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Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of the Federalist

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Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle's senior elections correspondent at the

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Federalist and your experienced Shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge.

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As always, you can email the show at radio at

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the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST,

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make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and

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of course to the premium version of our website as well.

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Our guest today is Lawrence M. Krause, theoretical physicist, president

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of the Origins Project, best selling author and editor of

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The War on Science. Thirty nine renowned scientists and scholars

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speak out about the current threats to free speech, open inquiry,

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and the scientific process. Lawrence, thank you so much for

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joining us on this edition at the Federalist Radio Hour.

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Speaker 2: Well, it's great to be with you, at least virtually.

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Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, And you know, I think about the War

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on Science and the elements of that have hit us

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in this battle virtually over the last several years. Obviously,

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the methods of communication and the delivery of science have

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changed over the years. What has in particular changed has

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been this kind of group think, this idea that politics

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is science, and I think that is what is really

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at the core of your new book. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, The notion that activism has replaced scholarship in many

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disciplines in academia is worries. And now as a scientist,

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we used to kind of laugh, you know, thirty years

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yars ago, when I was press for at Yale, we

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looked down the hill at the English Department which was

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doing deconstructionism, which is basically said there was no objective

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knowledge and no meaning, and everything was we did interpret

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in terms of power and oppression. We laughed at that

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and said, well, it never hit the sciences. But what's

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unfortunately happened is the same kind of nonsense has infiltrated

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the sciences as well, and so it not only hurts

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the credibility and quality of the science being done, but

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what's even more of greater concern is that there are

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bureaucratic organizations within universities that are enforcing rules that are

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and faculty are sometimes losing their jobs or just speaking

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out and asking questions, and of course, asking questions is

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the heart of scholarship and science. Science is a dialectic.

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It's based on open debate and free inquiry, and if

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that gets stopped, then scientific progress gets stopped. And if

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scientific progress gets stopped, the nations in trouble, no.

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Speaker 1: Doubt about it. I think that as I look back

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at my early education and higher education, I think that

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when I was going to school as a snot nosed

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kid at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee back in the early

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nineteen nineties, that whole notion that you talked about from

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the English department was really starting to hit in a

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lot of different disciplines. How far do you would you

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estimate being an academia, how far does this go back?

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Speaker 2: Well, you know it does. I was teaching at Yale

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in the nineteen eighties, and it went and it sort

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of started that this idea of poster modernist thought, I

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think through a French philosopher, Michelle Foucault, the notion which

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is really based on the idea that knowledge is subjective,

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there's no such thing as objective knowledge, and that all

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statements had to be viewed in terms of power structure.

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It's a very Marxist viewpoint really actually, and that had

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infiltrated some area is of academic research from English to

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you know, of course, has been a big part of

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some of the marginal academic disciplines like gender studies and

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some other things for a while, but it didn't really

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enter the mainstream and begin to permeate, especially the hard sciences,

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which really, you know, should have it should never have

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arrived at probably till about a decade ago, maybe maybe

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two decades Some people began to notice it two decades ago.

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Greg Lukanof, who's from a Foundation for Individual Rights and Education,

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probably started to talk about that, maybe over a decade

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ago or two decades ago, something like that.

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Speaker 1: I think about how preposterous some of the stuff is,

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and it has become unfortunately mainstreamed. I think about the

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notion of equitable math, equitable sciences, and I'm sure that

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you have dealt with it, and some of your colleagues

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who are writing on this subject have had to dealt

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with deal with it. But you know, it's it would

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be absolutely laughable if it wasn't so dangerous.

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Speaker 2: Exactly. It's dangerous for a bunch of reasons. Yeah, there

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are a bunch of the you know, there are thirty

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nine people, as you point out, who've written and there

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are two mathematicians who talk about the attack on mathematics

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and decolonizing mathematics, as if that has any meaning. The

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notion that somehow proofs in mathematics were done by European

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scholars implies that they're European and not universal. You know,

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the notion that pie somehow is is universal, or the

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power series to describe it. The wonderful thing about math

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is it is probably the most area most divorced from

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human political concerns. Yet saying somehow that students should should

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be suspicious of it because recent mathematical proofs have been

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done in the West, or I mean even worse. In California,

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there was a white paper produced by groups that were

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funded by the state and various private organisations recommending curricular

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changes in mathematics in California, saying that things like getting

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the right answer or showing your work were examples of

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white supremacy and should be removed. That kind of nonsense

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is dangerous for educating our children. So education is one thing,

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but in other areas where where this kind of group

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think has taken place, in particular, after all, science of

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public policy should be based on empirical evidence and testing,

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And there are a number of writers here who are

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doctors or talking about medical education and medical research. Those

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are areas where really lives depend upon upon a rigorous

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empirical basis and not based on ideology. And there are

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many examples that are quoted there where the lives of

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children or the lives of people are now being affected

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by this kind of political correctness and woke ideology. Even again,

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in Canada and in the United States, the medical curriculum

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is being being changed. An organization in Canada, can Meds,

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suggested and wrote that when it comes to medical education,

