Latest news with #Manichean
Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
‘The Kindling Is a Lot Drier Than It Used to Be'
How does political violence come to an end? It's been a lingering question the last few years in the wake of shocking episodes like the Jan. 6 Capitol riot or the assassination attempts on Donald Trump. And it's become newly pressing following the antisemitic fallout of the Israel-Hamas war on American soil. In the last two weeks, we've seentwo Israeli embassy workers fatally shot in Washington, D.C. andeight members of the Jewish community burned in an attack in Boulder, Colorado. There has also beenviolence against Muslims andpeople of Palestinian descent since the war began. William J. Bernstein, a neurologist and the author ofThe Delusions of Crowds, a book about the consequences of mass hysteria in history, expects the waves of political violence to eventually stop — but perhaps not until we reach a terrible episode that serves as a tipping point. 'Eventually, they burn themselves out because it's so awful,' he said in an interview with POLITICO Magazine. It's a cycle that's been repeated throughout history, Bernstein says: After that extreme moment of violence, the attacks fizzle out — from exhaustion, or even just the lack of novelty. Getting to that end point, however, will be a painful one, and our political system isn't built to soften the blow. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Some people believe we are seeing an increase in political violence in our country, most recently as a surge in antisemitic attacks in response to Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza. What is causing this? I think it's a combination of the Manichean mindset and group dynamics and confirmation bias. The Manichean mindset — this in-group, out-group kind of behavior — you can see historically, and you can also demonstrate experimentally in psychology labs. It's extremely widespread, and it's extremely pervasive. The other thing, which we're just starting to get a handle on, is how genetically determined it is. So if you look, for example, at twin studies, and you look at the psychological characteristics of twins, they're highly concordant. And one of the things that's been looked at is the tendency toward binary thinking; that is Manichean thinking. The sort of online communities and social media communities that form around these issues, I think, attract those kinds of people. But that's not a new phenomenon. We probably would have seen the same thing in anarchist groups 100 years ago. Online communities are more accessible though, right? Yeah, I think that the kindling is a lot drier than it used to be. What drives political violence? Is it beliefs, grievances, or something else? It's like any complex sociological, sociopolitical phenomenon. It's multifactorial. There's the genetic component toward binary thinking. There's the thing that we've already talked about, which is the increased herding of people that's been brought by social media. But there are genuine grievances. There's always a genuine grievance involved. And it's easy enough to see what those grievances are. I mean, what's a good life? A good life is being able to afford a house and being able to afford medical care and education for your children and being able to afford retirement and not being crept with debt up to your ears while doing all those things. Most people feel at least two or three of those things, if not all four of those things. I think one thing that the political right in this country understands to a devastating effect is that identity trumps self-interest. How many times a day does someone remark to you, 'I just don't understand the political right. They're going to lose their Social Security, they're going to lose their Medicaid. Their kids aren't going to be getting preschool paid for. They can't afford medical care. Why are they voting for Republicans?' And the answer is because Donald Trump knows how to push the identity — the us versus them — button. A few years ago, there was a lot of concern about violence coming from the political right, but the attacks of the past few weeks seem to be coming more from the political left. Is some kind of shift taking place? I don't think so. I think there is some epidemiological and even functional [brain] imaging evidence that the right is a little more prone toward conspiracy thinking and Manichean thinking. But there are plenty of Manichean people on the left, too. I mean, a lot of Manichean behavior, most of it was located on the left 60 years ago. I would even say it's just noise in an oscillating system. You've written about the consequences of mass mania in your book The Delusions of Crowds. How does mass mania contribute to the political violence we're seeing in the U.S. right now? If you put a bunch of people in a room, and let's say you're talking about abortion. Let's say there's a median position on abortion, it's exactly right in the middle. So there's a zero, which is people who are absolute anti-abortion opponents. And then you have a 10, which is people who are rabidly pro-abortion. Well, if you put a bunch of people together who are a six, what you see happening is that they slide off to that side because they want to seek the approval of the group, and they find that by making more and more extreme statements, they can garner more approval. So when you put people together like that, their opinions