Thom Workman explores the roots of the war on science

Anti-science has arisen from the corridors of the academy.

Thom Workman, a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of New Brunswick’s Fredericton campus, is also the author of If You’re in My Way, I’m Walking: The Assault on Working People since 1970 (2009) and other books.

Workman’s public talk on October 24 was hosted by the UNB’s SCI Club, a student group that provides an opportunity for university community members to present research and debate current scientific conclusions.

For the professor, the recent so-called “stop-woke” agenda “takes a run at progressive scholars and intellectuals.” However, the same intellectuals that are at the forefront of these attacks often use anti-science methods.

According to Workman, there are three broad sources of anti-science discourse.

Religious aspects of the movement harken back to the “Monkey Trial” (1925) that tried to ban the teaching of evolution in the Deep South of the United States. Biblical truths are more important than science and Workman cautioned the audience: “There are schools in New Brunswick that teach ‘creation science.’”

The corporate attack on science is that it creates “inconvenient truths” for industries such as extractive industries. Because of climate change, there have been repeated attacks on scientists, like Dr. Anthony Faucci, who make this known to the public or do this type of research. This assumes many forms including attacks on funding agencies, direct discrediting of scientists, and funding new research centres and/or studies.

For Workman, the most peculiar source of anti-science comes from within the Western academy. The secular nature of these largely arms-length institutions should provide them with some autonomy. They have some commitment to enlightenment rationalism and the academy’s foundation parallels the rise in science.

Still, the fossil fuel industry, for example, “has something to say about any efforts to cut into its profit margins.” “It’s capacity to do this is legion,” declared Workman. It is one of the primary pushers of the anti-science agenda, “when it’s convenient.” Workman calls this suppression of scientific research “illegal thuggery”, and considers these criticisms now entrenched.

Anti-science ideas have become a “wedge issue” in politics, building on the demagogues’ work making people “angry” and enflames situations. These ideas divide people on subjects that are not necessarily essential to life but are important, for example the debate about critical race theory in the United States or 2SPLGBTQIA+ issues in New Brunswick. This is a distraction technique, as governments erode other services like health or education.

Demagogue’s preoccupations “channel working class grievances into a way to get into power,” according to Workman. New Brunswick is not exempt of these types of tactics. As a strategy, it uses anti-science rhetoric.

Social media doesn’t help solve the problem but is not the cause of the problem, for Workman. The popular misconception that “anyone can do research,” contributes to this idea.

In U.S. politics, there is an agenda to “deregulate” everything, but there is push-back -even from industries- against this anti-science.

However, the main anti-science drive comes from arts and humanities faculties pushed by what calls “effete criticisms” emerging from the academy. The main reason it “catches fire” in the academy is that it is able to undercut sociological research that directly attacks socialism.

Workman says that if you “undercut the intellectual foundations,” the rest falls. There cannot just be “feel-good criticisms of capitalism,” there needs to be a more scientific analysis of capitalism. The academy exists so that this scientific criticism can exist.

However, the “dissing of science” in the arts and humanities faculties is systematic.  For example, Bruno Latour, a French social scientist, tried to establish the meaning of the “fact”; he was exploring the relationship between words and reality. There have been many clashes in the field of philosophy of science about reality, truth, and language that challenge the validity of the field of science. These criticisms congeal to form an anti-science sentiment in the academy.

These types of disputes try to hide the “one intellectual perspective that is critical of science,” according to Workman. In fact, the Western Academy is “here to make sure that the prevailing social relations are upheld.” It is anti-Marxist: “universities are dens of social rest,” according to Workman.

Universities often purport to say, “we’re radical and we’re progressive,” but in fact there was an embracing of neoliberal ideas. Workman cited the example of the treatment the Sodexho workers received in 2023 when the University of New Brunswick’s Fredericton campus changed food service providers. Despite a few angry outbursts upon the announcement, faculty members were largely absent from the debate.

Sophie M. Lavoie is a member of the NB Media Co-op’s editorial board.