Political conservatives and their publications are currently engulfed by a civil war, so it’s understandable if National Review‘s Jonah Goldberg is distracted. Email correspondents have been sending me his current article, “Who Are the Real Deniers of Science?”

In his discussion of the tactic of declaring unsettled science as “settled,” do you notice anything missing? Everything he says is true, and familiar:

The Left has long claimed that it has something of a monopoly on scientific expertise. For instance, long before Al Gore started making millions by claiming that anyone who disagreed with his apocalyptic prophecies was “anti-science,” there were the “scientific socialists.” “Social engineer” is now rightly seen as a term of scorn and derision, but it was once a label that progressive eggheads eagerly accepted.

Masking opinions in a white smock is a brilliant, albeit infuriating and shabby, rhetorical tactic.

Check.

I’m not saying that you can’t have science in your corner, or that lawmakers shouldn’t look to science when making policy….But the real intent behind so many claims to “settled science” is to avoid having to make your case.

We’ve said that one million times.

It’s an undemocratic technique for delegitimizing opposing views and saying “shut up” to dissenters.

Yes. But who are those dissenters? And what happens when they defy “settled science”?

If you dispute, say, the necessity of spending billions on windmills or on killing the coal industry, you are not merely wrong on climate change, you are “anti-science.”

Other examples?

Medical science informs us fetuses are human beings. The liberal response? “Who cares?” Genetically modified foods are safe, sayeth the scientists. “Shut up,” reply the liberal activists. IQ is partly heritable, the neuroscientists tell us. “Shut up, bigot,” the liberals shriek.

Which brings me to the raging hysteria over the plight of transgendered people who need to use the bathroom.

Sounds pretty bad. Could it be worse?

Many liberals believe that “denying” climate science should be a criminal offense.

Scary. He goes on, and there’s hardly a word to disagree with. Except there is no mention of the subject on which censors have done the most to silence dissenters. That subject is Darwinian theory, of course. Not one word.

I’m unsure how you’d prove this, but it’s certainly my sense that the intimidation directed against Darwin doubters puts in the shade the intimidation directed at, say, skeptics on climate change. Yet the science behind the Darwinian mechanism is more open to question — indeed, is vigorously questioned by mainstream scientists in their own literature — than the science behind current thinking about the climate.

The social intimidation is so intense that even conservatives leave evolution out of a discussion about denying scientific dissent. And that is exceeded by the fear cast on scientists and other scholars with an interest in intelligent design.

Don’t believe me? Note this confession from a scientist, an ID critic mind you, with whom we’ve been exchanging views here recently. He is Professor Joshua Swamidass, who teaches in the Laboratory and Genomic Medicine Division at Washington University. A Christian, he gave a talk at a conference on “Church and Science: Partners for the Common Good.”

He speaks well, and you can listen for yourself. I was struck by a candid admission. He says at one point, regarding the scientists in the movie Expelled:

It’s not that they’re being persecuted for belief in God. They’re being persecuted for being associated with this movement [intelligent design]. So for example, I’m a Christian. None of my colleagues have a problem with that. But if I came out positive[ly] for intelligent design, the movement, I would probably be in danger of losing my job.

He’s correct, and he’s chosen the right word to describe the treatment of ID scientists: “persecution.”

Say the wrong thing, think the wrong thing, and your career is over. That’s likely true in some contexts for climate skeptics, but to the same extent? I’m inclined to doubt it.

Image credit: © karin — stock.adobe.com.