tend toward the extremes, either one or the other. And eventually, you get to the point where you're advocating violence. I think it's just a natural progression of that sociological phenomenon. The classic type where you saw this happen was with people who were concerned about the Covid-19 vaccine. And it started out with the moms' groups: 'Should I get my kids vaccinated? I have some concerns. I want to talk about this and be better informed.' You put a bunch of people like that together, and pretty soon, that morphs into political violence. Is there anything that U.S. politicians — on the left or right — could do to tamp down on anti-Israel or antisemitic political violence in the United States? I'm pretty cynical. The answer I would give you is nothing that will improve their vote count. The name of the game these days is to energize your base, particularly with our primary-based system. Do you think our existing system rewards political violence? I think so, yeah. I'm old enough to remember when there wasn't a lot of ideological difference between Democrats and Republicans. If you did a Venn diagram of their policy positions, there was a lot of overlap. Now there's almost no overlap. With the primary-based system, what's going to happen is that it favors extremism on both sides. Now what's the solution to that? It would be nice if we had an open primary system. It would be nice if we had more objectively and rationally drawn congressional districts. Those two things would help, but to depend upon the goodwill of ordinary politicians in the public interest of our political class these days, and particularly, the way that elections are funded, I think that's a very, very big ask. A year ago, you told an Atlantic reporter that you don't think political violence 'ends without some sort of cathartic cataclysm.' Can you expand on what that means? What does a 'cathartic cataclysm' look like? Well, I think a cathartic cataclysm is when you see law enforcement officers in masks, snatching people into vans and shipping them abroad, or at least to Louisiana, because they have a political opinion. I mean, that's state violence. And let's call a spade a spade: The assassination attempt on Donald Trump during the election campaign was probably politically motivated as well. But what's a cathartic turning point look like? Well, a cathartic turning point looks like an awful piece of mass violence. It would have to be an episode of mass violence that is directly attributable to an easily identifiable political player. I thought Jan. 6 was that, but I guess Jan. 6 wasn't cataclysmic enough. What comes after the 'cathartic cataclysm?' Can there be a moment of reckoning that means less political violence for a while? Well, people just get sick of the violence. It's what happened in all major civil wars. Eventually, they burn themselves out because it's so awful. It's what happened in Northern Ireland. It hasn't happened in the Middle East yet, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but eventually it does happen. I can remember back in the '60s, early '70s, it felt like the political violence was never going to end. I mean, if you were an Italian in the '60s or the '70s, major political and judicial figures, including prime ministers, were getting bumped off on a regular basis. And it seemed like it was never going to end, but it did. It seemed like the anarchist violence of the early 20th century — it lasted for a couple of decades, killed the U.S. president — it seemed that was never going to end either, but it does. These things burn themselves out. I guess the best way of putting it is that human beings seek novelty, and after a while, political violence gets to be old hat and uncool. What's an example of cathartic violence from history? Well, I think that the political violence of the late 1960s was cathartic. You had the assassination of the U.S. president, of Martin Luther King, of Bobby Kennedy. And then it stopped. People shied away from political violence. Exactly why it stopped, I don't know, but it did. It wasn't just assassinations, it was also street violence. And then things calmed down. If I had to come up with a reason why, it's that people get bored. Initially, politically posturing and making violent threats gets you admiration and psychological support from other people, but eventually it gets old, and people stop doing it. Do you see the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol or last year's attempted assassination of Donald Trump as having contributed to the political violence we're seeing today? Is all of this building up in our society? Yeah. And unfortunately, a big part of that is institutional. I mean, what does it say when you commit violent crimes en masse and then the president of the United States pardons you? It basically tells people, 'Yeah, you've got a free pass the next time.' In that previous interview, you suggested that the Jan. 6 riot wasn't a turning point for political violence in our nation, because it didn't end up worse — there wasn't a 'cathartic cataclysm' with the killing of a politician, for instance. Is there any way to subdue violence without having to embrace that kind of extreme ending? How do we lower the temperature in America? If you're lucky, it burns itself out without a cataclysmic event. And I stand by what I said, which is that, had they actually killed Mike Pence, I think that would have ended it right there.
