Authors of ‘Science Under Siege’ warn of concerted effort to discredit science

Geoff Bennett:

From its embrace of dubious research about autism, its skepticism over vaccines, and its wholesale rejection of the consensus about climate change, the Trump administration continues to raise alarm within the scientific community.

Our William Brangham spoke with two prominent researchers about their new book chronicling what they argue is a concerted war on science.

William Brangham:

In their new book, our guests argue that we're living through a — quote — "anti-science superstorm," where a concerted group of global actors, billionaires, leaders of nation-states, and credentialed experts work to confuse and mislead the public about basic scientific principles, particularly around the twin crises of climate change and pandemic threats.

Their book is called "Science Under Siege," and its authors are familiar to "News Hour" viewers. Dr. Pete Hotez is the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and professor of virology and microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine. And Michael Mann is presidential distinguished professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Gentlemen, so nice to have you both here in person at the "News Hour."

I want to ask you both. In this book, you detail this, that, I mean, as far back as Galileo, there have been attacks on scientists and scientific understanding. Both of you, even with that knowledge, describe how you came into these, your respective fields, and still were in some way shocked at the level of vitriol directed against you.

And I wonder if you could just tell me a little bit about when you first recognized that that was coming at you.

Dr. Michael E. Mann, Co-Author, "Science Under Siege: How to Fight the Five Most Powerful Forces that Threaten Our World": Yes, thanks, William. It's great to be with you.

And it goes back 2.5 decades for me. Back in the late 1990s, my co-authors and I published the now well-known hockey stick curve that demonstrated how unprecedented the warming of the past century is, and it implicated human-caused climate change for the increase in the concentration of carbon pollution due to fossil fuel burning.

That was a threat to some powerful vested interests. And so they focused a whole lot of firepower on me to try to discredit me, to intimidate me, to get me fired from my job. And I will tell you, it was sort of like PTSD for me five years ago, when public health scientists like Peter and Tony Fauci found themselves under attack in precisely the same way, the same tactics, and even some of the same players.

And that's where Peter and I sort of started to interact. We became friends. Ultimately, that led to this collaboration.

William Brangham:

Do you remember the first time you got a glimpse of this?

Dr. Peter Hotez, Co-Author, "Science Under Siege: How to Fight the Five Most Powerful Forces that Threaten Our World": Yes, I mean — I did my M.D. and Ph.D. combined in the 1980s, worked on a hookworm vaccine for my M.D. Ph.D. Thesis, which now 40 years later is showing high levels of protection.

That's what I wanted to do, make low-cost vaccines for the world in the laboratories, as a laboratory investigator, pediatric scientist. And then I met my wife, Ann, in medical school and graduate school. Now we have four kids, including Rachel, who has autism and intellectual disabilities.

And, if you remember, that was the first assertion that — false claims that vaccines cause autism. And I saw it was nonsense. And I said something, ultimately wrote a book about it. And that made me public enemy number one or two with anti-vaccine groups.

William Brangham:

The bulk of your book points fingers very explicitly at these different actors. You lump them in. You call them the different P's here, plutocrats, petro-states, propagandists and the press.

And you argue and demonstrate how they are aligned against very basic principles of science, that carbon pollution is warming the planet to a dangerous degree, that vaccines can and have saved millions of lives.

Collectively, though, what do all of those different actors have in common?

Dr. Michael E. Mann:

Yes, well, there's an underlying agenda, whether it's the plutocrats who fund dark money organizations that have been attacking climate science that have actually been behind the assault on vaccines, which is interesting, as well as petro-states, Russia and Saudi Arabia, in particular.

They don't want a clean energy transition, and they have done everything they can to block any global green energy transition. The United States right now, unfortunately, has to be classified under the current administration as a petro-state as well. Its policies on energy and the environment are fundamentally driven by fossil fuel interests as well.

And then there's the conservative media, Rupert Murdoch's media empire, FOX News, Wall Street Journal, that have promoted a lot of the anti-science in both of these areas, but also some of the legacy media outlets, Washington Post, New York Times, that often fall victim to sort of false framing, what we call performative neutrality, where anti-science will be placed on an equal footing with the consensus of the world scientists on the op-ed pages of these papers.

Dr. Peter Hotez:

I mean, I think a point of the book is too often we call it misinformation or infodemic, like it's random junk out there on the Internet. It's not. It's organized, it's deliberate, it's politically motivated, and it's financially motivated.

So, on the vaccine side and the biomedical sciences, in addition to all the things Michael just said, you also have a very aggressive health wellness influencer industry. The problem is, people like us are bad for business, because we say, wait a minute, ivermectin doesn't do anything for COVID and neither does hydroxychloroquine and here's why you should get vaccinated.

And for that business model, for their business model to be successful, you have got to attack vaccines and you have to attack people like Michael and myself and portray us as cartoon villains or public enemies.

William Brangham:

The subtitle of your book is How to Fight the Five Most Powerful Forces that Threaten Our World."

One of the things that you argue is that you all, the members of the scientific community, need to speak out more overtly. And you in this book name names and point fingers very overtly. Do you worry, though, that that only further exacerbates the sense that people think, oh, science is partisan, that you guys have an axe to grind?

Dr. Michael E. Mann:

You know, back in the late 1990s, I loved crunching numbers, looking for patterns in data, writing computer code to solve problems.

I would have been very happy if they had just left me alone, but they didn't because the hockey stick did become this symbol of the climate crisis. They came after it and they came after me. As I like to say, I didn't come to politics. Politics came to me. And so we do think scientists need to step up to the table.

And it doesn't mean getting into political debates and name-calling, but it does mean demanding that any sort of policy-based discussions be premised on an objective and accurate understanding of what the science actually has to say. And, unfortunately, just having that position, just being an advocate for objective science now makes you a public enemy in the climate sphere or in the public health arena.

Dr. Peter Hotez:

I mean, look, I mean, we made a low-cost COVID vaccine, a recombinant protein COVID vaccine that reached 100 million people in India and Indonesia.

But as wonderful as that accomplishment was, I now realize it's not sufficient. It's necessary, but not sufficient, because unless we do something for this very aggressive anti-vaccine movement that is basically tearing the whole infrastructure for vaccinating the world's children down, that's its goal, we're not going to be successful. So, really driven to it by necessity.

William Brangham:

The book is "Science Under Siege."

Peter Hotez, Michael Mann, so great to see you. Thank you.

Dr. Michael E. Mann:

Thank you.

Dr. Peter Hotez:

Thank you. Appreciate it.