Science and Politics Interview

Check out Bloggasm’s interview with Bora Zivkovic, who has a great blog called Science and Politics that, as the name implies, will probably be of interest to readers of my blog as well. The interview features good advice for blogging in science and politics and a nice summary of the conservative movement against science.

He breaks down the players in the “war against science” into three categories: religious conservatives who fear science for obvious reasons, business leaders who try to prevent or discredit scientific information that would lead to regulation of their activities, and Republican politicians who pander to the first two groups to gain votes:

So, conservatives for whom either God, or Money, or Power are more important than the future of the world we are leaving to our grandchildren, will fight against science. Those who are not slaves to these three gods are quite fine with science and even try to fight for it. They are just, for the moment, marginalized and hushed within their party, but that is bound to change. Laws of nature do not care about our political preferences and the facts will, in the end, force even the most indoctrinated to deal with reality.

I like where he is going with this, but I don’t know if knowledge naturally trumps ignorance on its own, even though it should. More likely, it will take outspoken scientific advocates to protect scientific education and progress, which is something that Bora probably believes as well since he is so active in this area. Although it often seems in retrospect that social change or new ideas happened because they were correct, behind any of these you will find activists who worked tirelessly for this progress. The same will probably be true for turning back the anti-science tide currently coming from the political right.