Science depends on a liberal environment where the freedom to experiment, research, and debate the meaning of results is protected. This requires that government, church, and educational institutions refrain from interfering in the process of science. That has largely been the case for the last several centuries, but Duke University psychology and neurobiology professor John Staddon worries in his new book Science in an Age of Unreason that the United States is retreating from the liberalism that catalyzed so much scientific progress. Powerful forces that dislike the neutrality and objectivity of science threaten to take us back to earlier times when it was more important to enshrine certain beliefs than to allow free-wheeling research and discussion.

If you doubt this retreat is occurring, think about the way officials in the United States (and many other countries) reacted to COVID. Doctors and medical researchers were told not to dissent from government pronouncements about vaccines, masks, and treatments. For example, rather than engaging with skeptics such as the epidemiologists who wrote the “Great Barrington Declaration,” National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci and others sought to discredit them immediately. That is not the way of science, but the way of autocracy. Galileo would have understood just how the Great Barrington authors felt after the federal government dismissed their work and denigrated them.

Staddon argues that science is in dire straits in America because of the way it has become politicized. Many topics are now “off limits” because their exploration might offend politically important groups. Science should be dispassionate, but in the modern university passion often carries the day.

He writes:

Weak science lets slip the dogs of unreason: many social scientists have difficulty separating facts from faith, reality from the way they would like things to be. Critical research topics have become taboo, which, in turn, means that policy makers are making decisions based more on ideologically driven political pressure than on scientific fact.

Politics or perish / How has science so badly lost its way? Both government and university efforts at “helping” science have managed to distort incentives and inject non-scientific concerns.

As Staddon explains, in older times scientists were not under pressure to get publishable results. Most worked independently and often found that their conjectures were not borne out by the facts. No problem; they had learned that something wasn’t true and would then go on to other hypotheses. Today, however, scientific researchers need to publish papers that will generate acclaim if they want to advance up the academic ladder and get government grants for future papers.

Staddon observes, “But it is not just scientific discovery that is at stake; repeated failure is not compatible with career advancement and science is now for most scientists a career, not a vocation.” Therefore, researchers are driven to look for topics to investigate and use methods that they are confident will yield results. But what is good for research careers is not necessarily what leads to the most vital research.

Moreover, a substantial amount of published research is motivated by the desire to publish as much as possible without regard to the merits of the work. In scientific publishing (and this seems to be especially true in the social sciences), there is a term, “Least Publishable Unit” (LPU), that refers to the smallest amount of data that can be turned into a paper. Researchers are motivated to crank out LPU papers even though they have only infinitesimal knowledge value.

Another result of the perverse incentives created by government policy is the great surplus of students getting advanced degrees in science. We are training more scientists than there are jobs for, with the result that many wind up, Staddon writes, “simply as poorly paid help” for research professors. Eventually, most give up and find some other career only after spending many years and lots of money on a doctorate.

To make matters worse, the mania over “diversity” has infected science. Among the examples Staddon gives is the “Alliance for Identity-Inclusive Computing,” which is justified by the supposed necessity of reducing the percentage of “white and Asian, able-bodied, middle to upper class cisgender men” in the field of computer science. This program takes that goal as self-evidently good without the slightest attempt to provide a scientific basis for it.

In service of politics / Staddon next turns to several current controversies where science has been dragooned to convince people of the need for government action. For instance, we are told repeatedly that there is a scientific consensus that the climate is warming dangerously because of human activity and dramatic policies are necessary to combat this change. The trouble, he argues, is that (1) consensus is irrelevant because scientific conclusions don’t depend on numbers, and (2) there remain legitimate arguments over the data on warming and what policy responses should result. Sadly, many scientists have turned their backs on the spirit of science, finding it easier to go along with politically popular beliefs than to pursue the truth.

