IN OCTOBER OF 1980, IN THE MIDST OF HIS FINAL CAMPAIGN push against incumbent President Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan addressed some environmental concerns during an event in Steubenville, Ohio. In his speech he presaged a trend in political rhetoric that would not truly rear its head for another three decades:
I have flown twice over Mount St. Helens out on our West Coast. I’m not a scientist and I don’t know the figures, but I just have a suspicion that that one little mountain out there has probably released more sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere of the world than has been released in the last 10 years of automobile driving or things of that kind that people are so concerned about.1
It’s true: the man who would soon become the fortieth president of the United States was not, in fact, a scientist. In spite of that lack of scientific training, he managed to express some opinions on science and science-related policy, in this case about how much sulfur dioxide—the primary culprit in the formation of acid rain—that “one little mountain” emits compared to human sources. Of course, Reagan also wasn’t an economist, or an immigration lawyer, or an expert on the Middle East, but he had plenty to say and do about those issues as well. In general, the president doesn’t need to remind us of the things he is not qualified to do; we tacitly trust that in spite of those shortcomings, he might have a few experts on hand to answer some questions.
As it turns out, Reagan’s claim about Mount St. Helens, which had erupted in dramatic and deadly fashion months earlier, was quite far off. An Environmental Protection Agency representative at the time told the New York Times that although the volcano spewed as much as 2,000 tons of SO2 per day on average, all human sources in the United States produced about 81,000 tons per day. Globally, at the time, the total would have been over 300,000 tons of sulfur dioxide from human sources each day.2
The massive eruption of Mount St. Helens alone released about 1.5 million tons, according to the US Geological Survey, which is certainly no small amount.3 And if Reagan really meant to compare this to “10 years of automobile driving,” he might have been closer—except automobiles are not the issue when it comes to SO2. By far the biggest source is the burning of fossil fuels at power plants, accounting for 73 percent of the total today, followed by other industrial facilities—factories—at about 20 percent.4 Ten years’ worth of SO2 emissions from “things of that kind that people are so concerned about,” meanwhile, was equal to more than 200 million tons from the United States alone.
Okay, so Reagan was wrong. Who cares? After all, he said he wasn’t a scientist. Can you blame him for being off on the details?
Of course we can. Simply saying you’re not an expert is not an appropriate introduction for trying to act like one. In this example, the arguments over sulfur dioxide did not end in 1980; the Reagan administration obfuscated and delayed for years when it came to efforts to curtail SO2 emissions and thus cut down on acid rain. Spreading misinformation like this—one volcano dwarfs human contributions—is a key component of keeping the public on your side, or at least keeping the public in the dark so that people can’t object to your actions.
Fast-forward a few decades, and “I’m not a scientist” has become a go-to talking point for certain politicians, most often deployed in arguments about how to combat—or whether to combat—climate change. It is a dodge, a bit of down-home hucksterism designed to marginalize those eggheads over there who actually are scientists as somehow out of touch or silly. It is a simple way to get out of the conversation entirely, and it is often accompanied by bits of misinformation on the science as well.
Finding examples of its use is not difficult. In 2009, then-candidate for US senator from Florida Marco Rubio answered a question about whether climate change is caused by humans: “I’m not a scientist, I’m not qualified to make that decision. There’s a significant scientific dispute about that.”5 (No, there is not.)
Florida governor Rick Scott, after years of outright denial that humans had anything to do with a warming world, altered his position in 2014: “Well, I’m not a scientist.” He went on to tout his administration’s environmental record on specifics like “flooding around our coast”—without mentioning the relationship to rising seas and climate change—before saying it yet again: “But I’m not a scientist.”6
Former Ohio congressman and Speaker of the House John Boehner added a mild wording wrinkle, saying in 2014: “Listen, I’m not qualified to debate the science over climate change.”7 He followed up by saying that any efforts to deal with the problem would wreck the economy—which most experts also agree is totally untrue.
Senate majority leader and Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell sounded a familiar climate dog whistle when he brought up the 1970s “global cooling” red herring (in reality, very few were actually concerned about this, and global warming was already considered much more mainstream science): “We can debate this forever. George Will had a column in the last year or so pointing out that in the 70s, we were concerned the ice age was coming. I’m not a scientist.”8 The obvious question: McConnell thinks listening to George Will is wise, but listening to thousands of actual scientists around the world is somehow going to lead him astray?
