Chris Mooney is a visiting associate in the 
My latest piece for Science Progress--where I am now a contributing editor--has just gone up. It's entitled "Enablers," and it's how people like us, who care about science, are often guilty of actually empowering those who who are attacking it.
A great example occurred recently with the Heartland Institute's climate skeptic conference in New York. Climate skepticism is totally passe--this event should have been completely ignored. Instead, many of my intellectual allies were screaming their heads off denouncing it, and thereby drawing greater attention to it.
In the piece I give other examples, including one that comes from the latest version of the Nisbet-Mooney talk (about Ben Stein), and that I owe Matt Nisbet for originally pointing out:
There's certainly a longstanding mentality among progressive groups that nonsense must be refuted, often in rapid-fire mode if possible. But that mindset runs up against something else that ought to be obvious: controversy sells. If you create a big fuss over what your intellectual opponent is saying, you might well be helping him or her. Fox News's highly publicized lawsuit against Al Franken surely helped sell copies of Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. So why wouldn't repeated critiques by environmental groups of someone like, say, Bjorn Lomborg or the Heartland Institute do exactly the same thing?Nevertheless--and to stick with environmental groups for a second-they fall into this trap constantly, refuting at length anti-environmental forces at rightwing think tanks or in the media. The Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund (now known simply as Environmental Defense) both published lengthy studies to refute New York Times contrarian John Tierney's 1997 attack on the efficacy of recycling, to name just one example. Couldn't all the energy and resources bestowed on rebutting our enemies be better used to help promote our friends--perhaps, say, by devoting resources to getting the word out about individuals who have written pro-environment books? Rather than reacting, couldn't we be setting the agenda?
Unfortunately, yet another example of scientific defenders enabling anti-scientific forces has recently come to my attention. The rightwing comedian Ben Stein has a new movie out called Expelled, a supposed documentary about how evolutionary forces are suppressing the intelligent design movement's intellectually valid dissent. Now, this is nonsense, but what better way to help nonsense thrive than to unleash public statements that would seem to confirm it or to be consistent with it?
Sure enough, one of the Expelled trailers features the following quotation from Oxford evolutionary biologist and atheism apostle Richard Dawkins: "If people think God is interesting, the onus is on them to show that there is anything there to talk about. Otherwise they should just shut up about it." And then in comes Ben Stein to play the rebel, the Galileo, against this oppressive scientific orthodoxy, against "Big Science" that tells the little guy to "shut up." How's that for enabling?
The full column can be read here.
Politics
Environment
Comments
I am disappointed in Mr. Mooney, writing such drivel. Would he ignore a cancerous growth in the hope it would go away?
Posted by: SLC | March 19, 2008 2:11 PM
I agree....but it seems the alternative, ignoring it, would be worse.
You have to understand that anti-science viewpoints are, to their adherents, unfalsifiable.
Critique Stein? You are an evil suppressive Darwinist.
Ignore Stein? Ha, they have nothing to say because they know I'm right and the case for ID is so strong.
The advantage of resisting is that it allows us to get out the facts in the controversy. This may not work in network sound bites, but can be effective across the internet. Anyone drawn to TalkOrigins by the controversy will not be able to unread what they see there, for example.
I do agree that a greater energy should be given to positives, but not at the expense of taking away energy from these good fights.
Posted by: Jason Failes | March 19, 2008 2:21 PM
I don't know if I would call it drivel, but I certainly agree with SLC.
For every person who glances at an article about a supposed "controversy", there is at least a chance -a chance!- that they will look into it further and see which theory the evidence lends itself to. Letting on the pseudoscientists speak without rebuttal would be to shirk responsibilty.
Posted by: The Flying Trilobite | March 19, 2008 2:26 PM
It is completely amazing to me how people seem to miss the point of practically anything written about political strategy or tactics.
For instance: the immediate jump to the cancer metaphor! Why not the Nazi threat lurking in the mid-1930s. Never ignore anything that can be construed as a threat! All out war, immediately!
