Science, truth and conspiracy in the age of Trump

‘In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act’

– George Orwell

Donald Trump is on the come-back trail even although the ‘red wave did not originate at the midterms. Despite the deadly attack on the Capitol by his supporters, spurred on by racist, white supremacist rhetoric, misinformation that the election was stolen, and the Congressional and Senate hearings about that fateful day on the 6th January, 2021–the most significant insurrection in American history–Trump remains free, above the fray, and ready and waiting to accept the Republican nomination for president in 2024. Through all this Trump never wavered in claiming the ‘big lie’ that the election was stolen, a conspiracy still believed by 35% of all Americans and 68% of Republicans, even after all the investigations and public airings.¹ Both Trump’s tenacity and his supporters’ strength of conviction of their beliefs indicate something about truth, politics, and science in the age of Trump. The MAGA movement is more like a cult, a tribal attitude, or a quasi-religious cult built on psychological principles–a badge of membership–than a rational belief held on the basis of evidence. It could be argued that Trump’s supporters ultimately do not care about the truth status of his election claims. The overriding belief is simply that Trump should be president. The fervency with which the belief is held is partly to be explained by the fact that it goes to the heart of identity politics, defining who and what Trump’s followers are—it defines their very political being, their existential concerns for themselves and their way of life. For them this represents a struggle to the end. The endurance of the election lie and other Trump conspiracies are so resilient because they define the very identity and existence of his supporters: they feel threatened by the ‘deep state’ in Washington, by the liberal elite; they feel that what they take for granted (their ‘white privilege’) is about to be permanently extinguished after years of economic globalization that deindustrialized the Mid-West and sent jobs off-shore. In this carefully crafted political narrative there is some truth. Both Trump and Steve Bannon understand the deep psychology of conspiracy, how any claim will be entertained and held with intense conviction if it reflects or is intimately interwoven with existential identity anxiety. Evidence does not play Much of a role here–there is no counterfactual, no active testing or reality-checks; ‘evidence’ only exists as a confirmation of the main article of faith of the MAGA movement and that is a matter for the master conspirators crafting the narrative.

The midterm elections have favored the Republicans but only by a slender margin. Biden now faces a majority Republican majority in the House Senate for the next couple of years. The probability of Trump’s return in the 2024 elections is increasing. If he returns, then not just US but the world faces an era defined by conspiracy and ‘government by conspiracy’, by post-truth and fake news (Peters et al., 2018), that will impugn scientific integrity and scientific freedom, skew science-based policy, and damage the fabric of American democracy. The evidence for these claims can be based in part of the experience of Donald Trump first term as US President and his attitude to science. There have been many accounts how Trump damaged science and undermined scientific institutions during the Covid-19 years (Lewis, 2017; Tollefson, 2020; Pazzanese, 2020) as well as surveys that indicate a much more mixed result of Trump’s standing among scientists (e.g. Goldman et al., 2020). Why wouldn’t scientists who are Republican not hold a candle for Trump? Trump’s record on science is not good. It is well known that Trump called climate change a hoax: he tweeted ‘The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.’ (9/6/19). Romany M. Webb and Lauren Kurtz (2022) using the Silencing Science Tracker, an online database, indicate the ways in which ‘the Trump presidency fundamentally changed how federal government agencies perform, use, and communicate scientific research’. The Trump administration proposed sweeping cuts to research across federal agencies. Perhaps, more damaging was his manifest public attitudes to scientists and the institution of science itself as his administration ‘regularly suppressed, downplayed, or simply ignored scientific research’ (ibid.).

There is no reason to expect there will be any change in his attitude in a possible second term. Indeed, if anything, the prediction is that the covert opposition to science will increase as science is one of the few authoritative sources that can check, test and, if necessary, contradict Trump’s views, although increasingly it takes a brave scientist or organization to stand out against Trump’s authoritarianism and risk speaking truth to power. Trump’s anti-science has become legendry. As Tom Nichols (2017) intones in his book The Death of Expertise ‘This rejection of science and of expertise [has] become [a] demonstration of political loyalty. That’s the part I didn’t expect — that there would be an entire political movement, led by the president of the United States, to basically disavow science’ (cited in Pazzanese, 2020). Part of the Trump conspiracy strategy is to denigrate and cast doubt on traditional sources of truth such as the media, science and education, a strategy he followed with great effect during the first term. There is no doubt that should Trump win the election he will overturn the science-based policies of his predecessor with weeks and then work systematically against public science supressing studies, muzzling scientists and violating the integrity of science (Desikan, 2020). This is why science advocacy and science activism takes on an important role in Trump’s America and why various agencies like the Union of Concerned Scientists have taken a pro-active stance. Looked at from this perspective Anthony Fauci’s survival during the time he worked as an adviser to the President on Covid-19 as well as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases might be considered to be a minor miracle (McNeil, 2021).

