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    Science’s Problem With Money, Media and Politics

    In a fascinating interview with The Guardian’s Andrew Anthony, media-friendly physicist Michio Kaku reveals more than he may have intended about both science and politics when he explains how political funding of the science of fundamental research takes place today. The champion of string theory complains about the difficulty scientists have as they set out to solve the biggest theoretical questions about the origin and structure of the universe due to the incomprehension of prominent politicians. He describes the fate of a plan 30 years ago to build an installation even “bigger than the Large Hadron Collider,” currently the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, which the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) launched in 2008.

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    Kaku recounts what he refers to as “a big shock in the 1990s when we physicists proposed the super collider.” The scientists saw it as a chance for the United States to take a commanding lead in the realm of experimental particle physics. With the Cold War over, astute politicians might have viewed it as an important element of what Joseph Nye calls “soft power,” an essential element of diplomacy and influence for any nation intending to exercise global leadership. The richest country in the history of the world, with no ideological or economic rival to challenge its hegemony, could certainly have afforded to support the advance of theoretical physics.

    The collider project was planned to be built in Dallas, Texas. All it required was funding by the federal government. Kaku explained how the scientists’ hopes were dashed: “What went wrong? On one of the last day[s] of hearings, a congressman asked: ‘Will we find God with your machine? If so I will vote for it.’ The poor physicist who had to answer that question didn’t know what to say.” Congress rejected the project, opening the opportunity for Europe to assume leadership in the exploration of particle physics.

    Kaku regrets that glorious period called the Cold War, when scientists had a simple solution to obtain funding for any project requiring extravagant spending. “During the 60s, all we had to do was go to Congress and say one word: Russia. Then Congress would say two words: How much? Those days are gone.”

    Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

    How much?

    A common question relating to the evaluation of quantity that our modern capitalist society tends to apply exclusively to amounts of money

    Contextual Note

    The usual answer to the question, “How much?” is now expressed as an amount of money. Money has also become the unique measure of quality. We live in a “how much” world. Everything has a price, which we need to know because price is the sole indicator of worth.

    Finding God is one of the rare activities that the congressman in question apparently deemed worthy of being thought of as “priceless.” After finding the Americas, Europeans eventually put the resources of an entire continent in their hands to exploit in any way they deemed profitable, from extracting gold and silver to founding the Federal Reserve and launching McDonald’s.

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    If today’s Americans financed a collider capable of finding God, that would eventually put the divinity in their hands. At the very least, it would help to validate the claim — repeated by American schoolchildren every day as they  recite the pledge of allegiance — that the US is “one nation under God.” In the event that the projected super collider did find the Godhead, Congress might once again revise the wording of the pledge, this time to one nation alongside God.

    Kaku sums up the lamentable plight of the entire scientific community. “We have to sing for our supper,” he says. And as the well-known proverb explains, “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” Kaku had a symphony in mind when his colleagues sought funding for the super collider in Dallas. Politicians will always prefer something with a lilt, like “Home on the Range.” Science is justified when it creates economic activity resulting in the production of both merchandise and jobs. It has no (monetary) value when it simply seeks to reveal the mysteries of the universe.

    Kaku imagines how scientists schooled in rhetoric could have responded to the congressman who was ready to fund a glimpse into the face of God: “We should have said, this is a Genesis machine that will create the conditions of the greatest invention of all time — the universe. Unfortunately, we said Higgs boson. And people said, $10bn for another subatomic particle?” No shopping mall in the 1990s — not even Amazon today — can foresee making a profit from selling Higgs bosons. However, if a boson could be presented as a non-fungible token (NFT), that might be worth considering.

    What does this tell us about the status of science in the post-industrial society? If scientists spend their time singing for their supper, much of the science that emerges may reflect the taste of those who call the tune. Even theoretical scientists may allow themselves to be distracted by the interests of those who pay for their research and their meals. 

    Kaku cites the important role played by politicians, who — as everyone knows — spend 50% of their time, if not more, fundraising, soliciting cash from people with serious economic interests that may be threatened by certain scientific truths. Add the two sources of pressure together and there may be cause for concern about the fate of scientific truth in our popular culture.

    But it doesn’t stop there. There is a third factor of distortion: the media. Scientific stories concerning everything from dietary advice to solving the climate crisis or understanding what preceded the Big Bang make for popular reading and viewing. Commercial media pursue anything that draws people’s attention, including crackpot scientific theories or sensationalistic interpretations of authentic scientific discoveries.

