October 3, 2025 • 45 mins
Science is in trouble. Real questions in desperate need of answers—especially those surrounding ethnicity, gender, climate change, and almost anything related to ‘health and safety’—are swiftly buckling to the fiery societal demands of what ought to be rather than what is. Can true, fact-based discovery be redeemed? Dr. John Staddon, a legendary professor of psychology and biology, will join us to unveil the identity crisis afflicting today’s scientific community and provide an actionable path to recovery.
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S1 (00:00):
Hi friend, thank you so much for downloading this podcast
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Love of the Lord by my friend and frequent guest,
(00:22):
Doctor Sam Storms. You know, he tells us that so
often we struggle with this idea of feeling like we're
loved by God, or that somehow we've done something that
separates us from the love of God. But we fail
to remember the Scripture that reminds us that while we
were yet sinners, not perfect, not all put together, not
everything's all been worked out while we were yet sinners.
That's when Christ died. For us. Love is an action word,
(00:44):
and that's what Doctor Sam Storms reminds us in his book,
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And now with all my heart, I hope you hear
(02:10):
something today that really changes your perspective and makes you
excited about being a follower of Jesus Christ. Enjoy the program!
S2 (02:18):
Here are some of the news headlines we're watching.
S3 (02:20):
The conference was over. The president won a pledge.
S4 (02:22):
So Americans worshiping government over God.
S1 (02:24):
Extremely rare safety move by a major 17 years.
S4 (02:28):
The Palestinians and Israelis negotiated.
S3 (02:31):
Is not working.
S1 (02:46):
Hi friends. Welcome to In the Market with Janet Parshall.
We are about to engage in what I know will
be a fascinating conversation. So let me just put this
question on the table as we begin our time together. Remember,
this program is designed to get you to think critically
and biblically and let the record reflect. Your honor, that
is not an either or proposition. It is a both and.
And we are supposed to get off a diet of milk,
(03:07):
move to a diet of meat, put away childish things,
and hold fast to that which is good. So I
live in a town in Washington, DC where they've literally
marched down the streets of my town holding up signs
that say Follow the science or I believe in the science. Great.
And of course, the subtext of that is it's an
either or proposition. Either you believe in science or you
(03:27):
believe in faith, but the two are mutually exclusive. And
then we fomented this mythology for decades now that somehow
science and religion have been at war with one another,
when in fact, if you study the history of science,
you will see that great thinkers were oftentimes great believers,
and they found no conflict in their particular worldview. But
something is amiss. Something's changed along the line, and we
(03:47):
are seeing the ascendancy of something that C.S. Lewis saw
several years ago. He referred to it as scientism. Scientism
was a great concern of Lewis's, and he was concerned
because he thought that somehow humanity might be headed for
abolition and that in fact, in fact, in fact, science
would be placed on a pedestal and it would ignore
(04:08):
completely the central reality of the human condition. Was he right? Well,
I think we're going to find out more about that
as we continue our conversation this hour. What a delight.
And I mean an absolute delight to spend the hour
with Doctor John Stanton. He is the James B Duke
Professor of Psychology and Professor of biology emeritus at Duke University.
(04:28):
He obtained his B.S. at University College in London and
his PhD in Experimental psychology at Harvard University, where he
also did research at the MIT Systems Lab. He's the
author of more than 200 research papers and nine books,
including Scientific Method How Science Works, Fails to Work or
Pretends to Work. He was profiled in The Wall Street
(04:48):
Journal in January of 2021 as a commentator on the
current problems of science. He has written an Absolutely fabulous
book called science in an Age of Unreason in my classroom.
It would be recommended reading, I hope by the end
of this hour is that you won't walk. You will
run to get your copy. John. First and foremost, thank
you for the permission to call you John. I greatly
(05:10):
appreciate that. Second, thank you for something I can't give
you back, which is the irreplaceable gift of one hour
of your time. And third, thank you for writing this
book with such clarity and it speaks to a culture
now who has put us at war with science. Thank
you for being here.
S5 (05:26):
Happy to be here, Janet. Thanks for having me.
S1 (05:29):
It is a delight. Thank you. And I want to
find out a little bit more about your background. Tell
me about your gravitating toward psychology in general and then
your PhD in particular with experimental psychology. Was there a
particular area of psychology that you found interesting? When we
talk about experimental, what does that mean to the layperson
who might be listening somewhere across the country right now?
S5 (05:52):
Well, it's an interesting question, sort of technical. I mean,
my problem was that I grew up in England and
in England I it's a rather rigid educational system. You
have to pass a set of examinations in high school
which are called advanced level A-level exams. And I took four,
(06:12):
which was pure math, applied math, chemistry and physics. What
I really wanted to do was take biology, but my
school didn't have biology. And because it didn't have biology,
I couldn't get into biology department. And that's the way
it works in Britain. You apply directly into a department.
There's no sort of freshman year where you sort yourself out.
(06:33):
In fact, the freshman year occurs about the age of 16.
It's a very odd system, and I think it's still
pretty much that way. So I really wanted to go
into biology. All I could get into in college was
actually engineering. And from engineering I got into psychology because
psychology had no A-levels.
S6 (06:52):
But they wanted me to take a little test?
S5 (06:56):
So I flipped from Battersea Polytechnic, which is where I
started in engineering, into University College London, which had a
psychology department. Once I got there, what I really wanted
to work on was the behaviour of micro-organisms. No, no
opportunities for that. So I just took standard psychology, but
(07:18):
by a devious route. After I graduated, I came to
America and I wound up at Harvard and at Harvard.
There were then two psychology departments. There was one which
was called psychology, but was in fact experimental psychology. And
there's another one called social relations, which was all the
rest of psychology. So I got into this rather wonderful department.
(07:39):
At that time, in the basement of Memorial Hall was
100 rooms, only a half dozen faculty. A Nobel Prize
winner was there, George Baker, who discovered how the inner
ear works and so on. And the emphasis there were
two kinds of emphasis there. Stop me if I'm going
on too long. But one was a sensation and perception.
(08:00):
You know how the eye works, how the hearing works,
and so on. A wonderful psychoacoustic lab of, uh, one
of these, um, anechoic chambers and so on. And the other,
the other big force there was B.F. Skinner, who you.
S6 (08:16):
Perhaps heard of.
S1 (08:17):
Wow.
S6 (08:18):
Who who was.
S5 (08:21):
From my point of view, very, uh, I was very
unsympathetic to his theoretical position, which was, we don't need theory.
I was interested in theory, but I was very attracted
by his experimental method, which involved working with animal subjects
one at a time, not groups. I never did an
experiment with groups. Everything we did, you could repeat with
(08:42):
a single animal and so on. I thought, this is
the way to do science, I still do. Actually, I
think one of the ways that modern social science and
biomedical science has gone off the rails, is purporting to
be interested in individual organisms, but always studying groups, and
there are all sorts of problems in that I could
talk about later. A little bit technical. Anyway, so that's
(09:05):
the long story, short shortened version of the long story.
How I wound up in psychology. I'm really. That's why
I have a cross appointment in biology. I'm really a
psycho biologist. I look at psychology from a biological point
of view and say.
S6 (09:21):
Um, but um, rather than looking at that point of
view and also the social thing.
S3 (09:31):
Wow.
S1 (09:32):
Oh, what a fascinating story. And I find it so
interesting that when a door closed, another opened. And now
you're internationally renowned. Just what an amazing story. Doctor John
Staddon is with us. He is the James B Duke
Professor of Psychology and Professor of biology emeritus at Duke University.
He's the author of the new book science in an
(09:52):
Age of Unreason. So much to discuss in the book.
We'll get started right after this. Zephaniah 317 tells us
(10:13):
God loves us so much that he breaks out in
song over his children. That's why I've chosen the steadfast
love of the Lord as this month's truth tool. Learn
to know the everlasting, unchanging, soul saving love of God.
Ask for your copy of the steadfast Love of the Lord.
When you give a gift of any amount to in
the market, call 877. Janet 58. That's 877 Janet 58
(10:34):
or go to in the market with Janet Parshall. It
is absolutely a privilege to spend the hour with legendary
professor Doctor John Staton, who's the author of the book
science in an Age of Unreason. And let me just
tell you how intriguing this book is. There are many
chapters to the book. It's written in five parts, and
he breaks this down systematically as someone with his education
(10:55):
would naturally. So even for the layperson, this is utterly
and completely understandable. And it really does challenge us to
be thinking differently. And, by the way, not to acquiesce,
you know, follow the science. And we fail to recognize
that what in reality they're saying is that this is
the new religion. This is what Lewis was referring to
years ago, that somehow this would be the final arbiter
of truth, and that everything else was a distant second. So, John,
(11:18):
you begin your book with a chapter entitled Has Secular
Humanism Made science a religion? We could spend five hours
just breaking down this one chapter. But let me linger here,
if I can, for a little bit. So you start
out by defining what in fact constitutes a religion, which
is very important because even the high courts of the
United States have had to try to break down what
constitutes a religion. And some have said, well, is secular
(11:40):
humanism really, in fact a religion? So it's a question
that the courts have even had to look at. So
from your vantage point, as someone who is gifted in
psychology and biology. If I were to say. And I
landed here from another planet and I said, define religion
for me, what would you say?
