Anti-science is a weapon of mass destruction

I recently happened to come across an old (8 years) YouTube video of Australian senator Pauline Hanson questioning Rear Admiral Greg Sammut on their plan to acquire Shortfin Barracuda Block 1A submarines from France (a plan since replaced). Her line of questioning presumed that the decision had been made haphazardly with little regard for — well, anything. It also revealed that she had not the slightest amount of general common knowledge about mechanical things. Poor Adm. Sammut showed extraordinary patience as he constantly had to explain the most basic facts about submarines to her. It was like teaching calculus to a goldfish.

The money quote — which prompted the YouTube video to be posted — was when she asked him in an accusatory tone “Is it true that pump-jet submarines can only stay underwater for 20 minutes?”

On the one hand, my reaction is that hey, lots of people don’t know stuff like that; there’s no reason they should. I don’t need my butcher to understand Panamanian foreign policy in Colombia. They probably do know lots of other stuff. Maybe this senator has a deep background in insurance, or law, or sheep husbandry. In general, I’m not a fan of social media posts that poke fun at somebody when it’s not warranted.

But in this case…

It just so happens that Senator Hanson is the leader of One Nation, a far-right populist party which, like its counterparts in the US and elsewhere around the world, carries a deep philosophical objection to expertise, and rejects many basic science facts about the world. She denies the fact of anthropogenic global warming. She believes the false narrative that COVID-19 came from a Chinese lab. She denies the proven societal benefits of abortion, gun control, higher education, and basic human rights for LGBTQ+ people. She parrots every single false claim about immigrants and Muslims. So we should not be surprised that she’s going to assume everything Adm. Sammut tried to instruct her about “how submarines work” was either false or a lie. The populist brain is simply wired to object to anything coming from an educated person.

This is not a case where “her expertise lies elsewhere.” It’s a case where she abhors the very concept of expertise. This video should not be regarded as a joke to laugh at; it should be regarded as a cautionary tale of what happens when you put anti-science people in charge.

Senator Hanson sat on the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence, and Trade Legislation Committee.

I’ve long made no secret that I consider populist anti-science, whether it comes from the far-left or the far-right, to be a weapon of mass destruction against the very fabric of human civilization. When we put the anti-science in charge, at worst people will die, at best the world will get worse.

• Lysenkoism. Soviet agronomist Trofim Lysenko rejected genetics as “bourgeois” and promoted a pseudoscience that crops could be “trained” to develop desirable traits. Stalin adopted Lysenkoism, and triggered Europe’s worst-ever famine.

• Four Pests. Chinese superstition held that sparrows “stole grain” so Mao ordered them exterminated as part of the Four Pests arm of his Great Leap Backward Forward. Locust populations exploded, and triggered Asia’s worst-ever famine.

• Needle Exchanges. Government needle exchange programs are proven to reduce HIV transmission, but Bill Clinton caved to Evangelical pressures that falsely believed they encouraged more drug use. HIV cases continued to grow and cost an unknown number of lives lost.

• Don’t even get me started on the results of far-right COVID-19 misinformation.

Anti-Science kills people. It is a weapon of mass destruction.