Facts, lies, fiats, tweets and science
Resistance builds, pushing back at attempts by Trump to control scientific research, policy narratives
Who in the business community will be courageous enough to speak out about the risks posed for the innovation economy? Who in the academic research enterprise will be bold enough to protest the efforts to withhold funding and findings of scientific research?
How will the news media in Rhode Island report on the threat to the state’s innovation research enterprise by the Trump administration? Will the Providence Business News hold a summit about the assault on science?
A crowd of angry residents and elected officials from South Providence disrupted the event, claiming that they had not been included in the planning process, shouting down Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza. Gov. Gina Raimondo, a scheduled speaker, hurriedly left without speaking. Rhode Island Foundation President and CEO Neil Steinberg appeared to look dismayed. Joe Paolino, honored by GoLocalProv as Man of the Year in 2016, saw the “good intentions” of his proposal disappear under a wave of community resistance.
In many ways, it was a confrontation between an engaged, outraged community of residents, often disenfranchised by decision-makers, with the “powers that be,” folks that are used to controlling the narrative, pushing the buttons and getting the expected results around economic development. The times they are a-changing; the days of “we talk, you listen,” may be over.
One further observation about competing narratives: when the story first broke about the arrest of a woman for an outstanding warrant from 1985 about kidnapping her children, the news media played up the investigative skills of the police in finally tracking down the alleged perpetrator. However, as the story evolved, it turned out that the woman had taken her young children out of fear of domestic violence, having been assaulted by her former husband. The latest twist in the story is that the Attorney General dropped the charges, in apparent recognition of the domestic violence involved. In retrospect, it represented an amazing shift in narrative.
The ability of the so-called establishment – the business community and elected officials – to control the conversation when narratives compete and collide may become much harder in the months ahead, thanks to in large part to the way that engaged communities are rising up, locally and nationally, to challenge the authoritarian rule of President Donald Trump. Call it an unintended consequence.
PART ONE
PROVIDENCE – The late night tweet by Alan Tear at 11:24 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 24, was a simple, intriguing word: “Ugh.”
Tear, who describes himself on Twitter as “Startup obsessed. Betaspring and RevUp startup accelerators,” is one of the key inside players in the region’s innovation ecosystem, focused on building the foundation for startups and early stage companies to compete in the new economy.
Many of his nearly 9,000 tweets have focused on the innovation economy, new startups, and his ongoing efforts on behalf of Betaspring and RevUp, two accelerators.
[In the interest of transparency, I follow Tear, and he follows me; it is a typical Twitter relationship, based upon mutual curiosity and respect. We often say hello when we bump into each other in person at Olga’s Cup + Saucer, that innovation hub of conversation on Point Street in Providence, where Tear is often wearing one of his signature Irish flat caps].
In the past few weeks, however, on the cusp of the reign of President Donald Trump, there has been a growing mix of tweets offered up by Tear focused on the changing political landscape: a retweet of Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards, a reflection on Trump’s attack on Rep. John Lewis, and a retweet of Carl Sagan’s prescient quote from his 1996 book, The Demon Haunted World, Science as a Candle in the Dark:
“But there’s another reason. Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the U.S. is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issue; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”
So, what was up with ugh?
Baloney detection kit
It was a retweet of a post by Geoff Teehan, with an image of a jar of Nutella, a popular spread, in juxtaposition with a jar of the apparent actual contents inside: three-quarters of the concoction was made up of processed sugar [some 58 percent by weight], palm oil, and skim milk powder; one-quarter was cocoa and hazelnuts.
What was contained in the jar showing the apparent actual contents in Nutella turned out to be a pretty gross image, hence, I believe, the “ugh.” [Please correct me if I’m wrong, Alan.]
[The original image, it seems, was created as part of an ad campaign from a German consumer protection agency. The term, ‘baloney detection kit’ was a term coined by Sagan in The Demon Haunted World. The Italian maker of Nutella, Ferrero, was sued in the U.S. in a class action for false advertising, regarding claims that Nutella was “part of a nutritious breakfast.” In April of 2012, Ferrero agreed to pay a $3 million settlement.]
Teehan wrote, in an optimistic, jar-half-full view of the world accompanying the two side-by-side Nutella images: “If nutrition labels were designed to visualize ingredients like this, we would make better choices – as would the manufacturers.”
In the Twitter conversation that followed, Ryan asked: “Would that also apply to tech?”
Teehan responded: “As in visually show that a product is like 48 percent PHP, etc?”
Ryan replied: “Clunky code and obsessive tracking, if we’re all being more honest…”
The visual of the contents of a jar of Nutella, however, was not enough to deter some in the ongoing Twitter conversation, in response to Teehan, saying that they were conflicted; they liked the taste of Nutella too much to abstain from partaking of its sugary embrace.
Indeed, one Rhode Islander I know comes home every day from work and treats herself to a big tablespoon of Nutella as a daily reward.