S5 (11:56):
Well, I can say what I said in the book,
which is religions have three parts, really. First is the
spiritual part, the belief in God or angels, spirits, whatever. Um,
one of the distinctive things about that part is it's
not testable by the methods of science. It's outside science.
(12:17):
It's neither true nor false in point of view of science.
The second aspect is the historical aspect. Every religion has
a history of itself. I mean, uh, Christ was crucified,
the year is given, and so on, uh, the age
of the earth and all of that. Now, some of
those beliefs are testable, like the age of the Earth. Well,
(12:39):
it probably wasn't 4004 BC, you know, and so on. Um,
so that's testable. But the others are not. I mean,
they're just beliefs. Again, outside of science, historical, especially remote
historical events, you can't really prove them by the methods
of science. The third category is the one I wanted
(13:00):
to emphasize, and that is moral laws. Moral laws. You know,
the Ten Commandments, the Sharia law, and so on. These
are also unprovable by the methods of science. And the
person I allude to there is a wonderful enlightenment philosopher,
David Hume. You probably know about it.
S6 (13:20):
He is perhaps the.
S5 (13:23):
Most impressive of the enlightenment philosophers, and he pointed out
that a fact that is a product of science, a fact, uh,
has no direction for action. It doesn't tell you what
to do by itself. It doesn't tell you what to
do by itself. Um, and. When you do act based
(13:52):
on a fact, it's because of a value system which
comes either from your religion or from somewhere else. But
the point is from science. It doesn't make a bit
of difference where it comes from. The belief system is
not provable by science, even if you are a scientist
and a secular humanist. I mean, we know where the beliefs,
(14:12):
the moral beliefs of Christians come from the Bible, ten
Commandments and so on. We don't know as well where
the values of secular humanists come from, but they probably
come from writers like John Stuart Mill, John Rawls, more recently,
other philosophers, and so on. The problem, from a political
(14:33):
point of view, is that they're not written down in
that neat way that religious beliefs are. But this vagueness
got me into a little debate, which I write about
a bit in the book. It's on somewhere where I
first got into this, with a very well known evolutionary
biologist who insisted he what he seemed to say is
(14:58):
because your beliefs, that is, your Christian beliefs. I'm agnostic,
but if I were a Christian, your beliefs are tied
to these mythical things. Therefore I need pay no attention to.
My beliefs come from science. But the whole point of
Hume is that no beliefs come from science. Another way
to look at it is to say that science is
(15:20):
like a map. You know, it has a lot of
facts and so on. It's a map, but it's not
a destination. You've got all these things you could do,
places you could go. But science doesn't tell you which
of them to go to. That's provided by your value system.
So in that secular humanism is not a religion, but
it is motivated by action rules, you know, morals just
(15:44):
like any religion and deserves to be treated in much
the same way. I would say much the same way. Um,
now modern the one a lot of problems with secular
humanism because these things are not written down, they tend
to change. And now, for example, in society, I was
just watching this rather wonderful little film by Matt Walsh
(16:04):
called what is a woman? I don't know if you've watched.
S1 (16:06):
Yes. Yes. Wonderful.
S5 (16:09):
Yeah. I mean, it's a fascinating film, and obviously there's
a group that has a whole new set of values.
And I mentioned this briefly in the book. One of
the values is that people's wishes about themselves are absolutely dominant, preeminent.
So if you think you're a cat, you're a cat.
(16:31):
I mean, that kind of thing from a scientific point
of view is silly. I mean, you know what a
cat is? You can sequence its genome and so on. No,
you're not a cat and you have terrible fur. So besides,
you know, and so on. So I mean, that's I mean,
that's a nonsensical belief. And yet there's a class of people,
these transgender people who say, if I feel like a girl,
(16:55):
then I am a girl. And that's supported. That's not
not just the thought. It's it's an action system. It's
a moral system. So in Canada, for example, I can
hardly believe this. If you do not address a transgender
person by his or her preferred pronouns, you're legally liable.
I mean, that seems to me tyrannical beyond belief. But
(17:17):
apparently in Canada and, um, but it does follow from
a religious, in effect, a religious belief, which is that
my happiness and my my happiness is preeminent. I have
my truth and so on, what they call the standpoint epistemology.
These are all the set of values which are, um,
(17:40):
as unlinked to science as any set of religious values. Yeah. Now,
on the other way. Another way to look at this
is that and I think you mentioned this earlier, is
that many of the great.
S7 (17:52):
Scientists were were believers of Christians, right. Isaac Newton was
the most striking examples. I mean, there are many, many others. Yeah. Uh.
S1 (18:01):
John, forgive me, forgive me. Let me interrupt. Only because
I have to bow in submission to the clock here.
Let me pick it up, if I may, please. Right
at that point. Doctor John Staten, my guest author of
science in an Age of Unreason. Back after this. Science
(18:24):
in an Age of Unreason, the brand new book by
Doctor John Staten, who is the James B Duke Professor
of Psychology and Professor of biology emeritus at Duke University.
Absolutely fascinating. Look at the problems of science today. John,
I want to go exactly to where we were before
the break, because I think really this is the primary
thesis of why your title is so succinct science in
(18:45):
an Age of Unreason. So scientists, by their very nature,
when you were talking about this, particularly your love of biology,
we love to look under a microscope. We love to
look in a petri dish. We love to, in theory,
at least once upon a time, see where the evidence
leads us. We may have a supposition. We may have
a theory. But if the evidence doesn't substantiate that theory,
then it was nothing more than a theory. And we
(19:05):
move on. You follow where the evidence leads. So let's
go to this idea of gender dysphoria, which until it
was politicized, was very much a recognizable psychological condition that
should be treated with kindness, compassion, and as complex and
often comes with comorbidity. More than one diagnosis other than
the inability to see oneself within their physical body. But
(19:26):
if the science were to rule the day and we
were science in an age of reason, science would say,
young man, sit down, let's draw a little blood. We're
going to do a test. We're going to take a
look at your genetics. Okay? And let's see what the
chromosomes show us. It wouldn't be predicated on how the
patient felt. It would be objective truth, as evidenced in
a laboratory that would make it science in an age
(19:47):
of reason. But politics seemed to have coerced Nawaz to
accept that a dog is a cat and a cat
and a dog. If someone feels like it, talk to
me about that, because that, to me, would be the
death knell for science. Politics rules the day, not evidence.
S5 (20:00):
Well, you're absolutely right. I just wrote I just published
a little paper called The Face of Science and one
of the, uh, the central face of science. And it
is faith. I mean, you can't prove any of this.
The faith of science is that there is a truth
out there about nature, that nature is orderly. It doesn't
(20:22):
change randomly from day to day and so on. And
that without that faith, without that faith in a single
truth that is independent of the observer, you can't do science.
There's no point. And in fact, again, going back to
Matt Walsh's movie, that's exactly the opposite of what these
folks believe. They interviewed several people and medical people who
(20:48):
basically said, well, I have my truth. You have your truth.
There is no single truth. So they are absolutely outside
of science, no question about that. And what they have
is a religion where nature is what you want it
to be. I mean, maybe it's because these critical race
theory and so on, people have lived in a world
(21:09):
of words for so long. The words begin to assume
a reality of their own. So they feel, if if
I feel like X, then I'm X. You know, if
you don't agree, well, that's your truth. I have my truth.
So it's totally inimical to science and inimical really to
the core beliefs of Western civilization. That doesn't bother people,
(21:31):
of course.
S1 (21:32):
Yes. Well, let me linger on this idea because I
happen to outright, uh, Dispute the legitimacy of my truth
and your truth. I believe that truth is knowable. I
believe it's objective. I believe it applies to all times
and all people in all places. And so let me
give you an example. Again, in the scientific world, I
don't feel like gravity has a place in my life.
(21:52):
You referenced Isaac Newton earlier. So for me, the laws
of gravity will be suspended because it's not my truth.
Now that doesn't make it right, doesn't make it true,
doesn't make it real. If science is going to let
feelings or political agenda, as we say in my town,
supersede where the facts lead us. As I said before then,
I don't know what the future of science will be,
(22:12):
but my feelings are immaterial to objective truth. If I
drop an apple and it hits the ground, gravity exists.
And I would think for people in the scientific community,
they would be absolutely, uh, having apoplexy right now, that
if things don't get turned around, the world of science
is going to be put in the closet and the
door is going to be locked.
S5 (22:33):
Well, I mean, you're right. It's really a terrible, terrible situation.
I was, uh, listening the other day to Heather MacDonald
talking about the AMA, which is basically introducing identity politics
into medical schools. And in other words, they are no
longer to hire people because of their scientific ability, but
(22:56):
because of their racial identity. So for them, truth, which
should be the the foremost value of any scientist or
medical person, now takes a second place to identity politics,
which is absolutely crazy. I mean, I cannot grasp it.
I mean, I've written articles about this. I have looked
(23:18):
at things like the American Psychological Association's website, the American
Medical Association, American Sociological Association, and tragically, they're all on
this particular bus headed over a cliff. A cliff, I
might add, where gravity actually works.
