This article is reprinted from National Review with the permission of the author .

The idea that “science” and the supposed “scientific consensus” — which too often is really political consensus within the science establishment — are synonymous is causing tremendous harm to the scientific sector. But the science establishment keeps forging widespread public distrust by doubling down on the politics.

Now, as the American presidential election looms, Nature — perhaps the most important science journal in the world — just published a jeremiad against former president Donald Trump and in favor of the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris. She’s pro-science, don’t you know. From, “The World Needs a US President Who Respects Evidence“:

Harris, the vice-president under President Joe Biden, is a former US senator; before that, she was a public prosecutor and attorney general in California. In her previous and current roles, she has broadly sought to advance policies that are in line with the scientific consensus and with the objective of keeping people safe and protecting public health and the environment.

The Biden–Harris administration’s signature achievement is the plan to invest more than US$1 trillion in climate and clean-energy technologies over a decade — albeit while overseeing record levels of production of oil and natural gas in the short term. A landmark piece of legislation passed by Congress in 2022, called The Inflation Reduction Act, is a historic investment that seeks to modernize US manufacturing and create jobs in the clean-technology industry. At the same time, the administration has sought to craft and implement plans to insulate regulatory agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), from political interference.

That’s not science. It’s politics, through and through. Back to the editorial:

Harris said on 22 October that her administration will not be a continuation of the Biden presidency. She has said she wants to build an “opportunity economy”. Precisely what that means is yet to be defined — a science- and evidence-based approach needs to be at its core.

Please. Economics may be called the “dismal science,” but economic policy is hardly science.

But Garbage Man bad:

That record is in stark contrast to what happened during Trump’s presidency, from 2017 to 2021. As president, Trump not only repeatedly ignored research-informed knowledge, but also undermined national and global science and public-health agencies. He has denied climate science, lied about the federal government’s response to hurricane forecasts and asked scientists to investigate whether disinfectants could be used to treat people with COVID-19.

You’d think they’d applaud Operation Warp Speed which pushed vaccines through to approval in unprecedented time. But Trump must be shown to be irredeemable:

He pulled the United States out of the World Health Organization in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic. He withdrew the country from both the Paris climate agreement and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (also called the Iran nuclear deal) — both of which the United States had helped to craft. He instilled fear at the EPA, including by rolling back climate policies and making it harder for its research workforce to be able to function independently of politicians, as many EPA scientists told Nature at the time.

Again, these are political issues and international policy disputes that, by their very nature, are subjective. The JCPOA was, at best, profoundly flawed and allowed Iran access to billions that it has used to support terrorism, which somehow goes unmentioned by the editorialists. And notice: My last point demonstrates that it isn’t a science question. It is a fraught policy issue that involves a myriad of issues and uncertainties.

The “mistrust” issue

And get this:

Political leaders, irrespective of party membership or ideology, generally agree on the need for a society that creates jobs, promotes better health and advances science. But solutions for the world’s mounting problems can come only from a shared, accurate understanding of reality.

By “shared understanding of reality,” the editorialists mean accepting the premises of progressive politics, the denying of which leads to mistrusting science:

A lack of regard for the law and evidence fosters mistrust of scientists and institutions of state. That, in turn, weakens the foundations of democracy, both in the United States and around the world. A second Trump presidency would have an even more destabilizing effect globally, giving the green light to yet more leaders like him.

Yes, we must never mistrust “institutions of the state.”

Good grief. Mistrust of the state doesn’t weaken democracy. It is essential to its proper functioning. Indeed, it is why the Founders enacted the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Nature — which, I hasten to note, is a British publication — should stay out of American politics, which would be equally true if it supported Trump instead of Harris. For by crossing the line from science to politics and conflating subjective policy issues with scientific understandings, it breeds the very public mistrust in the scientific sector that it decries.