Political Correctness - Science

Science

See also: Politicization of science

Among scientists, "correctness" (of procedures, results, or scientific claims) derives from the factual truth of the matter or the soundness of the reasoning by which it can be deduced from observations and first principles. When publication, teaching, and public funding of science is decided by peer committees, academic standards, and elected or appointed boards, the allegation can arise that a work's acceptability has been assessed "politically". Professor J. I. Katz applies the term PC to censure characterized by emotional, rather than rational discourse.

Groups opposing certain generally accepted scientific views on evolution, second-hand smoke, AIDS, and other politically contentious scientific matters argue that PC is responsible for the failure of their perspectives to receive a fair public hearing; thus, in Lamarck's Signature: How Retrogenes are Changing Darwin's Natural Selection Paradigm, Assoc. Prof. Edward J. Steele says: "We now stand on the threshold of what could be an exciting new era of genetic research. . . . However, the 'politically correct' thought agendas of the neo-Darwinists of the 1990s are ideologically opposed to the idea of 'Lamarckian Feedback', just as the Church was opposed to the idea of evolution based on natural selection in the 1850s!"

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, by Tom Bethell, is a comprehensive presentation argument that mainstream science is dominated by politically correct thinking. Bethell rejects mainstream views about evolution and global warming, and supports AIDS denialism.

Read more about this topic:  Political Correctness

Famous quotes containing the word science:

    “Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century.”
    —J.G. (James Graham)

    “The natural historian is not a fisherman who prays for cloudy days and good luck merely; but as fishing has been styled “a contemplative man’s recreation,” introducing him profitably to woods and water, so the fruit of the naturalist’s observations is not in new genera or species, but in new contemplations still, and science is only a more contemplative man’s recreation.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “Current illusion is that science has abolished all natural laws.”
    —Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)