A degree of daftness
I often enjoy reading woolly environmentalist George Monbiot in the Guardian, and I find myself agreeing with a great deal of what he writes, but one thing he said in yesterday's article struck me as a little odd:
The attack on climate scientists is now widening to an all-out war on science. Writing recently for the Telegraph, the columnist Gerald Warner dismissed scientists as "white-coated prima donnas and narcissists … pointy-heads in lab coats [who] have reassumed the role of mad cranks … The public is no longer in awe of scientists. Like squabbling evangelical churches in the 19th century, they can form as many schismatic sects as they like, nobody is listening to them any more."
Views like this can be explained partly as the revenge of the humanities students. There is scarcely an editor or executive in any major media company – and precious few journalists – with a science degree, yet everyone knows that the anoraks are taking over the world.
I've read this kind of thing before by other writers whose work I love very much. And I think it's bizarre. Do these highly intelligent people really think that people who get a degree in one type of subject are so very different from people who choose to get a degree in another subject? Really? Because I don't think that at all. I think it's a bit of a false friend when you're going around looking for an explanation as to why people don't write about science convincingly or effectively - ah, they must have done a humanities degree, that values instinct and emotion rather than evidence-based research into things, that explains it all.
I mean, by all means do some proper evidence-based scientific research into the likelihood of science or humanities graduates writing good or bad news stories, and then come back to me. Otherwise, well, it's just what you think, isn't it. And that isn't science. Or am I missing the point? Maybe I am.
A humanities degree doesn't mean you're incapable of seeing the truth in complicated science, or that you're incapable of writing about it properly either. Just as a science degree doesn't guarantee that you'll do it right. It's a fairly narrow definition of a human being, what subject they did for a few years at university rather than all those other decades in their life which might have been spent doing this, that or the other. I've met a lot of dumb science graduates, and a lot of bright humanities graduates - and yes, I appreciate this is anecdotal evidence, and yes, somehow, I am aware that's not the same as peer-reviewed science, though how I should know that despite not having done a science degree must be some kind of bloody miracle, apparently.
As ever when I read stuff about journalism, I am struck by the kindness with which writers treat journalists and the willingness to accept everything other than malice as a reason for why they don't always get it right - Nick Davies is the same, and Ben Goldacre too. I'm not too dumb to imagine they might be inviting us to read between the lines, but still. It's rare to see anyone suggest that the reason why a journalist might get something wrong is because they don't care whether it's right or not, or because they want to write X, regardless of whether it's accurate, or fair, or truthful. They always look for alternatives - their higher education, for example. It's all very charitable. But is George really sitting there, confused, saying: "They must be good people, and I'm sure they're doing their best, but they just happen to be humanities graduates, that must be it, that must be why they can't understand the science, or they get it wrong."
I'd offer another, alternative explanation. It's not based on science so we're going to have to wing it - but since Monbiot's daftness about humanities graduates isn't based on science either, I'm sure he'd have to permit it. I think journalists get it wrong about climate change because they don't care. Columnists don't care whether they're right or not; they just want to be contrarian and pack a punch. It's easier to say "Aha, there's no global warming, because it's raining outside my window!" than it is to say "I wonder if these AGW models are entirely correct and whether we really will suffer catastrophic climate change" - but it's not just about easiness either; it's about entertainment. And the reason why there are so many columnists attacking climate change is because they find it entertaining - there's good scope and knockabout fun in chortling away at possible scenarios and conflating the Met Office's forecast for a 'barbecue summer' with really worrying science about the impact of temperature rises.
Columnists, particularly the ones you'll find in the usual suspects, are just trying to get a rise out of it. It's easy to snipe at Littlejohn, but look, he's up to his old tricks again, printing absolute tosh about Michael Foot - twice - for no reason other than to be provocative (and that because Foot is dead, no-one can sue - his relatives can, if they wish, go to the PCC, but we all know what will happen there. The defenders of freedom and haters of censorship will gnaw their fingernails to the bone hand-wringing about Littlejohn's 'right to offend' by telling the opposite of the truth). He might not know whether what he's saying about Foot is true or not, but the thing is he really doesn't care. If it's knocking some old leftie, then he'll do it.
You could say to me: oh, but that's Littlejohn. He's just a bad apple; they're not all like it. But I'd say: why is he? He's a marvellously successful journalist, right at the top of his game. Why is he a bad apple? He gets away with that tripe twice a week and gets magnificently rewarded for it. Being provocative and exploiting that contrarian "Yeah, what about me?" narcissism, regardless of the facts, is not the exception, I'm afraid. As I was saying yesterday, if you just read the Guardian (perhaps) or only read stuff you agreed with, you'd never know this. But look at the press as a whole and you'll see Littlejohn isn't the exception; he's the template. He does what he does very well. He's what I'd call a proll - a professional troll. I might think it's abhorrent, but what do I know? He's massively wealthy and adored by thousands while I'm typing this in my spare bedroom waiting for the kettle to boil. It's not hard to see who is the loser really.
