'Scuse Me! Lamar Smith (R-TX) You've Got A Lot Of Damned Gall To Think You Know Anything About Science!

As Jeff Goldblum's character Ian Malcolm said in the sequel to Jurassic Park, "Hold on, this is going to be bad."

Representative Lamar Seeligson Smith (R-TX), pictured above, is Chair of the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Be very afraid of his lately proposed legislation---to direct the NSF on how to judge the merit of grant proposals. That news is NOT good for social science, of which, of course, in most intellectual environments, archaeology and palaeoanthropology are considered a part. [A tip o' the hat to Tom Wake, Margie Purser and 'Rissa Russell for bringing this to my attention via Facebook.]

ScienceInsider has obtained a copy of the legislation, labeled "Discussion Draft" and dated 18 April [2013], which has begun to circulate among members of Congress and science lobbyists. In effect, the proposed bill would force NSF to adopt three criteria in judging every grant. Specifically, the draft would require the NSF director to post on NSF's Web site, prior to any award, a declaration that certifies the research is:

1) "… in the interests of the United States to advance the national health, prosperity, or welfare, and to secure the national defense by promoting the progress of science;

2) "… the finest quality, is groundbreaking, and answers questions or solves problems that are of utmost importance to society at large; and

3) "… not duplicative of other research projects being funded by the Foundation or other Federal science agencies."

We've heard regressive politicians before, and we know that whole segments of the population decry the funding of projects that are characterized as other than applied science [AKA useless, fluffy]. So, Smith's sabre-rattling in the sitting U.S. Congress is nothing new. What's new is that there are too many regressive politicians in these days---even those calling themselves liberal may be of a mind to cave before the present onslaught on science in the U.S. [and, alas, to a lesser, but still troubling degree, in my home and native land, Canada, thanks to the cretins who elected a regressive political party and gave them a parliamentary majority].

I'll get back to Smith a little further down. But first I want to digress for a moment to argue that criticism of pure science [and social science] has a long history.

A screen grab of
Pandorean geography

Not only is the right's depiction of much social science and even pure physical-science research nothing new, it had its roots in the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries. Jonathan Swift, in Gulliver's Travels, along with the country of Lilliput portrayed that of Laputa, which was an Avatar-like island that floated like a cloud over the earth. Laputa's society consisted of two sorts of people, mainly---scientists and servants. Gulliver describes the two sorts in these unforgettable words, he had

... never till then seen a race of mortals so singular in their shapes, habits, and countenances. Their heads were all reclined, either to the right, or the left; one of their eyes turned inward, and the other directly up to the zenith. Their outward garments were adorned with the figures of suns, moons, and stars; interwoven with those of fiddles, flutes, harps, trumpets, guitars, harpsichords, and many other instruments of music, unknown to us in Europe. I observed, here and there, many in the habit of servants, with a blown bladder, fastened like a flail to the end of a stick, which they carried in their hands. In each bladder was a small quantity of dried peas, or little pebbles, as I was afterwards informed. With these bladders, they now and then flapped the mouths and ears of those who stood near them, of which practice I could not then conceive the meaning. It seems the minds of these people are so taken up with intense speculations, that they neither can speak, nor attend to the discourses of others, without being roused by some external taction upon the organs of speech and hearing; for which reason, those persons who are able to afford it always keep a flapper (the original is climenole) in their family, as one of their domestics; nor ever walk abroad, or make visits, without him. And the business of this officer is, when two, three, or more persons are in company, gently to strike with his bladder the mouth of him who is to speak, and the right ear of him or them to whom the speaker addresses himself. This flapper is likewise employed diligently to attend his master in his walks, and upon occasion to give him a soft flap on his eyes; because he is always so wrapped up in cogitation, that he is in manifest danger of falling down every precipice, and bouncing his head against every post; and in the streets, of justling others, or being justled himself into the kennel.

Swift's account seems preternaturally prescient when Gulliver describes one of the Laputan scientists and his work.

The first man I saw was of a meagre aspect, with sooty hands and face, his hair and beard long, ragged, and singed in several places. His clothes, shirt, and skin, were all of the same colour. He has been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. He told me, he did not doubt, that, in eight years more, he should be able to supply the governor’s gardens with sunshine, at a reasonable rate: but he complained that his stock was low, and entreated me “to give him something as an encouragement to ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear season for cucumbers.” I made him a small present, for my lord had furnished me with money on purpose, because he knew their practice of begging from all who go to see them.

