The Denial of Science and the Politics of Fallacy
Necropolitics in times of global environmental change
I have the tradition of spending Sunday evenings watching old and badly acted movies. After wasting hours in front of my laptop screen I realized that virtually all movies about catastrophes — climate, pandemics, or kaijus like Godzilla —, start with a politician ignoring what a scientist has to say about the phenomenon.
Could it be, then, that the ruling class is characterized by a consistent lack of judgment? Or is it that denying scientific facts is part of a political project? Scientific skepticism shown by Hollywood politicians (even in their bad movies) is a mirror of our own society, where there is not only the denial of a specific body of knowledge or the figure of the scientist as such but a rejection of science as a political attitude.
It is no surprise to see figures like Trump denying climate change or pushing an “oil cowboy” vision even in the face of fracking warnings. Nor was it surprising (at least to me) that Bolsonaro questioned the effects of SARS-CoV-2 on health [1].
What is denying science, therefore? It is a rejection of the always unfinished, perfectible, and refutable search for truth. It is the denial of commitment to the defense of objectivity (as a regulatory ideal, not as a hegemonic explanation), reproducibility, and self-revisionism. This denial may be motivated by a quest for authority, a fear that changing one’s position will be interpreted as a lack of conviction, professionalism, and devotion to a project or idea [2].
Returning to Trump and Bolsonaro, they don’t seem to be far from Jack Nicholson as president in Mars Attacks or Perry King in The Day After Tomorrow. When one gives a glance to those government-heads, one detects that acceptance of truth as a temporary category, that can be modified with more evidence or a different explanatory system, jeopardizes discourses that require extremism, differentiation, racism, and xenophobia to function [3]. However, before entering into the rough terrain of politics, it would be worthwhile to ask ourselves whether these speeches are negationist or skeptical. I stop briefly at the latter since it may help us to differentiate between tyrants, pessimists, unbelievers, and critics.
Skepticism is a common position in empirical-positivist science. Thus, in this stance towards reality, the more extreme the assertion, the more evidence is demanded. This process was present in the decriminalization of abortion or climate change. It was not possible to demand the closure of industries and the creation of punitive policies until it was demonstrated that the carbon released by combustion was altering the functioning of the earth system [2]. This is based on the best evidence that current methodologies and theoretical bodies have been able to provide.
To a certain extent, to be skeptical is a necessary step for science and is even part of our culture. My grandfather would say:
‘I have my doubts because I am wise, not because I am a fool’.
Skepticism will then depend on how robust our explanations are and on our ability to communicate them. The latter part is often the Achilles’ heel of science, but that’s another day’s discussion.
Regarding negationism. It is the rejection of a scientific explanation, not on the precautionary principle, but rather in response to political ideals or to promote a doctrine. In this context, the concept of Necropolitics coined by the Cameroonian political scientist Achille Mbembe offers a platform for understanding how politics can influence scientific denialism, even if it means the death of people [3].
Necropolitics, which conflates the terms death (necro) and politics, involves the use of power to dictate how some people may live and must die to achieve a greater end. In other words, the concept describes how the state or a political leader manages risk, disease, destruction, or death to operate in favor of the economy, the maintenance of the status quo, or the resolution of conflicts (revolutions or an alien invasion).
Off the big screen, Bolsonaro’s measures against Covid-19 offer a critical example to understand the game between scientific denialism and necropolitics. Unlike his Hollywood counterparts, the Carioca president did not deny the existence of the coronavirus. Instead, he asserted — despite warnings from the scientific community — that many of the measures were exaggerated given an illness that he suffered from without major complications, as did a large part of Brazilians. Bolsonaro’s argument is based on the fact that quarantine threatens economic growth, reproduces unemployment, and interrupts production chains.
Lives for the economy. Does the end justify the means? In the speech given by Charles Chaplin in The Great Dictator[4], the character of the Barber reminds us that:
“As long as men die, liberty will never perish”
In the eyes of some, economic development is among the priorities along with sovereignty or liberty. A few will have to die then. Scientific denialism is used as a tool in discourses to enable the political division between those who deserve to breathe and those who will have to drown. This political division produces subjects whose life is disposable on the one hand. On the other hand, it translates into a vision that individualizes the visualization of the pandemic, that is, it obscures the relevance of collective decisions such as vaccination, in favor of strengthening “individual guarantees”, radicalization, and false identity [5].
Can science resolve this conflict? Timothy Caulfield [6] in an article for Nature — one of the most important journals in science — mentions that the scientific community has done a very good job in combating disinformation, pseudoscience, and science denialism. However, he stresses the lack of more effective communication to promote:
“trust in science and trustworthy science”
It is clear that science has a fundamental role in decision-making and can be crucial to solving global catastrophes, both in reality and on our screens. In addition to the urgent need to create better systems to communicate science, we must as a society promote critical, informed, discussed, reviewed, and, above all, collective visions to deal with emerging problems.