Politico
3 days ago
- Politics
- Politico
How Political Violence Finally Ends
How does political violence come to an end? It's been a lingering question the last few years in the wake of shocking episodes like the Jan. 6 Capitol riot or the assassination attempts on Donald Trump. And it's become newly pressing following the antisemitic fallout of the Israel-Hamas war on American soil. In the last two weeks, we've seen two Israeli embassy workers fatally shot in Washington, D.C. and eight members of the Jewish community burned in an attack in Boulder, Colorado. There has also been violence against Muslims and people of Palestinian descent since the war began. William J. Bernstein, a neurologist and the author of The Delusions of Crowds, a book about the consequences of mass hysteria in history, expects the waves of political violence to eventually stop — but perhaps not until we reach a terrible episode that serves as a tipping point. 'Eventually, they burn themselves out because it's so awful,' he said in an interview with POLITICO Magazine. It's a cycle that's been repeated throughout history, Bernstein says: After that extreme moment of violence, the attacks fizzle out — from exhaustion, or even just the lack of novelty. Getting to that end point, however, will be a painful one, and our political system isn't built to soften the blow. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Some people believe we are seeing an increase in political violence in our country, most recently as a surge in antisemitic attacks in response to Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza. What is causing this? I think it's a combination of the Manichean mindset and group dynamics and confirmation bias. The Manichean mindset — this in-group, out-group kind of behavior — you can see historically, and you can also demonstrate experimentally in psychology labs. It's extremely widespread, and it's extremely pervasive. The other thing, which we're just starting to get a handle on, is how genetically determined it is. So if you look, for example, at twin studies, and you look at the psychological characteristics of twins, they're highly concordant. And one of the things that's been looked at is the tendency toward binary thinking; that is Manichean thinking. The sort of online communities and social media communities that form around these issues, I think, attract those kinds of people. But that's not a new phenomenon. We probably would have seen the same thing in anarchist groups 100 years ago. Online communities are more accessible though, right? Yeah, I think that the kindling is a lot drier than it used to be. What drives political violence? Is it beliefs, grievances, or something else? It's like any complex sociological, sociopolitical phenomenon. It's multifactorial. There's the genetic component toward binary thinking. There's the thing that we've already talked about, which is the increased herding of people that's been brought by social media. But there are genuine grievances. There's always a genuine grievance involved. And it's easy enough to see what those grievances are. I mean, what's a good life? A good life is being able to afford a house and being able to afford medical care and education for your children and being able to afford retirement and not being crept with debt up to your ears while doing all those things. Most people feel at least two or three of those things, if not all four of those things. I think one thing that the political right in this country understands to a devastating effect is that identity trumps self-interest. How many times a day does someone remark to you, 'I just don't understand the political right. They're going to lose their Social Security, they're going to lose their Medicaid. Their kids aren't going to be getting preschool paid for. They can't afford medical care. Why are they voting for Republicans?' And the answer is because Donald Trump knows how to push the identity — the us versus them — button. A few years ago, there was a lot of concern about violence coming from the political right, but the attacks of the past few weeks seem to be coming more from the political left. Is some kind of shift taking place? I don't think so. I think there is some epidemiological and even functional [brain] imaging evidence that the right is a little more prone toward conspiracy thinking and Manichean thinking. But there are plenty of Manichean people on the left, too. I mean, a lot of Manichean behavior, most of it was located on the left 60 years ago. I would even say it's just noise in an oscillating system. You've written about the consequences of mass mania in your book The Delusions of Crowds. How does mass mania contribute to the political violence we're seeing in the U.S. right now? If you put a bunch of people in a room, and let's say you're talking about abortion. Let's say there's a median position on abortion, it's exactly right in the middle. So there's a zero, which is people who are absolute anti-abortion opponents. And then you have a 10, which is people who are rabidly pro-abortion. Well, if you put a bunch of people together who are a six, what you see happening is that they slide off to that side because they want to seek the approval of the group, and they find that by making more and more extreme statements, they can garner more approval. So when you put people together like that, their opinions tend toward the