This is the perfectest description of an academic that I have ever seen! Most research in Swift's 18th century experience would have been self-funded, with, often, deleterious effect on the researcher's finances.* One can easily imagine that the well-placed Swift had at times been confronted by impoverished, yet eager inventors hoping for a handout. And so, throughout Gulliver's tour of Laputa Swift shows us his proper English gentleman treating the Laputan research projects with equanimity, leaving the reader no choice but to see it as well-crafted satire.  

And it is to well-crafted satire in the here and now to which I'll be resorting. Well, maybe not satire, really. More like irony, when it comes to our new foe, Lamar S. Smith.

Mary Baker Eddy, Founder and spiritual leader of the
Church of Christ, Scientist.

Wikipedia reports that Representative Smith's religion is the Church of Christ, Scientist, commonly known as Christian Science. Notwithstanding the great reporting job that the Christian Science Monitor has done over the years, the dictates of Christian Science are, I think, largely unknown to most non-CS people. A little information might enlighten you as to Rep. Smith's notion of what constitutes science. Christian Science, the sect, was the invention of one Mary Baker Eddy, who, in the early 20th century decided that Enlightenment science had done little or nothing to improve the plight of humanity, afflicted as they are with trouble, strife, illness, and death. She foresaw a return to what she termed "primitive science" was in order. To address the health and other concerns of good Christians she proposed  that they "commemorate the word and works of [Christ Jesus]" and "reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing."

Practitioners of CS are to study the Bible dutifully every day according to the patterns of readings that Ms. Baker Eddy decreed for her devoted followers. That was just to help keep them healthy by, in a sense, living with and in the way of Jesus. And when misfortune strikes, the answer is prayer. Solitary and communal. Everyone knows everyone else in a typical CS group. So, when one of them gets sick all members of the congregation help the individual through prayer---such is their belief that only in this way can people be healed.

With all due respect for others' beliefs, positive thinking is one thing---Christian Science is quite another. I should know. Although a life-long atheist I fell in love with a Christian Scientist a long time ago. I was smitten before I knew the degree to which this otherwise smart and worldly woman believed in the tenets of the sect. Push came to shove when we started to talk about marriage and kids, and she said to me "I would expect that when I or one of the kids fell ill you'd allow me to exhaust 'primitive healing' before you took them to a medical doctor." I truly loved her. But in the end I couldn't conscion her beliefs. It was heart-wrenching for me. I have no idea how our parting affected her, but I'm pretty sure I know how she dealt with her broken heart. To me the adherents of CS are guilty of, not depraved indifference, but of a sort of depraved devotion to a pipe-dream.

So, your take-home message today is to remember that the "science" in Christian Science is anything BUT science in the vernacular sense of the word. Lamar S. Smith (R-TX) is steeped in the principles laid down by Mary Baker Eddy in 1908. Ironic, don't you think, that CS was begun JUST as medical science was embarking on a century of truly extraordinary advances in the attainment and maintenance of health. Moreover, at a time when electricity, telephones and the horseless carriage were mere novelties, Mrs. Eddy couldn't have foresee the triumphs of the physical sciences in the 20th century---space travel, genetics, and microwave pizza. It seems to me that anyone like Smith, who can refer to "primitive healing" as a 'science' and to Jesus Christ as a 'scientist,' knows precious little about science---what it is, what it stands for, how it works, and what it can achieve.

So, my American fellow subversives. Make as much noise as you want in opposition to Rep. Smith's benighted legislation. And feel free to mention his core belief [superstition, really] about Jesus and healing.

I'm up for a fight. How about you? Grab your torch and pitchfork!

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_policy#18th_and_19th_centuries

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The Impending Social Sciences A.P.O.C.A.L.Y.P.S.E.

Remember Rick Scott? The Florida State Governor, Rick Scott? The Rick Scott who as much as said that anthropology is about as valuable to society as screen doors on a submarine? That Rick Scott? Yes.