There are other examples of politicians using the “not a scientist” line, or slight variations on it, all designed to pretend like the science is somehow unknowable. And of course, these politicians are not relinquishing their positions of power to those who do know about the topic in question. They go right on legislating and governing on the very topics they claim to know so little about; the most important piece of the talking point may be the “but” that follows it. The meaning of the line—that these individuals are literally not trained in science—has nothing at all to do with the questions at hand or what they were elected to do. The line makes so little sense that a GOP consultant and strategist, Mike McKenna, called it “the dumbest talking point in the history of mankind.”9
The “not a scientist” line is a way out of talking about actual science, but politicians don’t always have such an exit strategy when scientific topics arise. And as those examples illustrate, even when they do try to dodge the question, they end up spewing misinformation and errors virtually at every step. This book is about what happens when our elected officials talk science, and fail.
They do so in a wide variety of ways: sometimes there is subtlety and nuance; sometimes there is fiery or inflammatory rhetoric; sometimes they seem to snatch nonsense out of the ether. Yet their methods do follow some larger patterns that can be pinpointed. This book groups these rhetorical and logical errors into clear types to help you find them when they arise, and to cut through the misinformation once you’ve spotted them. You will see the Internet’s nefarious influence with the BLAME THE BLOGGER, sniff out the unmistakable intent behind the BUTTER-UP AND UNDERCUT, learn to look for the bigger picture with the CHERRY-PICK, and glimpse the inner workings of many others.
This is not just to impress your friends during the next presidential debate, State of the Union address, or contentious legislative battle. Scientific topics have increasingly jumped to the fore of many political discussions in recent decades, and letting officials run wild with scientific missteps means there is less of a check on how those issues are actually legislated and regulated. Politicians have large platforms—increasingly so, with the advent of social media—and can reach wide audiences in short periods of time. A member of Congress spouting that vaccines cause autism is not without effect: the rise of the anti-vaccination movement, quite clearly a cause of recent outbreaks of relatively forgotten diseases such as measles, is a direct consequence of such incendiary and misinformed speech. And spreading misinformation about climate change has helped delay any global movement to stop it for decades, meaning that scientific ignorance or obfuscation on the part of our leaders could quite literally destroy the world as we know it.
Some important notes before we begin: First, with a couple of exceptions, there is little effort here to ascribe intent to the errors. It is very difficult to pinpoint exactly why politicians make mistakes when discussing science; maybe they truly don’t understand a complex issue, or their ideological agenda makes them honestly skeptical of a given scientific topic. Or maybe they’re just lying to gain votes, pass a bill, or garner support from a particular industry. Even when we get to the STRAIGHT-UP FABRICATION, teasing out reasons is difficult. The point is that intent doesn’t matter: getting science wrong has a whole host of effects, from eroding public trust in both politics and the scientific community, to actively harming people today and in the future.
Second, some of the science described in this book will undoubtedly have evolved in various ways by the time it reaches readers’ hands. In fact, the march of scientific progress is even the subject of a chapter: the BLIND EYE TO FOLLOW-UP. When writing about areas of active research, the best one can say is that it represents the available knowledge at the time.
Finally, the “not a scientist” line was originally a Republican talking point, and the vast bulk of errors (though not all) explored in this book were made by Republican politicians. This is not meant to be a partisan statement; it is merely a reflection of an unfortunate reality in recent years and decades—that one of the two dominant American political parties has largely abandoned mainstream scientific viewpoints. This should not be a particularly startling or controversial statement; indeed, entire books have been written specifically on the GOP’s strained relationship with science.10
Some individuals within the party itself have decried the antiscience attitudes: former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, who has himself used a variation on the “I’m not a scientist” evasion, has also said that the GOP needs to “stop being the stupid party.”11 South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham issued this challenge: “To my friends on the right who deny the science, tell me why.”12
The goal here is not to pile on one party further, but to highlight the types of errors we hear when listening to any political speech, from any party. The errors in recent years have come largely from the GOP, but that is not to say that the tables might turn at some point in the future. The techniques described here could be deployed by anyone, covering a wide variety of specific scientific topics, including those that haven’t yet become an issue in today’s politics. By laying out how these methods work, and why our leaders get these particular scientific issues wrong, we can recognize the errors when they surface in the future. Hopefully, the next generation of politicians will not be able to get away with them quite so easily or so often.