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critical social justice theories and activism is more important at

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teaching medical students than medical knowledge itself. And similarly, the

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American Medical Association is also recommended that kind of methodology

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important for educating the next generation doctors. I think most

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people who go to a doctor would far prefer they

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knew something about medicine than that they were concerned. I mean, look,

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the concerns are real ones, social inequities and the things

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like that. They the intent, the original intent of all

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this was good, but what happened is good intentions often

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go awry, and when they become ideology, when you can't

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question them, when they suggest that every problem is due

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to racism or sexism, when it has nothing to do

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with that. It background demographics, the fact that certain diseases

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are more prevalent in certain racial groups sickle cele anemia,

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for example, and the fact that that when you try

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and study it you can't You can't basically openly argue

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that the subject should in that case be more black

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than white. Is a problem of studying. How to cure

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that problem, and in fact people are now openly saying

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you can't. You can't look at genetics and race in

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any way to see if there's any correlation, and that's

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that that hurts the very groups that are that are

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being affected by diseases. So when ideology gets involved in medicine,

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then lives are at stake. In other areas, lives may

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be at stake too, because the quality of the science

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that's coming out when you can't hire based on merit,

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when you when you have to hire based on identity,

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either gender or race or sexual preference, when you're not

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hiring the best people, you can be assured that the

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quality of the work that's coming out decreases.

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Speaker 1: Well, you do remember what the great poet William Blake

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said hundreds of years ago that the road to hell

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is paved with DEI.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a modern interpretation of there.

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Speaker 1: It might be, it might be yes, but but no

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doubt about it. I mean, you have an example of

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where you are in Canada, you know, and we have

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seen this kind of thing. Although there has been and

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we can talk about this more, but there's been a

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legal fight against this in the United States, and it's

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been a successful one over the past few years. I

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would say, because we're really getting into, you know, due

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process issues, we're getting into discrimination. We're getting into laws

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that have been on the books for fifty sixty plus

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years to fight discrimination. And I know that what it

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was a university recently in Canada that hosted.

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Speaker 2: Yeah on the radio program and Universe who Ought to Love?

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But it's not the only one. Sure adds like that

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which say specifically for science for stem professorships. This one

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happens to say this call is open only to qualified

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individuals who self identifies women, transgender, gender fluid, non barinar

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are two spirit but there are many because in Canada

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there's a ridiculous law that basically says two wrongs make

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a right. It says counter past discrimination, you're allowed to

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discriminate now.

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Speaker 1: Anti racism, right, I mean, that's that's the whole theory.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's it's awful because what it says is

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that somehow, any example of hiring that doesn't match background

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demographics exactly is due to racism or sexism. And the

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federal government of Canada has taken the most prestigious government

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funded chairs Canada research shares they have to match the

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background demographics exactly. So fifty point nine percent afty women.

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You know, it goes on and on and regardless of

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in the field what the background applicant pool is like.

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So you find places like the University of Toronto, which

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is one of the premier research institutions in that country,

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saying they will not consider white males for those positions

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for the next five years. I mean, I think that

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is just shocking. And of course what you're seeing in

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the United States that in the United States, of course

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there are constitutional regulations that preclude doing that explicitly, but

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you can see it implicitly in hiring a search committees

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once again looking for hiring people based on gender or race.

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And now look, originally, once again, the intentions were good

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fifty sixty years ago. It was hard if you're a woman,

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say to be hired in science. And when I was

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in a physics department years ago, whenever, even thirty years ago,

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this was of concern, and whenever we didn't hire someone

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who was a woman, we had to write an explanation

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for why. And I understood that. When I was chair,

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we hired the first two women faculty members in my department.

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But this has been going on for years and there's

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no there is no explicit racism or sexism. The universities

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are probably used to be one of the most enlightened

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places in our country. And to say, for example, in

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physics there are fewer women and it's because women are

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excluded is ridiculous, because if you actually look now in

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the life sciences, it's overwhelmingly female, and in fact, in

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universities right now, in undergraduate levels it's basically sixty percent

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to forty percent female versus male. And if you look

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at all undergraduate degrees and graduate degrees, females outnumber males

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in almost every case, so certain areas. It's clearly an

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example of preference in some ways, and there are interesting

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arguments why perhaps there's a gender preference for choosing life

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sciences over physics. But to argue that every time things

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don't match background demographics it's to due to racist they're

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ridiculous there, or gender or sexism. I mean, there are

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many more men roofers or garbage collectors. It doesn't I

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don't think that's an argument for sexism. So to always

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assume that racism or sexism behind this is ridiculous. And

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you see what's really worse is you see the heads

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of institutions buying into this just for the sake of

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virtue signaling. Francis Collins, who I knew was a friend,

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he was head of the National Institutes of Health, and

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he said that, you know, after the George Floyd incident,

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that the biomedical sciences were systemically racist. If you really

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believe that, as someone who had been head of the

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nationalis Suits of Health for a decade, he should have resigned.

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But he was just virtue signaling. And that kind of

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virtue signaling by institution leaders is awful. They would rather

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now get ahead of the social media mobs than defend

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scientific integrity or free speech, or free inquiry or academic freedom.