These observations only serve to highlight the question of truth in a far-right America and the role of science as a potential source of truth and evidence for intelligent evidence-based policy in climate change and public health. One argument goes if we can’t trust science in modern America what and who can we trust. When Republicans indicate they are prepared to take up arms if Trump loses the midterm elections, indicating that a new civil war is coming, then the stakes could not be higher.² The coming science wars especially over climate warming not only highlights the context of science versus anti-science but raises the central question of the role of scientific truth in modern society, its philosophy and history in the rise of empiricism and scientific method, the significance of science education and, the relation of science to politics, an issue of increasing significance for authoritarian regimes (Slatelli & Funtowicz, 2016).

In ‘Truth and truth-telling in the age of Trump’ (Peters, 2017) and a variety of books, papers and videos, I defended the philosophical claim that ‘Human communication is only possible against a background of truth and truth-telling’ and ‘Truth is a deep cultural practice in the West, yet we take it for granted and only question it when we are exposed to the consequences or effects of a lie. But truth takes different historical forms and changed its shape over time.’³ I provided a very brief history of truth from its early Greek origins as a form of ontological disclosure (Aletheia) and charted the shift in meaning of truth in the Middle Ages from my ‘troth’ (oath) to ‘being in accord with the facts’ - the essence of empirical science and the basis of the modern movement of logical empiricism in the early twentieth century. I wanted to indicate the significance of Leibniz’s distinction between necessary and contingent truths, and highlighted the ancient tradition of truth-telling, as opposed to the ‘analytics of truth’, revolving around four questions: ‘who is able to tell the truth, about what, with what consequences, and with what relation to power’.

In related publications I charted the trajectory of ‘post-truth’, a term that was named as word of the year in 2016 by the Oxford Dictionary that defined it as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’, associated with the phrase the ‘politics of post-truth’.⁴ Many scholars and critics were aghast at the ways in which the politics of post-truth could shake the foundations of American democracy when, for example, Trump claimed that Obama and Clinton were the founders of the Islamic state! Many were concerned at the ways in which social media and especially Twitter propagated a form of misinformation that did not follow a normal news cycle, and was linked to the instantaneous Tweet that permits neither fact-checking nor critical discussion. ‘Fake news’ is said to spread faster than true stories or indeed any category of information, by those who construct the false narratives and hoaxes to coincide with supporters’ misbeliefs with the aim of deliberately deceiving or misleading the public for political power. The results of this deliberative process of falsification has been detrimental to America democracy and will continue to trouble it, questioning its very foundations in science and a free new media, showing contempt for political norms and the rule of law, formalizing right-wing juridical appointments and driving the Republic Party to the far-right (Boag, 2021; Vitiello, 2021).

My own research has focused on the history and culture of lying in public life, exacerbated in the recent past by the deceit leading US neoconservative politicians involved in the invasion of the Iraq. Truth, and the commitment to truth, lies at the very heart of both ethical practice and the practice of democracy, where discovered untruths have led to the call for dismissal of prominent politicians including Bill Clinton and Lord Archer. Truth and the absence of lies is at the very basis of jurisprudence in public life; it also lies at the very understanding of ourselves and the society we take ourselves to be part of (Malpass, 2008). Lying in public, that is making a statement to another with the intent of misleading them, while also ubiquitous in public life, is, as Arendt (1971) prophetically points out, ‘so easy up to a point, and so tempting’ ‘never comes into conflict with reason because things could indeed have been as the liar maintains they were; lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason, than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear.’ Yet when the public realm has descended into a realm of deception and the difference between factual truth and politics has been deliberately obliterated it is a short step to the denial of history and to the systematic political lying that invests itself in the public realm and creeps into the history books and into the culture more generally (Peters, 2015).

When the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, the so-called Royal Society, was founded in 1660 it professed a commitment to ‘all kinds of learning’ expressing a preference for natural philosophy guided by ‘actual experiments’ and indicating that ‘the whole world of letters may always recognize us not only as the Defender of the Faith, but also as the universal lover and patron of every kind of truth’⁵ (my italics). The Society was intellectually indebted to Bacon (1561–1626) who became the popular inspiration for ‘science’ during the Restoration, at a time when the word and concept of ‘science’ was gaining its first public use, and its method was characterised as Baconian induction (Peters & Besley, 2019). Truth was uppermost in their minds as an essential foundation of science as was its public use and free distribution. As Steven Shapin (1994) argues in his path-breaking study The Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth Century England the conventions and codes of science were based on values of trust, civility, honour and integrity on the one hand and a certain kind of truth-telling, as he says, ‘the gentlemanly constitution of scientifictruth’ (p. xxi). He writes: ‘Knowledge is a collective good. In securing our knowledge we rely on others, and we cannot dispense with that reliance. That means that the relations in which we have and hold our knowledge has a moral character, and the word I use to indicate that moral relation is trust’ (p. xxv).