It's not a great deal more complicated than that, and I think that while Monbiot would like to think the best of others, and fellow journalists, he's giving newspaper columnists a damn sight more credit than they deserve. They aren't getting it wrong because they didn't do a nice science subject at university, which would have made them write better stories; they are doing it because these are the stories that would have been written anyway, if not by them then by others. They fit into the right-libertarian narrative so beloved of these newspapers: we can do what we like to pollute and it won't make any difference; any attempt to stop us polluting as much as we want is just the evil apparatus of state trying to invade our lives and take away our freedoms; it's all a big con by academics to get handouts to prop up their careers, while we have to carry on paying tax and funding it all.
That's what I think it is. I could be wrong, of course. But it seems much more plausible to me than imagining that people who did humanities instead of science are just a bunch of yo-yos who can't grasp the concepts well enough and who therefore end up writing a load of rubbish. No, they're entirely aware of what they're doing. The science of climate change is complicated, but not insurmountable to anyone if they bother trying. It's the 'getting them to bother trying' bit that's tricky. And George is of course at the vanguard of this, and long may he continue. I just think that with silly lines like the one about humanities students he doesn't really do himself many favours.
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March 10th, 2010 - 10:12
In his ‘How The Mind Works’, Pinker dismisses “postmodernism” in a few sentences. That almost certainly reflects how much thought he gave to the term. That kind of contempt for understanding history, society and culture, beyond crass appeals to Western canons, is common among scientists, IMHO. Anything that might question their positivistically constructed universe is anathema, particularly the sociological research that drew attention to how messy and muddling and career orientated their positivism sometimes is.
March 10th, 2010 - 10:14
Goldacre tends to be a little more nuanced in his attacks on humanities graduates; he always stresses that it’s the humanities grads that take perverse pride in their their lack of understanding of science that are the problem (in jounrnalism), not humanities grads as a whole.
March 10th, 2010 - 10:41
I rarely disagree with you, but here I do. If you have a degree in science you will understand science better because not only have you read scientific literature, you have learnt directly from scientists. (Incidentally, if you have a degree in environmental science you will know more about global warming than someone who does a degree in psychology).
I have a degree in zoology and have read many works of ficition and enjoy history books but I don’t claim to know everything about history, or english literature. People read an article disputing climate change and, because it means they don’t have to change their lifestyle, they believe that rather that actual scientific facts. The same happens with people writing the articles, and so the cycle of bullshit continues – very few people denying climate change have ever looked into it.
March 10th, 2010 - 11:14
Well, yes. There is a contempt for having a deep and intimate understanding of history, society and culture among those disciplines to which they’re largely irrelevant. If I put time and effort into producing, say, a series of numbers demonstrating that the average global temperature is higher now than it was five years ago then it’s aggrieving to have someone else start talking about how temperature is purely a human construct so my argument is invalid, or to derail the argument into an analysis of the historical meaning and significance of temperature.
The humanities in and of themselves are not directly a problem, but the large extent to which they’ve been influenced by postmodernist thinking is — especially the kind which promotes the “Every opinion is equally valid” argument. Which is fine in articles which *are* opinion based, but crazy if it means you’re giving Flat Earthers the same amount of airtime as people who think we live on a globe.
March 10th, 2010 - 11:38
I noticed the same line in Monbiot’s article and it made me chuckle. I did a History degree, but I have more of an objective, evidence-based mind that most of the people I know who did science degrees.
The real problem with the press has already been elucidated by Noam Chomsky. These people have got to the top of their profession by a process of artificial selection: journalists who ask awkward questions and speak truth to power don’t tend to make it to the top, whereas ignorant bigots like LittleJohn too. Even lauded journalists like Andrew Marr have made it to where they are by knowing the ‘right’ kind of articles to publish or lines of enquiry to pursue.
I wish I knew what to do about it right now, but I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that the Internet (and people typing in the spare rooms waiting for the kettle to boil) will destroy the corporate media monopoly and shitty ‘journalists’ out of a job.
I would highly recommend you subscribe to Media Lens bulletins if you don’t already. They’re an unbelievably perceptive glance into the biases of the British press and hugely eye-opening.
March 10th, 2010 - 12:33
I think there is a certain amount of bad blood between the two disciplines. It’s seeded at university, when science students think that humanities students just roll out of bed at midday and read for an hour or two whilst they’re slaving diligently in the lab all day, and humanities students resent their work being dismissed like that, and neither tries to understand the other’s study or ways of thinking and they just snipe at each other in a half-joking kind of way.