S1 (23:35):
So. I love the word picture and I couldn't agree more.
Which does raise, I think, a serious conversation. And that
is you talk about the AMA. Well, the AMA now
is what the American Bar Association is. These are the
political wings of these disciplines. They no longer represent the great,
exalted work that physicians do. Collectively, they become a lobbying arm,
(23:56):
if I can put it that way. The American Academy
of Pediatrics jumped ahead and said, oh, let's give puberty
blockers to kids and let's do this mutilating surgery. And
then they looked across the pond and they saw what
happened to Tavistock and went, oops, maybe we need to backtrack.
So they've just recently now backtracked and said, wait a minute,
maybe we need to take this on a case by
case basis, and maybe we don't. We shouldn't rush to
(24:17):
facilitating these kinds of decisions because in many cases they're
irreparable and they change a person forever and eliminate the
possibility of breastfeeding your child or having a baby altogether.
So again, the madness here cannot be overlooked. There's so
much in this book I want to get to climate change.
That's the big section of your book, because this is
where this unreason plays itself out. Let me just say
(24:40):
the book is rich. It is thought provoking. It speaks
common sense into a world of madness. Right now, science
is a discipline that should be respected. I happen to
believe that science very much reflects the glory of God
is magnificence, that telos, the way things work together. You
can believe if you want to. It was happenstance. I
think there was a great clockmaker who makes the clock work,
(25:02):
by the way, and he takes on this issue of
Darwinian evolution in the book as well. Science in an
Age of Unreason. Doctor John Staddon, my guest. More after this.
If what you hear on in the market with Janet
(25:23):
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(25:44):
to in the market with Janet Parshall. Absolutely fascinating book.
I'd like to encourage you to read. It's called science
in an Age of Unreason. It is written by our guest,
Doctor John Staten. James B Duke professor of Psychology and
Professor of biology, emeritus at Duke University. He got his B.S.
at the University College in London, his PhD in experimental
(26:07):
psychology at Harvard University, where he also did research at
the MIT Systems Lab. He is the author of more
than 200 research papers and nine books. He was profiled
in The Wall Street Journal as commentator on the current
problems of science in his book science in an Age
of Reason. It is far more than commentary. It is
a tome and I strongly encourage you to read it.
(26:28):
Let me back up to something you said before, John.
And there are there's 25 hours worth of conversation in
your book. So I want to make the most of
my time together because this is such a rich topic
to cover. You point out early that secular humanists and
some evolutionary biologists believe that science provides an ethical system,
not the long discredited social Darwinism, but a melange of
(26:51):
supposedly secular values derived from liberal and progressive writings over
the past three centuries. Let me just take that primary thesis.
So if there is in fact an ethical system in science,
my question would be, and how did that ethical system
come to be? How is it not utterly subjective if
it's not an objective code that over all of science?
(27:12):
And has it been made up as we've gone along,
sort of put it that way? And if there isn't ethics,
by the way, why are so many questionable practices being
put in place right now? What is that ethical system
in science look like?
S5 (27:24):
Well, that's hard to say. Science is a collection of
facts about nature, about the universe. You know, as you
mentioned earlier. Gravity. The Earth is a sphere, not flat.
And so on and so on. It's science is just
those facts. Now, in order to do science, you have
to have some values like a belief in truth, honesty,
(27:48):
willingness to share your data, open debate, all of those
kinds of things. So there is no conflict really between
the facts of science and any set of values. I'm
not sure that answers your question, but am I missing something?
S1 (28:02):
No, no. I'm just wondering if there is, in fact
a code of ethics. I would let me look at
it in the practical. So if in fact a scientific
code of ethics does in fact exist, what's to prohibit
us from doing human cloning and not when it's just
in the embryonic stage or in the zygote stage? But
let's just say we have a baby born to full
(28:23):
term in pregnancy. Uh, do we encourage, like Dolly the
sheep in Scotland? Do we encourage the cloning of human beings?
Do we mix animal cells and human cells together in
the lab? Is there an ethical prohibition to that? Do
we decide that only the fittest should live? And then
some subjective group somewhere of scientists decides what constitutes fit
(28:44):
and what doesn't? In other words, I want to see
this application. I can see it in the heart of
every individual scientist being played out. For example, one of
the conflicts we have in Washington right now is if
you happen to be a pharmacist who's pro-life, you now
have the government hanging over your head like Damocles sword
that says you will, despite your personally held sincere beliefs,
distribute this abortifacient whether you believe in it or not.
(29:07):
If not, you will pay the penalty. That's government coercion.
Where's the system of ethics? There is ethics for science
a general application, or is it an individualized code of behavior?
S5 (29:18):
Well, I'm sorry, I'm sorry I didn't hear this question earlier.
I would have sent you my little paper, because I
point out at the end that the ethics for doing
science are not all of ethics. I mean, eugenics is
a perfect example, right? That tells you that mammals, human
beings included, can be bred selectively. But by golly, it
(29:40):
doesn't say you should do it or you shouldn't do it.
S1 (29:43):
Exactly.
S5 (29:43):
Those come from elsewhere. So the all I was talking
about was the morals that allow you to do science,
that is, to find facts. Now, there are, of course,
problems at the limit, as you point out, things like cloning, uh,
experimentation with human beings, particularly human infants. Those have to
be decided by another set of ethics. So in science
(30:04):
says if you want to do this or the method
of what I'm calling the morals of science, say, if
you want to do this, then you must do x, y,
and z. But a superordinate set of ethics, which is
provided by Christians, for Christians by the Bible, and so on,
that system of ethics guides you beyond that point. I mean,
(30:29):
a contemporary example, which is sort of blows my mind.
Is this a gain of function research?
S1 (30:35):
Right?
S5 (30:36):
Bryant says, yeah, you can engineer a virus so that
it kills more people. Is that a great idea? Well,
that's not science doesn't tell you whether it's a great
idea or not. Something else does. And scientists have been
aware of this for a long time. There was a
conference years ago called the Asilomar Conference. Asilomar being a
place in California where a lot of molecular biologists got
(30:58):
together to discuss the ethics of gene splicing and so on,
and came up with a set of recommendations. Now that's fine.
But of course, the scientists are not the only ones
who should decide. The whole of society should decide, really.
And that's the way it should be. Now, right now,
with this Covid business, um, what's happened is that the
(31:22):
scientists have been put in the driving seat. So you've
got people like Doctor Fauci saying, I am science. Well,
I don't know. Maybe he thinks he's science. Doctor Fauci
is science in the way that he thinks he's a girl.
I mean, it's nonsense to say that he's not science.
He is or was a scientist, and he could present
(31:44):
his facts of science objectively, hopefully. But then the decision
about what to do about them that shouldn't be made
by him one man, one scientist should be made by
society through the political process, political, legal, moral process and
so on. So I think there was a real botched
situation in the Covid crisis where a scientist were given
(32:07):
more authority than either their moral stature or the knowledge
at that time available to them more than what they knew.
They were given power beyond their ability to exercise it wisely.
I mean, there's no reason why a virologist should be
the best person to tell a school whether to close
(32:29):
down the school or not. I mean, it's absolutely not
his business. Really?
S8 (32:33):
Yeah, exactly.
S5 (32:34):
Even as a citizen and a parent, maybe, but not
beyond that.
S8 (32:37):
Yeah.
S1 (32:38):
Well stated. Let me take this back down to terra firma,
because this is where the pragmatics of your book come
into play. So let's stick with the gain of function question.
So if science is objective and science is about seeking
truth and following the evidence where it leads, we know,
for example, in Communist China that nothing is ever done
without an intersection with the military. So we know also
through our own security here in the United States, that
(32:59):
gain of function is something Communist China has been doing
for a long period of time. They've been manipulating viruses
to go after people of a certain age, people of
a certain ethnicity. Uh, obviously killing people is not a
problem to the communist way of thinking. They have a long,
tattered and sad history of doing just that. But yet
we saw once again, and this is where it isn't
just an Age of unreason, John, but it's also an
(33:20):
age of political coercion or acquiescence. Or maybe you already
start out with that particular worldview and it's a hand
in glove kind of relationship. But why would the World
Health Organization have dragged its feet? Why did they not
completely go after Communist China? Why didn't we examine the
Wuhan labs first? This is all science. This shouldn't have
anything to do with politics. This should be for the
greater good. This should be for loving our fellow man.
(33:41):
Whether you're an atheist, agnostic, or a follower of Jesus Christ,
that principle should be transcendent. One would think you would
follow that. But the intersection with science now isn't objective
truth seeking. It is absolutely being the handmaiden of politics. That,
to me, seems to new to be a new iteration.
You know, the alleged struggle was between science and faith.
(34:03):
The new struggle seems to me this unholy alliance between
science and politics. And so I ask you as a scientist,
how in the world can that be undone before the
weeds of that entanglement suffocate science completely, and it really
becomes an operating arm of government good. If it's good
government horrific if it's bad government.
S5 (34:22):
Yeah. I mean That is a great problem. I really
don't know what to do. Uh, I mean, I've got
some ideas, but who knows? One idea I had is that, um. Well,
let me back up. The World Health Organization is a
political organization. The people who run these sorts of things
(34:44):
are not working scientists, interestingly enough. I actually worked under
two World Health Organization scientists in Africa many years ago.
