In a talk in Oslo and then a blog post Roger Pielke Jr. asks “What Did We Expect Would Happen?” with the politicization of science in the United States. And it’s an excellent question because the answer seems to be that the scientific community didn’t think it through before getting into a hole where they’re digging hard wondering why they can’t get out. They denounced much of the public as vulgar smelly planet-torching morons and can’t understand why they now seem so ungrateful.

This topic was already on our minds because of a Matthew Wielicki item called “Mission creep” that kicked off bluntly:

“To effectively market propaganda as science, one must first capture influential government and academic institutions. This disturbing playbook is exactly what climate alarmists have executed over recent decades, transforming respected public institutions into advocacy-driven cash cows. By converting objective scientific inquiry into politically motivated fearmongering, these institutions have effectively secured an endless stream of taxpayer funding.”

Here we take pains to grant that it didn’t look that way to them. Among their failings people are far too prone to assume that everybody must think the way they do and that if they’re doing well by doing good it’s just the universe unfolding as it should. Be that as it may, what struck us about this “capture” is that “bureaucratic capture” is actually a well-known phenomenon at least among “public choice” economists who study how people in the public sector react to the incentives that dominate that arena. For instance the business where if you create a powerful organization, capable of making rules or handing out money in life-changing ways, then those who might benefit most from its largesse or suffer most from its hostility become very strongly motivated to get control of it.

It might seem obvious. But it is frequently overlooked. Including by well-meaning types who think a disinterested group of experts with a great deal of authority could really benefit the little guy, only to find that if it has jurisdiction over, say, farming, it is food producers with money and influence and a lot of hide in the game who lunge for the reins, not scattered consumers each of whom, individually, won’t benefit much.

Indeed the archetype here is the massive push for regulation of the U.S. meat-packing industry following the publication of Upton Sinclair’s 1906 muckraking novel The Jungle. Reformers were startled to find that big meat-packing firms actually supported measures like the Pure Food and Drug Act and Meat Inspection Act (both passed that same year) because they figured they could afford to comply and their smaller competitors would be driven out of business. Which was by no means entirely a bad thing since the marginal packers were often the worst offenders. But it happens again and again, including on pharmaceuticals. Proving that to understand climate science you need to understand a lot of things including economics and, yes, history.

If so you know that it’s not just those with a financial stake, important as they are. Bureaucratic capture is also hugely appealing to zealots of all sorts, who care far more about this cause or that one than ordinary people do about the often marginal real-world impact of such things as umbrella trade outfits. And so they are often taken over by people willing to run for Board positions and stay for hours arguing trivia until their desperate fellows vote for anything to be allowed to leave, resulting in radical manifestos that don’t even reflect the views of the Board majority let alone the member organizations. Which has certainly happened on climate, on gender and on geopolitics with depressing frequency.

And on science. In his post RPJ observes that polls routinely showed Republicans having more faith in “the scientific community” than Democrats from 1970 to the end of the Cold War. There were several factors in play including that the GOP used to be the party of the rich and credentialed and the Dems that of the working class, which has now reversed. But there was more to it:

“Meantime, the scientific community increasingly moved to the left, even the far left, with some of its leaders choosing to repurpose institutions of science in support of Democrats and against Republicans.”

Being Pielke Jr., he makes data-rich arguments on this point and you can look them up. And he doesn’t let Republicans off the hook:

“Republicans saw science as a means to show their less-educated and less-wealthy constituency that the elites did not share the values of the working class, which they argued was getting a raw deal.”

But for various reasons the phrase “experts say” or “scientists say” in headlines increasingly meant “leftists say” and still does, again on fields from gender to vaccines to climate. And the result is that a lot of people tune them out. As RPJ quotes one academic after the reelection of Donald Trump:

“Claims in academic arguments are routinely judged in terms of their likely political effects... What links the work of a professor who conceives of her job as climate activism, to a student-orientation leader teaching that the term “illegal immigration” is a microaggression?... The thread is a shared commitment to a particular brand of partisan politics. If this is truly what the university stands for, if these are our values, then when we are called before our elected representatives to answer for ourselves, what can we say? Colleges have no compelling justification for their existence to give when the opposing political party comes into power. We have nothing to say to the half of America who doesn’t share our politics.”

The same is even more true of government agencies. As Wielicki complains:

“When NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) was established in 1961, it was dedicated to rigorous, unbiased research in planetary atmospheres and astrophysics. Its founder, Robert Jastrow, envisioned a scientific powerhouse, contributing objectively and reliably to America’s space and environmental exploration. Unfortunately, GISS today has become almost unrecognizable, increasingly resembling a politically motivated advocacy group rather than a bastion of objective science.”

He attributes it mainly to the zealots’ desire for a steady flow of generous research grants, which is by no means imaginary. But it’s also due to their genuine belief that there was a climate crisis, which naturally led them to bend all their efforts to gaining control of a mighty engine of cash, influence and publicity. Which, alas, turned the organization into something at once lucrative and seedy. As he adds:

“Since Gavin Schmidt took over GISS in 2014, the institute has transitioned from a scientific entity into an activist hub. Schmidt, who co-founded the controversial RealClimate website, frequently blurs the line between unbiased research and advocacy. Under his leadership, GISS’s communications routinely highlight sensational claims about looming climate disasters, sidelining rigorous historical context and uncertainties intrinsic to climate models.”

Which brings us, finally, to a call from Francis Mention, the Manhattan Contrarian, to “Defund the National Academy of Sciences!” He begins:

“Here’s an article you might find interesting from Science magazine on June 2. The headline is ‘National Academies, staggering from Trump cuts, on brink of dramatic downsizing.’ Science magazine is one of those formerly-prestigious ‘peer-reviewed’ journals where for many decades you just had to get your research published in order to become someone in a scientific field. Somewhere along the way, Science turned from scientific inquiry to orthodoxy enforcement.”

Sound familiar? Oh yeah. A classic case of the activists getting hold of something and improving it until it broke. Just like the NAS which:

“along with two fellow Academies of Engineering and Medicine sometimes called ‘NASEM’)… is a federally-chartered but supposedly private entity set up to give ‘independent’ scientific advice to the government. The Academies raise meaningful amounts of private funds, but in the most recent reported year (2023) got the substantial majority of their funding (over $200 million) via contracts from the feds.”

Those government-chartered, “private” or “arms-length” entities dependent on the state for their funding are a classic red flag. He who pays the piper calls the tune and determines the pronouns. And as Menton notes, the current head of the NAS, formerly editor of Science (small world) was devoted not to the pursuit of knowledge but to the enforcement of orthodoxy on three particular and all politically contentions points and always, duh, from the left, including “the so-called ‘consensus model’ of climate change driven by CO2 and other greenhouse gases.” And FYI as head of the NAS she pulls down over $1 million a year. Doing well by doing bad.

It might seem incredible that such a body could exist as a genuinely private entity based on voluntary fees and donations. But in a nation of over 340 million with a GDP of over $25 trillion, if it can’t, it obviously isn’t doing what it claims to be. And if there were no NAS, what harm would actually be done?

Not if you’re an activist. But if you’re a citizen or a scientist, we mean.