Scientism in the classroom

What teachers need to know

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When I was young, I was foolish. The less we know about the world, the simpler it seems. Yet the world is complicated.

The gold standard

For example, tying the value of a currency to the value of gold seems like a good idea for combatting inflation, with all its negative effects for ordinary people who see the prices of food and shelter rising faster than their ability to pay. However, if a government needs to quickly increase the supply of money because, for example, it is fighting a war or pandemic, it cannot. That’s why fiat money—money that is not pegged to a commodity—gradually started to replace the gold standard from the First World War onwards. The process finally ended with the collapse of the Bretton Woods agreement in 1971 that saw the American dollar decouple from gold—and subsequently the rest of the world decouple from the dollar—and led to the current system where governments have flexibility over the supply of money and many currencies float upwards or downwards in value.

This system has its own problems. Democratic governments are keen to deliver their promises and so are tempted to ‘print’ more money to fund them. This drives inflation and has contributed to the current cost of living crisis that much of the world is experiencing after COVID-19. For their part, monetarist economists have argued that we could have a form of gold-standard-without-the-gold by tightly controlling the supply of money, although that requires great discipline from politicians who tend to focus more on their own re-election.

There is no easy answer to any of this. Moreover, there is no simple moral choice. If you ask yourself what solution a good and virtuous person should choose then the answer is: it’s complicated.

Most policy problems are like this. When we know little about a subject, we can be convinced that the solution is simple and staring us in the face. We can also convince ourselves that the solution is so simple that only bad people with nefarious motives could be against it. This is how fear and rage infect all sides of politics.

As Paul Graham wrote in his classic essay, How to Disagree.

“You don't have to be mean when you have a real point to make. In fact, you don't want to. If you have something real to say, being mean just gets in the way.”

Net Zero

I was reminded of this by a comment on my latest Curios post. I had written about a blog by UK academics arguing that ‘Net Zero’ should be placed in the school curriculum, claiming that the policy of achieving Net Zero is ‘vital’. I noted this is a topic of active political disagreement in the UK, as well as Australia, and so we should not be teaching young people to take a side in a contested argument. Instead, our role as teachers is to equip students with the knowledge to make up their own minds.

I avoided the temptation to state my own position on Net Zero policies because I am just as much opposed to teaching children political positions I agree with as I am opposed to teaching them political positions I disagree with. So, it did not seem to matter.

In the comments on my post, I was upbraided by a regular contributor:

“You’re best when you write about what you know well. It’s uncomfortable when you delve into things that aren’t in your wheelhouse.

Especially as you chide others for “a UK commentator who writes columns for newspapers on whatever he can think of”.

Among climate scientists who work in this area, the “net zero CO2 to stabilise warming” point is essentially consensus because it follows directly from the carbon budget framing used in major assessments.

- IPCC AR6 Synthesis Report, Summary for Policymakers, section B.5 “Carbon Budgets and Net Zero Emissions”, page 19.

One would think a conclusion with that much scientific consensus shouldn’t be challenged off hand by someone without the knowledge and training to do so. One would also hope our science curriculum represents the best available current consensus among scientists who specialise in the relevant field.

There’s a certain false equivalence on the thinking around this topic. Scientists say X, politicians, media commentators and other public figures say Y. I know expert either but I know who I trust.”

I think this is really interesting, especially the repeated idea that I don’t know what I am talking about when it comes to Net Zero. That is an example of a common response when someone has taken a scientistic—not scientific—position. Purveyors of scientism tend to characterise their opponents as lacking in knowledge and therefore, implicitly, as holding illegitimate positions.

Scientism

Scientism has a number of definitions but it essentially means a sleight of hand where science is used as a basis to make claims that are not within the realms of science. It takes the form of a logical syllogism that looks something like this:

1. Empirical premise: X is the case (supported by science).

2. Hidden value premise: We ought to prioritise Y (efficiency, safety, equity, emissions reduction, etc.) above competing goods.

3. Conclusion: Therefore, we should implement policy P.

For example, a scientistic claim might be that smoking causes cancer (true) therefore we should ban smoking in the outdoor areas of pubs and bars.

The hidden value premise here is that this policy would make it more inconvenient for people to smoke, cause more to quit and therefore lead to fewer deaths from smoking. However, there are other ‘goods’ that have not been valued: the individual freedom of smokers and the livelihoods of pubs and bars. I might mount the case, for example, that people who are still smoking in 2026 have made a deliberate choice that should be respected.

All life is special and lifespans should be maximised, you may counter. I might then point out that this principle is not a consistent one in public policy. In Victoria, for example, we have voluntary assisted dying. That’s different, you might argue, because it only applies to people already at the end of life. You may also suggest that smokers impose a heavy burden on our healthcare systems. I might respond that this is at least partially offset by smokers dying younger and paying more taxes. Moreover, smokers who die young are less likely to require extended social care. In any case, I may ask, how do you price individual freedom?

