A RATIONAL IMPERATIVE: THE LIGHT OF REASON MUST ILLUMINATE REALITY AND DISPEL RESURGENT SHADOWS OF THE DARK AGES

Recent reputable polls document widespread public mistrust of science, conspicuously regarding -- but by no means limited to -- the realities of anthropogenic global warming and evolution by natural selection. Because mitigation of climate change poses an immense and immediate challenge to humanity, and the understanding of evolution is fundamental to biological and medical science, these egregious examples of citizen disdain for evidence-based knowledge and the methods of science are problematic in the extreme. They compel immediate attention and remediation and provide a principal rationale for this session addressing myths and misrepresentations.

An informed, rational, and responsible citizenry is essential to the survival of democracy. This foundation of a free society is being undermined by a pervasive propaganda campaign to discredit scholarship and reason and to elevate uninformed opinion and partisan parroting to a level of equal validity and credibility in public discourse. When public policy is substantially influenced by or indeed predicated upon myth, suspicion, denial, and demagoguery, then we are in danger of travelling backward in time from the age of reason into the shadowy abyss of the intellectual dark ages. And those of us who stand aloof eschewing advocacy to view professional responsibility only through the narrow prism of our own research are enablers of and responsible for this deplorable retrogression of rationality that can -- as history abundantly demonstrates -- lead to the decline and collapse of civilizations.

The most effective strategy is direct and clear presentation of science: observations and measurements and their rational interpretation in the context of Nature. An important second step is pulling aside the wizard’s curtain to expose the myths, misrepresentations, and motives of agenda-driven deniers and contrarians. But the paramount imperative is that we be advocates of reason. Not just geoscientists or scientists or educators or scholars, but all who recognize and respect the unique humanizing value of objective intellectual enterprise and its communication. Knowledge is indeed power. It is what distinguishes our species and endows us with the stewardship of planet Earth.