Florida Governor R. Scott. The Bloomberg caption reads: "Florida Governor Rick Scott proposed linking more than $167 million of the state university system’s $3.8 billion budget to performance standards that include the percentage of recent graduates with jobs, the cost of their education and their salaries."

Our collective ass is grass.

"Anthropology Mocked as U.S. Governors Push for Employable Grads"

That headline in Bloomberg.com announces the impending doom of the affordable liberal education. If, that is, Rick Scott and like-minded politicians get their way.

Just feast your eyes on this thinly veiled misogynist, anti-intellectual bullshit from out the mouth of North Carolina's governor [I refuse to call him by his given name's diminutive] McCrory.

“If you want to take gender studies, that’s fine,” McCrory, 56, said in a January radio interview. “Go to a private school and take it. But I don’t want to subsidize that if it’s not going to get somebody a job.”

I'm sorry. Did I say thinly veiled? I meant bald-faced. This dick-head and many more like him are hoping to turn public universities into vocational institutes.

But, get this. If you looked up 'ironic' in the encyclopaedia there'd be a picture of this guy looking back at you. From the Bloomberg article:

McCrory, a graduate of North Carolina’s Catawba College, a private liberal-arts school, defended the type of education he received yet said the state shouldn’t subsidize some courses -- gender studies and philosophy -- now offered at Chapel Hill.

And the shoe drops. This salient member of the North Carolina upper class could afford to take his own advice. He went to a private college. They're really expensive and none but the very best applicants receive financial aid. Something tells me McCrory wasn't one of them, if, an indeterminate number of years afterward he can gleefully work to turn public universities into glorified apprenticeships.

It's not all gloom and doom. The Bloomberg article also includes this:

[McCrory's] comments prompted critical newspaper editorials, an Internet petition and a letter from faculty inviting McCrory to learn more about the university.

Ooooooh. I'll bet the 1% are shakin' in their Gucci loafers. Okay. It doesn't really come close to dimming the gloom or the doom. Letters? Petitions? I'd think torches and pitchforks are needed! After all, how far is righteous indignation gonna go to slow the already precipitous decline---the dumbing of America? The answer may lie in this very telling bit of background. The implications don't make me feel any safer. You?

The university has been a target of Republican criticism before, including by the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, founded by the family foundation of McCrory’s budget director, Art Pope. One headline on the center website reads: ‘‘Teaching Marxist Subversion at UNC.’

It's the same Republican shit: "liberal" equals "socialist" equals "Marxist-inspired" equals "We don't want any uppity women or [must be said with barely disguised contempt] 'people of colour' either!"

Wish all of us in the 99% "good luck." We're gonna need a big fat pile of good fortune to surmount the even bigger pile of crap that's being thrown into the path of those who'd like, eventually, to become members of an informed electorate!

Have a look at what McCrory, Scott and their other U.S. of A. Republican gubernatorial pals have been doing to the public [read 'affordable' and 'accessible to minorities'] universities in the past decade or so. Be very afraid.

Copyright belongs to Bloomberg

Linking funding to jobs. That's gonna be hard to do if there aren't any god-damned jobs! Oh. Yeah. Sorry. That's beside the point.

Kayso, let me see. Gender studies is out. Anthropology, too, no doubt. Whaddayathink? Economics? No sense letting the rank and file know how badly they're being screwed by the banks. Sociology? Prolly on the chopping block, too. After all, who needs a bunch of effete, bleeding-heart do-gooders telling us how ass-backward our penal and other social systems are, or worse, suggesting that medical marijuana is a good thing?

I know that the 'slippery slope' argument is fallacious, philosophically speaking. But as a metaphor it's still a very powerful one. How far down this slippery slope will the U.S. [and other fascist governments] take the populace? I shudder to think of it.

Clench your buttocks. Looks like it's gonna be a bumpy ride.

SA announces new posts on the Subversive Archaeologist's facebook page (mirrored on Rob Gargett's news feed), on Robert H. Gargett's Academia.edu page, Rob Gargett's twitter account, and his Google+ page. A few of you have already signed up to receive email when I post. Others have subscribed to the blog's RSS feeds. You can also become a 'member' of the blog through Google Friend Connect. Thank you for your continued patronage. You're the reason I do this.