S8 (34:53):
Mhm.
S5 (34:54):
Many, many years ago, uh, in something called the Northern
Rhodesia Health and Nutrition Scheme, I was just a skivvy.
I mean, I didn't have my degree at that time
and so on. Uh, I went out there to make
a little pocket money, uh, for a couple of years.
But at that time it worked well. It worked very well.
These two senior scientists, one was a pediatric expert from Denmark,
(35:19):
I guess, and the other was, uh, an Irish guy
who was an Infectious disease expert and they were very good.
They ran a great ship and so on. And it
did what it was supposed to do, which was find
the sources of infection and so on. But I think
since then the W.H.O. has been transformed. I mean, bureaucracies,
(35:41):
unless they are very cleverly set up with feedback checks
and balances and so on, very soon degenerate into self-serving organizations. Um,
a colleague of mine works on the economics of that.
I think it's called public choice theory. And this shows
very convincingly how bureaucracies degenerate unless there is stabilizing influences.
(36:03):
So the World Health Organization is not a scientific organization,
or it's only partly. I mean, it's got input from scientists,
no doubt about that. But it also has political inputs.
And there are all sorts of problems with this. Now
when the science. And I mentioned this in the book,
when the science is very strong like physics. Right. Great
political influences are minimal.
S7 (36:26):
Bridges don't fall down and so on because they're cheaper.
Bridge would be better because the physics is so strong.
It's so strong that the political pressures are ineffective. But
when the science is weak, which is true, almost all
the social science that is in these other places now.
S1 (36:48):
So, John, let me pick it up at exactly at
that point when the science is weak, like you said,
you can't argue with physics. The bridge is either strong
and it's going to stay up or it's going to fall.
That's objective. But I want to move to climate change
when we come back, because here is where there's a
lot of suspect science. And yet policies are being built
on the supposed science that's out there. Doctor John Staddon
is with us. His fascinating book is called science in
(37:10):
an Age of Unreason, back after this. Doctor John Staddon
is with us, the author of the book science in
an Age of Unreason. In January of 2021, The Wall
Street Journal profiled Doctor Stanton as a commentator on the
current problems of science. I, for one, am very grateful
(37:32):
that this breath of fresh air is blowing through the
laboratory because there's much to be done here. Maybe it's
where I am in Washington, D.C., but the politicizing of
science doesn't serve anyone, by the way. It certainly doesn't
serve the scientific community, and it certainly doesn't serve us
who have been the beneficiaries of centuries of sound work
and science. Which takes me and you devote a good
chunk of the book to this, and I'm so glad
you did, John, to this whole idea of climate alarmism.
(37:54):
You know, I, I, uh, have to clench my fist
and count to a thousand. Or to put it in
biblical terms, be angry and sin not. Every time I
hear some pundit on television or at a press conference
say the science is settled, really? Is that is that
why we have a lot of PhDs who are peer
reviewed and published, uh, who have said, I question some
of the science. In other words, all naysayers sit down
(38:16):
and be quiet, because if you don't, we're going to
marginalize you by saying you subscribe to the flat earth perspective.
So what do we do when science is jerry wired
to meet a political agenda as opposed to, again, evidence
leading to the facts? Talk to me about this.
S7 (38:33):
Yeah.
S5 (38:33):
I mean, it's an interesting it's an interesting question. I mean,
I can give you I have to give you a
little bit of history. I'm not an expert in climate science, obviously,
although I know some biology, physics, chemistry and so forth.
But I have a very good friend who's an engineer
and a physicist, and he got me interested in this
problem because he was quite skeptical about it. And so
we looked at the literature and so on as best
(38:56):
we could. Most of it is public, and came up
with a conclusion that a great deal less alarmist than
what you currently read. Now, climate science is an example
of what has been called by another chap trans science.
It's nothing to do with transgender. It just means it's
a scientific question, but it can't necessarily be answered by
(39:19):
the methods available now.
S7 (39:21):
Okay.
S5 (39:23):
If it was, the Earth was a simple system, a
simple physical system. You could make a mathematical model of it.
You could solve it on a computer and you'd get
some predictions. Unfortunately, the Earth is too complicated even for
the most advanced modern computers. So the the obvious way
to solve the problem, which is to make a model
of climate and see that it is in an ideal world,
(39:47):
see that your model predicts the previous hundred years and
then use it to predict the next hundred years. Now
there are problems even with that method, as your investment
advisor will probably tell you. Past performance is no measure
of future results. So even that method can be wrong.
The point is that a lot of these models have
been created and they diverge. A chap called Steven Koonin
(40:10):
wrote an excellent book recently, pointing out that they diverge
even more now than they did when they were less elaborate,
and so on. So the models don't really don't really
work to predict what's going on. Now there's another class
of models, which I didn't say much about, called full
physics models. These are very, very simple models, uh, based,
designed to predict the, uh, the climate, like the the
(40:36):
change of temperature in the atmosphere with height and so on,
to predict the climate not just of the Earth, but
of several other planets which have atmospheres. And there are
several of these models, and some of them are quite good,
but they don't predict the kind of catastrophe that the standard, uh,
general general climate models, um, they don't predict these sorts
of catastrophes. And, you know, they're off in a corner somewhere. Now,
(41:01):
the other way of doing this, the other way of
doing this, are looking at this problem is something I'm
used to as a sort of mixed social science is
to look at correlations. And one of the correlations you
can look at is between temperature over the last, what,
half a million years. Some length of time like that. Um,
(41:22):
look at look at, uh, look at the correlation between
temperature over that long time and carbon dioxide, which is
supposedly the main driver of climate. Well, what you find is, yes,
there is a correlation. There is a correlation over the
past 700,000 years. But in fact, if you look at
the details and some of the works yet to be
done on this, I think. But looking at what we have,
(41:44):
looking at the details, what you find is very often,
perhaps most frequently the temperature rises and the carbon dioxide rises.
800 years later, now, even even in the wonderful world
of transgender humans, nobody says the cause comes after the effect. Right. Nobody.
(42:05):
I don't think anybody yet says that it's hard to
argue the carbon dioxide is causing these temperature changes. It
typically follows the change rather than coming in the future.
I'll say one other thing and then I'll let you
get back at me. Um, so that's what the the
model system does has holes in it pretty obviously. Now,
(42:27):
another thing is what we read in the, in television
or the papers every day is that we just had
a hurricane that's caused by climate change. Now that's easy proof.
That is easy to disprove. You can the data are
in the internet. We we reprint most of it that
we found. If you look at the incidence of hurricanes
over the last several hundred years hasn't changed. It hasn't changed.
(42:51):
So it's just nonsense to say that the hurricane tomorrow
is caused by climate warming. But you climate change. But
you see that absolutely, absolutely. All the time. All the time.
And the it's the it's the reporting that's really, really
terrible on that. If people doubt that, let them look
at my book or wander in the internet themselves and
(43:12):
see that trends in And hurricane. Severe hurricanes. Not so
severe hurricanes. Even temperature. You don't see much of a change.
There's been some cooling periods in the last hundred years
and so on and so on. So all that, all
that is mostly, uh, media rhetoric. Not not, uh, not facts.
I'll say one more thing. When we, uh, my friend
(43:36):
and I, uh, collected all this stuff, we wrote a
little paper about it, and I wanted to get feedback.
So this is a normal scientific thing. You write a draft,
you get your colleagues to comment on it, and so on.
So we sent it to three people now, two of
them we thought would be probably sympathetic. The third, the
third one was a sort of an unknown quantity. He
(43:59):
was a colleague of mine, an.
S7 (44:00):
Environmental scientist.
S5 (44:01):
But I knew.
S7 (44:02):
Him, but not, uh, it was just acquaintances. And I
sent it to. He sent it to these three people.
Two of them said, fine. My colleague said.
S5 (44:13):
Basically, stay in your lane.
S7 (44:15):
You're not a climate scientist. Can you run? On that.
S5 (44:22):
Reaction, Freeman.
S7 (44:23):
Dyson, who was a great, great, great scientist. Yeah, he
got that reaction years ago, too. It's pretty typical, actually.
S8 (44:30):
Yeah.
S1 (44:31):
So you're in good company. Oh, John, that hour went
far too quickly. What a memorable conversation. And I always
say this to my friends in a book that I
particularly love. I feel like I've thrown a stone over
the top of a pond. I didn't get to plumb
the depths. I simply skirted over the top. But if
I got your attention, if I got you curious to
see what else Doctor Stanton has said in his book,
then I've done my job. I have to tell you,
it is well worth the read. Science is in a
(44:53):
state of confusion right now, and it has devolved into
an age of unreason. We live collectively in an age
of unreason, but science now, instead of leading, is following suit.
I'm going to be curious to see how it rectifies
itself in the days ahead. Learn more by going to
our website. My heartfelt thanks to Doctor John Stanton and
you friends. We'll see you next time.