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Speaker 3: Ronald Reagan was right, and it's worse than we thought.

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The watch doot on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski.

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Every day Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and

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the economy and how it affects your wallet. If I'm

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from the government and I'm here to help, isn't bad enough.

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The government spends one hundred and eighty one billion dollars

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per year on direct cash to private businesses. Did you

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see a check in the mail? Whether it's happening in

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DC or down on Wall Street, it's affecting you financially.

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Speaker 2: Be informed.

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Speaker 3: Check out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris

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Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 1: Well, speaking of Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci and others,

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if we go five years plus back in twenty twenty,

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that was a very difficult time for exactly what this

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book is about, what your colleagues are writing about. In

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the War on Science, thirty nine renowned scientists and scholars

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speak out about current threats to free speech, open inquiry,

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and the scientific process. How many scientists were silenced by

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the Group Think during COVID.

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Speaker 2: Well, you know, this is a good point, and you

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know there's been a lot of discussion about this, and

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it's a real sad thing for me what happened during COVID,

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because I've viewed it as a great chance for the

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public to see how science has really done that at

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the forefront, there are uncertain is we don't know everything,

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and it takes time to resolve things. So you see

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debates and you see experiments, and by the way, vaccines

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saved millions of lives. So I want to make it

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clear that I think the search to produce COVID vaccines

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was heroic effort. But the fact that some people would

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make reasonable arguments for why perhaps schools shouldn't be closed

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or or you know, vaccines should be the way vaccines

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should be rolled out to be different, and there's open

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there were good debates. I don't agree with all of

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those statements, but those people shouldn't have been silenced. And

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it's true that that now the current head of the

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NIH was someone who was silence, a professor at Stanford.

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And it's unfortunate because the public could have seen how scientists,

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by baby steps arrive at conclusions and we acknowledge our uncertainties,

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and that would have been a wonderful learning experience. And

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I was kind of sad that people would say the

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science is settled at a time when it probably wasn't.

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But on the other hand, it's I do worry about

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people who somehow claim that vaccines killed, you know, have

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ultimately killed more people than they say. That's just not true.

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The empirical evidence is the opposite in that regard.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I can understand that, but I think it was

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a difficult time, certainly for media outlets that were trying

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to report on what these silenced scientists were trying to

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get out to the public. And so we at the

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federalists know that better than any I mean, we were

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absolutely in some quarters in social media shut down. Elsewhere

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there was a concerted government campaign to silence those people.

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And I think.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely you're right and I agree with that, and there

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should never be government campaigns to silence people people. You know,

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free speech is what the kind of free speech that

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you need to defend is the speech you disagree with,

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not the speech you agree with. And governments and other

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individuals fall into that trap all the time. And let

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me say I first learned it from my late colleague

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chrispher Hitchins, who got it from the philosopher David Hume

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and other a long time ago. Free speech is important

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not just to defend the people you disagree with, but

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it's important for you because if we silence free speech,

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you have no opportunity to learn that you may be wrong.

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You won't even hear the artifics that disagree with you,

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and often we need to hear them to see if

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we're wrong.

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Speaker 1: I think that is true in science and every walk

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of life, of course. But I wanted to ask you

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what did that experience in COVID when we had the

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silencing of scientists, when we had the suppression of important

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scientific findings, when we had a growing group of scientists

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who said, well, wait a minute, maybe shutting down schools

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in society in general is not how to confront this.

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Maybe the better way is to deal with our most

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vulnerable and you know, go after different tracks. How much

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did that play into wearing down the faith in science

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in our society.

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Speaker 2: It's a good point. I think it played a lot

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into wearing down the faith because once again, it made

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it seem that these decisions were ideological because there were

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different political groups arguing in favor of them instead of

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instead of allowing the open scientific debate, and it made

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it seem like science was a close discipline, controlled in

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some cases by certain ideological predilections. And it isn't, I

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should say, in general, but for the as far as

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the public is concerned, what this great learning experience could

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have been to see how wonderful science is and allowing

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open debate and understanding uncertainty. Instead, for many people it

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caused them to distruss scientists. And I still see it

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today when I write about this. You know, there are

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people who basically say we can't trust any scientists, and

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that's unfortunate because it hurts everybody. And I will say

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just to make it clear that I think that is

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part of the problem of what's happening with the Trump

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administration right now, who, in response to the kind of

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ideological wokeness that we're discussing sort of, then do broad

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brush painting of all scientists as woke or leftists, and

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instead of attacking the real problems, they cancel funding for

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really important science projects. It's really important not to attack

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this with a sledgehamber, but with a scalpel, and to

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realize that most scientists were not actually woke or leftists.

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What they were doing was just hiding under the radar

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and trying to get their work done, and the best

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scientists we're doing excellent work. Sure, Harvard did have rampant

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anti semitism, did discriminate against white males and Asians in

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many cases, that's all true. But at the same time,

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at Harvard, the best scientific research in the world was

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being done. And you've got to make sure that you

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don't hurt one for the other. So I do worry

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about overreach in many cases from the left in the

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case we've been talking about when it comes to covid

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in vaccines, but now in this case to some extent,

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from the right in response, and we have to, you know,

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fight both both efforts to quell sort of responsible science

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and equally. And so I do want to point that out.

