BY MARY O’BRIEN
Ignorance is Strength
Complexity is just too baffling to manage.
L
et’s consider the sex hormone estradiol in light of a huge anti-science cam-
paign under way in our country.
Hormones such as estradiol bind to complementary
receptors in our bodies like keys in locks. Those receptors
then activate specific genes that accomplish major
things like making two sexes look different or coun-
tering the effects of stress.
Did an intelligent designer produce hormone
systems? When some people contemplate exquis-
itely complex systems like hormones and receptors,
they conclude that evolution could not have pro-
duced such linkages, roll their eyes upward to some
intelligent designer who must have engineered them,
and quit asking questions.
On the other hand, did evolution produce hormone systems?
When scientists like Joe Thornton at the UO contemplate complex systems, they roll
up their sleeves. Joe has spent years observing hormones and receptors in living or-
ganisms. He has run experiments. He has published his observations, so other scien-
tists can repeat the experiments to see if they get the same or contradictory results,
or can add to what he has learned. Joe’s questions never end.
Through this social process called science, Joe, his students, and other scientists
are piecing together the mechanisms by which hormones and receptors developed at
least 600 million years ago through natural, random processes (e.g., duplicating
genes or mutations) and then spread through natural selection. The organism in
which a receptor developed passed those genes on to succeeding generations, includ-
ing us.
A court trial is going on in Pennsylvania this week about the origin of complex sys-
tems like hormones and receptors. On one level, the trial is about whether the Dover
Area School District is violating separation of church and state by requiring school ad-
ministrators to read an intelligent design versus evolution statement to ninth grade
biology students.
At another level, this trial is the tip of an iceberg. Fundamentalists are disparaging
science because they fear it challenges God’s authority. Their attacks on science in
turn feed the political right’s attacks on uncomfortable scientific findings that chal-
lenge their authority.
Mandatiing the promotion of intelligent design against evolution has the effect of
reducing all science, not just evolutionary science, to a story no more worthy of trust
than any other story about the world. It pulls the ground out from under us, because
then evidence from that ground (or 600 million-year old ocean organisms, or any-
thing else in the observable world) is “just one theory.” If scientific evidence is just
one story among many, the stories coming from authoritative televangelists or war-
waging presidents are often far easier to understand and more seductive than compli-
cated, still-incomplete scientific evidence.
The right-wing’s attack on science is exemplified by President Bush’s flippant rejec-
tion of the Environmental Protection Agency’s report that much of global warming is
caused by emissions from automobiles, power plants, and oil refineries.
“I read the report put out by the bureaucracy,” Bush told reporters. He didn’t say
he read “the report put out by scientists.” He purposefully referred to scientists as
“the bureaucracy.”
T
his year the Bush administration changed National Forest planning regula-
tions to lift restraints on logging, mining, livestock ranching, roads and off-
road vehicles in our national forests. One of the changes eliminated the re-
quirement that national forest decisions must be “consistent with” the best available
science. The new regulations allow the Forest Service to merely “take into account”
(and then presumably ignore) best available science when permitting activities that
may harm native wildlife, plants, and ecosystems on the forest. The Forest Service
says they removed the requirement that decisions be consistent with science because
“formal science is just one source of information.” One might guess about this admin-
istration’s other sources of information.
These are not isolated examples. Science and scientists are being cut back or elim-
inated from the Endangered Species Act, all federal public lands management, ocean
planning, federal websites, commissions, research institutions, and budgets. Key gov-
ernment scientific reports are being altered by political appointees.
Once uncomfortable or inconvenient evidence from the observable world is absent
or swept away, other sources of information — for instance, fundamentalist religious
leaders; powerful industries, or end-time presidents — will have freer reign.
As the dictatorial government proclaimed in George Orwell’s novel, 1984,
“Ignorance is strength.”
That government had it right: Our ignorance is authoritarian leaders’ strength.
Mary O’Brien of Eugene has worked as a public interest scientist since 1981. She can be reached at mob@efn.org
4 OCTOBER 6, 2005
TO THE EDITOR
NOW WE KNOW
Like many long-time observers, I remem-
ber Jack Roberts when he was the firebrand
mouthpiece for corporate Oregon, the ex-
treme right-wing, anti-labor activist who, im-
mediately upon his unbelievable election to
Secretary of Labor, promised to eliminate the
office. Cooler heads prevailed, but not for
lack of trying on his part, and over two terms.
Lately, however, I’ve noticed in his letters
to the editor and guest editorials a decidedly
— one might even say “forced” — moderate
tone, so much so that I wondered to myself:
Huh; wonder what he’s planning on running
for. Well, now we know.
Given his past, not only should we not au-
tomatically assume that his current mild-
mannered, reasonable incarnation is anything
more than a smoke screen, but we should also
NEVER put him in the Supreme Court.
Unless of course one wants to see the rights
of the average working Oregonian erode fur-
ther.
Bill Smee
Springfield
UNFAIR TREATMENT
However fair and bal-
anced your recent cover
story (9/15) on Mayor
Kitty Piercy was (or was-
n’t), we thought your cover
art and caption (“Mayor
Maybe”) was very, very
unfair. Mayor Piercy has
reached out to councilors
and community members
in unprecedented ways,
and has shown herself with
the LTD, Sanipac, and
other issues to be a real,
hands-on problem solver.
She intends to make
Eugene a model for clean energy and create
a stronger jobs base. It won’t happen
overnight and it won’t happen without sup-
port from her base.
She represents the entire city — yes,
even people that we progressives may not
always agree with. Too often we in the pro-
gressive community let the perfect be the
enemy of the good, as we referee from
above the political fray. So we are writing to
cry “foul’” for a cover that we wish to pe-
nalize for “unnecessary roughness.” Mayor
Piercy deserves better than cheap shots.
Marc Baber, Joyce Berman,
Dan Carol, Joy Marshall
Eugene
I’VE BEEN SPRAYED
After being dosed with herbicide last
week (Ortho weed killer), poison drifted
into my open room. I was very upset and my
landlord and I went next door to see a man
spraying next to our property. He said he’d
stop there. I called the police and they
would do nothing. I called the city of
Eugene and got their complaint report form
to write up and hand in.
I also called NCAP (Northwest
Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides)
which provides a good article, “You’ve
Been Sprayed, What You Can Do” (2001),
and the on-line archives at www.persti-
cide.org have good advice.
They’ve been battling the
poison epidemic for
decades.
NCAP said they get
many calls for help from
people sprayed in the
Northwest. There are
many legal suits over
chemical farm spray drift,
poisoning lands, people
and animals. I’ll check
deeper about laws, poli-
cies and actions about
these poisons used so
widely in yards, lawns,
golf courses, roadsides, schools, farms and
forests.
Maybe nature will blast the U.S., slow or
stop us if “peak oil” crashes. A blessing and