Hi friend, thank you so much for downloading this podcast
of In the Market with Janet Parshall, and it is
my most sincere hope that you are edified, equipped, enlightened,
encouraged and then it makes you just want to get
out there in the marketplace of ideas and influence and
occupy until he comes. But before you start listening, let
me just take a moment of your time to tell
you about this month's truth tool. It's called The Steadfast
Love of the Lord by my friend and frequent guest,
(00:22):
Doctor Sam Storms. You know, he tells us that so
often we struggle with this idea of feeling like we're
loved by God, or that somehow we've done something that
separates us from the love of God. But we fail
to remember the Scripture that reminds us that while we
were yet sinners, not perfect, not all put together, not
everything's all been worked out while we were yet sinners.
That's when Christ died. For us. Love is an action word,
(00:44):
and that's what Doctor Sam Storms reminds us in his book,
The Steadfast Love of God. I don't know about you,
but with the headlines of the day, being reminded of
who God is is about the most precious news I
could hear on a regular basis. And I'd love for
you to have a copy written by a man who
understands the Bible and always delivers rich theology. So just
call 877 Janet 58. When you give a gift of
(01:05):
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Scroll down on the page. You'll see the cover of
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make Your Donation and we'll send it to you again.
(01:27):
Listener supported. And when you give a gift, it keeps
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And now with all my heart, I hope you hear
(02:10):
something today that really changes your perspective and makes you
excited about being a follower of Jesus Christ. Enjoy the program!
S2 (02:18):
Here are some of the news headlines we're watching.
S3 (02:20):
The conference was over. The president won a pledge.
S4 (02:22):
So Americans worshiping government over God.
S1 (02:24):
Extremely rare safety move by a major 17 years.
S4 (02:28):
The Palestinians and Israelis negotiated.
S3 (02:31):
Is not working.
S1 (02:46):
Hi friends. Welcome to In the Market with Janet Parshall.
We are about to engage in what I know will
be a fascinating conversation. So let me just put this
question on the table as we begin our time together. Remember,
this program is designed to get you to think critically
and biblically and let the record reflect. Your honor, that
is not an either or proposition. It is a both and.
And we are supposed to get off a diet of milk,
(03:07):
move to a diet of meat, put away childish things,
and hold fast to that which is good. So I
live in a town in Washington, DC where they've literally
marched down the streets of my town holding up signs
that say Follow the science or I believe in the science. Great.
And of course, the subtext of that is it's an
either or proposition. Either you believe in science or you
(03:27):
believe in faith, but the two are mutually exclusive. And
then we fomented this mythology for decades now that somehow
science and religion have been at war with one another,
when in fact, if you study the history of science,
you will see that great thinkers were oftentimes great believers,
and they found no conflict in their particular worldview. But
something is amiss. Something's changed along the line, and we
(03:47):
are seeing the ascendancy of something that C.S. Lewis saw
several years ago. He referred to it as scientism. Scientism
was a great concern of Lewis's, and he was concerned
because he thought that somehow humanity might be headed for
abolition and that in fact, in fact, in fact, science
would be placed on a pedestal and it would ignore
(04:08):
completely the central reality of the human condition. Was he right? Well,
I think we're going to find out more about that
as we continue our conversation this hour. What a delight.
And I mean an absolute delight to spend the hour
with Doctor John Stanton. He is the James B Duke
Professor of Psychology and Professor of biology emeritus at Duke University.
(04:28):
He obtained his B.S. at University College in London and
his PhD in Experimental psychology at Harvard University, where he
also did research at the MIT Systems Lab. He's the
author of more than 200 research papers and nine books,
including Scientific Method How Science Works, Fails to Work or
Pretends to Work. He was profiled in The Wall Street
(04:48):
Journal in January of 2021 as a commentator on the
current problems of science. He has written an Absolutely fabulous
book called science in an Age of Unreason in my classroom.
It would be recommended reading, I hope by the end
of this hour is that you won't walk. You will
run to get your copy. John. First and foremost, thank
you for the permission to call you John. I greatly
(05:10):
appreciate that. Second, thank you for something I can't give
you back, which is the irreplaceable gift of one hour
of your time. And third, thank you for writing this
book with such clarity and it speaks to a culture
now who has put us at war with science. Thank
you for being here.
S5 (05:26):
Happy to be here, Janet. Thanks for having me.
S1 (05:29):
It is a delight. Thank you. And I want to
find out a little bit more about your background. Tell
me about your gravitating toward psychology in general and then
your PhD in particular with experimental psychology. Was there a
particular area of psychology that you found interesting? When we
talk about experimental, what does that mean to the layperson
who might be listening somewhere across the country right now?
S5 (05:52):
Well, it's an interesting question, sort of technical. I mean,
my problem was that I grew up in England and
in England I it's a rather rigid educational system. You
have to pass a set of examinations in high school
which are called advanced level A-level exams. And I took four,
(06:12):
which was pure math, applied math, chemistry and physics. What
I really wanted to do was take biology, but my
school didn't have biology. And because it didn't have biology,
I couldn't get into biology department. And that's the way
it works in Britain. You apply directly into a department.
There's no sort of freshman year where you sort yourself out.
(06:33):
In fact, the freshman year occurs about the age of 16.
It's a very odd system, and I think it's still
pretty much that way. So I really wanted to go
into biology. All I could get into in college was
actually engineering. And from engineering I got into psychology because
psychology had no A-levels.
S6 (06:52):
But they wanted me to take a little test?
S5 (06:56):
So I flipped from Battersea Polytechnic, which is where I
started in engineering, into University College London, which had a
psychology department. Once I got there, what I really wanted
to work on was the behaviour of micro-organisms. No, no
opportunities for that. So I just took standard psychology, but
(07:18):
by a devious route. After I graduated, I came to
America and I wound up at Harvard and at Harvard.
There were then two psychology departments. There was one which
was called psychology, but was in fact experimental psychology. And
there's another one called social relations, which was all the
rest of psychology. So I got into this rather wonderful department.
(07:39):
At that time, in the basement of Memorial Hall was
100 rooms, only a half dozen faculty. A Nobel Prize
winner was there, George Baker, who discovered how the inner
ear works and so on. And the emphasis there were
two kinds of emphasis there. Stop me if I'm going
on too long. But one was a sensation and perception.
(08:00):
You know how the eye works, how the hearing works,
and so on. A wonderful psychoacoustic lab of, uh, one
of these, um, anechoic chambers and so on. And the other,
the other big force there was B.F. Skinner, who you.
S6 (08:16):
Perhaps heard of.
S1 (08:17):
Wow.
S6 (08:18):
Who who was.
S5 (08:21):
From my point of view, very, uh, I was very
unsympathetic to his theoretical position, which was, we don't need theory.
I was interested in theory, but I was very attracted
by his experimental method, which involved working with animal subjects
one at a time, not groups. I never did an
experiment with groups. Everything we did, you could repeat with
(08:42):
a single animal and so on. I thought, this is
the way to do science, I still do. Actually, I
think one of the ways that modern social science and
biomedical science has gone off the rails, is purporting to
be interested in individual organisms, but always studying groups, and
there are all sorts of problems in that I could
talk about later. A little bit technical. Anyway, so that's
(09:05):
the long story, short shortened version of the long story.
How I wound up in psychology. I'm really. That's why
I have a cross appointment in biology. I'm really a
psycho biologist. I look at psychology from a biological point
of view and say.
S6 (09:21):
Um, but um, rather than looking at that point of
view and also the social thing.
S3 (09:31):
Wow.
S1 (09:32):
Oh, what a fascinating story. And I find it so
interesting that when a door closed, another opened. And now
you're internationally renowned. Just what an amazing story. Doctor John
Staddon is with us. He is the James B Duke
Professor of Psychology and Professor of biology emeritus at Duke University.
He's the author of the new book science in an
(09:52):
Age of Unreason. So much to discuss in the book.
We'll get started right after this. Zephaniah 317 tells us
(10:13):
God loves us so much that he breaks out in
song over his children. That's why I've chosen the steadfast
love of the Lord as this month's truth tool. Learn
to know the everlasting, unchanging, soul saving love of God.
Ask for your copy of the steadfast Love of the Lord.
When you give a gift of any amount to in
the market, call 877. Janet 58. That's 877 Janet 58
(10:34):
or go to in the market with Janet Parshall. It
is absolutely a privilege to spend the hour with legendary
professor Doctor John Staton, who's the author of the book
science in an Age of Unreason. And let me just
tell you how intriguing this book is. There are many
chapters to the book. It's written in five parts, and
he breaks this down systematically as someone with his education
(10:55):
would naturally. So even for the layperson, this is utterly
and completely understandable. And it really does challenge us to
be thinking differently. And, by the way, not to acquiesce,
you know, follow the science. And we fail to recognize
that what in reality they're saying is that this is
the new religion. This is what Lewis was referring to
years ago, that somehow this would be the final arbiter
of truth, and that everything else was a distant second. So, John,
(11:18):
you begin your book with a chapter entitled Has Secular
Humanism Made science a religion? We could spend five hours
just breaking down this one chapter. But let me linger here,
if I can, for a little bit. So you start
out by defining what in fact constitutes a religion, which
is very important because even the high courts of the
United States have had to try to break down what
constitutes a religion. And some have said, well, is secular
(11:40):
humanism really, in fact a religion? So it's a question
that the courts have even had to look at. So
from your vantage point, as someone who is gifted in
psychology and biology. If I were to say. And I
landed here from another planet and I said, define religion
for me, what would you say?