[In Trump’s world, there is now a White House pantry filled with Lay’s potato chips as his salty snack food reward, according to a recent story retweeted by WPRO’s Steve Klamkin.]
White death
The connection between sugar consumption and the onset of obesity and diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease [some researchers are now calling Alzheimer’s a later-stage diabetes] is a topic of active scientific research, driven in part by the overwhelming medical costs of treating those chronic disorders – more than $558 billion a year in the U.S. and counting.
It’s a big issue for health insurers, both nationwide and here in Rhode Island. The Rhode Island Business Group on Health, the industry group for health insurers, recently held a summit on Jan. 20 on diabetes prevention, entitled: “Sugar Rush: The Not So Sweet Truth About How Much Diabetes Costs RI Business.”
Public dissemination of research on the deleterious impacts of added sugar in food and soft drinks, however, could be severely restricted under the new Trump administration policy guidelines, particularly if it supported evidence of the need for public health interventions, including taxation, as a deterrent. Can you say tobacco?
In turn, design of visual labels for science and politics could serve as a tool – a baloney detection kit – in the new American, not-so-silent spring of resistance.
A new design app
The idea of how to make the contents of food and technology visible and transparent was still kicking around my neural circuits the next morning as I drank my first cup of coffee [never with sugar], trying to envision what other kinds of ways there might be to apply the Nutella concept.
How, for instance, should federal government employees respond to the new gag rules, instituted immediately after the Trump inauguration? Social media has been abuzz with examples of resistance, such as the National Parks Service account from the Badlands tweeting facts about climate change, until it was shut down.
In its place soon came a rogue site, @ALTUSForestSer, which described itself as “The Unofficial # Resistance team of U.S. National Park Service. Not taxpayer subsidized!”
The power of the social media response, by apparent government employees, in resistance to President Trump, was captured in a recent cartoon by DWITT, a Minneapolis artist.
The three-frame cartoon showed a caricature of a bloviating Donald Trump in the first two frames: “I decide what is the TRUTH! Listen ONLY to ME! OBEY ME! LOVE ME!” The third frame, featuring a National Park ranger, sitting at her desk in her prim uniform, in front of her laptop, responding with a simple, “Nope.” Badlands became Badasslands in the cartoon. [See link to image above.]
That has led to a proliferation of alternative Twitter sites, such as @alt_fda, @RogueNASA, @AltHHS, @ActualEPAFacts, @altusda, and the hashtag #ScienceNotSilence.
There is also the Merriam Webster twitter account, reporting on the words most searched.
• On Jan. 22: “A fact is a piece of information presented as having objective reality.”
• On Jan. 23: “A claque is a group hired to applaud.” And, if you’re part of a group that’s paid to applaud, you’re a claquer.”
Banning the sea from rising
Then there was the excellent writing and reporting by Dave Levitan in Time, in his story: “Donald Trump’s Science Denial Is Becoming National Policy,” showing what good writing and good reporting can accomplish. Here are the first few paragraphs:
In August 2012, the North Carolina legislature banned the sea from rising. At least not as quickly as it was. The state passed a law disallowing policymakers and planners from using the best predictions available for how high the sea levels would reach.
This meant that the predominant scientific forecast that the ocean would rise 39 inches within the next 100 years shrunk down to about eight inches, which the state was forced to use in guiding coastal policy. This bit of legislative magic, of course, won’t save your beach house.
The N.C. shenanigans were good for a laugh around the parts of the country that take climate change seriously. But fast-forward to just after noon on Jan. 20, 2017, and we are now faced with the fact that wishing away scientific reality has become national policy.
Of course, from the Trump administration perspective, the news media should just shut up, according to White House advisor Steve Bannon.
“The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for awhile,” Bannon said during a telephone call, according to a story on Jan. 26 in The New York Times.
The story continued: “I want you to quote this,” Bannon added. “The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”
‘Keep your hands off my petri dishes’
The response from the public and the scientific community to the rash of authoritarian edicts issued by the Trump administration to control the flow of information around scientific policy and research has been swift.
To paraphrase lyrics from Bruce Springsteen, “When they said, ‘Sit down,’ I stood up.”
Scientists are busy mobilizing to organize a March for Science, following in the path of the Women’s March on Jan. 21, to push back against what they perceive as the threat of the Trump administration’s anti-science policies. Further details about the planned march will be released on Monday, Jan. 30.
Call it another engaged community of resistance. On a newly launched website, the organizers wrote: “Although this will start with a march, we hope to use this as a starting point to take a stand for science in politics. Slashing funding and restricting scientists from communicating their findings [from tax-funded research!] with the public is absurd and cannot be allowed to stand as policy.”
The organizers continued: “There are certain things that we accept as facts with no alternatives. The Earth is becoming warmer due to human action. The diversity of life arose by evolution. Politicians who devalue expertise risk making decisions that do not reflect reality and must be held accountable. An American government that ignores science to pursue ideological agendas endangers the world.”