extremes, either one or the other. And eventually, you get to the point where you're advocating violence. I think it's just a natural progression of that sociological phenomenon. The classic type where you saw this happen was with people who were concerned about the Covid-19 vaccine. And it started out with the moms' groups: 'Should I get my kids vaccinated? I have some concerns. I want to talk about this and be better informed.' You put a bunch of people like that together, and pretty soon, that morphs into political violence. Is there anything that U.S. politicians — on the left or right — could do to tamp down on anti-Israel or antisemitic political violence in the United States? I'm pretty cynical. The answer I would give you is nothing that will improve their vote count. The name of the game these days is to energize your base, particularly with our primary-based system. Do you think our existing system rewards political violence? I think so, yeah. I'm old enough to remember when there wasn't a lot of ideological difference between Democrats and Republicans. If you did a Venn diagram of their policy positions, there was a lot of overlap. Now there's almost no overlap. With the primary-based system, what's going to happen is that it favors extremism on both sides. Now what's the solution to that? It would be nice if we had an open primary system. It would be nice if we had more objectively and rationally drawn congressional districts. Those two things would help, but to depend upon the goodwill of ordinary politicians in the public interest of our political class these days, and particularly, the way that elections are funded, I think that's a very, very big ask. A year ago, you told an Atlantic reporter that you don't think political violence 'ends without some sort of cathartic cataclysm.' Can you expand on what that means? What does a 'cathartic cataclysm' look like? Well, I think a cathartic cataclysm is when you see law enforcement officers in masks, snatching people into vans and shipping them abroad, or at least to Louisiana, because they have a political opinion. I mean, that's state violence. And let's call a spade a spade: The assassination attempt on Donald Trump during the election campaign was probably politically motivated as well. But what's a cathartic turning point look like? Well, a cathartic turning point looks like an awful piece of mass violence. It would have to be an episode of mass violence that is directly attributable to an easily identifiable political player. I thought Jan. 6 was that, but I guess Jan. 6 wasn't cataclysmic enough. What comes after the 'cathartic cataclysm?' Can there be a moment of reckoning that means less political violence for a while? Well, people just get sick of the violence. It's what happened in all major civil wars. Eventually, they burn themselves out because it's so awful. It's what happened in Northern Ireland. It hasn't happened in the Middle East yet, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but eventually it does happen. I can remember back in the '60s, early '70s, it felt like the political violence was never going to end. I mean, if you were an Italian in the '60s or the '70s, major political and judicial figures, including prime ministers, were getting bumped off on a regular basis. And it seemed like it was never going to end, but it did. It seemed like the anarchist violence of the early 20th century — it lasted for a couple of decades, killed the U.S. president — it seemed that was never going to end either, but it does. These things burn themselves out. I guess the best way of putting it is that human beings seek novelty, and after a while, political violence gets to be old hat and uncool. What's an example of cathartic violence from history? Well, I think that the political violence of the late 1960s was cathartic. You had the assassination of the U.S. president, of Martin Luther King, of Bobby Kennedy. And then it stopped. People shied away from political violence. Exactly why it stopped, I don't know, but it did. It wasn't just assassinations, it was also street violence. And then things calmed down. If I had to come up with a reason why, it's that people get bored. Initially, politically posturing and making violent threats gets you admiration and psychological support from other people, but eventually it gets old, and people stop doing it. Do you see the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol or last year's attempted assassination of Donald Trump as having contributed to the political violence we're seeing today? Is all of this building up in our society? Yeah. And unfortunately, a big part of that is institutional. I mean, what does it say when you commit violent crimes en masse and then the president of the United States pardons you? It basically tells people, 'Yeah, you've got a free pass the next time.' In that previous interview, you suggested that the Jan. 6 riot wasn't a turning point for political violence in our nation, because it didn't end up worse — there wasn't a 'cathartic cataclysm' with the killing of a politician, for instance. Is there any way to subdue violence without having to embrace that kind of extreme ending? How do we lower the temperature in America? If you're lucky, it burns itself out without a cataclysmic event. And I stand by what I said, which is that, had they actually killed Mike Pence, I think that would have ended it right there.