    A breaking story originating with the highly suspect Daily Mail but dutifully relayed by the supposedly “respectable” web portal and news aggregator MSN is a case in point. It informs its readers about former CIA Director James Woolsey’s “‘openness’ to the possibility of alien life.” The story is related to the promotion of Woolsey’s new book in which the head of an agency dedicated — as everyone should know by now — to lying makes the oh-so-credible claim that “Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK on the orders of the Kremlin.”

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    The Daily Mail, MSN and Woolsey himself have collaborated to offer this wonderful insight into the connection between politics and cosmology. It’s the kind of “science” the public loves to access. They have also collaborated to make sure that Russia is part of the story.

    In the interview with The Guardian, Kaku evokes both the problem related to popularizing science, with the risk of being misunderstood, and his own “openness” to the existence of alien life, which is based on his understanding of the scope and complexity of the universe and his knowledge of the laws of physics rather than the anecdotal reports of strange phenomena cited by Woolsey. Kaku knows that, as a public figure present in the media, his discourse consists of playing a delicate game in an economic and political system whose rules he understands, but which he must not violate.

    Historical Note

    All this highlights the fact that US political culture has created a curious relationship in its dominant ideology between science, God and a nation deemed “exceptional.” It is a relationship that, as Michio Kaku reminds us, somehow depended on the perception of a threat called Russia to bring things comfortably together. He evokes the magical period where the universally imposed paranoia of communist Russia (the Soviet Union) made it possible for all Americans to agree on sharing a common religion defined in opposition to Marxist atheism. All that was required was to feel that we were all “under God.” This idea suggested to school children reciting the pledge that the American God would look after all of them.

    The problem with this new theology is that the idea of God in his heaven hovering over the territory of the United States depended for its coherence on the existence in people’s minds of a hell represented by Russia. With the end of the Cold War in 1991, Russia was no longer the enemy. Liberated from communism, it had become a laboratory for American free market ideology. That was until Satan reappeared in the person of Vladimir Putin and Russiagate emerged to restore order.

    *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    The Latest Version of Russiagate

    The New York Times keeps slogging away at a four-year-old theme that it refuses to allow to die a natural death. Should we call it Russiagate 2.0 or 3.0 or 7.0? Whatever we call it, Russiagate has made its way back into The NYT’s headlines. Perhaps we should adopt the same convention as the health authorities who called the disease caused by the novel coronavirus COVID-19 because it first appeared in 2019. So, this could be Russiagate-20, although the number of minor versions that have appeared since the beginning of the year might make it Russiagate-20.3.

    The latest article’s title is “Russian Intelligence Agencies Push Disinformation on Pandemic,” followed by the subtitle, “Declassified U.S. intelligence accuses Moscow of pushing propaganda through alternative websites as Russia refines techniques used in 2016.”

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    The logic of the crime perpetrated by the recidivist known as Russia is well-known. The scenario is as familiar as any Hollywood remake. The authors of the article, Julian E. Barnes and David E. Sanger, want to make sure that the new variation on a story about Russian interference with American democracy does not suffer from the criticism leveled at anticlimactic events such as the Mueller report. Some will remember that in August 2019, The Times’ executive editor, Dean Baquet, embarrassingly admitted that the paper was “a little flat-footed” when it doggedly followed an editorial line that consisted of hyping Russiagate on the pretext that it looked “a certain way for two years.” It was the look that kept the story alive even though the narrative contained no substance.

    To make their point about the seriousness of this story, Barnes and Sanger take the trouble to cite, though not to name, “outside experts” who can confirm its reality. “The fake social media accounts and bots used by the Internet Research Agency and other Russia-backed groups to amplify false articles have proved relatively easy to stamp out,” The Times reports. “But it is far more difficult to stop the dissemination of such articles that appear on websites that seem legitimate, according to outside experts.”

    Here is today’s 3D definition:

    Dissemination:

    A synonym for publication that subtly suggests something underhanded, implying that the content of what is being broadcast consists of lies or disinformation

    Contextual Note

    What all these stories boil down to is a pair of simple facts with which readers should now be familiar. The first is the revelation that Russians and, more particularly, Russian intelligence agencies lie, just in case readers weren’t aware of that. The second is that the Russians are clever enough to get at least some of their lies published on the internet.

    For these well-known and oft-repeated “truths” to become newsworthy, the reader must believe something exceptional has occurred, following the man-bites-dog principle. The exceptional fact The Times wants its readers to understand is that, unlike the stories that looked “a certain way” for two years with reference to the 2016 US presidential election, this one is no remake. It is undeniably news because it is about the COVID-19 pandemic, which only became an issue this year.