(Hopefully some folks have learned the lesson of questionable metaphors from the Iraq war. Fifth anniversary is today, btw)
Or, think of the counterarguments!
The thing is, we aren't talking about cancer or counterarguments between intellectual pugilists. We're talking about how things play out in public fora.
How does the republic party respond to the many very poignant criticisms launched socialist intellectuals?
Can they possibly ignore that cancer? Do they worry about the cutting remarks they will suffer at cocktail parties?
Posted by: Oran Kelley | March 19, 2008 3:14 PM
My exposure to academic science is extremely limited: a high school physics class taught by a former coach who let us play with the lab equipment while he sat at his desk and read, and a really good one-semester college botany class around 1962.
Perhaps there is indeed no need to "create a big fuss," but I personally appreciate factual responses to inaccurate claims, especially those responses summed up in terms basic enough for the layman and short enough to read in fifteen minutes or so. A search for factual information in small bites is really what caused me to seek out relevant blogs after I retired.
Certainly it's good to get the word out about factual books, but it would be a mistake to transfer absolutely "all the energy and resources" away from responding directly to false claims.
Even those non-science types like myself who are making a sincere effort to understand are unlikely to get around to reading whole books in order to find out about the accuracy and relevancy of some new widely-publicized claim; for example, the apparently big news not so long ago that the hottest year this century was not recently, but (I think) 1935. It was very helpful to me to have pointed out in easily obtained media the importance of trends versus single data points, as well as the difference between average US temperature and average global temperature with its disproportionate effect felt at the poles.
I find Scienceblogs and Panda's Thumb to be particularly helpful in pointing out what is science and what is pseudoscience. I do agree, though, that strings of insults and being told to shut up have never helped me to understand anything. And the hours wasted wading through insults and adolescent jibes in search of facts has led me to be more selective about which science blogs I spend my limited time reading.
Posted by: JuliaL | March 19, 2008 3:44 PM
The Index of Creationist Claims is valuable. By cutting and pasting, you can both respond to them, and show that their objection is old and dumb, without wasting much time.
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html
Posted by: steve s | March 19, 2008 4:13 PM
So you think that by putting your fingers in your ears and telling others to do the same that objections to the premise, methodology and data backing AGW theory will whither on the vine?
Have you checked the satellite and surface temperature anomalies lately Chris? What was the ACE index last season? What is the current sea ice extent in the Arctic and Antarctic systems? What is the correlation between actual tropospheric heating and the values predicted by "climate models"?
Or are all of those scientific issues "passe" as well?
Posted by: Lance | March 19, 2008 4:43 PM
That last paragraph by Nisbet is really what all of this is about. Science defenders must, at all times, be wary of what they say, and how they say it! Or else, god forbid, someone somewhere who knows how to use video editing software, or even something as basic as cutting and pasting will make us all look bad! Just be polite, talk nice and slow, and maybe, in a hundred years, the naysayers will just retreat back into a hole after being completely ignored and everyone will stand up and agree "By jolly, AGW is real, and we need to do something about it!"
Posted by: Jonathan | March 19, 2008 6:00 PM
Re Jonathan
I think that Mr. Jonathan is right on. A snarker after my own heart.
Posted by: SLC | March 19, 2008 6:59 PM
This is actually a much more mild proposition than a lot of posters seem to assume, at least as far as I can see. Pro-science activists have a tendency to be reactive to every move made on the denialist front, and this often brings the latter undue publicity.
It's certainly true that you need to make sure good information is available to those who seek it, but realistically, the tide of public opinion is affected little by what we think of as "information". Those who are short on facts and long on rhetoric can be very effective in muddying the waters. When environmental scientists respond to every piece of brownlash propaganda with vigor, sometimes the only discernable effect is to draw attention to it and generate an atmosphere of controversy where none legitimately exists.
