Politicization of science

{{politics}}{{pseudosciencenav}}
'''Politicization of science''' refers to the alteration of [[Scientific theory|scientific theories]] or [[philosophy of science|philosophy]] for [[politics|political]] reasons. It occurs when a group attempts to influence the way research is done or how it is to be interpreted by/taught to the public in order to advance their interests.

==Examples==
* Members of the [[religious right]] want to make it seem like [[God|Gawd]] is with us on a [[Young-Earth creationism|6000-year-old Earth]] where we have ''[[Jesus|Gawd]]'''s 2000-year-old [[Shroud of Turin|toga]]. Hence [[pseudoscience]]s like [[baraminology]], [[creation science]], and [[Shroud of Turin|sindonology]]. See those articles for more. The most interesting thing about this is that these people have a [[Christianity]]-centric view: the Shroud has both an {{wpl|Mosque of the Cloak of the Prophet Mohammed|Islamic}} and {{wpl|Relic of the tooth of the Buddha|Buddhist}} equivalent, and pretty much ''every'' [[religion]] has a creation myth of some sort.
* The [[oil]] industry, having gotten comfy drilling the [[hell]] out of the [[Earth]], sometimes faces problems regarding little things, like, using petroleum for non-stop bonfires means a helluvalotta CO<sub>2</sub> enters the atmosphere, and this can cause sea levels to rise '''a lot'''. The solution? Spread [[propaganda]] about [[watermelon]]s and claim that [[global warming]] [[denialism|
isn't real
 isn't man-made]]. Unfortunately, due to the power of various [[corporation]]s, this issue has become more of a political game where the fate of civilization is at stake. Yes, really.
** Everything about [[Al Gore]] and [[global warming]]. Al Gore seems to be the biggest pillar to take down. Crazy thoughts include his plans for a carbon emission tax that would let [[socialism|government take over]] poor industry, his involvement in a [[New World Order]], or "look how hypocritical he is by living in a mansion; therefore all the scientists he cites are wrong". If the global warming denialists run out of arguments, be prepared for a mention of Al Gore.
* The [[tobacco]] industry has a similar problem, but not because burning cigarettes produces a lot of CO<sub>2</sub>. There's a lot of [[toxin|yucky stuff]] in tobacco, a lot of which is [[cancer|carcinogenic]]. Not wanting to lose the stacks of money that come in when you have millions physically addicted to your product, the solution is obvious: get some [[think tank|experts for hire]] to say it's harmless in a sciencey-looking (i.e., not [[peer-reviewed]]) journal. This is also a part of the larger-in-scope…
* [[War on Drugs]], or, as we like to call it, [[Prohibition]] 2.0. The movement is very expensive, but when we get down to it, it's political in nature. Rehabilitation, rather than heavy-handed punishment and obscene lengths of incarceration, as well as programs such as needle exchanges and drug replacement, have been shown by science to work; but politicians cannot be seen as being "soft" on this sort of crime, and thus cannot endorse proven methods. Another problem is the proliferation of vice squads and superfluous federal agencies; to ease back on drug restrictions would put many police officers and bureaucrats out of work.
* Remember those [[fundy loon]]s from the first item? Well, regardless of what is more effective (hint, it's actual [[sex education]]), [[Abstinence programs|abstinence-only sex 
mis
education]] is more politically palatable to [[fundamentalist]] voters for some reason. This is why more effective programs (which teach abstinence ''in addition'' to conventional sex education) are either defunded or sometimes outright banned.
* Embryonic [[stem cell research]] is a field of [[medicine]] which has great potential in saving millions of lives and fighting incurable diseases.<ref>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQHElkfaWUU Human embryonic stem cells reverse Parkison's in monkeys], to start.</ref> However, in order to get this "holy grail" of modern medicine, we need to take insentient 5-day-old [[embryo]]s that <!--- resemble a dead hamster in a ball more than anything else and --> would have been thrown away anyway (they use leftovers from IVF to make these) and cut them open to get at their "[[magic]]" insides. A lot of people, mainly fundies and [[Catholics]], say that the blastocyst (the embryo's name at this point) is a [[Horton Hears a Who!|person, no matter how small]] and that ''Gawd'' is going to burn all the doctors in [[Hell]]… or something. It's hard to make much out when they sound so much like a [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=WHARRGARBL dog drinking out of a sprinkler].
* [[Heliocentrism]], although a bit of an old hat, is still "[[manufactroversy|debated]]" in [[modern geocentrism|some places]]. Back when [[Galileo]] presented his Idea with Evidence™ to the Catholic Church in the 1500s, the ruling was "[[Creation Museum|The Bible says it, I believe it]], [[non sequitur|so]] [[argument by assertion|it's right]], now you can't leave your house for the rest of your life". The Church apologized for its errors a few centuries after the fact, though. (
Though as comedian Mark Russell pointed out, Copernicus is still rotting away in jail.
<ref group=note>In reality, Copernicus was paroled in 1758, when his book ''De Revolutionibus'' was removed from the Church's official List of Evil, Banned Books™, though it still took a good two centuries and a half after for Galileo to get his due.</ref>)
* [[Water fluoridation]] is often feared greatly by those holding extremely fringe beliefs (particularly those in the right-wing), due to it supposedly being dangerous<ref group=note>Spoiler alert: it isn't.</ref> and [[Appeal to nature|not natural]], despite the fact that fluoride has naturally occurred in food and water.<ref>[https://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/basics/index.htm "Water Fluoridation Basics"], ''Centers for Disease Control and Prevention''. Retrieved on July 31, 2021.</ref>
* [[HIV/AIDS denialism]] led to the death of thousands upon thousands of people dying during the height of the AIDS epidemic.<ref>King, Noel. "40 Years Later: The Denialism That Shaped The AIDS Epidemic." ''National Public Radio,'' https://www.npr.org/2021/05/18/997783457/40-years-later-the-denialism-that-shaped-the-aids-epidemic. Accessed 18 December 2021.</ref><ref>Deer, Brian. "Death by denial: The campaigners who continue to deny HIV causes Aids." ''The Guardian,'' https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2012/feb/21/death-denial-hiv-aids. Accessed 18 December 2021.</ref>
* [[Vaccination]] has had many [[Manufactroversy|manufactroversies]], including (but not limited to) the [[MMR vaccine controversy|MMR scare]], the anthrax vaccine scare in the [[United States]] re the Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program, opposition to [[HPV vaccine#Reactions and debunking|HPV vaccination]], the Dengvaxia controversy in the [[Philippines]] (the dengue vaccine is only supposed to be given to people who previously got dengue fever,<ref>"Dengue Vaccine." ''Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,'' 18 Dec. 2021, https://www.cdc.gov/dengue/vaccine/index.html</ref> but don't tell that to anti-vaxxers; it may abash them), opposition to [[COVID-19 vaccine#Arguments|COVID-19 vaccination]], vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, and [[Thiomersal|thiomersal in vaccines]].

