Review: Science Under Siege
Review of Science Under Siege: How to Fight the Five Most Powerful Forces That Threaten Our World by Michael Mann and Peter Hotez
This book was basically designed to trigger me, and it succeeded - though not in the way the science deniers it catalogues would hope.
Having spent time deep in conspiracy theory research during 2020, much of the territory Mann and Hotez cover felt like returning to a crime scene I’d already processed. The bodies are still there; more keep appearing; and the perpetrators are still walking free.
Science Under Siege identifies five drivers of what the authors call the “war on science” - and they’ve got a thing for alliteration: Plutocrats funding disinformation, Petrostates weaponizing it (Russia gets deservedly extensive coverage), Professionals lending pseudo-intellectual cover, Propagandists amplifying the message, and a Press that’s either complicit or captured.
As is often the case with American dysfunction, the US offers one of the starkest recent versions of many of these forces, but the story unfortunately rhymes everywhere.
The diagnosis is compelling and thoroughly documented. The authors nail the fundamental asymmetry of the information war: “The basic idea is to throw so much mud on the wall that the other side (the scientists) spend all their time trying to scrape it off. A losing battle.” They’re equally sharp on why scientists shouldn’t debate charlatans: “Simply getting up on the same stage with a science denier signals to the audience that the denialist viewpoint is a credible one. You’ve lost the debate before it started.”
This point deserves emphasis. Professional scientists do not typically “debate” science - they publish papers, submit to peer review, and let evidence accumulate. The demand for public debates is itself a bad-faith tactic, the intellectual equivalent of challenging someone to a knife fight and showing up with a machine gun loaded with Gish Gallop ammunition.
I find all aspects of this profoundly infuriating and sad.
Let’s take media for example; “false balance” and performative neutrality are rife; the pathological need to present “both sides” on equal footing even when one side is demonstrably wrong has become a cancer in mainstream journalism. The fourth estate, Mann and Hotez argue, “is now mortally threatened,” with plutocrats purchasing media outlets to remove the final check on their power.
Murdoch, Australia’s dubious gift to humanity, and his empire get extensive and justified coverage.
I find few things more infuriating than so much of the media neglecting the very elements of journalism they were founded on. Much like with accurate information vs disinformation, there are still good media outlets and actors out there, but the zone is being flooded with…shit.
So anyway, there’s a lot of accurate information in the book about how we got here. None of it is pretty.
The subtitle promises to show how we can fight these forces, and I have to say it doesn’t quite meet that promise.
The authors offer sensible recommendations: inoculate people against misinformation before they encounter it, replace sticky myths with stickier truths, communicate science more effectively, pressure plutocrats, mend the media.
All well and good. The problem is that enacting them requires functional democratic institutions, and the book itself documents how thoroughly those institutions have been captured.
They also spell out something we’re all increasingly and painfully aware of:
The United States is now itself, for the time being, a petrostate and a bad actor in this space. It is therefore incumbent upon other Democratic nations such as the European Union, United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan to band together... to take whatever punitive actions are necessary against bad state actors—the United States sadly now included—to rein them in.
I don’t disagree with this. I like this plan. I just don’t like its chances of succeeding when all three branches of American government are aligned against science, and when the authors themselves acknowledge their solutions are “mostly all pipe dreams for now”.
A minor quibble: the authors maintain that limiting warming to +1.5°C remains achievable. I posit it’s not. NASA says 2024 was +1.47°C above the pre-industrial baseline; WMO says +1.55°C; NOAA says +1.46°C.
Even if we take a more recent baseline, we get to +1.28°C or so – then when we acknowledge the current emissions trajectories, the physics of building stuff, and the climate hysteresis, there is no realistic future in which we will limit the warming to +1.5°C. Acknowledging this reality doesn’t mean abandoning mitigation - it means being honest about where we actually are.
My major personal pet peeve that kept surfacing throughout: the idiots railing against science rely on it daily for their very lives. Your smartphone, your medicine, your food safety, your weather forecasts, the private jets you fly in - all products of the scientific method these people now distrust.
The cognitive dissonance would be fascinating if it weren’t so dangerous. I don’t know how they live with it.
Overall, Science Under Siege is important, well-researched, and deeply depressing reading. It’s a comprehensive catalogue of how we got here and who’s responsible. What it cannot quite provide - through no fault of the authors - is a convincing path out when the arsonists are running the fire department.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Dog-ear index: 6.7
Who is it for: People who want to understand the coordinated forces arrayed against scientific truth; those who still use “both sides” unironically; and people who need ammunition for arguments with relatives who’ve fallen down various rabbit holes - though fair warning, the book will also explain why those arguments probably won’t work.
[reminder: I highlight important parts of the books I read, and dog-ear the really important pages. The dog-ear index is simply the average number of dog-eared pages per 100 pages]
Product link for reference only; please support your local bookstore where possible: https://www.amazon.com.au/Science-Under-Siege-powerful-threaten/dp/1761381660/