Oran Kelley is correct in pointing to Republican propaganda as an example. Right-wing think-tanks seldom expend effort refuting criticisms of their propaganda, as they focus instead on bullhorning it out into the public discourse. The Republican ascendency of the past two decades clearly vindicates such a strategy.
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | March 19, 2008 9:23 PM
If you're going to start ignoring ideas you don't like, you might need to turn off NPR:
Morning Edition, March 19, 2008 · Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years.
Posted by: Neuro-conservative | March 20, 2008 1:32 AM
I don't believe it is possible to be more wrong.
I agree that much of the pro-science rhetoric is as juvenile --viz."demented fucktards"- and as blindly partisan as any on the anti-rationality front.
However, smugly ignoring or not taking militant mysticism seriously because it is intellectually contemptible is what has allowed the most ignorant and anti-intellectual government in the history of democracy to celebrate 5 years of a "successful war".
This is not penny-ante, we're playing for all the marbles here and if you don't have the stomach for a fight to defend reason against unreason, then at least consider the implications of complacency before becoming an advocate for it.
Posted by: Andrew | March 20, 2008 9:42 AM
Oran Kelley put it best: "It is completely amazing to me how people seem to miss the point of practically anything written about political strategy or tactics."
I agree completely.
Posted by: Chris C. Mooney | March 20, 2008 10:04 AM
SLC: "Would he ignore a cancerous growth in the hope it would go away?"
False analogy. Imagine a weird sort of tumor where a treatment can have two contradictory effects:
* If the tumor is growing, then the treatment keeps it in check, as we expect.
* If the tumor is already shrinking and dying out, the same treatment risks triggering it to revive and grow again.
You propose delivering the same treatment to both kinds of tumors.
Posted by: J. J. Ramsey | March 20, 2008 10:31 AM
Uh, interesting analogy. Is there any such tumor/treatment combination? If so, how does it pertain to the current situation?
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | March 20, 2008 10:55 AM
Is that accurate? How does it relate to overall global warming? I imagine that this will be (if it hasn't already been) used as an argument that global warming isn't happening. This is a good example of an opportunity to provide facts (but not a big fuss) to help out us non-science types.
Posted by: JuliaL | March 20, 2008 11:25 AM
I understand what you're trying to say, and I think it applies in some cases, but what about placing it in a larger context? Joseph Romm does this to some extent in his reply to you:
Remember the Paul Krugman column from a while back on industry funded think tanks and scholars? Do you think the press establishment fully realizes the extent to which right wing think tanks do this? Part of the problem, I think, is that the media establishment hasn't gotten a sense of the tactics that have been used. Their actual reputation at this point lags their deserved reputation.
Posted by: Jon Winsor | March 20, 2008 11:40 AM
As Paul Krugman and others have recently argued, a lot of these tactics can be intentional and coordinated.
Also, if you haven't seen it, make sure to listen to Naomi Oreske's talk on the history of climate change denialism. You'll be familiar with most of the stuff at the beginning, but I like the way she frames the problem toward the end. Libertarian types have to be honest about what they're debating--they like to pretend they're having a scientific debate, when they're really having a political one. It's fine to have the political and economic debate, but they should be clear about what they're debating, instead of obfuscating the science.
Posted by: Jon Winsor | March 20, 2008 11:43 AM
Argh. Some of what I said above is a bit garbled. Essentially, what I meant to say was 1) the establishment media doesn't understand the extent to which right wing science and research distorts findings for political purposes, 2) the actual reputation of right wing sources of information lags their deserved reputation, 3) there's something to be gained by consistently pointing these things out, and showing how problemmatic libertarian think tanks (etc.) are are as sources of information.
Once the establishment press "gets it," it will be much harder for the "counterestablishment" (as it was once called) to pull off the kinds of things that Naomi Oreske describes.
Posted by: Jon Winsor | March 20, 2008 12:07 PM
Pierce R. Butler: "Uh, interesting analogy. Is there any such tumor/treatment combination?
I have no idea if there are any real tumors like that.
"If so, how does it pertain to the current situation?"