If the hard sciences have taken a beating at the hands of progressive ideologues, the social sciences have been thrashed to a bloody pulp. Many subjects can no longer be investigated because they are “too sensitive” and scholars risk censure or even loss of jobs if they say anything that offends certain groups.

Consider, for example, a case at Staddon’s own university. In 2011, a trio of researchers (two economists and one sociologist) published a paper that found that students admitted under racial preferences at Duke were far more likely to shift out of more academically demanding majors and into less demanding ones. The conclusion was that preferences add to the student body many who struggle in competition with those admitted strictly on their merits, and the former compensate for this by gravitating to easier majors.

These findings were important, but they could not be discussed objectively because they offended vocal black student groups. Duke’s president issued a statement in which he denounced the professors for “disparaging the choice of majors by African-American students.” Yet, the paper had not disparaged anyone, but merely reported facts. Facts are what science and education are supposed to be about and reporting on them is the essence of academic freedom. Instead of upholding science, however, Duke chose to appease the students, who were, Staddon writes,

treated like infants. They were pandered to, conciliated—not educated. And the cry for censoring this kind of research was tolerated rather than refuted. This is now the prevailing pattern in academe.

Activism and academia / Universities today are full of academic disciplines that make almost no pretense of objectivity, with faculty members who proudly announce their commitment to social change. Activism is far more important to them than the search for truth and their teaching does more to indoctrinate than enlighten students.

We have, for example, “Whiteness Studies” that are grounded not on verifiable facts but on dubious conjectures such as the existence of “white logic.” Many campuses have hosted University of Washington education professor Robin DiAngelo, author of the book White Fragility. Staddon argues that her book is just an elaboration upon claims that have no empirical backing.

We also find many professors arguing that American society and universities are beset with “institutional racism.” But when challenged to prove their assertions, they retreat to shabby intellectual dodges and circular arguments. Any professor who suggests that racial disparities might be caused by factors other than racial discrimination is apt to find himself labeled a racist and accused, like the Duke trio, of attacking the university’s “values.”

Another of the bad trends unleashed by unreason is the way that scholars can now advance their careers by launching personal attacks on others, attacks that are based on misrepresentations of their work. Staddon points to the egregious case of Duke history professor Nancy MacLean, whose book Democracy in Chains garnered great acclaim but is intellectually dishonest in its portrayal of Nobel economics laureate James Buchanan. (See “Buchanan the Evil Genius,” Fall 2017.) Scholarly accuracy can now be dispensed with when the target is someone who “progressives” want to cast into disrepute, whether the field is history, science, medicine, or any other.

Staddon is also alarmed that scientists appear to be willing to accept the suppression of their results if anyone expresses fear that some elements of society can’t handle the truth. In other words, science should remain silent “on the basis of a necessarily inexact assessment of social bias.” The scientific search for truth will suffer badly as its longstanding commitment to free inquiry erodes.

Conclusion / In a particularly memorable chapter, Staddon argues that we are entering a new era of Lysenkoism. Trofim Lysenko was a Soviet agronomist and biologist during the Stalin era. He was a poor scientist, yet he became director of the Institute of Genetics within the USSR’s Academy of Sciences—not because of any scientific achievements, but because he was from a proletarian background. (The Soviets had their own version of affirmative action.) His views on genetics and agriculture became the party line and scientists who challenged them were subject to punishment. The problem was that Lysenko was completely wrong and governmental policies based on his notions proved to be disastrous.

We are entering our own period of Lysenkoism, Staddon fears. Those who espouse politically correct narratives get ahead while those who challenge them are ignored or censored.

The “age of unreason” is spreading to more and more areas of life. One topic that Staddon briefly alludes to at the book’s end is medicine, where—as we’ve witnessed during the COVID frenzy—freedom of speech and action by medical professionals has eroded in the face of official demands to conform to “accepted” views. Under today’s conditions, the realm of science will steadily shrink, to the long-run detriment of everyone.

This is a very timely book. If science is forced to continually retreat in the face of political pressure, our future is bleak.