Scientists: Please Don't Fall For This

The Worse Take of All Time?

You do not, under any circumstances, need to ‘hand it to Hitler’.

If you find yourself so addled by current events that you become Fuhrer-curious, go sit in a dark room by yourself until you come to your senses.

There is no partial credit for the Third Reich.

Fascism is Anti-Science

The framing of that article is also historically illiterate. Of course Hitler went after scientists.

Fascism is, by definition, anti-science.

The rigorous, objective study of observable phenomenon is in direct conflict with the fascist’s goal to maintain a manufactured reality built to serve one person, nation, or political party.

Here’s an excerpt from Jason Stanley’s book, How Fascism Works:

Just a few examples:

• Nikolai Vavilov starved to death in a gulag in 1943. He was persecuted for advancing the Mendelian concept of genetics and rejecting the pseudoscience of Stalin-backed Trofim Lysenko, who insisted, among other things, that acquired traits could be passed down to future generations.

• In May 1933, Nazis raided and burned down the Institute for Sexual Sciences, founded by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld. The Institute conducted research, offered medical care, and provided safe haven to sexual and gender minorities. The Nazi party vilified Hirschfeld, a man of Jewish ancestry, accusing him of conducting a “Jewish plot to undermine German society”.

• Turkish forensic physician Şebnem Korur Fincanci was arrested and sent to prison in 2016 after accurately reporting what she found in Cizre, a small town in southeastern Turkey. The Turkish military had murdered innocent civilians, including children, while purportedly fighting a Kurdish insurgency.

#NotAllScience

The author of the article pictured above (I don’t want to reward it with clicks but you can look it up if you want) acknowledges that Hitler was bad for some science: “Hitler did seek to turn science to his own ends, to promote research on eugenics, new technologies for blitzkrieg war, sick medical experiments, and more efficient ways for the mass killing of Jews.”

If only he stopped there.

Incredibly, he follows that sentence with: “Yet civilian German science, long a mark of German pride, also thrived.”

To be clear: there is no reason to add a ‘yet’ or ‘but’ after describing atrocities.

Beyond that, I want to underscore the danger of lifting up some science as ‘virtuous’ to distract from or serve as a counterpoint to morally bankrupt anti-science.

Can We Just Defund the “Icky” Science?

Newspaper articles, cable news coverage, and the academic press are awash in stories highlighting the danger of cuts to scientific research, US AID, and public health.

Accurately, they explain that these actions are endangering research into such worthy causes as pediatric cancer treatments. Who would want to defund pediatric cancer research? Only, to use another popular phrase of the day, “the worst of the worst”.

I’ve never run for an elected office nor am I a political messaging consultant. I’ll assume they know what they are doing and are using that strategy to win over public opinion.

We in the scientific community absolutely cannot internalize that framing.

Kids are cute. Pediatric cancer is bad. Sure.

But multi-drug-resistant HIV is also bad. As is death from untreated opioid addiction. Maternal sepsis from incomplete abortions. Mass starvation in “third world” countries.

Suggesting that some scientific pursuits are worthy and others are dirty, based on an unaccountable, shifting ideology, is a terrible idea that will not end well.

It only supports another core feature of fascist regimes: hierarchy.

Authoritarians like Hitler seek to reinforce “natural” hierarchies in which some human lives are worth more than others. The woman is subservient to man. The Jew less human than an Aryan. The elderly less worthy than youth.

Advocating vocally for pediatric cancer research doesn’t make you an authoritarian. Obviously.

The problem arises when we stop advocating for less “palatable” fields altogether. When we agree to shave off the more controversial bits so that we can stay in the administration’s good graces. When we accept that some lives are more worth saving than others’.

Now is Our Moment

Here’s the bad news: scientists, as a whole, don’t have a great track record when it comes to rejecting authoritarian advances.

For example, the leaders of the German Chemistry Society asked their Jewish members to resign in 1933, just months after Hitler came to power, in what historians refer to as a cowardly act of “anticipatory obedience”.

In Mussolini’s Italy: “University administrators implemented the laws dutifully and efficiently, in many cases with alacrity, going out of their way to make their lists of Jewish employees as accurate as possible. Not one voice in the academic and scientific world was raised against this collection of data, nor against the expulsions.”

Already, academic institutions are making choices to acquiesce or resist the Trump administration’s ban on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Here’s the good news: we can learn from the past.

Obeying in advance does not work. Sacrificing certain scientific theories or areas of inquiry in order to save others does not work.

Eventually, anti-intellectualism runs itself off a cliff. And it falls, because gravity still exists, even if the leader claims it doesn’t.

Now is the time for scientists to stick together. Do not obey in advance.

Around the Internet

• When ‘Just Asking Questions’ About Science Turns Into 300,000 Dead

  Opinion essay in the NYTimes by Yale Epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves. He recounts the damage done when South African government officials were radicalized into thinking AIDS wasn’t caused by HIV and outlawed antiretroviral therapy, and how activists successfully

• ‘Everything you’ve been told is a lie!’ Inside the wellness-to-fascism pipeline
  This Guardian article isn’t new, but it’s interesting and related to today’s theme

• Letter from the United Science Alliance

  A letter to the researchers, educators, and academics of America, signed by 38 scientific organizations, including the American Psychological Association who coordinated the effort

• Trump Wants to Destroy All Academia, Not Just the Woke Parts
  A recent NYTimes opinion piece by Michelle Goldberg, describing what’s really behind the slashing of university funding

Living Rent-Free in My Brain this Week

This week, the US Park Service removed references to transgender people from the Stonewall National Monument.

Transgender people led the Stonewall Inn riot and are an integral part of LGBTQ+ and world history.

We will not let them erase the record of what our forebears have accomplished.

Quote I Like

Thanks for reading. Hang in there, everybody.

Ky

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