Expelled and Right-Wing Tactics

I just finished reading David Brock's The Republican Noise Machine and it got me thinking. In the book, Brock makes the claim, also put forward in the documentary Outfoxed, that the notion of "liberal bias" in the media is something that has in large part been put into the American consciousness by the right wing, and something that has been continually pushed even as the radical right has taken over the media in a number of ways. I'll refer to this political tactic - that of labeling something as biased when it's not - as the "bias tactic".

One of the immediate consequences of the populace's acceptance of the notion of "liberal bias" in the media - that is, of the success of the bias tactic with respect to media - is that it gives those with radical right wing beliefs an automatic trump card in debate. After all, any facts that you try to bring to light in debate that rely on the reports of the media are automatically under suspicion, since the media supposedly has a liberal bias. And any right wing debater can play this card whenever such reported facts threaten his position - "Well, sure the news supports what you're claiming" he can say, "the media is biased. We're not hearing both sides of the story". This, of course, can be an immediate debate stopper. If one has been sucked in by the idea that the media has a liberal bias, then, if one did not collect the facts oneself, it is impossible to properly justify the facts that you've presented on the basis of media reports. Not only that, but the success of the bias tactic also makes it possible for the right wing media sources like Fox to use anti-bias sounding slogans like "fair and balanced" to draw viewers to news that actually is biased.

It seems to me that Ben Stein's new bit of propaganda - Expelled - is a broadening of the application of the bias tactic. Charges of bias used to be thrown just at the people who report the facts. But now it's the people who collect the facts. This time they're after science.

Think about it for a moment. The whole premise of Expelled is that the scientific establishment is biased, that it kicks out people who do not agree with the established consensus. Now this is patently false, just as it was in the case of the media. There are many scientists who question the current paradigm and don't get kicked out. After all, if you have the evidence to back up your claim that the current paradigm is wrong, you're instantly famous! Here comes the Nobel Prize! But that won't stop the people behind Expelled any more than it stopped those who propagated the "liberal media" myth.

If application of bias tactic to science were to be successful the rewards for the right would be overwhelming - much better than the rewards reaped from duping viewers of Fox news. Just as Fox news managed to situate itself as an actual news organization rather than the propaganda machine that it is due to the success of the bias tactic with respect to the media, organizations doing pseudo-science that supported conservative ideas, even when they contradicted real science, would gain a much greater status. Global warming denialism, young earth creationism, and spurious claims about the ills of vaccines or the effects of abortion like the lie that abortion causes breast cancer would all instantly gain credit. After all, if the scientific establishment is biased, then we can't trust what they say, so we have to listen to both sides. "Fair and balanced" and "teach the controversy" are products of the same idea - the idea that the best way to get around facts that you don't like is to create your own "facts".

Now, I may be being a bit of a conspiracy theorist here. And either way it doesn't look like they're going to get away with it this time. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you, and just because they fail once doesn't mean they won't try it again.