S5 (11:56):
Well, I can say what I said in the book,
which is religions have three parts, really. First is the
spiritual part, the belief in God or angels, spirits, whatever. Um,
one of the distinctive things about that part is it's
not testable by the methods of science. It's outside science.
(12:17):
It's neither true nor false in point of view of science.
The second aspect is the historical aspect. Every religion has
a history of itself. I mean, uh, Christ was crucified,
the year is given, and so on, uh, the age
of the earth and all of that. Now, some of
those beliefs are testable, like the age of the Earth. Well,
(12:39):
it probably wasn't 4004 BC, you know, and so on. Um,
so that's testable. But the others are not. I mean,
they're just beliefs. Again, outside of science, historical, especially remote
historical events, you can't really prove them by the methods
of science. The third category is the one I wanted
(13:00):
to emphasize, and that is moral laws. Moral laws. You know,
the Ten Commandments, the Sharia law, and so on. These
are also unprovable by the methods of science. And the
person I allude to there is a wonderful enlightenment philosopher,
David Hume. You probably know about it.
S6 (13:20):
He is perhaps the.
S5 (13:23):
Most impressive of the enlightenment philosophers, and he pointed out
that a fact that is a product of science, a fact, uh,
has no direction for action. It doesn't tell you what
to do by itself. It doesn't tell you what to
do by itself. Um, and. When you do act based
(13:52):
on a fact, it's because of a value system which
comes either from your religion or from somewhere else. But
the point is from science. It doesn't make a bit
of difference where it comes from. The belief system is
not provable by science, even if you are a scientist
and a secular humanist. I mean, we know where the beliefs,
(14:12):
the moral beliefs of Christians come from the Bible, ten
Commandments and so on. We don't know as well where
the values of secular humanists come from, but they probably
come from writers like John Stuart Mill, John Rawls, more recently,
other philosophers, and so on. The problem, from a political
(14:33):
point of view, is that they're not written down in
that neat way that religious beliefs are. But this vagueness
got me into a little debate, which I write about
a bit in the book. It's on somewhere where I
first got into this, with a very well known evolutionary
biologist who insisted he what he seemed to say is
(14:58):
because your beliefs, that is, your Christian beliefs. I'm agnostic,
but if I were a Christian, your beliefs are tied
to these mythical things. Therefore I need pay no attention to.
My beliefs come from science. But the whole point of
Hume is that no beliefs come from science. Another way
to look at it is to say that science is
(15:20):
like a map. You know, it has a lot of
facts and so on. It's a map, but it's not
a destination. You've got all these things you could do,
places you could go. But science doesn't tell you which
of them to go to. That's provided by your value system.
So in that secular humanism is not a religion, but
it is motivated by action rules, you know, morals just
(15:44):
like any religion and deserves to be treated in much
the same way. I would say much the same way. Um,
now modern the one a lot of problems with secular
humanism because these things are not written down, they tend
to change. And now, for example, in society, I was
just watching this rather wonderful little film by Matt Walsh
(16:04):
called what is a woman? I don't know if you've watched.
S1 (16:06):
Yes. Yes. Wonderful.
S5 (16:09):
Yeah. I mean, it's a fascinating film, and obviously there's
a group that has a whole new set of values.
And I mentioned this briefly in the book. One of
the values is that people's wishes about themselves are absolutely dominant, preeminent.
So if you think you're a cat, you're a cat.
(16:31):
I mean, that kind of thing from a scientific point
of view is silly. I mean, you know what a
cat is? You can sequence its genome and so on. No,
you're not a cat and you have terrible fur. So besides,
you know, and so on. So I mean, that's I mean,
that's a nonsensical belief. And yet there's a class of people,
these transgender people who say, if I feel like a girl,
(16:55):
then I am a girl. And that's supported. That's not
not just the thought. It's it's an action system. It's
a moral system. So in Canada, for example, I can
hardly believe this. If you do not address a transgender
person by his or her preferred pronouns, you're legally liable.
I mean, that seems to me tyrannical beyond belief. But
(17:17):
apparently in Canada and, um, but it does follow from
a religious, in effect, a religious belief, which is that
my happiness and my my happiness is preeminent. I have
my truth and so on, what they call the standpoint epistemology.
These are all the set of values which are, um,
(17:40):
as unlinked to science as any set of religious values. Yeah. Now,
on the other way. Another way to look at this
is that and I think you mentioned this earlier, is
that many of the great.
S7 (17:52):
Scientists were were believers of Christians, right. Isaac Newton was
the most striking examples. I mean, there are many, many others. Yeah. Uh.
S1 (18:01):
John, forgive me, forgive me. Let me interrupt. Only because
I have to bow in submission to the clock here.
Let me pick it up, if I may, please. Right
at that point. Doctor John Staten, my guest author of
science in an Age of Unreason. Back after this. Science
(18:24):
in an Age of Unreason, the brand new book by
Doctor John Staten, who is the James B Duke Professor
of Psychology and Professor of biology emeritus at Duke University.
Absolutely fascinating. Look at the problems of science today. John,
I want to go exactly to where we were before
the break, because I think really this is the primary
thesis of why your title is so succinct science in
(18:45):
an Age of Unreason. So scientists, by their very nature,
when you were talking about this, particularly your love of biology,
we love to look under a microscope. We love to
look in a petri dish. We love to, in theory,
at least once upon a time, see where the evidence
leads us. We may have a supposition. We may have
a theory. But if the evidence doesn't substantiate that theory,
then it was nothing more than a theory. And we
(19:05):
move on. You follow where the evidence leads. So let's
go to this idea of gender dysphoria, which until it
was politicized, was very much a recognizable psychological condition that
should be treated with kindness, compassion, and as complex and
often comes with comorbidity. More than one diagnosis other than
the inability to see oneself within their physical body. But
(19:26):
if the science were to rule the day and we
were science in an age of reason, science would say,
young man, sit down, let's draw a little blood. We're
going to do a test. We're going to take a
look at your genetics. Okay? And let's see what the
chromosomes show us. It wouldn't be predicated on how the
patient felt. It would be objective truth, as evidenced in
a laboratory that would make it science in an age
(19:47):
of reason. But politics seemed to have coerced Nawaz to
accept that a dog is a cat and a cat
and a dog. If someone feels like it, talk to
me about that, because that, to me, would be the
death knell for science. Politics rules the day, not evidence.
S5 (20:00):
Well, you're absolutely right. I just wrote I just published
a little paper called The Face of Science and one
of the, uh, the central face of science. And it
is faith. I mean, you can't prove any of this.
The faith of science is that there is a truth
out there about nature, that nature is orderly. It doesn't
(20:22):
change randomly from day to day and so on. And
that without that faith, without that faith in a single
truth that is independent of the observer, you can't do science.
There's no point. And in fact, again, going back to
Matt Walsh's movie, that's exactly the opposite of what these
folks believe. They interviewed several people and medical people who
(20:48):
basically said, well, I have my truth. You have your truth.
There is no single truth. So they are absolutely outside
of science, no question about that. And what they have
is a religion where nature is what you want it
to be. I mean, maybe it's because these critical race
theory and so on, people have lived in a world
(21:09):
of words for so long. The words begin to assume
a reality of their own. So they feel, if if
I feel like X, then I'm X. You know, if
you don't agree, well, that's your truth. I have my truth.
So it's totally inimical to science and inimical really to
the core beliefs of Western civilization. That doesn't bother people,
(21:31):
of course.
S1 (21:32):
Yes. Well, let me linger on this idea because I
happen to outright, uh, Dispute the legitimacy of my truth
and your truth. I believe that truth is knowable. I
believe it's objective. I believe it applies to all times
and all people in all places. And so let me
give you an example. Again, in the scientific world, I
don't feel like gravity has a place in my life.
(21:52):
You referenced Isaac Newton earlier. So for me, the laws
of gravity will be suspended because it's not my truth.
Now that doesn't make it right, doesn't make it true,
doesn't make it real. If science is going to let
feelings or political agenda, as we say in my town,
supersede where the facts lead us. As I said before then,
I don't know what the future of science will be,
(22:12):
but my feelings are immaterial to objective truth. If I
drop an apple and it hits the ground, gravity exists.
And I would think for people in the scientific community,
they would be absolutely, uh, having apoplexy right now, that
if things don't get turned around, the world of science
is going to be put in the closet and the
door is going to be locked.
S5 (22:33):
Well, I mean, you're right. It's really a terrible, terrible situation.
I was, uh, listening the other day to Heather MacDonald
talking about the AMA, which is basically introducing identity politics
into medical schools. And in other words, they are no
longer to hire people because of their scientific ability, but
(22:56):
because of their racial identity. So for them, truth, which
should be the the foremost value of any scientist or
medical person, now takes a second place to identity politics,
which is absolutely crazy. I mean, I cannot grasp it.
I mean, I've written articles about this. I have looked
(23:18):
at things like the American Psychological Association's website, the American
Medical Association, American Sociological Association, and tragically, they're all on
this particular bus headed over a cliff. A cliff, I
might add, where gravity actually works.
