By Thomas R. DeGregori
Posted: Monday, March 22, 2004

ARTICLES
Publication Date: March 22, 2004

In a democracy, science policy is much too important to be left to the scientist alone. This is a virtually self-evident proposition that is undoubtedly accepted by most scientists. For that matter, in a democracy, the public policy aspect of any endeavor is almost by definition a concern of the entire public and not merely the monopoly of its practitioners. But for science policy to be meaningful and effective, it must rely on a significant input from the scientists themselves and a basic understanding of science and its potential.

In recent years, there has been a disturbing tendency for advocacy groups to cross the line from using legislation merely to frame science policy to attempting to use legislation and administrative decree to define what constitutes the body of scientific knowledge itself. It has been reported that in 1897, the legislature of the state of Indiana sought to define Pi as 3.00, an action that was aborted in the state Senate following consultation with a mathematician from Purdue. To my knowledge, no legislative body has sought to define Pi since then.

Much has been said about those opposed to modern evolutionary biology trying different strategies to require the teaching of their alternative to evolution. Largely ignored, though, has been the emergence of what one might call "Green science," as various advocacy groups seek to use the political process, sometimes successfully, to further their ideological agenda and redefine scientific knowledge.

Science-Free Zones

On Tuesday, March 2, the good citizens of Mendocino County, California passed an ordinance making the county "GMO-free" (free of genetically-modified organisms), and in so doing they have initiated a bold revision in modern biology. By popular vote, they have decreed that DNA is a "complex protein" (see http://www.gmofreemendo.com/moreh.html). Granted, DNA is packaged into chromatin with histones and other proteins, but some of us thought that the DNA itself was not protein. Using this description of DNA as a complex protein and other definitions of the new Green science, one would have trouble passing an introductory course in biology in high school or college.

Green science requires an increasing number of odd redefinitions. "Organic" no longer refers to carbon compounds. Tomatoes do not have "genes" unless biotechnologists put them there. A "chemical" is something synthesized by humans and doesn't exist in nature — ditto for toxins. "Organic" water is bottled and sold (there is now a debate as to whether it should be decertified as organic). And now DNA is a "complex protein." A proposed ordinance to ban the deadly chemical dihydrogen monoxide was on the agenda for a California city council meeting until someone realized that it was H2O, a.k.a. water. The odd items in this "new science" seemingly go on without end. To the plant physiologist, microbiologist, or biotechnologist, the supposedly "scientific" claims of the anti-GMO movement are as absurd as any of the foregoing.

Much of the new Green science originates in the universities, where increasing numbers of postmodernist literary professors have decided that the science departments are teaching a system of thought that is erroneous — or as they would put it, that is guilty of ethnocentric logophaollocentric reductionism. Many of these postmodernist academics cluck piously about the religious zealots who once opposed the teaching of evolution. Yet the postmodernists preach an ideology that would undermine the very foundation of modern scientific inquiry, not just Darwin. If there is one universal, transcultural endeavor in the contemporary world, it is the use of the scientific method and the bodies of knowledge that humans have created with it.

Life-Saving Science, Science-Hating Greens

Most developed countries added close to thirty or more years of life expectancy over the last century, and the developing countries added about twenty years over the last half century. By most every objective measure of human wellbeing — increasing life expectancy, declining maternal, infant, and child mortality, dramatic increases in what is called DAILY (disability adjusted life years) or the number of years of life free of debilitating diseases, etc., etc. — humans made more progress in the last century than had been made in the history of humankind. Something made this happen! If it was not advances in science and technology that brought about these advances, than what was it? No alternative explanation has yet to be offered by the Greens. Yet the rhetoric of the new "Green science" proclaims that modern science and technology are killing us — to which I repeatedly respond that if they are killing us, why are we living so long?

The problems of modern life can best be understood and addressed using the method of scientific inquiry. For the Greens, ideology drives science, not the other way around. Much of the popular support for the "Greens" comes from ordinary people concerned for the state of the environment, people who laud the stated objectives of the Greens. While the proclaimed goals of the Green movement may be worthy, their actions are often contrary to them. No matter how much progress we make, life will always be filled with problems, and Green pseudo-science will aggravate them, not solve them.

Thomas DeGregori, Ph.D., is a professor of economics at the University of Houston, member of the Board of Directors of the American Council on Science and Health, and author of Bountiful Harvest: Technology, Food Safety, and the Environment (Cato Institute) and Origins of the Organic Agriculture Debate (Blackwell Professional).