A 75-Year-Old Warning about Those Who Say ‘Listen to the Science’

A 75-Year-Old Warning about Those Who Say ‘Listen to the Science’

• When people say “follow the science,” often what they’re really saying is “follow our plan.”

On his first day as president, Joe Biden, flanked by a portrait of Ben Franklin, called on the federal government to “advance environmental justice” and “be guided by the best science.”
...The economist Ludwig von Mises once observed the problem with using scientific claims to shape the modern world...in many cases people invoke science simply to tell people what they must do.
“The planners pretend that their plans are scientific and that there cannot be disagreement with regard to them among well-intentioned and decent people,” Mises wrote in his 1947 essay “Planned Chaos.”
...When teen activist Greta Thunberg exhorts us to follow the science on climate change, she’s not saying we should acknowledge that the planet is warming and that humans play a role in the Earth’s climate. She’s saying people should adopt her plan and that of other climate activists, which includes transitioning off meat, giving up flying (something to be achieved either through shame or coercion), taxing fossil fuels, and myriad other proposals...Read all.