S1 (23:35):
So. I love the word picture and I couldn't agree more.
Which does raise, I think, a serious conversation. And that
is you talk about the AMA. Well, the AMA now
is what the American Bar Association is. These are the
political wings of these disciplines. They no longer represent the great,
exalted work that physicians do. Collectively, they become a lobbying arm,
(23:56):
if I can put it that way. The American Academy
of Pediatrics jumped ahead and said, oh, let's give puberty
blockers to kids and let's do this mutilating surgery. And
then they looked across the pond and they saw what
happened to Tavistock and went, oops, maybe we need to backtrack.
So they've just recently now backtracked and said, wait a minute,
maybe we need to take this on a case by
case basis, and maybe we don't. We shouldn't rush to
(24:17):
facilitating these kinds of decisions because in many cases they're
irreparable and they change a person forever and eliminate the
possibility of breastfeeding your child or having a baby altogether.
So again, the madness here cannot be overlooked. There's so
much in this book I want to get to climate change.
That's the big section of your book, because this is
where this unreason plays itself out. Let me just say
(24:40):
the book is rich. It is thought provoking. It speaks
common sense into a world of madness. Right now, science
is a discipline that should be respected. I happen to
believe that science very much reflects the glory of God
is magnificence, that telos, the way things work together. You
can believe if you want to. It was happenstance. I
think there was a great clockmaker who makes the clock work,
(25:02):
by the way, and he takes on this issue of
Darwinian evolution in the book as well. Science in an
Age of Unreason. Doctor John Staddon, my guest. More after this.
If what you hear on in the market with Janet
(25:23):
partial encourages you, enlightens you, engages you, and equips you,
I want to ask you to become a partial partner today.
This program depends on the faithful and ongoing support of
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(25:44):
to in the market with Janet Parshall. Absolutely fascinating book.
I'd like to encourage you to read. It's called science
in an Age of Unreason. It is written by our guest,
Doctor John Staten. James B Duke professor of Psychology and
Professor of biology, emeritus at Duke University. He got his B.S.
at the University College in London, his PhD in experimental
(26:07):
psychology at Harvard University, where he also did research at
the MIT Systems Lab. He is the author of more
than 200 research papers and nine books. He was profiled
in The Wall Street Journal as commentator on the current
problems of science in his book science in an Age
of Reason. It is far more than commentary. It is
a tome and I strongly encourage you to read it.
(26:28):
Let me back up to something you said before, John.
And there are there's 25 hours worth of conversation in
your book. So I want to make the most of
my time together because this is such a rich topic
to cover. You point out early that secular humanists and
some evolutionary biologists believe that science provides an ethical system,
not the long discredited social Darwinism, but a melange of
(26:51):
supposedly secular values derived from liberal and progressive writings over
the past three centuries. Let me just take that primary thesis.
So if there is in fact an ethical system in science,
my question would be, and how did that ethical system
come to be? How is it not utterly subjective if
it's not an objective code that over all of science?
(27:12):
And has it been made up as we've gone along,
sort of put it that way? And if there isn't ethics,
by the way, why are so many questionable practices being
put in place right now? What is that ethical system
in science look like?
S5 (27:24):
Well, that's hard to say. Science is a collection of
facts about nature, about the universe. You know, as you
mentioned earlier. Gravity. The Earth is a sphere, not flat.
And so on and so on. It's science is just
those facts. Now, in order to do science, you have
to have some values like a belief in truth, honesty,
(27:48):
willingness to share your data, open debate, all of those
kinds of things. So there is no conflict really between
the facts of science and any set of values. I'm
not sure that answers your question, but am I missing something?
S1 (28:02):
No, no. I'm just wondering if there is, in fact
a code of ethics. I would let me look at
it in the practical. So if in fact a scientific
code of ethics does in fact exist, what's to prohibit
us from doing human cloning and not when it's just
in the embryonic stage or in the zygote stage? But
let's just say we have a baby born to full
(28:23):
term in pregnancy. Uh, do we encourage, like Dolly the
sheep in Scotland? Do we encourage the cloning of human beings?
Do we mix animal cells and human cells together in
the lab? Is there an ethical prohibition to that? Do
we decide that only the fittest should live? And then
some subjective group somewhere of scientists decides what constitutes fit
(28:44):
and what doesn't? In other words, I want to see
this application. I can see it in the heart of
every individual scientist being played out. For example, one of
the conflicts we have in Washington right now is if
you happen to be a pharmacist who's pro-life, you now
have the government hanging over your head like Damocles sword
that says you will, despite your personally held sincere beliefs,
distribute this abortifacient whether you believe in it or not.
(29:07):
If not, you will pay the penalty. That's government coercion.
Where's the system of ethics? There is ethics for science
a general application, or is it an individualized code of behavior?
S5 (29:18):
Well, I'm sorry, I'm sorry I didn't hear this question earlier.
I would have sent you my little paper, because I
point out at the end that the ethics for doing
science are not all of ethics. I mean, eugenics is
a perfect example, right? That tells you that mammals, human
beings included, can be bred selectively. But by golly, it
(29:40):
doesn't say you should do it or you shouldn't do it.
S1 (29:43):
Exactly.
S5 (29:43):
Those come from elsewhere. So the all I was talking
about was the morals that allow you to do science,
that is, to find facts. Now, there are, of course,
problems at the limit, as you point out, things like cloning, uh,
experimentation with human beings, particularly human infants. Those have to
be decided by another set of ethics. So in science
(30:04):
says if you want to do this or the method
of what I'm calling the morals of science, say, if
you want to do this, then you must do x, y,
and z. But a superordinate set of ethics, which is
provided by Christians, for Christians by the Bible, and so on,
that system of ethics guides you beyond that point. I mean,
(30:29):
a contemporary example, which is sort of blows my mind.
Is this a gain of function research?
S1 (30:35):
Right?
S5 (30:36):
Bryant says, yeah, you can engineer a virus so that
it kills more people. Is that a great idea? Well,
that's not science doesn't tell you whether it's a great
idea or not. Something else does. And scientists have been
aware of this for a long time. There was a
conference years ago called the Asilomar Conference. Asilomar being a
place in California where a lot of molecular biologists got
(30:58):
together to discuss the ethics of gene splicing and so on,
and came up with a set of recommendations. Now that's fine.
But of course, the scientists are not the only ones
who should decide. The whole of society should decide, really.
And that's the way it should be. Now, right now,
with this Covid business, um, what's happened is that the
(31:22):
scientists have been put in the driving seat. So you've
got people like Doctor Fauci saying, I am science. Well,
I don't know. Maybe he thinks he's science. Doctor Fauci
is science in the way that he thinks he's a girl.
I mean, it's nonsense to say that he's not science.
He is or was a scientist, and he could present
(31:44):
his facts of science objectively, hopefully. But then the decision
about what to do about them that shouldn't be made
by him one man, one scientist should be made by
society through the political process, political, legal, moral process and
so on. So I think there was a real botched
situation in the Covid crisis where a scientist were given
(32:07):
more authority than either their moral stature or the knowledge
at that time available to them more than what they knew.
They were given power beyond their ability to exercise it wisely.
I mean, there's no reason why a virologist should be
the best person to tell a school whether to close
(32:29):
down the school or not. I mean, it's absolutely not
his business. Really?
S8 (32:33):
Yeah, exactly.
S5 (32:34):
Even as a citizen and a parent, maybe, but not
beyond that.
S8 (32:37):
Yeah.
S1 (32:38):
Well stated. Let me take this back down to terra firma,
because this is where the pragmatics of your book come
into play. So let's stick with the gain of function question.
So if science is objective and science is about seeking
truth and following the evidence where it leads, we know,
for example, in Communist China that nothing is ever done
without an intersection with the military. So we know also
through our own security here in the United States, that
(32:59):
gain of function is something Communist China has been doing
for a long period of time. They've been manipulating viruses
to go after people of a certain age, people of
a certain ethnicity. Uh, obviously killing people is not a
problem to the communist way of thinking. They have a long,
tattered and sad history of doing just that. But yet
we saw once again, and this is where it isn't
just an Age of unreason, John, but it's also an
(33:20):
age of political coercion or acquiescence. Or maybe you already
start out with that particular worldview and it's a hand
in glove kind of relationship. But why would the World
Health Organization have dragged its feet? Why did they not
completely go after Communist China? Why didn't we examine the
Wuhan labs first? This is all science. This shouldn't have
anything to do with politics. This should be for the
greater good. This should be for loving our fellow man.
(33:41):
Whether you're an atheist, agnostic, or a follower of Jesus Christ,
that principle should be transcendent. One would think you would
follow that. But the intersection with science now isn't objective
truth seeking. It is absolutely being the handmaiden of politics. That,
to me, seems to new to be a new iteration.
You know, the alleged struggle was between science and faith.
(34:03):
The new struggle seems to me this unholy alliance between
science and politics. And so I ask you as a scientist,
how in the world can that be undone before the
weeds of that entanglement suffocate science completely, and it really
becomes an operating arm of government good. If it's good
government horrific if it's bad government.