    Embed from Getty Images

    To the discerning reader, the message is exactly the same as the idea behind the “flat-footed” campaign Baquet mentioned. But the content has changed. In both cases, processing the message requires that readers accept the implicit premise that Russians have a monopoly on lying or, alternatively, that that’s the only thing Russians know how to do. They are the only people on earth who invest in inventing contestable takes on the news and getting their lies published on the internet. There can be no legitimate reason to suspect any other nation, especially the United States, of telling lies about other nations and even managing to get them published on the web. How does The Times know that? Because its anonymous sources hailing from the very reliable US intelligence agencies have dutifully provided it with the data.

    If the story had focused only on COVID-19, it probably would not have justified a full-length article. Understanding this, the journalists sought evidence of Russian interference on “a variety of topics,” including a major one: NATO. “The government’s accusations came as Mandiant Threat Intelligence, part of the FireEye cybersecurity firm, reported that it had detected a parallel influence campaign in Eastern Europe intended to discredit the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,” Barnes and Sanger write.

    How extraordinary, Times readers must be thinking, that Russia might be trying to discredit NATO. That really is news, at least for anyone who has failed to pay attention to everything that has happened in Eastern Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991. Do readers of The New York Times belong to that category of the deeply (or simply willfully) ignorant readers of the news? The Times has, after all, published a few articles at least since 1994 alluding to what historians now understand was a persistent act of betrayal by Western powers of the promises made to Russian leaders Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin not to expand NATO… before aggressively doing the contrary over decades.

    In an article in The Nation from 2018, the distinguished Russia expert Stephen Cohen highlighted the role of Western media — and The New York Times, in particular — in failing (or refusing) to cover that ongoing drama. It should surprise no one that even today, The Times not only neglects that vital bit of context, but it also uses its feigned ignorance to express its shock at the idea that the Russians might feel impelled to discredit NATO in Eastern Europe. This is not a case of Russian meddling in US elections. It’s an attempt to limit the damage the Russian government feels has resulted from Western perfidy.

    The latest Times article doesn’t stop there. It offers us this insight: “While the Mandiant report did not specifically name Russia and its intelligence agencies, it noted that the campaign was ‘aligned with Russian security interests’ in an effort to undermine NATO activities.” In other words, the reporters admit there is no direct evidence of Russian involvement. They simply expect Times readers to conclude that because there appears to be an “alignment,” Russia is to blame. This is a perfect encapsulation of everything that took place around Russiagate. Alignment is proof of collusion.

    Historical note

    During the Cold War, Americans were thrilled to find their vocabulary enriched when the word “propaganda,” derived from Latin, was imported from their enemy, the Soviet Union. The term literally means “what is to be propagated.” The Soviets used it as the official term to describe their communications operations modeled on the same logic as the “voice of America.” In both cases, it was all about teaching third parties why their system was better than their opponent’s.

    Americans sneered at the dastardly evil concept of propaganda. They clearly preferred the idea of PR (public relations). This was about the time that Vance Packard’s best-seller, “The Hidden Persuaders,” revealed how — as The New Yorker described it at the time — “manufacturers, fundraisers and politicians are attempting to turn the American mind into a kind of catatonic dough that will buy, give or vote at their command.”

    The monumental effort of Madison Avenue stepping in to dominate a rapidly expanding economy conveniently distracted most people’s attention from the magnificent work the CIA was undertaking across the globe in the scientific (or pseudo-scientific) dissemination of misinformation. The more Americans suspected advertising was lying to them, the less concerned they were by the skullduggery of the military-industrial complex and its intelligence agencies. It clearly went well under their radar as they focused on consumer pleasures.

    That gave the US a double advantage over the Soviet Union. It had two powerful industries working in parallel to feed a regular diet of lies to the American people, whereas the Soviet Union had only the government to supply them with glaringly obvious lies. The Russians were already beginning to receive its messages with growing skepticism. The US enjoyed another advantage to the extent that the fun of advertising and the pleasures of the consumer society took the sting out of their growing awareness that they too were being constantly lied to.

    Can there be any doubt today that The New York Times is committed to propaganda? Like most of the media sympathetic to the Democratic Party, it not only accepts uncritically the “assessments” of the intelligence community, but it also amplifies its messages. It even extrapolates to draw conclusions they dare not affirm.

    If the notion of dissemination has a negative connotation linked to the idea of propaganda, The New York Times is a master disseminator.

    *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Click here to read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More