==Nordic physics==
In order to weed out [[science]] that was antithetical to the ideals of the [[Nazi]] Party, many [[Jewish]] scientists (and not-so-Jewish scientists) were [[Deutsche Physik|marginalized]] for promoting "[[Judaism|Jewish]] physics". This included [[Albert Einstein]] and [[relativity|his ideas]], instead [[anti-relativity|preferring]] the "Nordic physics" of [[Kepler]] and [[Newton]]. [[Irony|Then the Nazis stopped in their]] tracks when they realized that the [[theory]] of relativity was not only correct, but useful for building [[WMD|scarier weapons]].

{{cquote|'''BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!'''|||Billy Mays}}

[[Hans Hörbiger]]'s ''Welteislehre'' (Cosmic Ice Theory) is a cosmic-catastrophe [[crackpot]] [[cosmology]] that states that the Earth has had several moons before the [[Moon]] that it now has, and that most [[Solar System]] objects are covered with ice. Hörbiger claimed that his theories were rejected because they were contrary to "astronomical orthodoxy" (read: "facts"), and his followers would sometimes heckle astronomers' meetings: "Out with astronomical orthodoxy! Give us Hörbiger!" They formed a pressure group to get people to accept the WEL, and when the Nazis rose to power, they associated themselves with [[Nazism]]. They even compared Hörbiger to Hitler, stating that they were both successful Austrian "amateurs" who successfully fought Jewish influence. Some Nazi officials ended up stating that one could be a good Nazi without believing in the WEL. After [[World War II]], though, the WEL's advocates dropped out of sight, though they reappeared in the 1950s and 1960s. Since then, however, they seem to have disappeared; they have no discoverable Internet presence.

==Lysenkoism==
[[Lysenkoism]] was a pseudoscience that had its heyday during the [[Stalinist]] era in the [[Soviet Union]]. Trofim Denisovich Lysenko was a plant breeder and [[quack]] [[geneticist]] who claimed that he could do a ''much'' better job at breeding useful crop plants than mainstream biologists. He claimed that [[gene]]s do not exist, that mainstream biologists were wasting their time crossbreeding fruit flies, and that he could systematically alter crop plants' heredity with his experimental treatments.

His experimental procedures were remarkably shoddy; he claimed that [[statistical]] testing is a waste of time. But that did not stop him from making grandiose claims of success, and so he got the favor of Communist Party officials, all the way up to Stalin himself; and, as we all know, in Soviet Russia, 
research performs ''you''
 Stalin was [[omniscient]]. Lysenko's followers struggled with mainstream biologists in the 1930s and 1940s, with the Lysenkoites unfortunately triumphing in 1948 (thanks in part to their aforementioned success in selling their [[woo]] to Joseph friggin' Stalin). Among their victims was the eminent biologist Nikolai Vavilov, who discovered "Vavilov zones" of plant domestication. He was sent to prison on trumped-up charges that he was a [[British]] spy, where he died some months later of malnutrition. Other mainstream biologists were made to recant their [[bourgeois pseudoscience|bourgeois]] idealist [[Gregor Mendel|Mendelist]] Weismannist Morganist [[heresy|heresies]].

This is particularly ironic given the recent claims of Young Earth Creationists that the Soviets favored the teaching of [[Darwinism]], since that's exactly what Lysenkoism attacked (he favored a kind of neo-[[Lamarckism]]). 
Don't tell the creationists that, though.
 Of course, it never makes a difference when this is pointed out to creationists; they'll simply repeat the accusation once they think no one who knows any better is listening.

Some Lysenko imitators hoped for similar triumphs in physics, declaring [[quantum mechanics]] to be contrary to [[dialectical materialism]], the philosophical basis of Marxism-Leninism. But the mainstream physicists beat them back, enabling the Soviet Union to develop [[nuclear bomb]]s. What have we learned? [[Authoritarian]] pseudoscience always gives way to nukes.

==See also==
*[[Evidence linking abortion to breast cancer]]
*[[Political beliefs of academics]]
*[[Reality]]
*[[Scientific method]]
*[[War on Science]]

==Notes==
{{reflist|group=note}}

==References==
{{reflist|1|80%}}

[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Political terms]]

Categories: Science, Political terms