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I get it, and I will say, what's one of

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the reasons why when I chose the thirty nine people

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for this book, you'll find scientists from the left and

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the right here because they don't always agree, and I

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think it's important to when it comes to ideology, they

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agree on the science, and that's what's important.

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Speaker 1: Indeed, our guest today is Laurence M. Krausse, theoretical physicist,

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president of the Origins Project, best selling author and editor

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of The War on Science, thirty nine renowned scientists and

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scholars speak out about current threats to free speech, open inquiry,

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and the scientific process. You were talking about this before,

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and I think it deserves a little more time. You know,

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what was originally thought to be an idea to battle against,

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you know, racism, to stand up against racism and discrimination

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in the sciences and in all walks of life in

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this country has now turned into more discrimination. It's sad

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to think about that after what this country has has

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gone through. But not only that lawrence, we are dealing

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not only with if you want to call it reverse discrimination,

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I think discrimination of any kind is discrimination, But we

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are dealing with the mutilation of children. That's where this

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woke ideology infused into the sciences has landed us. How

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do we get out of that particular egregious conduct in

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the sciences?

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Speaker 2: Oh? Look, there are probably four or five doctors and

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medical scientists who in book talk about gender issues and

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in particular the issue of gender firming care for young children,

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and the United States is an outlier. Now England, through

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the Cast Report and Europe have have begun to recognize

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that claims of that that claims that are made, for example,

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that that children that young individuals who are who have

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a gender dysphoria are likely to commit suicide if if

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if active intervention is not made in either drugs or surgery.

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There they they relate to claimed scientific studies which in

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fact did not ever make that claim. And and what

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you see is there is those references to those studies,

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or worse, references to people who then reference those studies

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are made to justify and the past of the American

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Medical Association, the American Association of Pediatric Specialists, or whatever

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it's called, all of these organizations in the United States

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promote this active gender affirming care to miners. And now

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you're seeing in other parts of the world people saying

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hold off. It's inappropriate, especially since they're below the age

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of consent, to take as someone who for at one

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reason or another, feels uncomfortable in their body, as a feeling,

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you know, if they're a boy or a girl, feeling

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like they're a boy or a girl, and those are real,

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those are real issues, those are real problems. But then

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actively choosing to do something that will then later on

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cause them to lose any ability to have sexual pleasure

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or later in life, and miners should not be operated

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on without it because they're below the age of consent.

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And I think most people are now in other countries

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are now realizing that we have to be very careful

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and that the studies that claims that we're saving people

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from suicide are not valid studies. And as I say,

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the United States is an outlier. And you've now seen

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the Supreme Court decision when it comes to Tennessee that

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basically finally is now saying, yes, you you should not

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basically operate on minors who may feel gender dysphoria because

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they're not in a position to make decisions as adults.

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And that and that's not suggesting once again that there

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that there are not people who have gender dysphoria, and

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they're not are not people who later on in life

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as adults, choose to reflect a different gender than they're

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than they're than their sex. That's all valid and those

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people should not be discriminated against because of those issues.

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But as children, we they're not in a position to

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be able to make those decisions.

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Speaker 1: But the political identity science, and that's what it was

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and that's what it is it still is was and

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is wrong. I think we're getting a better idea now,

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but I just I guess there are a lot of

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people like me that are struggling looking at the scientific community,

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those who have used the science, manipulated the science to

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get their political points across, or to drive their political

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ideas and agendas. This to us, to me, it seemed

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wrong from the very beginning. I mean, how did we

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get here? How did we arrive here?

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Speaker 2: Right? In one real sense where the science is completely historic,

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we talk about that, the confusion between gender and sex,

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the fact that many even scientific organizations will not open

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we will punish people for saying sex is binary. Sex

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is binary depends on the size of game meats, females

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of large gam meets males of small gammets. And it's

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true throughout the throughout the animal kingdom. It's not just

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for humans. And you know, one of the people who

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wrote for this book, Carol Hooven, said on I think

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it was a Fox interview that sex is binary. She

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was later harassed so much at Harvard that she had

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to resign your position. And you know, take another one

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of our people who wrote for us, Elizabeth White, and

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an anthropologists, archaeologists, who studied studies ancient skeletons at the

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American Anthropological Association, I think that was the meeting they

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had a session on the sex of skeletons that was

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removed by the organization because it might offend or harm

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certain individuals, when in fact, of course, it's important if

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you're trying to understand early cultures under and that the

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roles of how they worked skeletons are but yet based

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on sex. Female skeletons are different than male skeletons because

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the physiology is different, and to deny that is to

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deny the science based on ideology. And when professional organizations

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start doing that, that is a real problem. And then

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when you have scientific journals that will actually come out

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and say it, like the journal Nature Behavior, as their

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editors have said, if there are scientific articles that might

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offend some groups or make them feel like there's harm

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against them, we will not publish those articles, even if

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they're scientifically correct. And that is the I mean, that

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isn't an athematic science because it obviously the science is

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important and whether it offends anyone or not is irrelevant.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it is absolutely an ethematic science. I mean, that's

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it couldn't be any farther from the scientific process, the

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scientific method, It couldn't be any farther from reality. So

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let me ask you, this is the war on science

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in many aspects of war on reality.

