So many others and so many attendees and so much time has gone into giving us 16 book festivals and i really want to say thank you to all of you for coming out today and having come out for 15 years. I also want to think to medicine Public Library taking his event on when heas was unsure whetherr not someone would and for getting us this evil space to keep p putting on events for the public in medicine and from anywhere you can from today. I also want to think the madison Public Library foundation they do the private fundraising and keep these events free and open to the public. We have been doing this is our 25th festival here the mass Public Library and all of our events have been free and we care deeply about that and hope you do too. I want to say a huge thank you to them and to all the sponsors have helped put on the specimen from the year. I also would ask you right now to please silence your cell phones. That goes for dave, as well. [laughter] and probably me but the architect. I would like to start my introduction by saying i am not a scientist but i really believe that book festivals are the solution to Climate Change and i have data and i will not show it to you right now but it is true. Just believe that it is true. I think weve all heard some version of that in the past and david is here today to tell us why we should not just believe. Y is writing about these things, you know . In an age where we dont know necessarily whats going on all the time, davids here to say this is going on, and its going on probably more than you think. I think its a very important topic. I think, you know, to hold the people who represent us accountable, but to also know what the facts are when were talking about the facts. So heres dave to tell us what we need to know. [applause] well, thank you very much for that introduction, conor, and thank you to the festival and to the library for having me. This is very cool. Yeah, my name is dave levitan, and i am a science journalist basedded near philadelphia. Ive written for a whole bunch of places on a whole bunch of scientific topics. The book is called not a scientist. 9 it is, essentially, a playbook of how politicians get science wrong. I thought what i would do today is sort of go new the origins of the book, where it came from and then also discuss that line, the title, not a scientist, and where that came from. Go through a couple of examples that are in there and maybe talk a bit about how some of the things that i was writing about in the book are playing out today and, more recently, in politics. So to start off, the book actually sort of arose out of my time as a staff writer for factcheck. Org. Im a freelancer generally, but i spent a little bit of time as a fulltime staff writer for fact check, which i hope everyone is aware of that web site. They got a grant in early 2015 to start covering science sort of in a dedicated fashion. They had covered some scientific issues before, but they didnt have a Science Writer trained as a Science Writer. But they got a grant to start covering science directly, and they hired me to do that. We launched a sort of little, new section of the site called scicheck. My day job was basically paying attention to what politicians were saying about science and explaining why they were wrong when they were wrong, which i did not lack for material. [laughter] and basically early on in that job i started to notice some patterns in the ways that they were talking about science. Sometimes this was, you know, actual repeated talking points, just the same exact words from different people. But other times it was more sort of pattern ors of speech, rhetorical tricks, devices that i just started sort of noticing crop up again and again. I started collecting them, basically, at paris just sort of listing at first just sort of listing them down. And very rapidly i had a pretty long list of these. And i decided that it might be a useful sort of endeavor to put them all into one place, to basically collect these as a sort of playbook of the ways politicians are trying to fool us when it comes to scientific topics. A publisher agreed with me, so thats sort of where the book came from. I left that job in late 2015 basically to work on the book and to go back to freelancing, which im still doing. So thats sort of where it came from. I divided the book up, basically, into types of errors, types of devices of tricks. So some of these would sound very familiar. Theyre things like the cherry pick. Im sure people are aware of the oversimplification, obvious what that means. Others i had not really seen described specifically before, so i gave them weird names, things like the butterup and undercut or the certain uncertainty. Theres a bunch in there. I was making them up as i went, basically. But, okay. So ill get into a few of those examples, but first go into that title, im not a scientist. Im sure everyone has heard some version of that line plenty of times before. It really sort of picked up in popularity it was probably around 2009 or 10 when we heard it a whole lot. Almost universally as it related to Climate Change. And it really sort of came from almost any politician you could find. It was remarkably you ubiquitoui think. So once i decided that was going to be the title of this book, i realized i should probably figure out where it came from. It goes back, actually, a lot farther than i anticipated. But first i should say since im all about requiring evidence of people, i cannot promise with 100 president certainty that this is the very first time that someone used this line in exactly this way, but its the first one i could find. And its a pretty good example, i think. It actually goes back to september of 1980. During the end of the president ial campaign that year, thencandidate Ronald Reagan was asked during a campaign stop, i think it was in ohio, he was asked some questions about environmental issues, specifically about sulfur dioxide which is a pollutant you dont hear that much about, but it is the primary component of acid rain. Another thing you dont hear about much