Sifossifoco was referring to a newsitem regarding the death of a Florentine poet, Mario Luzi, which covered up the reporter's ignorance of Luzi's work, citing a statement by the mayor that "he is gone but left us with his words" - without actually recalling any of them. This seems odd for a report on someone who had been a candidate for the the nobel prize and given the title Senator for Life of the Italian Republic in honor of his very words. This kind of cover-up is often attributed to the laziness of otherwise well-meaning reporters on tight deadlines and dismissed as iinnocuous. But that is to accept something much more insidious as just normal background noise, particularly when this kind of chittter chatter is presented as real news. When reporters on tight deadlines fail to ask questions, and in many cases, go so far as to pass along the content of press releases and government produced videos as news, they are unworthy of their job title or of the trust placed in them by the public. Lazy reporters are hardly the only source of such ignorance.

Science can just as easily be used to cover up ignorance by providing an illusion of understanding and objectivity, with facts that have been carefully selected to support an agenda. This happens on all sides, whenever scientific generalizations are used to to provide simple, generic and seemingly objective answers as the solution to complex problems, with little if any consideration of the place or context in which they are to be applied. This context, which includes future human behavior, is usually the source of even greater ignorance. Mario Giampietro refers to such generalizations as the kind of knowledge that one would expect from replicants - these were the pseudo-human creatures portrayed in the film Blade Runner, who had no histories, and therefore, no memories, no roots, no future and no point of view. In other words, unbiased. Except that, in order to function, they were implanted with the memories of those who created them. This made them ideal for their role as colonizers of other planets.

There may well be those who have unrealistic expectations that science can predict the future, and who pontificate in a state of blissful ignorance. Then there are those who take advantage of such expectations in others by claiming scientific uncertainty as a way to justify arbitrary and capricious behavior, or simply to avoid controversial decisions such as reducing emissions of greenhouse gasses, and taking steps needed to reduce vulnerability to their consequences. That this has been a conscious and deliberate public relations strategy on the part of the Bush administration was demonstrated by the now infamous briefing book prepared by Republican strategist Frank Luntz for the 2000 presidential campaign. In it, he recommended that Republicans focus on the lack of scientific certainty in the global warming debate, and recruit sympathetic experts who would challenge the science, so as to avoid a broad public consensus on the matter, as this might require an actual commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The problem of global warming itself was defined as a "communications battle" rather than one of responding to the expected and unexpected impacts of climate change. The great majority of scientists who actually study climate and anyone else who dares to disagree can then be conveniently labeled as biased - as if bias could actually be avoided. Unless of course, one is a replicant. They can also be ridiculed with labels that obscure what is actually at stake and reduce the public discourse to a some sort of a caricature. It is much easier to dismiss global warming concerns as environmental alarmism based on doomsday science, call the problem a market failure, blame Clinton, and say everything will be fine as long as we drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - rather than debate differences of values and objectives. Responding to such charges may be even more difficult and tiring than discussing inevitable trade-offs. As Sifossifocco also says, "Mai discutere co' un grullo! T'abbassa í livello dialettico e poi ti vince coll'esperienza" (post of 4-24-2004) - [translation: Never argue with a fool! He will lower the dialectical level and beat you with experience.]

A more recent Luntz report (zip file) instead recommends the exploitation of tragedy, by framing isues in the context of 9/11. The only mention of climate is in reference to political, legal, business and economic climates. He specifically recommends against the use of the term "global" with respect to anything (apparently polls show that Americans are more afraid of globalization than of privatization), and doesn't mention warming at all. Energy issues associated with changes in climate are instead presented as threats - of sticker shock, rolling blackouts, rising gas prices, and to national security. It reminds me of a remark once made to me about 15 years ago by a government official who was in charge of producing environmental impact statements for offshore oil exploration and development in the Gulf of Mexico - that if only there were an energy crisis, there would be no need for environmental impact statements. Why was I not surprised today to hear discussion in the news of a potential doubling of oil prices? Interestingly, Luntz also suggests it is effective to advocate trust in experts rather than politicians, but he doesn't say which ones. Another item in the news today is that over 1300 pre-eminent scientists from 95 countries who participated in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment came to a general conclusion that business as usual is no longer an option, but that there are still some options. OK, I'm biased - I was among the less pre-eminent members of that distinguished group but wrote significant portions of a chapter on options for responding to the loss of freshwater services as a result of ecosystem degradation. It won't be easy, but I digress.