S5 (34:22):
Yeah. I mean That is a great problem. I really
don't know what to do. Uh, I mean, I've got
some ideas, but who knows? One idea I had is that, um. Well,
let me back up. The World Health Organization is a
political organization. The people who run these sorts of things
(34:44):
are not working scientists, interestingly enough. I actually worked under
two World Health Organization scientists in Africa many years ago.
S8 (34:53):
Mhm.
S5 (34:54):
Many, many years ago, uh, in something called the Northern
Rhodesia Health and Nutrition Scheme, I was just a skivvy.
I mean, I didn't have my degree at that time
and so on. Uh, I went out there to make
a little pocket money, uh, for a couple of years.
But at that time it worked well. It worked very well.
These two senior scientists, one was a pediatric expert from Denmark,
(35:19):
I guess, and the other was, uh, an Irish guy
who was an Infectious disease expert and they were very good.
They ran a great ship and so on. And it
did what it was supposed to do, which was find
the sources of infection and so on. But I think
since then the W.H.O. has been transformed. I mean, bureaucracies,
(35:41):
unless they are very cleverly set up with feedback checks
and balances and so on, very soon degenerate into self-serving organizations. Um,
a colleague of mine works on the economics of that.
I think it's called public choice theory. And this shows
very convincingly how bureaucracies degenerate unless there is stabilizing influences.
(36:03):
So the World Health Organization is not a scientific organization,
or it's only partly. I mean, it's got input from scientists,
no doubt about that. But it also has political inputs.
And there are all sorts of problems with this. Now
when the science. And I mentioned this in the book,
when the science is very strong like physics. Right. Great
political influences are minimal.
S7 (36:26):
Bridges don't fall down and so on because they're cheaper.
Bridge would be better because the physics is so strong.
It's so strong that the political pressures are ineffective. But
when the science is weak, which is true, almost all
the social science that is in these other places now.
S1 (36:48):
So, John, let me pick it up at exactly at
that point when the science is weak, like you said,
you can't argue with physics. The bridge is either strong
and it's going to stay up or it's going to fall.
That's objective. But I want to move to climate change
when we come back, because here is where there's a
lot of suspect science. And yet policies are being built
on the supposed science that's out there. Doctor John Staddon
is with us. His fascinating book is called science in
(37:10):
an Age of Unreason, back after this. Doctor John Staddon
is with us, the author of the book science in
an Age of Unreason. In January of 2021, The Wall
Street Journal profiled Doctor Stanton as a commentator on the
current problems of science. I, for one, am very grateful
(37:32):
that this breath of fresh air is blowing through the
laboratory because there's much to be done here. Maybe it's
where I am in Washington, D.C., but the politicizing of
science doesn't serve anyone, by the way. It certainly doesn't
serve the scientific community, and it certainly doesn't serve us
who have been the beneficiaries of centuries of sound work
and science. Which takes me and you devote a good
chunk of the book to this, and I'm so glad
you did, John, to this whole idea of climate alarmism.
(37:54):
You know, I, I, uh, have to clench my fist
and count to a thousand. Or to put it in
biblical terms, be angry and sin not. Every time I
hear some pundit on television or at a press conference
say the science is settled, really? Is that is that
why we have a lot of PhDs who are peer
reviewed and published, uh, who have said, I question some
of the science. In other words, all naysayers sit down
(38:16):
and be quiet, because if you don't, we're going to
marginalize you by saying you subscribe to the flat earth perspective.
So what do we do when science is jerry wired
to meet a political agenda as opposed to, again, evidence
leading to the facts? Talk to me about this.
S7 (38:33):
Yeah.
S5 (38:33):
I mean, it's an interesting it's an interesting question. I mean,
I can give you I have to give you a
little bit of history. I'm not an expert in climate science, obviously,
although I know some biology, physics, chemistry and so forth.
But I have a very good friend who's an engineer
and a physicist, and he got me interested in this
problem because he was quite skeptical about it. And so
we looked at the literature and so on as best
(38:56):
we could. Most of it is public, and came up
with a conclusion that a great deal less alarmist than
what you currently read. Now, climate science is an example
of what has been called by another chap trans science.
It's nothing to do with transgender. It just means it's
a scientific question, but it can't necessarily be answered by
(39:19):
the methods available now.
S7 (39:21):
Okay.
S5 (39:23):
If it was, the Earth was a simple system, a
simple physical system. You could make a mathematical model of it.
You could solve it on a computer and you'd get
some predictions. Unfortunately, the Earth is too complicated even for
the most advanced modern computers. So the the obvious way
to solve the problem, which is to make a model
of climate and see that it is in an ideal world,
(39:47):
see that your model predicts the previous hundred years and
then use it to predict the next hundred years. Now
there are problems even with that method, as your investment
advisor will probably tell you. Past performance is no measure
of future results. So even that method can be wrong.
The point is that a lot of these models have
been created and they diverge. A chap called Steven Koonin
(40:10):
wrote an excellent book recently, pointing out that they diverge
even more now than they did when they were less elaborate,
and so on. So the models don't really don't really
work to predict what's going on. Now there's another class
of models, which I didn't say much about, called full
physics models. These are very, very simple models, uh, based,
designed to predict the, uh, the climate, like the the
(40:36):
change of temperature in the atmosphere with height and so on,
to predict the climate not just of the Earth, but
of several other planets which have atmospheres. And there are
several of these models, and some of them are quite good,
but they don't predict the kind of catastrophe that the standard, uh,
general general climate models, um, they don't predict these sorts
of catastrophes. And, you know, they're off in a corner somewhere. Now,
(41:01):
the other way of doing this, the other way of
doing this, are looking at this problem is something I'm
used to as a sort of mixed social science is
to look at correlations. And one of the correlations you
can look at is between temperature over the last, what,
half a million years. Some length of time like that. Um,
(41:22):
look at look at, uh, look at the correlation between
temperature over that long time and carbon dioxide, which is
supposedly the main driver of climate. Well, what you find is, yes,
there is a correlation. There is a correlation over the
past 700,000 years. But in fact, if you look at
the details and some of the works yet to be
done on this, I think. But looking at what we have,
(41:44):
looking at the details, what you find is very often,
perhaps most frequently the temperature rises and the carbon dioxide rises.
800 years later, now, even even in the wonderful world
of transgender humans, nobody says the cause comes after the effect. Right. Nobody.
(42:05):
I don't think anybody yet says that it's hard to
argue the carbon dioxide is causing these temperature changes. It
typically follows the change rather than coming in the future.
I'll say one other thing and then I'll let you
get back at me. Um, so that's what the the
model system does has holes in it pretty obviously. Now,
(42:27):
another thing is what we read in the, in television
or the papers every day is that we just had
a hurricane that's caused by climate change. Now that's easy proof.
That is easy to disprove. You can the data are
in the internet. We we reprint most of it that
we found. If you look at the incidence of hurricanes
over the last several hundred years hasn't changed. It hasn't changed.
(42:51):
So it's just nonsense to say that the hurricane tomorrow
is caused by climate warming. But you climate change. But
you see that absolutely, absolutely. All the time. All the time.
And the it's the it's the reporting that's really, really
terrible on that. If people doubt that, let them look
at my book or wander in the internet themselves and
(43:12):
see that trends in And hurricane. Severe hurricanes. Not so
severe hurricanes. Even temperature. You don't see much of a change.
There's been some cooling periods in the last hundred years
and so on and so on. So all that, all
that is mostly, uh, media rhetoric. Not not, uh, not facts.
I'll say one more thing. When we, uh, my friend
(43:36):
and I, uh, collected all this stuff, we wrote a
little paper about it, and I wanted to get feedback.
So this is a normal scientific thing. You write a draft,
you get your colleagues to comment on it, and so on.
So we sent it to three people now, two of
them we thought would be probably sympathetic. The third, the
third one was a sort of an unknown quantity. He
(43:59):
was a colleague of mine, an.
S7 (44:00):
Environmental scientist.
S5 (44:01):
But I knew.
S7 (44:02):
Him, but not, uh, it was just acquaintances. And I
sent it to. He sent it to these three people.
Two of them said, fine. My colleague said.
S5 (44:13):
Basically, stay in your lane.
S7 (44:15):
You're not a climate scientist. Can you run? On that.
S5 (44:22):
Reaction, Freeman.
S7 (44:23):
Dyson, who was a great, great, great scientist. Yeah, he
got that reaction years ago, too. It's pretty typical, actually.
S8 (44:30):
Yeah.
S1 (44:31):
So you're in good company. Oh, John, that hour went
far too quickly. What a memorable conversation. And I always
say this to my friends in a book that I
particularly love. I feel like I've thrown a stone over
the top of a pond. I didn't get to plumb
the depths. I simply skirted over the top. But if
I got your attention, if I got you curious to
see what else Doctor Stanton has said in his book,
then I've done my job. I have to tell you,
it is well worth the read. Science is in a
(44:53):
state of confusion right now, and it has devolved into
an age of unreason. We live collectively in an age
of unreason, but science now, instead of leading, is following suit.
I'm going to be curious to see how it rectifies
itself in the days ahead. Learn more by going to
our website. My heartfelt thanks to Doctor John Stanton and
you friends. We'll see you next time.
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