Under the Microscope:A reader contacted me recently with the following story. He borrowed a biology book from the library and found it so interesting that he ordered a personal copy through a book store. The library book was published by the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
The book that arrived to the book store was published by a US publisher and was more than 100 pages shorter than the Royal Society edition because it omitted all references to evolution, stem-cell research and brain-mind relations. The likely explanation for this is that the US edition was shortened under pressure from the Christian fundamentalist movement. Censorship of science under pressure from this and other quarters is a growing problem.
Science is the only method for investigating and giving us reliable information about how the material world works. It has been amazingly successful over the last 400 years. Science has shown us how the universe was formed about 13.5 billion years ago, how the 92 natural elements formed, how stars and planets formed, how life began on earth about four billion years ago and evolved since then into the myriad forms of life that occupy every environmental niche today.
It has described the four fundamental forces - gravity, electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces - that determine everything physical that happens. And the technological applications of science now run modern civilisation and underpin economic activity.
So, science is powerful stuff and it is therefore no wonder that various powerful interest groups, each with their own agenda, might from time to time try to manipulate scientific information to suit their own purposes. One such group is the fundamentalist Christian movement in the US which doesn't accept the central scientific theory in biology, the theory of evolution through natural selection.
THIS THEORY IS AS well confirmed and established as any theory in science and is the most important concept in understanding biology. Of course, there are scientific discussions and even disputes about the detailed patterns and processes through which evolution unfolds. The religious fundamentalist critics seize on this and magnify and distort it in order to cast doubt on the validity of evolution itself. There is no scientific doubt about the fact of evolution through natural selection.
Fundamentalist Christians don't accept evolution because it contradicts the literal interpretation of the creation story in the Book of Genesis.
They are also wary of science in general, seeing it has a lynch-pin of atheistic materialism. Fundamentalist groups in the US have been very successful at persuading school boards to adopt biology textbooks that either omit evolution altogether or else down-play evolution, presenting it as mere hypothesis and comparing and contrasting it with the fundamentalists' preferred theory of intelligent design which contradicts evolution. President George W Bush has publicly encouraged this latter approach.
So successful have been the public campaigns of the US fundamentalists that polls show that 45 per cent of all Americans believe that God created human life within the past 10,000 years. Indeed, a prominent current contender for nomination as official Republican candidate for the presidency, Mike Huckabee, proudly asserts his opposition to the theory of evolution. This is truly a ridiculous state of affairs in the richest country in the world, the "leader of the free world" and the country that prides itself as being more informed by science than any other country. I generally find much to admire in the US and I benefited greatly from doing scientific research there for several years. It therefore saddens me to see this widespread ignorance of basic science and powerful anti-science sentiment. Mainline Christian churches accept the theory of evolution and are embarrassed by the fundamentalist Christian position on evolution. Not only are the fundamentalists wrong, but they are very aggressive with their opinions, thereby attracting constant publicity.
Efforts to censor science in the US are not limited to the fundamentalist Christians.
THE FOLLOWING EXAMPLES are quoted by the National Coalition Against Censorship (www.ncac.org). In 2006 the prominent climatologist James Hansen, working at Nasa's Goddard Institute, announced that Nasa administrators were thwarting his efforts to speak publicly on global warming. In September 2002, a White House official altered part of the Environmental Protection Agency's air pollution report in an effort to discredit the scientific basis for claims about global warming. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suppressed a fact-sheet that suggested global warming is contributing to the strength and frequency of hurricanes. The Department of Health and Human Services recently introduced a new guideline whereby scientists must obtain approval to participate on scientific panels convened by United Nations organisations.
Of course, distrust of science is not limited to the US. Here in Ireland we have long officially refused to accept scientific studies reporting that discharges from Sellafield could cause little ill-health. Also, the recent scientific report from the UN Chernobyl Forum on the ill-health effects of the Chernobyl accident is flatly rejected by environmental groups here.
I am not claiming that science is infallible but I do claim that, in its own domain, science does produce reliable information. For any group on the basis of unscientific reasoning to challenge the findings of science is to invite almost certain defeat. Also, if you tangle in this way with science, you risk losing much more than the argument. You may also discredit your general position, much of which may be of value.
William Reville is Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Public Awareness of Science Officer at UCC, http:// understandingscience.ucc.ie