Ron Bailey has a rational discussion of them, and a well-deserved slap at scientists who fancy themselves policy makers:

...a word of unsolicited advice to scientists who want to play in the public policy arena. Facts by themselves do not immediately entail the adoption of particular policies. Many of the scientific "facts" cited by activists arise from contested epidemiological data and controversial computer models. For example, if humanity is significantly warming the planet, it is entirely possible that the best policy is to encourage rapid technological progress and economic growth so that any problems caused by such warming can be dealt with more effectively and fairly in the future. And how does one make the trade-off between possibly harming a few species of birds through the use of DDT, and using the insecticide to prevent the deaths of millions of people each year from malaria? These are political decisions. Suggestive scientific data certainly help guide our decisions, but they do not mandate any particular policies—not even those championed by the most brilliant researchers.

Using DDT to prevent malaria involves spraying relatively small amounts of that chemical on the walls of dwellings (where it persists for a long time, killing mosquitos as they alight), not spraying large amounts into the environment. This shouldn't have any significant effect on birds.

Well, as one of the band (scientists) but also one of the heretics (a solid W voter), I'm going to weigh in on this.

First of all, I think Mr. Bailey's criticism is a little undeserved with respect to the Nobel laureate letter. So far as I could tell, the scientists on that letter said nowhere that they believed they were speaking as experts or a scientific question. I think they would all agree they were offering a political opinion and speaking primarily as citizens who happen to be scientists.

And they should not be criticized for doing so. Their situation is no different than doctors or lawyers speaking about tort reform, nurses talking about patient-staff ratio regulations, aerospace engineers talking about space policy, auto workers talking about CAFE standards, teachers debating the NCLB act, firemen debating whether local property taxes should rise to fund better police and fire protection, and journalists talking about whether bloggers should be regulated by the FCC.

We all do this. Each of us, by virtue of his career, has a unique perspective on our collective political decisions, and we offer it up -- usually vociferously. I recall flying into Des Moines for a conference during the primary season and seeing a big poster put up by a nurse's union, showing a nurse in uniform with the caption: Here for the primary? You need to speak to me about health care. There is no material difference between that poster and this letter. They are both healthy expressions of differentially informed opinion in the rambunctious marketplace of ideas that is democracy.

In short, we all use our professional background to "play in the public policy arena," and it is our right to do so as citizens. It would be absurd to suggest that scientists alone ought to restrict themselves to collecting the data and offer no opinions about what to do with it.

Now, to be sure, once a scientist issues a political opinion he is no longer entitled to the special regard given an expert speaking in his area of competence. He must accept criticism from all comers, and must respond with reasoned argument, and not some dismissive huff about being the only one entitled to judge. But I know of no competent scientist who would fail to accept that.

Ultimately, Mr. Bailey's point is nevertheless well-taken: scientists have no magic perspective on political decisions. They can be exceedingly expert at discerning the facts, but what we do about the facts is political, not scientific, and the scientist has no special route to the correct answer.

Yet also ultimately I think Mr. Bailey chose the wrong target for his advice. It would be better given to non-scientists than scientists. Because the problem, I suggest, is not scientists posing as experts beyond their competence so much as citizens declining to make the tough decisions. We as Americans have, indeed, gone soft compared to our grandfathers. We look to experts and Presidents to, between them, solve any number of knotty problems -- global warming, yes, but also the looming Social Security horror, terrorism, economic malaise, race relations, how to combine security of employment with the freedom to sell your labor as you please, and on and on.

We dump these problems in their laps, expect miracles, and shoot them impatiently down like dogs when they don't produce almost instantly. I can't tell you how sick I got of hearing Democrats and even Republicans this last election cycle accusing each other of failing to do enough to help some large group of ordinary citizens (the elderly, the young, the middle class, blah blah blah), who by God to my eye sure seem collectively perfectly capable of helping their own damn selves.

That is, there's this very troubling streak of infantilism running through the modern electoral ethos. We keep looking to someone else to solve the quotidian problems of our lives, or at least provide us with perfect information ("intelligence") about those hideously complex topics so that all our decisions become easy. We hide behind the decisions of others, so that the only kind of quaterbacking we do is on Monday morning.