I’m not saying that absolutely everybody does that, or that it must clearly linger after graduation (I’d like to think it doesn’t) but it’s probably reasonable to point to it as a latent prejudice.
To suggest that this might understandably distort any kind of thoughtful writing about science from a journalist is plainly bollocks, however.
Also: Littlejohn might be rich and read by many misguided souls, but he’s also a tosser, which matters.
March 10th, 2010 - 12:34
I think he’s mainly referring to postmodernism, and to the preponderance of people from the humanities who embrace an anti-empirical way of looking at things. Not everyone who studies the humanities is like that, of course, but many or most of the people in high places are – in my experience, anyway. And you’re expected to conform to this mindset.
Unfortunately, the real world and its weather patterns do seem to be part of a “positivistically constructed universe,” and that’s what science bases itself on: the observable, provable reality of what is going on in our world, including Global Warming. And those who scream about discourses and the arrogance of scientists, in the face of the real and measurable changes we are all facing, are not very far from the Climategate lunatics.
March 10th, 2010 - 13:00
Yes, absolutely — apologies if my post read like I was arguing that everbody with a degree in the humanities was a postmodernist (or, indeed, that everybody with a degree in the sciences was some sort of godlike emotionless reasoning machine, because that’s equally untrue.)
March 10th, 2010 - 12:41
Norman Mailer had a degree in engineering, go figure.
March 10th, 2010 - 13:03
Maybe I’m being simplistic about this, but I don’t think most journos who mock climate change do so because they’re lost in some postmodernist wonderland where every argument is as valid as every other argument.
They mock climate change because they take issue with the scientific evidence. Maybe that’s to serve an agenda, or because they don’t understand it properly, or because they want to smack down those uppity scientists, or because they don’t think that what’s been presented to them hangs together as evidence, or whatever.
But they aren’t (or at least the ones I’ve read aren’t) discounting scientific investigation or trying to see everything through a postmodernist prism. They’re frequently stupid, or being disengenuous, but not because they’re humanities graduates and they don’t believe in proveable fact.
March 10th, 2010 - 13:21
You know, I’ve not aware of a single serious social theorist whom might be included in the category “postmodern” ever asserting that “every opinion is equally valid” – well, alright, perhaps one – Feyerband, sort of – but not so much every opinion as every method. But even conservative philosophers of science such as Kuhn would quibble about whether any scientific fact is truly universal.
And that’s the problem here – “postmodern” gets reduced to slogans, when in fact its a very broad category of thinkers, and who counts as postmodern depends on who you talk to – or perhaps who you want to disagree with.
I can appreciate scientists might not want to wade through Foucault (and strictly speaking, he’s poststructural), but neither do I want to wade through peer reviewed evidence. I understand the significance of peer review. I’m an autism teacher, and people make feasible assertions about the nature of autism based on a handful of peer reviewed studies covering a surprisingly small amount of data. The evidence for climate change is, by contrast, monumental.
March 10th, 2010 - 13:35
Have been reading your blog for a while Anton and this is my first comment. I heartily agree with your assertion that journalists/columnists ‘on the whole’ don’t care whether what they’re writing is true or not, merely that it is ‘successful’ in the sense that draws attention to their work.
Although, you are of course also missing out on that great inspiration from the sky*, ‘editorial policy’ – or, as it is more commonly know “the business model of needing to find customers for the paper’s advertisers to target”.
Whilst your blog might suffer, I am continually drawn to the idea that the UK would be a better place if one morning there were no newspapers on the stands. Forever.
Cheers.
*And I choose my words carefully there…
March 10th, 2010 - 16:30
“[I'm] not aware of a single serious social theorist whom might be included in the category “postmodern” ever asserting that “every opinion is equally valid””
Quite. It is funny that people who claim to defend empirical reasoning simply make shit up when it comes to writing about what goes on in the humanities and social sciences.
And, like others on here, I’d argue that if you really do think that journalists write bollocks about climate change, or MMR, or anything else, because they are post-modernists, then you’ve lost your mind. The problem is that news is a commodity.
March 10th, 2010 - 16:31
I completed (that was the hardest bit) a degree in political science. Humanities and science, in one degree; shove that up your arse Georgie boy.
“He’s massively wealthy and adored by thousands while I’m typing this in my spare bedroom waiting for the kettle to boil. It’s not hard to see who is the loser really.”
It’s not hard at all. It’s pretty easy. It’s the rich cunt who is the loser.
I’m with Souperman and Richard B, no newspapers, all gone, tomorrow. Please.