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Speaker 2: Of course, it is because science is our best way

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of understanding reality. We don't understand by assuming it in

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advance and forcing the universe to conform to our beliefs.

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We have to force our beliefs to conform to the evidence,

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and that's the way science works. We all are human,

461
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we all have biases, we all have things desires that

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we wish things were true. The wonderful thing about the

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scientific process and the reason it works, is it's a

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methodology for overcoming our biases. That we say, we think this,

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We do the experiments, and we see if the evidence

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tells us it's true, and if the evidence tells us

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it's false, we throw it out like yesterday's newspaper. That's

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the way it works, and then we keep doing the experiments,

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we keep testing, and that's the way we overcome the

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intrinsic biases that individual sciences may have. That's why the

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scientific method is worth explaining and teaching children and everyone else,

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because ultimately, public policy should be based on the same thing.

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If you make a policy, and you know, we all

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can make policies for how we think the world should working.

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Politicians have to work that we have to do that

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based on incomplete evidence. But then you you enact the policy,

477
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and if you find out it's not working, then if

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you're responsible, you should say, well, we should change the policy.

479
00:30:07,359 --> 00:30:10,240
It should be paced on empirical evidence. And you know,

480
00:30:10,559 --> 00:30:12,759
in many areas of science things are more caught dry.

481
00:30:12,839 --> 00:30:16,359
My Aora physics happily that we do experiments, we have

482
00:30:17,480 --> 00:30:21,920
one hundred billion results and we can therefore test things

483
00:30:21,920 --> 00:30:24,839
with extreme accuracy. It's certain areas like medicine and other

484
00:30:24,880 --> 00:30:28,440
areas that you have smaller groups and things are more uncertain,

485
00:30:28,799 --> 00:30:31,920
but you continue to do the experiments. And you know,

486
00:30:32,039 --> 00:30:34,920
Richard Dawkins, who was one of the first papers in

487
00:30:35,000 --> 00:30:38,200
the book, talks about double blind tests, which is the

488
00:30:38,240 --> 00:30:41,880
beauty of it's used in medicine where you where you

489
00:30:41,960 --> 00:30:45,319
basically neither the doctor nor the patients know in some

490
00:30:45,480 --> 00:30:48,640
cases what's being done, so that there are no biases

491
00:30:48,680 --> 00:30:51,319
that can affect the results of the experiment. And you

492
00:30:51,400 --> 00:30:54,799
learn by that, and you learn by baby steps and

493
00:30:54,799 --> 00:30:58,000
and there's no place for ideology, even though we have

494
00:30:58,039 --> 00:31:02,920
to recognize that. Of course, individual scientists can have inherent biases.

495
00:31:03,240 --> 00:31:06,559
But the great thing about science is it overcomes those biases.

496
00:31:06,799 --> 00:31:10,680
The whole methodology overcomes it. And when you start imposing

497
00:31:10,720 --> 00:31:14,799
ideology and not allowing those experiments to be done or

498
00:31:14,839 --> 00:31:17,920
not publishing the results, well you're hurting everybody.

499
00:31:18,920 --> 00:31:23,440
Speaker 1: Indeed, how many scientists were lost in this recent modern

500
00:31:23,559 --> 00:31:29,440
day purge of politics ing injected into science, Well.

501
00:31:29,319 --> 00:31:31,319
Speaker 2: It's hard to know. It's hard to know. Of course,

502
00:31:31,359 --> 00:31:33,640
you never know the ones who didn't, who didn't end

503
00:31:33,720 --> 00:31:38,720
up becoming scientists. But it is problematic when there are,

504
00:31:39,319 --> 00:31:43,039
first of all, scientists who lose their positions for simply questioning.

505
00:31:43,799 --> 00:31:46,039
You know, there's one of the scientists here is like

506
00:31:46,079 --> 00:31:49,799
another Canadian who who was fired from a tenured position

507
00:31:50,359 --> 00:31:56,160
for questioning several things including whether indigenous knowledge and astronomy,

508
00:31:56,480 --> 00:32:00,119
which could be taught culturally as useful, was useful in

509
00:32:00,119 --> 00:32:04,880
introductory astronomy classes, for understanding stellar evolution or things like that.

510
00:32:05,160 --> 00:32:07,720
She questioned it, and ultimately it was determined that she

511
00:32:07,759 --> 00:32:10,960
produced a hostile work environment and resmoved from her tenured position.