Science, many would argue, has not lost its moral character that emphasizes its position as a global public good, where systemic risk is an unintended effect of economic globalization in the 21st century that has generated a new and unprecedented level of interdependence and complexity between social and environmental systems, characterised by breakdowns or collapses of entire systems, where modest tipping points produce large failures, contagion triggers a chain of negative reactions, and systems are unable to recover equilibrium after a shock (‘hysteresis’). If ever there was a case to be made for the survival of humanity and the planet in this period of accelerating overlapping global non-linear complex causal structures and relationships, it is surely this historical moment that calls for science, for scientific truth, and for global coordination and collaboration of international development agencies.

My research has focused on the epistemology of conspiracy and the concept of ‘openness’ especially as it operates in open science, education, publishing activities that attempt to test and rigorously analyse conspiracies and theories to fathom the facts and to provide the best interpretation in the light of the availableevidence. Science has the power to assess and quell nasty toxic stories and AI viral narratives algorithmically generated to manipulate the population. In this sense the epistemic basis of democracy and democratic approaches based on openness shares some epistemic characteristics of open science, yet in politics, religion and culture it is also necessary to evaluate motive and the possibility that the narrative is being generated, not in the name of truth but in the name of private interest that mitigates against the public sphere (Peters, 2021). I have tried to articulate a viral theory of post-truth (Peters et al., 2022) that is based on the concept of ‘viral modernity’, ‘a concept that is based upon the nature of viruses, the ancient and critical role they play in evolution and culture, and the basic application to understanding the role of information and forms of bioinformation in the social world’ (Peters et al., 2020). I argued that in social media networks ‘viral media does not discriminate between information and knowledge: it can generate and circulate information irrespective of its truth value. It is an ideal medium for hype, exaggeration, falsehood, lies and gossip that are characteristic of the age of post-truth’. In the standard Platonic account of knowledge requires belief, truth and justification. Information, including misinformation and disinformation as categories of information, requires none of these conditions thereby constituting a fundamental rift between evidence and truth in the age of Trump.

Whether Trump is successful in returning to the White House is immaterial as the problem is now a generalised crisis of scientific truth as Sharpin (2019) explains not without considerable irony:

Of course, there’s a Crisis of Truth and, of course, we live in a ‘Post-Truth’ society. Evidence of that Crisis is everywhere, extensively reported in the non-Fake-News media, read by Right-Thinking people. The White House floats the idea of ‘alternative facts’ and the President’s personal attorney explains that ‘truth isn’t truth’. Trump denies human-caused climate change. Anti-vaxxers proliferate like viruses. These are Big and Important instances of Truth Denial — a lot follows from denying the Truth of expert claims about climate change and vaccine safety.

Yet he argues that ‘Conceiving the problem as a Crisis of Truth, or even as a Crisis of Scientific Authority, is not, I think, the best starting point.’ I must say I like his gib when he argues ‘Knowledge speaks through institutions; it is embedded in the everyday practices of social life; and if the institutions and the everyday practices are in trouble, so too is their knowledge’, poking his finger at liberal democracy. Credibility and legitimacy problems infest many of our cultural institutions, especially those that impinge on science: when science is coextensive with business and profit or with the state’s exercise of power why would we be surprised? And if there is a crisis of scientific authority, it is in part due to a more mature and seasoned understanding of the cohabitation of science with Truth and Power in the ‘real world’.

I am inclined to accept that the nature of science is changing and it is not just a matter of replacing Truth with quality and risk assessment as in ‘post-normal science’ (Funtowicz & Ravetz, 1993). Rather under the influence of the information paradigm the nature of science itself is changing as data-intensive research based on ‘technological convergence’, mathematical modelling, and computational science have accelerated under the informational paradigm that threaten to eclipse the role of scientists. Yet these changes have taken place alongside more ‘democratic’ developments including the extension of the peer community in citizen science, the advent of open science and the embrace of complexity as recognition of a planetary systems ecology where truth still matters in the production of global public goods.

Michael A. Peters
Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Illinois, USA
[email protected]

Notes

1 See https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2022/70-percent-republicans-falsely-believe-stolen-election-trump/ and Sarah Longwell, Trump Supporters Explain Why They Believe the Big Lie, The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/trump-voters-big-lie-stolen-election/629572/

2 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63133259

3 See for example Peters et el (2008) and the videos: ‘The evolution of truth’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_btDM0SED-s; Dan Schneider Video Interview #187: On Truth: Philosopher Michael Peters, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ-WRAEmIEs, and ‘Post Truth, Fake News and Philosophy in the Pandemic’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEc8ruuqSHA

4 https://languages.oup.com/word-of-the-year/2016/

5 https://royalsociety.org/∼/media/Royal_Society_Content/about-us/history/2012-Supplemental-Charter.pdf.