these days. He said, i have flown twice over mount st. Hell especially out on our west coast. Im not a scientist and i dont know the figures, but i just have a suspicion that that one Little Mountain out there has probably released more into the atmosphere of the world than has been released during the last ten years of automobile driving and things of that kind that people are so concerned about. Okay. So, i mean, i feel like that should sound very familiar. People didnt use this more recently on sulfur dioxide, but its a similar formulation of how they were talking about something. He starts by saying im not a scientist and i dont know the figures, but heres a figure. He just goes right ahead and disavows expertise to start and offers up what amounts to an expert opinion. I mean, obviously the line im not a scientist itself is basically meaningless. Of course youre not a scientist, we know that. But it is the but that follows it that is always the most important part. Its what theyre going to offer up instead of actual science that an actual scientist would say. And i find that the technique sort of amounts to a smoke screen. Its a way to put experts, the actual scientist9s sort of off into the corner that no one is going to bother listening to because they seem sort of out of touch. Its a way to make it seem like we shouldnt listen to experts. And in reagans particular case, here he was very much wrong on his point about sulfur dioxide. Generally speaking, whatever you hear is wrong. I dont think ive ever heard a version where there was a little bit of right following it. [laughter] so quickly, mount st. Helens at that point was releasing about 2,000 tons of sulfur dioxide into the area, but humans were rereesing 81,000 tons a day, and thats just in the u. S. If he was referring to the eruption which had happened three or four months before that, that was 1. 5 million tons sorry, in the eruption itself. Thats still not enough though, because he said ten years of human activity which would have been Something Like 200 million tons. Again, just in the u. S. It sounded reasonable though, right . I mean, the idea of this huge, massive explosion, this had been a big deal in the u. S. At the time. I mean, it killed a bunch of people, it was this massive thing. To pretend or to claim that humans couldnt possibly compete with Something Like that sort of sounds like it should make sense, and people have said how could we possibly change the climate, were so small compared to the earth. But we do manage to change it pretty effectively. Anyway, so that is sort of the first version of that line that i ever found. And i find it to be a really good example because, you know, it took its not like suddenly everybody started using it right then. It took them a few decades before people started, you know, taking up that mantle again. It was so bizarre to me when it was being used all the time because its such a meaningless thing to say. You dont hear people say it about anything else. They dont say im not an economist, you know, im not an expert on north korean culture and diplomacy. They just say the thing they want to say. And, again, i really think it sort of stands to marginalize experts. And im not the only one who thought this was weird. There was a republican strategist and consultant named mike mckenna who once called the line im not a scientist the dumbest talking point in minnesota kind. [laughter] im going to go through a couple of examples. I mentioned a few of the names of these techniques. I get asked a lot about sort of which one of these people can never decide it which is your favorite or least favorite, which is actually appropriate there. Its sort of the one that wounds me the most, i think. Its called the ridicule and dismiss. The concept here is that science, especially basic Scientific Research can often be described in absurdsounding terms because it is basic. It is done on model organisms or on just cells. And when you just Say Something about this quickly, its not going to sound like youre curing cancer. Its going to sound ridiculous. And politicians seize on that in order to try and question funding of that science. Its always about funding. Its always about trying to undercut our support for federallyfunded research. Heres an example. This is from kentucky senator rand paul. This was a few years ago. He was talking about funding for the National Institutes of health, nih, and he said you know what we did discover, they spent a Million Dollars trying to determine whether male fruit flies like younger female fruit flies. I think we could have polled the audience and saved a million bucks. He gets a laugh, of course, because it does sound ridiculous if thats actually what youre doing. But thats not even close. Its only, like, in the very basis of sense correct and only without any sort of context. The lab he was actually talking about was at the university of michigan, and they do work on basically how healthy sexuality can promote Healthy Aging and connections between sexuality and aging. Theres a whole bunch of other line of research in this, but when you put it that way, it sounds like that might be, actually, very useful. And you can do this for so much when it comes to basic research that involves model organisms like a fruit fly. Itll always sound ridiculous to study things in a fruit fly if you want it to sound ridiculous. Or a mouse or a zebra fish, all these valuable model organisms that scientists use, its never going to sound reasonable until you make it sound reasonable. This is why this wounds me so much, because it sort of serves to undermine all of our support for Scientific Research. If we think what the government is spending money on is ridiculous, then were not going to want the government to spend money on it anymore. But it is not at all ridiculous. Even if that particular research, you know, is not going to cure a disease tomorrow, thats just not how science works. We fund a whole town of individual little, basic bits of research that pile onto each other until we come to usable answers for things. And we do