512
00:32:11,319 --> 00:32:15,079
That nonsense and that kind of awful culling of people

513
00:32:15,119 --> 00:32:19,119
who ask questions and she's not the only one for example,

514
00:32:19,200 --> 00:32:22,119
is awful. But then, as I say, there are others

515
00:32:22,160 --> 00:32:25,880
who've been lost because of this effort to hire based

516
00:32:25,880 --> 00:32:29,599
on identity rather than merit. Universities have to be a meritocracy.

517
00:32:30,079 --> 00:32:32,920
And of course there are inequities in our society, and

518
00:32:32,960 --> 00:32:35,720
to deny that, of course is ridiculous. But you don't

519
00:32:36,039 --> 00:32:39,720
overcome the inequities, be the a gender or racial at

520
00:32:39,759 --> 00:32:42,200
the level of a professor at a university. If you're

521
00:32:42,200 --> 00:32:44,759
worried about inequities to say in inner cities and the

522
00:32:44,839 --> 00:32:48,200
United States and where there may be, you know, people

523
00:32:48,880 --> 00:32:51,640
have less access to education, you've got to address those

524
00:32:51,680 --> 00:32:54,440
at the primary school level. But you don't solve them

525
00:32:54,680 --> 00:32:58,279
at the level of a tenured professor. It's just not

526
00:32:58,400 --> 00:33:00,680
the right way to attack the problem.

527
00:33:00,839 --> 00:33:04,960
Speaker 1: Well, science also is nothing without ethics. There has to

528
00:33:05,039 --> 00:33:10,240
be a basis, There has to be some kind of

529
00:33:12,640 --> 00:33:17,240
ethical core at it all. How much have ethics been

530
00:33:18,119 --> 00:33:23,279
been hurt through this modern era, this brave new world

531
00:33:23,319 --> 00:33:23,880
of science.

532
00:33:24,400 --> 00:33:27,119
Speaker 2: Well again, ethics, I mean ethics is a more subtle issue,

533
00:33:27,200 --> 00:33:33,000
right because you know, people can make reasonable arguments for

534
00:33:33,480 --> 00:33:36,880
very different what some people would think was a moral morality,

535
00:33:36,880 --> 00:33:39,400
and ethics have to be distinguished. But I think the

536
00:33:39,480 --> 00:33:42,640
key point is that those philosophers in particular discuss ethics

537
00:33:44,000 --> 00:33:48,039
would argue, and they're utilitarian philosophers and others who would

538
00:33:48,119 --> 00:33:51,000
argue that one should bath our ethical decisions once again

539
00:33:51,039 --> 00:33:55,960
on empirical evidence. But it's important. What's most important is

540
00:33:56,039 --> 00:34:00,000
while there can be reasonable disagreements, that those Greek disagreement

541
00:34:00,039 --> 00:34:02,680
should be voiced, that not just one side should be

542
00:34:02,720 --> 00:34:06,480
able to say what's right or wrong. I mean, and

543
00:34:06,799 --> 00:34:09,840
let me again phrase this in a way that was

544
00:34:11,280 --> 00:34:13,119
going back in time where it was done wrong. In

545
00:34:13,119 --> 00:34:18,239
the opposite direction, to argue that homosexuality is a moral

546
00:34:18,320 --> 00:34:22,360
or unethical is to misunderstand the ultimately science, and to

547
00:34:22,559 --> 00:34:24,960
argue that those people should be persecuted, as used to

548
00:34:25,000 --> 00:34:28,039
be the case, was wrong, and happily in society for

549
00:34:28,079 --> 00:34:30,239
the most part, we now overcome it. In the United

550
00:34:30,280 --> 00:34:32,039
States or rules that you can have gay marriage and

551
00:34:32,079 --> 00:34:33,880
other things, and you know, and there are lots of

552
00:34:33,880 --> 00:34:37,400
examples and other species. A sheep are to ten percent

553
00:34:37,440 --> 00:34:41,480
of sheep of long term monogamous gay relationships. Same sex

554
00:34:41,519 --> 00:34:44,760
relationships and to argue that somehow they're moral or ethical

555
00:34:44,960 --> 00:34:47,440
is ridiculous. So, you know, it's happened in the past,

556
00:34:48,000 --> 00:34:52,119
and it's important that we have overcome that to some extent,

557
00:34:52,280 --> 00:34:54,239
and it's more important now that we overcome it in

558
00:34:54,280 --> 00:34:58,079
the opposite direction and we don't say, for example, we

559
00:34:58,119 --> 00:35:03,639
don't label people who say that biological sex is biological.

560
00:35:03,719 --> 00:35:06,800
It's not cultural, and we can't and to label them

561
00:35:06,800 --> 00:35:10,159
as transphobic and to try and cancel them, whether they

562
00:35:10,239 --> 00:35:14,280
be the author of the of the Harry Potter series

563
00:35:14,360 --> 00:35:19,039
or someone else, is to is to once again, you know,

564
00:35:19,159 --> 00:35:22,079
have this kind of branding of people as unethical on

565
00:35:22,119 --> 00:35:24,000
the basis of ideological grounds.

566
00:35:24,840 --> 00:35:28,000
Speaker 1: Well, I know there's there's probably a big debate in

567
00:35:28,039 --> 00:35:29,840
the scientific community over this.