Isn't it obvious? It has already been pointed out even before this article that attempting to rebut a myth can help reinforce it. Now when groups like the Heartland Institute are in a strong position, one is stuck with working around that dynamic and publicly countering their misinformation. When such groups are on the ropes and having a hard time attracting the public attention they need, then publicly rebutting them brings them this attention and that dynamic that I just mentioned comes into play.
The catch, of course, is figuring out whether a group is really on the ropes or not.
Interestingly enough, while Mark H on the Denialism blog disagrees with Mooney, he does understand what Mooney is trying to get at.
Posted by: J. J. Ramsey | March 20, 2008 12:21 PM
Re Neuro-conservative
The answer to this apparent conundrum is very simple. The admixing of cold water coming from melting ice with ocean water is temporarily preventing the oceans from getting warmer. See, wasn't that simple?
Posted by: SLC | March 20, 2008 12:31 PM
Re J. J. Ramsey
The problem with Mr. Ramseys' analysis is that the tumor, in this case creationism and other whacky ideas, are not shrinking and dying out. It is growing and metastasizing. I seem to recall that Mr. Ramsey was involved in the discussion with a whackjob calling himself JonS over at the evolution blog. Anyone following that discussion would not come to the conclusion that the problem was going away.
Posted by: SLC | March 20, 2008 12:37 PM
J. J. Ramsey: Y'know, the rhetorical purpose of building a straw man is to attack it, not to stand behind it as the strong point of your case.
As SLC points out, the liars are hardly "on the ropes" - not even Bush & Cheney, who are lame ducks repeatedly exposed as shameless frauds.
More to the current point: many of us in the anti-war movement delight in reminding the public of such propaganda ploys as "Mission Accomplished", "Ba'athist dead-enders", "It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months." Do you, or Mooney & Nisbet, or anyone, think that we are thereby promoting Bush's wars?
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | March 20, 2008 1:22 PM
SLC: "The problem with Mr. Ramseys' analysis is that the tumor, in this case creationism and other whacky ideas, are not shrinking and dying out."
That is half-true. Creationism as a whole is not dying out, but the effort of the movie Expelled is dying, and the climate change denialists are enough on the losing end that even Bush has paid some lip service to the reality of climate change. Funny thing, these are the issues that Mooney was talking about.
Posted by: J. J. Ramsey | March 20, 2008 1:30 PM
Posted by: J. J. Ramsey | March 20, 2008 1:36 PM
For those interested here is my reply at denialism blog.
While I agree that Chris has a point that to some degree it seems like we sciencebloggers end up being the only ones talking about some cranks, thus giving them press, the HI conference is a bad example of something to ignore. As many people have pointed out in this thread, historically ignoring denialism has not worked. I'll add the additional example of the tobacco companies denialist campaign which used many of the same actors who are working on the global warming denialist campaign. These people get their bullshit into all sorts of corners if you let them and don't expose them.
Now, some smalltime crank occupying some outpost on the interweb certainly would fall under Chris's realm. I rarely write about a bunch of creeps like holocaust deniers and HIV/AIDS denialists until they break out of their little shitbird nests and create a more public ruckus. But groups like Heartland, or the DI, or CEI, who have money, lobbyists, and journalists spitting their BS into every little nook and cranny that will take it need to be dealt with proactively.
Posted by: Mark | March 20, 2008 3:47 PM
...as a debate about the science itself...
Actually, the best work that I've seen discusses how the misinformation came about--for instance the link between denial campaigns and big tobacco. This changes it into a story about the culture of misinformation, you could say, more than about the misinformation itself.
This seems to be solidly in the tradition of muckraking journalism, and it is often very effective. (The Newsweek cover story that ran a few months back comes to mind.)
Posted by: Jon Winsor | March 20, 2008 3:49 PM
Our "opponents" in the cases of Bush's wars aren't claiming scientific validity, but their misrepresentation of military and geopolitical analysis is comparable to their exploitation of the name of science, whether considered as howling dishonesty or exploitation of public ignorance.
The creationists differ from the warming deniers (& the warmongers) in lacking corporate subsidy, but they more than make up for it in ecclesiastical support. In all three instances, a policy of deliberate neglect cannot be expected to stop the growth of the "tumor".
Even where no significant outside support for absurd claims can be seen, such as the UFO movement, it's hard to see that the de facto "ignore 'em and they'll go away" strategy has succeeded.
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | March 20, 2008 3:53 PM
Pierce R. Butler: "Our 'opponents' in the cases of Bush's wars aren't claiming scientific validity"
More to the point, they aren't trying to use the presence of public argument as a misleading implication of the lack of scientific consensus. Different opponents, different ways of handling them.
Pierce R. Butler: "policy of deliberate neglect cannot be expected to stop the growth of the 'tumor'."
And no one has been saying that deliberate neglect should be a universal strategy.
Posted by: J. J. Ramsey | March 20, 2008 5:05 PM
I believe you mean "simplistic" as in reduced in complexity to the point of non-meaning.
If the oceans show no sign of heating for the last five years and the net sea ice extent is the same as it has been for over a decade and the atmosphere is cooler than anytime in the last ten years then where exactly IS your heat SLC?
Oh, I forgot you boys are having a "political" discussion about trying to censor the scientists that are presenting evidence that just isn't following your script.
Posted by: Lance | March 20, 2008 5:27 PM
[T]hey aren't trying to use the presence of public argument as a misleading implication of the lack of scientific consensus.
No, but there are similarities. During the runup to the war there was the manipulation of what Naomi Oreskes called "the prestige media" (see Judy Miller, the Wall Street Journal Editorial page during the runup, etc.), and also there was the taking advantage of the technical nature of knowledge surrounding aluminum tubes, plus there was the ingenious and selective use of facts in the administration's public statements during the runup to the war (see the comment thread that begins here on NYU professor Jay Rosen's blog).
Again, if it's done well, I don't see how reporting on how distortions are produced, and how the media buys them, can be bad.
BTW, Al Gore specifically compared the runup to the Iraq War with the public discourse related to climate change in this Charlie Rose appearance. He apparently sees them as related.
Posted by: Jon Winsor | March 20, 2008 5:49 PM
Jon Winsor: "No, but there are similarities."
But one of those similarities is not a tendency to say, "Aha! There's engaging us. See, that means we must be credible."
Posted by: J. J. Ramsey | March 20, 2008 6:12 PM
J. J. Ramsey: ... they aren't trying to use the presence of public argument as a misleading implication of the lack of scientific consensus.
Misdirection, fraud, smoke'n'mirrors, spin, character assassination. repetition, abuse of authority, scapegoating, slick superficiality... - the similarities outnumber the distinctions.
Different opponents, different ways of handling them.
SS, DD. The same corrupt jerks who are screwing up everything else in the country, abetted by the apathetic & ignorant majority, versus the people trying to straighten things out. As with the routine tactics (see above short list), not that much variation within the respective subsets working various rackets.
no one has been saying that deliberate neglect should be a universal strategy.
Other than this necessary-but-insufficient tactic of (cue the band) Accennntuuuaate the Positive!, the dearth of pro-active strategic recommendations around here is discouraging.
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | March 21, 2008 12:11 AM
Chris, I can see your point of view, but I think you are somewhat wrong.
I've explained it at greater length in this post, but basically my stance can be summed up to the following:
We shouldn't debate anti-scientists, but we should call them out on their lies.
Posted by: Kristjan Wager | March 21, 2008 4:38 AM
Denialists should not be debated.
But it is worthwhile pointing out that the so-called scientists attending this meeting are proven liars, both on this topic and in other denialist campaigns such as challenging the linke between cigarettes in cancer.
I'll say it again though, ignoring HI and DI is a bad example of this principle. They are too well-funded. They have well-defined lines of communication with large bodies of people and media sources. Ignoring them will come around to bite you in the ass.
