The GOP's Science Problem - Which Is Far Older And More Malignant Than You Might Think [View all]

[hatrack]

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Once Trump became president, disbelief mutated into something more dangerous: an aggressive federal effort to suppress scientific knowledge. In an extensive account of such efforts, based on a survey of scientists at sixteen federal agencies, the Union of Concerned Scientists noted in 2018 that “many survey respondents . . . report censorship of their work, especially work related to climate change.”

This included deleting references to climate change from websites and reports, and insinuating denialism into government documents. Of a government warning that unchecked warming could devastate the economy, Trump said, “I don’t believe it.” One result, reports the New York Times, is that “parts of the federal government will no longer fulfill what scientists say is one of the most urgent jobs of climate science studies: reporting on the future effects of a rapidly warming planet. . .” Forget the overwhelming consensus of scientists that accelerating climate change could soon become catastrophic—or the evidence of melting ice caps, rising sea levels, proliferating droughts, burgeoning wildfires. Suppressing climate science propitiates important Republican constituencies: the fossil-fuel industry; a donor class exemplified by the Koch brothers; and base voters resentful of perceived elites.

COVID-19 has dramatized this subordination of knowledge to politics—including Trump’s dismissal of repeated scientific warnings. As of today we have suffered more than 84,000 deaths. Yet little more than two months ago, Trump was describing Democrats’ critiques of his COVID-19 response as their “new hoax,” bragging that “we have lost nobody to coronavirus,” and predicting that the number of cases “within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”

Once again, Limbaugh and Fox—particularly Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity—derided science as a hoax. Once again, partisans believed them: Polling throughout March showed that most Republicans dismissed COVID-19 as a major public health threat. Events proved otherwise. In late April, Vox reported a sophisticated statistical analysis by three economists from the University of Chicago which suggested that, in the early stages of the pandemic, areas with more Hannity viewers had more cases and deaths from COVID-19. As death enveloped us, Trump resorted to anti-scientific magical thinking. One of his quack cures, hydroxychloroquine, seems to increase fatalities; another, self-injecting cleaning products, surely would. Yet many of his followers swallowed this dangerous nonsense—some literally.

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https://thebulwark.com/the-pandemic-and-the-gops-science-problem/