568
00:35:29,960 --> 00:35:30,639
Speaker 2: I know there is.

569
00:35:30,679 --> 00:35:34,480
Speaker 1: It's no probably about it. But you know, I believe

570
00:35:35,280 --> 00:35:41,039
in the progress of science, and science is a core

571
00:35:41,280 --> 00:35:45,000
part of the human experience, very necessary part of the

572
00:35:45,039 --> 00:35:49,440
human experience. But I also believe in faith in the

573
00:35:49,519 --> 00:35:53,559
human experience, and I think over the last several years

574
00:35:53,840 --> 00:35:58,239
there has been you know, a war between the two

575
00:35:58,480 --> 00:36:05,239
going on that we talk about and in some ways understandably,

576
00:36:05,320 --> 00:36:10,760
so I'm curious what are the broader implications of this

577
00:36:11,039 --> 00:36:15,599
war on science? And I'm certain that you have colleagues

578
00:36:15,639 --> 00:36:20,320
who have you know, that's really what this book is about, ultimately,

579
00:36:20,440 --> 00:36:27,360
is what happens when you are injecting politics into science

580
00:36:27,559 --> 00:36:31,719
and you know, taking away the goal, the ultimate goal

581
00:36:31,800 --> 00:36:32,400
of science.

582
00:36:33,119 --> 00:36:36,159
Speaker 2: Yeah, and well, look I frame it more generally than

583
00:36:36,199 --> 00:36:38,639
just politics. I can take frame it as ideology. And

584
00:36:38,639 --> 00:36:41,599
that ideology can come from political background, it can come

585
00:36:41,599 --> 00:36:44,760
from religious beliefs, and it can come from many areas.

586
00:36:45,119 --> 00:36:49,360
And what you want to move is dogma. Dogma basically is,

587
00:36:49,679 --> 00:36:53,320
and whether it's religious or political or secular, basically says

588
00:36:53,360 --> 00:36:56,639
certain ideas are heretical and you cannot discuss them, and

589
00:36:56,679 --> 00:36:59,800
the people who discuss them are bad. And that notion

590
00:37:00,360 --> 00:37:03,800
is an an aathematics science, and nothing is sacred in science.

591
00:37:04,119 --> 00:37:09,480
Any question is askable, regardless of who it offends. And ultimately,

592
00:37:09,519 --> 00:37:13,039
it's nature that determines what's reasonable and not human beings.

593
00:37:13,039 --> 00:37:16,559
And we've determined that by doing experiments, not by revelation

594
00:37:17,159 --> 00:37:20,360
or prejudice. But we do experiments, and we test, and

595
00:37:20,880 --> 00:37:24,199
nature tells us what's real and what isn't and that

596
00:37:24,519 --> 00:37:27,440
and when we give up that understanding of reality. It

597
00:37:27,519 --> 00:37:30,960
inevitably comes back and bites us in the button you

598
00:37:30,960 --> 00:37:34,039
know later on, because whenever you base your decisions on

599
00:37:34,119 --> 00:37:39,320
some unreal phenomena, you're going to find yourself having problems

600
00:37:39,400 --> 00:37:39,920
down the road.

601
00:37:40,679 --> 00:37:46,440
Speaker 1: We are seeing, you know, a seed change Americans thoughts

602
00:37:46,480 --> 00:37:52,119
on the whole DEI movement and the dangers therein, and

603
00:37:52,199 --> 00:37:57,280
so you have seen a movement to you know, change

604
00:37:57,440 --> 00:38:01,280
course on that. We are also seeing universe cities threatened

605
00:38:01,519 --> 00:38:05,559
with funding issues, as we talked before, you know, changing

606
00:38:05,760 --> 00:38:11,280
or at least publicly facing changing those things. But we're

607
00:38:11,280 --> 00:38:15,920
seeing a lot of those institutions of higher education going underground,

608
00:38:16,039 --> 00:38:19,400
continuing to do what they do to drive out those

609
00:38:19,760 --> 00:38:24,920
in the science, their scientific communities, asking important questions that

610
00:38:25,000 --> 00:38:27,719
don't fit the ideological mold. Where do you see all

611
00:38:27,760 --> 00:38:30,280
of that going in higher education moving forward?

612
00:38:30,920 --> 00:38:34,840
Speaker 2: Well, look, there's been there's been problems at universities, and

613
00:38:35,360 --> 00:38:38,480
in general those problems, I mean they're not universally located

614
00:38:38,480 --> 00:38:41,360
in one area, but universities have built these huge bureaucracies

615
00:38:41,360 --> 00:38:44,920
called diversity, equity, inclusion bureaucracies. And those words sound like

616
00:38:44,920 --> 00:38:47,679
good words. Everyone's in faith, you know how could you

617
00:38:47,679 --> 00:38:50,920
be against diversity or inclusion correctly, But in fact those

618
00:38:50,960 --> 00:38:54,320
are buzzwords and they're used to do the exact opposite,

619
00:38:54,440 --> 00:38:59,519
to exclude and to have inequities. You know, what we

620
00:38:59,559 --> 00:39:03,960
should be arguing for is equal opportunity, not equal outcomes.