Posted by: Mark | March 21, 2008 8:12 AM
Pierce R. Butler: "the similarities outnumber the distinctions."
And that means that we should ignore the distinctions?
Posted by: J. J. Ramsey | March 21, 2008 8:13 AM
And that means that we should ignore the distinctions?
I'd note that we're having a pretty abstract conversation already, ignoring the distinctions.
My argument is that there's a very good case for covering the Heartland conference. The story is how the denial industry works, laid out for all to see. Now, as you rightly argue, if a science defender were to elevate a marginalized view, and debate it, that wouldn't be helpful. But, as Joseph Romm pointed out, if science defenders call out the media's coverage of the event, or "reframe" the conference as a great specimen of longstanding libertarian think tank activity, then that could be helpful.
Posted by: Jon Winsor | March 21, 2008 9:43 AM
Re Expelled
Attached is a link to PZ Myers blog describing how he was ejected from a private screening of the subject movie while Richard Dawkins was allowed in!
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/expelled.php#comments
Posted by: SLC | March 21, 2008 10:17 AM
J. J. Ramsey - And that means that we should ignore the distinctions?
Apparently, it means you have full license to ignore all my other points, so why not?
So as to segue into the new topic du jour around here, how does the preferred (in your view) approach suggest we "frame" the Great PZ Expulsion/Dawkins Infiltration saga?
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | March 21, 2008 4:52 PM
Chris Mooney wrote:
Did you know that over at the Expelled Movie Blog they also use a semi-quote from Chris Mooney:
So, Chris, were you enabling them too?
Posted by: Norman Doering | March 21, 2008 5:40 PM
Chris,
Well this explains your interest in Tolkien's work.
Posted by: Lance | March 21, 2008 6:33 PM
Pierce R. Butler: "how does the preferred (in your view) approach suggest we 'frame' the Great PZ Expulsion/Dawkins Infiltration saga?"
Simple. The scientific minutiae is largely beside the point, so the dynamic described below doesn't apply:
PZ has already found a frame that puts the Expelled people on the defensive: namely the hypocrisy of those screening (in more ways than one) the film.
Posted by: J. J. Ramsey | March 21, 2008 6:43 PM
BTW, if my last post appears contradictory, note that it was in response to the question of how to frame an event, not whether to ignore it.
Posted by: J. J. Ramsey | March 21, 2008 7:00 PM
Sorry for the triple post, but I finally decided that I was way too soft on Mooney.
Posted by: J. J. Ramsey | March 25, 2008 6:05 PM
Please Mr. Mooney stop enabling the controversy over framing. Stop telling people how to approach controversial issues. Stop telling other people to keep their mouth shut. If you are so worried about people promoting bad science by refuting it then spend your energy on getting the good science out there into the public sphere.
The problem with this discussion about denialists versus framers is that the solution proposed by the framers is to tell the denialists to shut up. It's not working. So I suggest that the framers stop worrying about the denialists and start creating some of their own positive framing for science. You are committing the same error you are condemning. You are wasting your energy creating a controversy and drawing more and more attention to it.
So finally please stop. Stop telling other people why they should shut up and start producing some of these wonderful frames that are going to change the public discourse about science. So far the only thing I see coming out of your efforts are complaints about other scientists and no changes in public opinion. Stop please. Stop it now. Create the better frame instead of railing against the frames of your opponents.
Posted by: Todd Suomela | April 2, 2008 7:41 PM
Ignoring up-start nobodies is probably worthwhile bu it's difficult to ignore people who are already capturing the minds of the policy-makers - the people who decide where to shovel our taxes.
An alternative might well be to start a movement with a positive name that captivates (not "skepticism" for Pete's sake) and to start selling ideas that politicians and media personalities can grasp without needing a degree in physics. In other words, take the offensive position instead of the defensive. Easy to say but can it be done?
Posted by: AndyD | April 19, 2008 9:15 AM