So I view much of this newfangled carping about those damn irresponsible scientists or those damn lying politicians or those damn sneaky lawyers or those damn arrogant doctors as a troubling reflection on our own tendency to immaturity. We need to grow up, I think, and realize that we are each, individually, the captain of our own ship. We can ask for advice from others, but we must take ownership of the decisions and solutions to almost all of our problems.

Now, secondly, Mr. Bailey entirely misses the cultural disconnect between science and politics. In science you are trained to clearly delineate the problem even if -- especially if -- the answer is unknown. Whereas in politics, as we just saw in this election, stating a problem loudly without the shred of an idea about its solution is a way to lose by megachads.

Not unreasonably so, in my opinion. We have little need for political leaders who can diagnose problems accurately. If a problem is so subtle it needs keen insight merely to diagnose, then ipso facto it will be impossible to form a democratic consensus around its solution.

That is, the more important role a politician serves is to gather a consensus about which of several plausible solutions to a widely-recognized problem we the citizens wish to employ. From this point of view, it is simple folly to even acknowledge the existence of a problem until there are some solutions to choose from floating around.

This cultural disconnect makes scientists and politicians misunderstand each other.

For example, a scientist may say: "It's a fact that man-made CO2 is changing the environment and we should do something about that." To another scientist, the first statement is clearly a scientific statement, but the latter is a political statement. Another scientist who does not share the same political persuasion -- which is rare, I grant you, academia being what it is -- will have no trouble accepting the first statement and rejecting the second, even though that leaves the problem as accepted fact but the solution nowhere in sight.

By contrast a politician will find it much harder to reject half the statements. He will feel he must either accept both the existence of the problem and the proposed solution, or else deny the existence of the problem and its proposed solution altogether. In the political world, problems must not be unaccompanied by solutions.

This greatly frustrates the scientist, who does not realize the politician is not so much denying the reality of a problem so much as denying its political reality. (Something like: "Privately I agree with you, but publically I cannot.")

So the two groups have a hard time understanding each other.

The problem is compounded by the fact to which I alluded above, which is that intellectuals are powerfully indoctrinated into the catechism of the Left during their sweep through college and graduate school. It takes a tough mind to throw off the mythology and think for your self. Most scientists don't have the time or energy to do it.

Of course, if they're entrepreneurally inclined and form new companies to sell products, then they do re-educate themselves. It is a shame the reverse experience does not seem to exist for politicians, that is, there is no role they play that teaches them what it's like when the realities of your work simply are, and are not a matter of consensus perception which can be voted up or down.

Finally, Mr. Bailey reveals he is himself closer to the politician than the scientist by putting scare quotes around "fact" when he refers to computer models of global warming. No doubt he's aware that the uncertainty associated with any such model is completely inadequate to deny the basic idea (CO2 concentration is going up and the climate is warming in response). But he doesn't want to acknowledge the problem as fact until he has a response he likes (one that doesn't rely on some massive Stalinist solution like Kyoto). He probes at one by making the (sensible) suggestion that perhaps global warming is to be embraced, not fought, or at least adapted to flexibly.

Which brings a final, related topic: we've seen in this election cycle that the left has just got to connect to people who think of character and morals as class A priorities in public life. The one charge that really sticks to the left, fairly or not (and it is mostly not fair) is that they are anything-goes cowardly Derrida degenerates who wouldn't recognize a moral principle if it bit them (or blew them to bits in a Jerusalem cafe).

However, similarly, the right has got to connect with more scientists. Because the one charge that tends to stick to the right, also unfairly, is that they are short-sighted intellectually rigid Neanderthals who wouldn't recognize a novel idea if it bit them (or drowned them in a permanently rising ocean).

The left must jettison its Fahrenheit 9/11 wackos and find its own persuasive moral perspective. Sometimes war is the answer, ugly as it may be, because being as pain-free as possible is not a plausible moral compass. But tell us, you on the left, how war when we must fight it can be more moral, more just, more humane?