621
00:39:04,039 --> 00:39:06,840
And that's the key difference. We want to give everyone

622
00:39:06,880 --> 00:39:11,639
the opportunity to excel, but the fact that some people

623
00:39:11,679 --> 00:39:16,320
don't excel is not necessarily due to racism or sexism

624
00:39:16,440 --> 00:39:19,960
or anything else. And in particular in universities, some people

625
00:39:19,960 --> 00:39:23,119
are better than others and in certain fields, you know,

626
00:39:23,199 --> 00:39:27,079
in their talents or the work they've done, or whatever

627
00:39:27,119 --> 00:39:29,599
it is, and that has to be judge on the

628
00:39:29,639 --> 00:39:33,840
basis of the results. Now, these divergency an equity inclusion

629
00:39:33,880 --> 00:39:38,800
of bureaucracies unfortunately have become significant in many universities and

630
00:39:38,880 --> 00:39:45,760
have governed hiring, have governed in various rules of things

631
00:39:45,760 --> 00:39:48,039
that students have to be taught, and that has to

632
00:39:48,039 --> 00:39:50,840
be fought. Now that's being fought, and one of the

633
00:39:51,000 --> 00:39:53,920
positive things that I would say that the Trump administration

634
00:39:54,000 --> 00:39:57,320
has done is made it clear that those kind of

635
00:39:57,400 --> 00:40:01,440
organizations which do discriminate or enforce ideology have to be

636
00:40:01,480 --> 00:40:07,360
removed from universities, so that that is that's a good result,

637
00:40:07,559 --> 00:40:11,360
that's helping. And the more the public realizes that's a problem,

638
00:40:11,519 --> 00:40:14,639
the more pressure there will be on universities to reduce

639
00:40:14,679 --> 00:40:18,039
the impact of those bureaucracies and also not relabel them

640
00:40:18,199 --> 00:40:20,559
so that they continue to operate. And you're seeing it.

641
00:40:20,599 --> 00:40:23,800
A lot of universities are disbanding those groups, and that's

642
00:40:23,840 --> 00:40:27,079
good and really a university should be run by the faculty,

643
00:40:27,400 --> 00:40:31,239
not by these administrators. And unfortunately, in many universities, these

644
00:40:31,280 --> 00:40:35,679
administrators are It's like a cancer. There are more administrative

645
00:40:35,760 --> 00:40:39,760
hires than there are students. It's awful, it really is awful.

646
00:40:39,840 --> 00:40:41,599
But at the same time I want to try I

647
00:40:41,599 --> 00:40:44,639
want to make it clear that the solution of this

648
00:40:45,079 --> 00:40:47,840
is not to then require as some states have done

649
00:40:47,880 --> 00:40:51,079
and to some extent, the current administrations. I argue that

650
00:40:51,199 --> 00:40:56,039
you cannot discuss the issues behind diversity ecre inclusion, including

651
00:40:56,320 --> 00:40:59,760
critical race there, which I think is nonsense, But you can't.

652
00:41:00,000 --> 00:41:03,039
I can't legislate that people can't discuss that. The proper

653
00:41:03,079 --> 00:41:05,400
thing is for people to be able to discuss it,

654
00:41:05,599 --> 00:41:08,360
and for people like me to then have a platform

655
00:41:08,400 --> 00:41:11,400
to be able to argue why it's nonsense. That's how

656
00:41:11,440 --> 00:41:15,760
good ideas get rise up and how bad ideas eventually disappear.

657
00:41:16,760 --> 00:41:21,480
So you know, you can't fight intolerance with intolerance. You

658
00:41:21,519 --> 00:41:25,519
can't fight bad ideas by imposing your own ideas and

659
00:41:25,559 --> 00:41:28,320
not allowing the opposite. You have to allow the free

660
00:41:28,320 --> 00:41:29,440
and open debate.

661
00:41:30,480 --> 00:41:38,199
Speaker 1: Well orwell livest about it. Nineteen eighty four is very

662
00:41:38,320 --> 00:41:43,000
prevalent in twenty twenty five. This debate will continue to

663
00:41:43,039 --> 00:41:46,320
go on, and it is a very important debate, a

664
00:41:46,440 --> 00:41:50,239
very important conversation to have. Thanks to my guest today,

665
00:41:50,320 --> 00:41:53,920
Lawrence M. Krause, best selling author and editor of the

666
00:41:53,960 --> 00:41:58,360
War on Science thirty nine Renowned scientists and scholars speak

667
00:41:58,400 --> 00:42:02,800
out about current threats to free speech, open inquiry, and

668
00:42:02,920 --> 00:42:06,599
the scientific process. You've been listening to another edition of

669
00:42:06,639 --> 00:42:10,360
The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle's senior elections correspondent

670
00:42:10,440 --> 00:42:14,000
at the Federalist. We'll be back soon with more. Until then,

671
00:42:14,159 --> 00:42:36,440
stay lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray