The Hubris Of Experts: NIH Edition

Before we get to the peak pomposity of the Bethesda Declaration, a supreme How Dare You demand from credentialed and well-funded scientists to speak to the NIH manager, had you heard that Expert USDA inspector general Phyllis Fong had to booted on her arse and muscled out the door after “defying”—the very word used, and used incorrectly, by propagandists—Trump’s ordering her firing?

She felt (not thought), How dare he, a non-Expert, fire me, an Expert! That, my dear friends, is what a “degree” and credentials will do to you.

The same hubris was on full display in the hoity-toity Bethesda Declaration, signed by Expert scientists galore, after hearing NIH was, in a minor way, cutting back on some funding. Alas, just some, not all funding. Yet the threat the great gusher of green won’t keep flowing their way had multiple “Nobel Laureates” reacting like teenaged brats being told by their fathers they had to earn their own money to buy a car. They threw a tantrum most spectacular.

These credentialed Experts have grown too used to largess. They have fed and grown fat on a steady diet of your money, producing less and less worth having, and much that is poisonously wrong, even as the money increased. The demand to have more, ever more More MORE, because they are Experts. Their wonderful credentials and awards make them feel deserving. This is like a Hollywood actress holding up her Oscar and demanding “Trans rights for migrants!” They have all swallowed whole, and with relish, the false dichotomy that if Uncle Sugar doesn’t come through with the gold, no science will be done.

It is a pathetic display.

The worst of the declaration, in glaring falsity, is a claim so full of snooty hubris that it will bore a hole in your screen if you hover your mouse over it too long, is that if the government doesn’t keep the money flowing at fever-pitch levels, we’ll lose “Academic freedom”, which “is a core scientific principle”. If that doesn’t convince you “IQ” is not sufficient for intelligence, and scientists are surely “high IQ”, I don’t know what will.

There is no academic freedom beyond a narrow and narrowing range when the source of funding is singular, or nearly so. The same small cadre of credentialed Experts cycle in an out of government and sit on its grants committees; they rule with a rod of iron over who lives and who dies in this system. Enforcement of Consensuses through peer-review, where they are the peers, ensures No New Thing will disturb their serenity.

Let’s examine some specific demands (in bold), to see how damaging to thought the insularity of academia can be.

Politicize research by halting high-quality, peer reviewed grants and contracts. They had in mind the canceling of DIE-grants, which was the politicization of science on nuclear steroids. They view continuing to DIE as non-political. Which, to them, it is not. Because they are Experts, they come to believe they know best on all things, including that DIEing is necessary. Scientism, to them, is not to be eschewed, but is a positive philosophy.

Health disparities. The ravages of Equality are well known to readers, so I’ll spend no time on them, except to note the desire for absolute uniformity, which they call Diversity, is yet another political act, and is not science.

Health impacts of climate change. There aren’t any. This is an asinine area of science, one that you would guess any scientist would blush to admit having done anything in it. “Climate change” health “impacts” is cosplay. Small horror tales scientists invent for themselves wondering what might happen if the impossible comes to be. Worst, they ask you to take them seriously.

Gender identity, sexual health, and the needs of intersex people in the U.S. Oh, did you hear that science has come up with a new treatment for homicidal psychopathy? Yes. Scientists will send psychopaths one journalist per month to let them torture, carve up, kill and eat. Whatever they like. We need to be concerned with the mental health of homicidal psychopaths, who alas have high rates of suicides, and the only way to ensure their mental well being is to support their deranged fantasies and beliefs. Only bigots deny this.

Damage hard-earned public trust. Thing about Experts is that they believe all others, except for a handful of obviously touched and benighted like us, believe as they believe. They cannot imagine how they can be disagreed with, especially since their credentials and awards prove, to themselves, that they know best. They view the slowing, by a fraction, of the money they “deserve” with indignation; therefore, they think, the public at large will be as “outraged” as they are.

Interrupt global collaboration. Meaning they won’t be able to travel to Europe and stay at nice hotels to attend conferences to hear about “novel” results, that suspiciously look like the “novel” results announced last year.

Undermine peer review. Fix science with this one weird trick: abandon peer review. “But Briggs, without peer review, how will we decide who gets funding?” Ah, that’s right. End the funding, too, and you won’t have to worry about it. Let funders proliferate, and let them decide who they give money to. Like my most generous—and perspicacious and handsome or beautiful, as they case might be—readers fund me.

Science is obese. Put it on a strict diet and require it to lift New Ideas. That’s the only fix.

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