this with fruit flies or mice or a whole lot of other things. And the funding that the federal government has put out for that has resulted in incredible amounts of useful discoveries. I mean, we live Something Like 30 years longer today than we did 100 years ago largely because of principallyfunded basic scientific federallyfunded basic Scientific Research. That sounds a lot better when you put it that way. People have been doing this, using this technique for many years. Former senator william proxmeyer used to give out the Golden Fleece awards. They were, basically, just trying to call out ridiculoussounding bits of government spending. He often focused on science because, again, its easy to focus on science for Something Like this. He did get in trouble a few times when the thing he said wasly duck louse turned out not to be, of course, and now theres something called the golden goose awards which take things that sound ridiculous and ended up being incredibly useful and gives them an award. My favorite example, there was a study involving massaging rat pups. Which does sound ridiculous, til you realize the results of that study was used to change how we treat premature babies. And we have not only saved a whole lot of lives, but billions of dollars in how hospitals have to manage premature babies. So, again, massaging rat pups to saving premature babies. You can choose how you want to describe Scientific Research. And politicians like paul will sometimes choose to make it sound as ridiculous as possible. He should know better, by the way, because hes an m. D. , hes a doctor, and he should understand how basic science works. Thats the one that sort of gets to me the most. Another example, another technique that i call the demonnizer is another one thats actually very old. This is almost universally used to connect immigration with disease. So politicians who are, you know, very much against immigration are always looking for ways to sort of prove their point on this. One of them that they have come back to over and over over the years is that immigrants bring disease with them. So this is a quote from an alabama congressman named moe brooks. This was a few years ago right when there was a Measles Outbreak happening that started at disneyland, actually. And he was talking about how and at the same time, there was this sort of stream of children who were showing up at the border from some Central American countries. And he was sort of arguing that we should be turning them back because theyre bringing disease in. So he said, unfortunately, our kids just arent prepared for a lot of the diseases that come in and are borne by illegal aliens. You have to have sympathy for the plight of the illegal aliens, i think we all understand that, but they have not been blessed with in their home countries with the kind of health care and immunizations that we demand of our children in the United States. So, again, this probably sounds reasonable to a lot of people, that the u. S. Health care system is going to be better than, say, nicaraguas where a lot of children were coming from at the time. He specifically mentioned immunizations because of the Measles Outbreak that was going on at the time. Now, im sure a lot of people are well aware of the antivaccination movement in this country. I wont go into the details on the background, theres a bunch of it in the book if youre interested. But i think its really important to realize just how wrong this sort of bit of speech is. Hes saying theyreing in that might be bringing diseases that they dont have protection against and might harm us by doing so. So according to the world health organization, the coverage at one year old covered by the mmr vaccine, in the u. S. Has been holding pretty steady for the last couple of decades at about 92 . So 92 of 1yearolds are covered which sounds okay except the really ideal level for maintaining herd immunity for measles which means enough of it get vaccinated that the people among us who cannot because of lee chemoya or other issues, they are protect9 as well, immunity should be around 95 for measles. 92 is kind of at the lower end of where you want to be. This is a little misleading because this is a nationwide statistic. Its a little more relevant to look at smaller areas because its not like we come into contact with the entire country. There are plenty of pockets because of the antivaccination movement that are far below this. Places like marin county, california, orange county, i dont have last years data, but at various points have dropped down into the 70 kind of range which is far away from what herd immunity requires. Anyway, so were at 92 if you coto do just take the white average. Mexico for the last couple of decades has been around 95 . Theres been, there was one weird year where they dipped, and i dont know why. Generally, they have been better than the u. S. Nicaragua for at least a decade has been at 99 coverage for the mmr vaccine. El salvador, just another one, has been right around 94, 95, again, a couple years dipped in 92. But again the implications was that all these countries where these kids were coming from have no health care at all, you know, its nothing. And theyre going to come into the u. S. And put all of us at risk when in actuality those kids were put at risk by us. We were the ones who were much more likely to give them measles than the other way around. This sort of technique is so old. You can go back to the aids crisis. There was a huge push to prevent people entering the country who were hiv positive. Again, without any particular scientific reason for this. There werent actually that many people showing up at borders who were hiv positive. And obviously we, in the u. S. , were perfectly capable of spreading the disease ourselves. And just to show that these kinds, this kind of rhetoric can have sort of farreaching implications, because of that discussion about not letting people in, they did pass, basically put in a policy that did not allow anyone to enter the country who was hiv positive. And this lasted all the way until 2009