Still worth reading is an article by Franklin Foer, Closing of the Presidential Mind that was published in The New Republic last year (7-5-04, subscription required), that provides some history and analysis of the current conservative backlash, distrust and phobia of experts. From this perspective, experts are all biased, and objectivity is a front for a leftist agenda. However, it also includes valid concerns about some of the shortcomings for which the social sciences in particular have been known, and that are equally troubling to many if not all social scientists. Among these shortcomings are assumptions made by archetypal experts, such as, that all people have rational motives and want the same things and can be studied with the same models by disinterested observers, along with a tendency to downplay the role of values and culture in shaping human behavior. I'm not sure such experts, or people, actually exist but anyone who truly believes this would be absolutely baffled by the ideological and religious fanaticism and contradictory beliefs displayed by some of these very same conservatives, so their observation should not come as a surprise. But rather than offer this criticism constructively, and seek to address these shortcomings of determinism, they reject empirical observations altogether. Consistent with this way of thinking, it has become standard practice in the Bush administration to draw upon experts only as back up for selling a policy agenda, and to modify agency reports accordingly, as was done in the EPA report on the Environment, in which an entire section on the consequences of climate change for human health and the environment was replaced with an inconclusive paragraph about complexity. Furthermore, under policies such as the Data Quality Act, political appointees of the Office of Management and Budget become the ultimate judges of the quality of science used in policy decisions, and also oversee the process of peer review of science used to support policy decisions within other agencies. Even within the White House, there is no one to question the content of presidential pronouncements. The director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy no longer reports directly to the President, and the Council of Economic Advisors was moved out of the west wing. Apparently, science just gets in the way.

This is consistent with what has now become an infamous quote, a senior advisor to Bush once said to New York Times reporter Ron Suskind, people who "believe that solutions emerge from [the] judicious study of discernible reality" are part of what he calls "the reality-based community." He then went on to explain: "That's not the way the world really works anymore...We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." In response, many have started calling themselves "proud members of the reality based community". But when people believe, act, and even vote, on the basis of caricatures, it does change reality. And as new neighborhoods are built to look like idyllic places, and idyllic places disappear, those caricatures may soon be all that is left.

As for bias, former Bush secretary Ari Fleischer claims, in his new book Taking Heat that the media is generally biased for having the fundamental premise that the role of the government is to solve problems. For balance, I would really like to hear him argue the other side of that one - and say what he thinks the role of the government is. But the most effective and memorable reporters, regardless of whether we agree with everything they say, are the ones who have not shied away from asking questions driven by a strong point of view. Hunter Thompson comes to mind. He went so far as to say that, "objective journalism is one of the main reasons American Politics has been allowed to be corrupt for so long." Once upon a time, when Oriana Fallaci was a journalist, in the introduction to her book Interview with Historyshe said

"I participate in what I see or hear as though the matter concerned me personally and were one on which I ought to take a stand (in fact I always take one, based on a specific moral choice). So I did not go to these fourteen people with the detachment of the anatomist or the imperturable reporter. I went with a thousand feelings of rage, a thousand questions that before assailing them were assailing me, and with the hope of understanding in what way, by being in power or opposing it, those people determine our destiny. For example: is history made by everyone or by a few? Does it depend on universal laws or on a few individuals and nothing else?"

How else would we have ever known that Henry Kissinger actually saw himself as a cowboy who "leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse, the cowboy who rides all alone into the town the village, with his horse and nothing else. Maybe even without a pistol, since he doesn't shoot. He acts, that's all, by being in the right place at the right time." As he explained to her, "Americans like that immensely."

As for science, personally, I would not accept the conclusions of scientists who are not biased by the fundamental premise that a healthy environment is essential to human well being and that a catastrophic change in climate or eating Soylent Green is something we would all like to avoid - any more than I would choose a doctor who is not committed to the health of their patients. I also expect public officials to be committed to public service, and for policy debates to be about objectives and visions of the future - perhaps I am naive. Ultimately, science is driven by values, and if scientists would all just clarify this, admit their biases, and resist the tyranny of generalizations that are always wrong about something, they would be less vulnerable to mindless banter. It might even open up an opportunity to tell more interesting stories about the way the world works and muddle our way through ignorance.

Good science is driven by conscious ignorance of knowledge, and by humility. To return to the subject of Mario Luzi, I must confess my own ignorance of his work up to this point. He doesn't seem to be very well known outside of Italy, but perhaps he should be. But some of his words, presented on another website, seem fitting, so I offer here my own rough translation - if I find that there is a better translation somewhere, I will correct it:

Ridotto a me stesso? Reduced to myself?

Ridotto a me stesso? [Reduced to myself?]
Morto l'interlocutore? [Is the interlocutor dead?]
O morto io, [Or am I dead,]
l'altro su di me ]the other over me]
padrone del campo, l'altro [landlord of the field, the other]
universo, parificatore... [universe, equivocator...]
o no, [or not,]
niente di questo: [none of this:]
il silenzio raggiante [the radiant silence]
dell'amore pieno [of full love]
della piena incarnazione [of the full incarnation]
anticipato da un lampo? - [anticipated by a flash? -]
penso [I think]
se é pensare questo [if this is thinking]
e non opera di sonno [and not a work of sleep]
nella pausa solare [in the solar pause]
del tumulto di adesso... [of the tumult of now...]

By Mario Luzi, from the collection, Al fuoco della controversia (At the fire of controversy), (1978), and from the website Romanzieri.com