Similarly, the right must jettison its Creation Science wackos and find its own persuasive objectivist perspective. Global climate change is real. Get over it. But tell us, you on the right, your ideas for coping with that reality in a way that is more flexible, market-oriented, and American.

Rand, no one had said a word here, so I thought I'd cut loose. If you have policies on comment lengths -- which obviously I'll have wildly exceeded, ha ha -- I'll of course follow 'em in future.

They're good comments, Carl, and I have no explicit policy about comment length, other than that I frown (often severely, to the point of banning repeat offenders) on long quotes from some other source that could be provided simply with a link instead. But long original and thoughtful comments are always welcome (just don't attempt to publish a book here :-).

Great comments, Carl. I'm currently in the process of pondering them deeply.

Carl, that was very eloquent and thought-provoking. I agree with you that the concept of personal responsibility is now foreign to most Americans. Our culture is now characterized by a "who-can-I-blame" mentality where it's always somebody else's fault, be it the government, lawyers, doctors, parents, etc. It's the easy way out, where bad decisions are not learned from because they are not analyzed with the intent of never making them again.

Second, I completely agree with you about the indoctrination of the left in our higher education. My girlfriend is currently going to grad school at an Ivy league university and I've given up trying to work against some of their misconceptions about how the world works. While I don't consider myself conservative, I do think that the left has a tendency to assign blame no matter the choice. If we do go into Iraq, we get shit we've been getting, if we don't go, then you get shit for not helping those poor oppressed people throw off the yoke of a brutal dictator. THEY ALWAYS WANT IT BOTH WAYS! TINSTAAFL, people!! You can't have high quality, modern health care available to all ... without paying for it! They have no concept of history, of cause-and-effect. They assign monolithic motives and see conspiracies everywhere.

Sorry, I got a little out of hand there. I could write a similar rant about the right as well. Carl, I think that if a centrist party formed that endeavored to keep out the wackos from both sides it would thouroughly dominate American politics. The 9/11 wackos and the C.S. wackos are basically why I will never identify myself as either a Democrat or a Republican.

Thank you all for the kind comments.

Greg, you're the wave of the future, the voter as political entrepreneur. Your decision bespeaks the decline of the feudal spirit in politics, where the individual voice of each man was lost in the massed voice of a political party.

I think you should not hope for a political party to join. Any such animal could not represent your interests perfectly, and if you felt inclined to join it this would be a bad sign, a sign that you felt your individual voice had diminishing effect, and you could only make your opinions influential by pledging your support to a feudal "lord" (the party and its leaders).

It's better for the Republic, I think, if you preserve your independence, and throw your support, election by election, behind the candidate that best represents you, regardless of his or her party. Or if you join and leave temporary political groupings as quickly as you think they do, and no longer, represent your interests.

Things like your decision, or the new freewheeling world of blogs, help bring the efficiencies of the free market to the world of American political ideas and political decisions. Good information is disseminated faster, bad information is discredited earlier, and people are more often able to make free and informed political decisions that represent their own best interests. Call it Open Source Government, or politics Linux style. It can only be good for our country.

Of course, in any feudal-to-market transition some folks lose their importance -- the high priests that advise the manorial lord, the court chamberlains who channel (and filter) the voices of the peasants to the ears of the laird. They will resist the change strenuously.

Hmmmm. Is this to be seen in the recent behaviour of certain actors on our national stage?

Ahh! I only said that I thought a centrist party would dominate politics, not that I would necessarily join it! I agree with you that mindlessly supporting the candidate of your party is pretty ridiculous. The problem I have is that I don't mindlessly follow the rhetoric of either party, so I agree and disagree with both parties depending on my own thoughts on a specific issue. It makes it difficult to want to vote! I think that there is something wrong with our political process that tends to discourage the sane from wanting to run for president. When are we going to get presidents that are teachers and engineers and not lawyers?

It is also interesting that the founding fathers initially hoped to prevent the formation of political parties. They really knew what they were talking about, didn't they? I need to read much more about them, as somebody recently mentioned (here, I think) that many of them were Deists, and I identified with the explanation of what that viewpoint represents.

Sorry, I think I rambled a little. Too tired, time for bed!