Telegraph
27-04-2025
- General
- Telegraph
The stories behind some of the world's weirdest motorways
In the first half of the 20th century, motorways – also known as expressways or, more generally, controlled-access highways – were heralded as utopian. They were the embodiment of progress, launched with huge parades, decked in Art Deco ornament and applauded by a jubilant press. The optimism would not last long. All too soon, around the world, such gigantic roads would become symbols of dystopian urban planning from above, wounds inflicted upon cities, mechanised floods tearing communities apart: as Richard J Williams puts it, they were seen as 'an everyday form of devastation'. The Expressway World challenges this binary. Williams, professor of contemporary visual culture at the University of Edinburgh, points out the self-deception and absolutism in this Manichean way of seeing the built environment. Instead, he views these roads more soberly, as attempts to solve a traffic crisis, the evolution of which branched off into divergent paths. In doing so, he makes a compelling case for truths that lie beyond exaltation or condemnation. Each chapter focuses on a different place, approach and outcome: the West Side Highway in New York, the Samil Elevated Highway in Seoul, the Minhocão in São Paulo and so on. (The last of these is named after a worm-like folkloric beast.) While his book is notionally centred on automobile infrastructure, Williams effectively creates a portrait of the rise and fall of modernist urbanism. A great deal of its charm lies in returning to the delusionally halcyon days when architectural critics, in this case Reyner Banham, could herald an interchange as a 'work of art'. Still, given the architectural torpidity and piety of our contemporary age, the megalomania on display here has a certain villainous charisma. For instance, in celebrating the elevated panoramic view over the Hudson that New York motorists would enjoy, the notorious urban planner Robert Moses claimed that 'by comparison, the castled Rhine with its Lorelei is a mere trickle.' Moses's egocentric ambition was exceeded only by Paul Rudolph's gargantuan proposal for Lomex (Lower Manhattan Expressway), which Williams dubs 'Futurism meets the Death Star'; it's still a stunning vision and, if it falls absurdly short of its inspirations, which included the Parthenon and Chartres Cathedral, the audacity is easy to admire. Thankfully, given it would have involved mass evictions and bulldozing swathes of SoHo and Little Italy, Rudolph's Bladerunner-esque design remained a series of unbuilt renderings. The car was both an object of desire and a tool of democratisation, and the motorway was its apotheosis. Even now, hit one at the right speed and hour and you can still feel, in Banham's words, it's 'the nearest thing to flight on four wheels'. But as these monumental roads spread via government planning, from Fascist autostrada and Autobahn to the American post-war building boom, 'autogeddon' followed. Expressways went from panacea to poison. All the initial hyperbole flipped to denunciations. They were a no-man's-land, embedded with structural violence, so grievous that their very existence put 'civilised life at stake'. Today, they're seen by critics as a necessary evil at best, though the photogenic brutalist retrofuturism of their bridges and service stations continue to attract admirers. Williams is a scholarly guide: literary, artistic and cinematic references abound. But his strength is his aversion to histrionics. He acknowledges the 'severed neighbourhood[s]', displaced citizenry, race and class issues, pollution and noise that many controlled-access highways caused in urban areas. He quotes from jeremiads, and charts various 'occupations', including the artistic festivals that flourished on the Minhocão. Yet he resists easy partisan positions, and his resolute critical eye makes him something of a gadfly. This is why The Expressway World, which could have been arid or marginal, has a zing to it. For instance, rather than settling for the monstrous caricature of popular lore (The Spectator labelled him 'the psychopath who wrecked New York'), William argues that Robert Moses was motivated by his own admittedly twisted conception of progress; and while admiring Jane Jacobs's ardent work in opposing the New York expressways and preserving neighbourhoods, Williams rejects her latter-day sainthood, contending that the clashes were, partly, 'one set of privileged actors battling another'. Though he is by no means contrarian, Williams