Lisa Randall Writes on How Science Can Lead the Way. (September 29, 2011)

The Harvard University theoretical physicist Lisa Randall (Randall-Sundrum models) in some ways may be seen as a soft-spoken female counterpart of Richard Dawkins, although her research interests are far removed from his. In a short article in the October 3, 2011 issue of Time magazine she writes on "what we lose when we put faith over logic".

Professor Randall's opening sentence leaves you in no doubt where she's coming from: "Today's politicians seem more comfortable invoking God and religion than they do presenting facts or numbers. Of course, everyone is entitled to his or her own religious beliefs. But when science and reason get short-changed, so does America's future... Empirically based logic and the revelatory nature of faith are very different methods for seeking answers, and only logic can be systematically improved and applied."

 What follows is an admonition as cogent for Australia as for the United States -- although the coming US presidential and congressional elections are probably somewhat closer than Australia's next federal election: "It is important on how our political leaders view science and its advances, because their attitudes frequently mirror their approaches toward rational decision-making itself."

From an Australian perspective nowhere is this more apparent in the current fiasco regarding the approach to the reduction of greenhouse gas emission and the irrational argumentation regarding the deflection of those seeking asylum who have arrived unbidden by boat, unless of course the latter is a cynical approach to garnering votes from the xenophobic segment of our population.

As Professor Randall interprets the US scene: "What we are seeing in the current presidential race is not so much a clash between religion and science as a fundamental disregard for rational and scientific thinking... Evaluating alternatives strategies; reading data, when available... about the relative effectiveness of various policies; and understanding uncertainties -- all features of the scientific method -- can help us find the right way forward."

Unfortunately the monumental disinterest by the leaders of both the major political parties in Australia in science, as well as the vast majority of our parliamentarians, doesn't augur well for the nation's longer-term future.

When this is coupled with the drive by the federal government to pack the university system with a large influx of new students without making available the resources to adequately educate them, and without working out the methodology to adequately increase the quality of primary and secondary school teaching in mathematics and the sciences, the irrationality of the approach is overwhelming; the Opposition's unconcern hardly unexpected.