honesty, incompetence as well as competence, self-interest as well as disinterestedness, and so on. Moreover, fallible humans have to rely for guidance on the contemporary state of knowledge, which may be misleadingly insufficient.

Those points are illustrated, for instance, by how the mistaken theory became established that AIDS was caused by a “human immunodeficiency virus” [10]; and once a “scientific consensus” has become the conventional wisdom of media and public, it effectively resists change just by the facts of reality.

As to climate change, a comprehensive discussion points out that “[t]he attitudes of national publics to climate change are largely unaffected by the scientific arguments”. “The climate-change domain supports an independent culture of its own” which emphasizes catastrophic predictions even though “claims of certain near-term global climate catastrophe in the absence of dramatic action are not supported by mainstream science [11; italics in original].

Although this just-cited book, The Grip of Culture: the Social Psychology of Climate Change Catastrophism, features global climate catastrophism as a prime theme, its exposition of the properties of cultural entities also illuminates mainstream treatment of minority dissent quite in general and throws light on contemporary USA political dysfunction.

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[1]    https://scimedskeptic.wordpress.com/2012/11/25/a-politically-liberal-global-warming-skeptic)

[2]    Chris Morrison, Cancellations start for John Clauser after Nobel Physics Laureate speaks out about “corruption” of Climate Science,  23 July 2023; https://dailysceptic.org/2023/07/23/cancellations-start-for-john-clauser-after-nobel-physics-laureate-speaks-out-about-corruption-of-climate-science

[3]    For example, World Climate Declaration at https://clintel.org; Leipzig Declaration at sepp.org; CO₂ Coalition, https://co2coalition.org

[4]    Jeanne Lenzer, “Peter’s Principles”, Discover, 49 (#6, June 2008) 45-50

[5]    “The AIDS industry and media want you to think there are only a handful of scientists who doubt the HIV–AIDS hypothesis. Here’s the reality: 2,897 signatories, over a thousand with advanced degrees (608 PhDs, 377 MDs, 6 DOs, and 109 MSc) plus 3 Nobel Laureates [Walter Gilbert, Kary Mullis, Linus Pauling] with a combined four Nobel Prizes in Chemistry”; https://rethinkingaids.com/index.php/signatories

[6]    https://scimedskeptic.wordpress.com/2017/03/06/political-correctness-in-science

[7]    But if the cause of AIDS originated in Africa, as orthodox theory holds, through jumping to humans from some other primate, and if that postulated virus is as inevitably deadly as HIV is supposed to be, why had not Africa — at least the southern part of Africa — been almost depopulated before any treatments developed in America had become available?

[8]    My distinguished friend Sever Sternhell remarked, after seeing the evidence that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, worried that public knowledge that the theory was wrong might destroy confidence in science in general. That is not what has happened, of course. Facts alone don’t change beliefs, nor do they change a :scientific consensus”.

[9]    Henry H. Bauer, Scientific Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific Method, University of Illinois Press, 1992; “I would  strongly recommend this book to anyone who hasn’t yet heard that the scientific  method is a myth. Apparently there are still  lots of those folks around” (David L. Goodstein, Science, 256 [1992] 1034-36). 

[10]  https://henryhbauer.substack.com/p/the-hivaids-blunder

[11]  Andy A. West, The Grip of Culture: the Social Psychology of Climate Change Catastrophism, Global Warming Policy Foundation, 2023, pp. 1, 2; free pdf download at
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2023/07/West-Catastrophe-Culture6by9-v28.pdf

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Bauer, Henry H. (2007). The Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory, McFarland

Bauer, Henry H. (2009). Confession of an “AIDS denialist”:
How I became a crank because we’re being lied to about HIV/AIDS; https://mega.nz/file/wegVGAqL#0kJGxh0KWMhW3OsZJUFonh6c7cetmCQAhJ-0b1B1aAo

Bauer, Henry H. (2017). Science Is Not What You Think: How It Has Changed, Why We Can’t Trust It, How It Can Be Fixed , McFarland 2017

Duesberg, Peter H. (1996). Inventing the AIDS Virus, Regnery

Festinger, Leon (1962). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, Stanford University Press

Festinger, Leon, Henry W. Riecken, & Stanley Schachter (1956). When Prophecy Fails, University of Minnesota Press