Few of these arguments can be decided by science and yet they are all legitimate arguments that democratic systems are designed to grapple with. By hiding the value premise from view and insisting that ‘science says we need to stop people smoking outside bars’ we are playing a trick on the public and attempting to avoid this debate entirely.

Net Zero scientism

The scientific statement at the heart of the Net Zero argument is that if the world reached a position where human carbon dioxide emissions averaged out at zero then global temperatures would eventually stabilise, along with the harms this would cause. Barring the effects of methane, aerosols and so on, I believe this to be an accurate assessment based on the available evidence. It is true.

However, drawing the conclusion that the world therefore should seek to reach Net Zero by 2050 means we are prioritising the good of preventing further global warming over other good things. These might arguably include lifting people out of grinding poverty or the pursuit of economic growth. It is no secret that some environmentalists would be happy with a retreat from modern comforts, but I am not sure that’s what everyone wants.

Moreover, there is no world government and so Net Zero is a policy individual countries need to implement with no guarantee that other countries will follow suit. It’s reasonable to ask why Britain or Australia should pursue such a target, with all its associated costs in terms of higher energy prices and the potential damage to what remains of manufacturing industry, if America and China choose not to do the same. It is also reasonable to point out that offshoring, say, steel production from Britain to China does not reduce world carbon dioxide emissions, it just moves them from Britain to China.

So, even if you are convinced that the consequences of global warming are catastrophic and existential, it’s not even clear that Britain’s Net Zero policy or Australia’s Net Zero policy will do anything much about them.

You might argue that Western countries benefitted from early industrialisation and therefore have a moral duty to take a lead, whether others follow or not. That is a powerful point, but we have now strayed so far from any kind of scientific argument that describing it as such would be absurd.

For what it’s worth, I am in favour of Britain and Australia pursuing Net Zero, but the only sensible way I see of doing this is through a significant expansion of nuclear power to support renewables. That way, we can potentially reduce carbon emissions without soaring electricity costs—a debatable point, I’ll admit, but one that I would argue is supported by the evidence. Britain is including nuclear energy as part of its strategy. Australia is committed to remaining nuclear free and whatever your views on the desirability of the 2050 net zero target, I see no real prospect of Australia meeting it under any government.

I would love to be proved wrong.

[Note that if you read this section and think I am against pursuing Net Zero when I literally wrote I am in favour of it then you should read it again. If you read it again and still think I’m against Net Zero then I can’t help you and you need to go and put your head in a fridge.]

Pseudo-scientism

What is worse that scientism? Pseudo-scientism. Scientism at least progresses from a scientific claim that is true, whereas pseudo-scientism progresses an argument on the basis of a scientific claim that is questionable or false.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we were asked to accept all sorts of policy positions that were not up for debate—at least on legacy media—because they were supposedly based on science. This is classic scientism. However, even the original empirical premise that initiated this logic was often not true. Sometimes, these premises were just best guesses based on the available evidence at the time, even if they were presented as established fact. At other times, there was no strong evidence, such as for Victoria’s outdoor mask mandates.

Scientism in the classroom

Teachers can easily slip into scientism, especially if they do not realise they are doing it. I link this to a possible narrative turn in legacy media. In Quillette last November, Graham Majin, a former BBC journalist, detailed his argument that the news organisation had gradually abandoned dry impartiality for interesting narratives.

This has a ring of truth. Anyone watching the ABC News Channel in Australia will be aware of the narratives they seek to highlight and to which they attach their stories. Much of this is entirely benign—celebrating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander achievements and identities, celebrating Australia’s cultural diversity, highlighting gender pay inequality, linking any hot weather, fires or floods to global warming and so on. This week, the morning news hosted a lengthy section based on a press release by the Climate Council on a poll it had conducted that sought to link home insurance costs to the wider climate emergency. This is a questionable link based on a methodologically weak survey and impartiality would require at least a little gentle challenge. There was none.

It seems likely that more robust stories often miss out on being aired because they don’t fit one of these narrative lanes.

Over time, a cultural focus on narratives may have eroded everyone’s ability to tell the difference between empirical claims and widely held opinions. If a news item or policy position fits the narrative then we lose our critical lens. This is not a surprise because stories hold a privileged place in our minds. That’s why they are interesting and why impartiality is boring. Impartiality is the aberration. It is impartiality that we had to painstakingly invent as a technology for edging closer towards the truth.

Teachers are as susceptible as anyone else to these biases. When they take a scientistic approach, it is not because they are knowingly promoting a political agenda, it’s because they cannot tell where facts end and opinions begin. However, if we do not recommit to the aim of impartiality, the backlash against biased teaching will involve more bias of a different kind and we will leave young people to cast about for sources of truth in the chaos. And we know where they will go for that.

Unfortunately, we are not trained in balance and impartiality. It is rarely discussed. As a profession, political balance is something we are remarkably unconcerned about. And it is clearly not a topic of interest to teacher educators who are more likely to be committed to forging a new generation of activists, judging by the abundance of papers on the topic.

So, share this essay with your colleagues. They need to know they are not impartial and they need to know this is a problem. If it makes them angry, then good.

We can start from there.