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5.24.04 A Lesson from the Soviets

I'm still on my high horse about righteous ideology as the basis for a strategic playbook.

The Union of Concerned Scientists has raised a red flag about the Bush administration's disregard for information based on science.

Across a broad range of issues—from childhood lead poisoning and mercury emissions to climate change, reproductive health, and nuclear weapons—the administration is distorting and censoring scientific findings that contradict its policies; manipulating the underlying science to align results with predetermined political decisions; and undermining the independence of science advisory panels by subjecting panel nominees to political litmus tests that have little or no bearing on their expertise; nominating non-experts or underqualified individuals from outside the scientific mainstream or with industry ties; as well as disbanding science advisory committees altogether.

This organization has issued a report detailing how the administration has manipulated, distorted or suppressed scientific or expert information. It's a damning report -- that the Bushites have merely shrugged off.

The June issue of Wired isn't online yet, but it contains an excellent commentary by Bruce Sterling: "Suicide by Pseudoscience." What it is frightening is that this is exactly what happened in the Soviet Union. The phenomenon is known as Lysenkoism, after Stalin's top stooge in Soviet agricultural science.

This totalitarian huckster spent his whole career promising exciting results and bringing about only disaster. But the party never judged itself on results, so he always got a free pass.

Politics without objective, honest measurement of results is a deadly short circuit. It means living a life of sterile claptrap, lacquering over failure after intellectual failure with thickening layers of partisan abuse. Charatans like Lysenko can't clarify serious, grown-up problems that they themselves don't understand.

The implications are frightening. Anyone of a certain age knows what happened to the great Soviet 10-Year Plans.

In all of the hand-wringing about the outsourcing of American jobs, the one bright spot the pundits always point to is that America will never be able to outsource our ingenuity and innovation.

But wait a minute. Doesn't innovation depend on, uh, science? Don't new inventions and breakthrough ideas depend on, uh, accurate feedback from genuine tests? What technological innovation has ever come from an ideological playbook?

Jesus can't save this one.

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