can be commendably sacrilegious. His scepticism towards artwashing and performative politics is timely, especially on how both can reinforce the social inequalities they feign to oppose. At the same time, he acts as a Devil's advocate for London's Ballardian Westway, which has had few defenders from the beginning (there were over 20,000 objections filed to the Greater London Council at the time regarding their motorway plans): he claims that, for all its ills, it 'brought new possibilities the old city lacked'. Formerly the site of slum tenements, he argues 'the Westway became a carnivalesque space […] in which a certain amount of bounded disorder was possible'. Whether this ideal of 'bounded disorder' can survive either gentrification or deprivation remains to be seen. William's strongest argument comes in the chapter on the Cheonggyecheon redevelopment in Seoul, where a seven-mile-long elevated motorway, running through downtown Seoul since 1976, was replaced with a riverine space that is, if its global press coverage to be believed, the best thing since Arcadia. 'It's hard to imagine,' Williams retorts, 'a more controlled space outside of an airport or prison.' As he points out, Cheonggyecheon has simply exchanged one form of authority for another, one that has greenery instead of concrete and tarmac, while continuing to consist of 'constant exhortations to behave in approved ways', predicated on 'surveillance and the pressure to spend money'. The Expressway World is a discerning study of fantasy and erasure. Twenty-first-century urbanism, after all, has become a realm dominated by mythic or near-Biblical thinking, in which the automobile is sinful, the environment (or rather 'simulated nature') is Edenic, and the expressway a convenient scapegoat for modernity's ills. In truth, these roads are just another arena for competing centres of power, their visions and blindnesses. Until that is recognised, we'll be vulnerable to the comforts and temptations of ancient fantasies and those selling them; and for all the talk of the future, society will be hurtling forwards with its eyes firmly fixed on the rear-view mirror.
Boston Globe
11-02-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Science is in trouble. And not just because of Trump.
Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up While 'Doctored' is gripping in its own right, it also serves as a warning about the collapse of trust in expert authority. Thanks to the capacious new markets for crankery carved out by social and 'alternative' media — not to mention a worldwide populist revolt against 'the Establishment' in general — there's more grifting and science denial than ever before, and the worst purveyors of pseudoscientific sludge rake in millions precisely by positioning themselves in opposition to mainstream science. Advertisement This gets to why the book's release date proved inconvenient. Donald Trump won a second term as president in part because of a belief that the Establishment needs to be torn down, and the scientific establishment is no exception. When I started writing this article, prior to his inauguration, I was going to cite, as examples, personnel choices like his nominees for head of Health and Human Services (anti-vaccine crank Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) and the Environmental Protection Agency (Lee Zeldin, an ardent opponent of meaningful attempts to fight climate change, who has been confirmed). Advertisement Obviously things have gotten far worse since then: Trump and his chief lieutenant, Elon Musk, are attempting to take a swift, At a time of such uncertainty and such dangerous overcorrection, it can feel awkward or inappropriate to point out, as Piller does in 'Doctored,' just how broken some of our cherished mainstream scientific institutions are. Isn't that playing right into Trump's hands? I don't think so. The strategy adopted by many mainstream liberals in response to the populist surge — effectively, plugging our ears and chanting 'Trust the science' over and over — might be comforting, in that it offers a Manichean worldview in which improving the world is a relatively straightforward matter of convincing people of their own ignorance so that they will join the rest of us on board the science train. But this effort has clearly failed. Some populist distrust of mainstream science is unwarranted and harmful, such as most strains of vaccine skepticism. But in plenty of instances, people are more or less correct not to automatically trust mainstream scientists, even if they