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Do you have march fatigue yet? The left, apparently, does not, performing street theater on Saturday, Earth Day, with the so-called March for Science.

Its hard to think of a better way to undermine the publics faith in science than to stage demonstrations in Washington, D.C., and around the country modeled on the Womens March on Washington that took place in January.

The Womens March was an anti-Donald Trump festival. Fine. I found it vulgar and demeaning to women, but its a free country.

Science, however, to be respected, must be purely the search for truth. The organizers of this March for Science by acknowledging that their demonstration is modeled on the Womens March are contributing to the politicization of science, exactly what true upholders of science should be at pains to avoid.

When you read the organizers online statement, the purpose seemed so utterly vacuous as to cause heads to nod: The March for Science champions robustly funded and publicly communicated science as a pillar of human freedom and prosperity. We unite as a diverse, nonpartisan group to call for science that upholds the common good and for political leaders and policy makers to enact evidence based policies in the public interest.

Yeah. I know loads of people who oppose the common good, dont you?

So what is it really about?

As best I can make out (besides being a nice excuse to enjoy the April weather in Washington, when everything is in bloom), those who attended wanted to express dismay at President Trumps policies on a range of subjects, including climate change and the travel restriction (which they label a travel ban).

On the matter of climate change, those who present themselves as champions of science, i.e., fact-based reasoning and commitment to the scientific method, ought to be very careful not to blackball everyone who offers a dissenting view. Even among self-described environmentalists, there are differing views on how best to combat global warming. Whether temperatures are rising dangerously is a scientific question. What to do about it is a political question.

When you lump the travel ban into the march, though, you really go off the rails. As Robert Young, an ecologist, warned in The New York Times, including such matters only serves to cement the image of scientists as an interest group who might politicize their data, research, and findings for their own ends.

A true march for science might tackle problems like the replication crisis or confirmation bias.

Its a vanity of the left that they stand for science, fact-based policy and sweet reason as opposed to conservatives, who support superstition, alternative facts and denial. Jeffrey Anderson, an associate professor of radiology and bioengineering at the University of Utah, explained to The New York Times that he would fly to D.C. for the march because of what he regards as the wholesale disregard of truth and fact by the president and his close advisers. Their devaluing evidence and the scientific method, is so extreme that I cant be silent.

Admittedly, this president has been reckless and heedless of the truth or falsity of his comments on a range of subjects. His endorsements of conspiracy theories about vaccines causing autism and climate change being a Chinese ruse to harm American companies were preposterous and worrying. But he hasnt said those things lately, and the march doesnt seem to have been provoked by them.

Note to the left: The above paragraph is what sincere people who are fact-based and willing to be critical of their own side write. Now, where is the acknowledgement that there is plenty of hostility to science among progressives? Who objects to nuclear power (despite its potential to combat global warming)? Who rejects evidence of male/female brain differences? Who stands in the way of genetically modified organisms but also argues that children should be hormonally and surgically modified if they say that they are of a different gender from the sex listed on their birth certificate?

When progressives are ready to admit that they sometimes cherrypick the science they like and disregard the science that confounds their worldview, they will have taken a key first step toward the scientific method.

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Progressives ignore science in conflict with their worldview - Daily Mining Gazette