arrive at that conclusion for reasons some of us might find wanting. Advertisement In other words, while it's easy to accuse those red-staters out there of exhibiting an alarming lack of faith in science, especially now that their wrecking-ball avatar is in power, it's harder — and arguably just as important — to ask whether perhaps we have too much faith in it. The scientific establishment hasn't exactly covered itself in glory in recent decades, given the replication crises that have roiled multiple fields, the data-fraud scandals popping up everywhere from In an abstract sense, sure, science is 'real': Done properly, it can bring us miraculous advances. And good, sound, productive science often proceeds unbothered behind the scenes, developing innovations in medicine or consumer products or whatever else only many years later. But you know what's also real? Human frailty, which chronically hinders the execution of sound science. To ignore this is to let powerful people and institutions off the hook, all while providing more fuel for the burn-it-down crowd. Advertisement Piller's book provides numerous damning examples of the difference between science as we idealize it and science as it is practiced by real-life human beings. For example, much of the data fraud in Alzheimer's research, alleged and proven, involves doctored images. This fraud was uncovered not by journal editors or peer reviewers — the individuals supposedly responsible for such quality control — but by unpaid anonymous sleuths 'who use pseudonyms to post comments' online, as he writes, in hopes that someone who matters would notice and act. All too often, no one does. One of the few sleuths who does this work by name is Elisabeth Bik, a Dutch microbiologist who has become a legendary investigator of such matters (her work cost two-thirds of these cases, absolutely no action had been taken by the journals in question. According to Piller's reporting, which draws frequently from Bik's work, this is no aberration: Journals often slow-walked investigations and have proved quite reluctant to retract papers that seem to plainly warrant it, while universities have frequently closed ranks around researchers credibly suspected of fraud rather than engage in prompt and thorough investigations. In my own reporting on youth gender medicine, I've found that journals and individual researchers not only are loath to correct or explain errors but are often unwilling to even respond to basic questions about their work. Advertisement That's the problem with demanding that people 'trust' science just because it calls itself science, or just because it's being conducted by an institution or an individual bearing impressive-seeming credentials. More deference is not the answer, because undue deference lies at the root of almost every major scandal in science. Why should you trust a journal that refuses to correct its errors or a university that protects a star researcher credibly accused of fraud? And at the risk of repeating myself: While these stories are particularly galling when you read about them in 'Doctored,' given just how much human anguish is at stake, they are by no means unique to Alzheimer's research. It's no surprise, in light of the book he just wrote, that Piller believes that science is in something of a crisis: 'The institutional authorities of science — journals, universities, funders, and regulators — face a pivotal moment,' he told me in an email. 'They need to get serious, fast, about policing fraud and fakery in scholarly papers, medical research, and grant proposals. If they don't, the 'tear-it-down' anti-science forces in the Trump administration and beyond could do lasting damage to essential research we all depend on.' He sent me that note before Trump started to, well, tear it down, and it has proved depressingly prescient. I don't have confident answers other than yes, definitely read 'Doctored' if you want to better understand how science goes wrong. Based on the hasty and careless way they're operating, it's extremely likely that Donald Trump and Elon Musk or their subordinates are going to do more harm than good. But the current political situation isn't forever; in the future, our scientific institutions (or what is left of them) will still have to prove they're worthy of our trust. And they have a long way to go. Jesse Singal, a journalist in New York City, is the author of and cohost of the podcast A version of this essay first appeared in his Substack newsletter, , and has been adapted with permission. He can be reached at
