What wokeness does to science

By Patrice Lewis

Once in a while you come across a leftist educator who is so crazy or whose claims are so absurd, it’s hard to grasp they’re for real. This past week, I was appalled to find a woman who thought the effects of pollution on bird populations was just dandy. In fact, she calls it a “perverse joy.”

The “scientist” in question is a woman named Anne Pollock, head of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London. She decided to put a “woke” spin on some scientific research by tackling the effect of avian endocrine disruptions from pollution through a “queer feminist perspective.” Her goal is to “depathologize queer animals.”

She writes: “[T]he major story of endocrine disruption is this: there is considerable scientific evidence that toxic chemicals that pollute our environment interfere with the endocrine systems of wildlife, contributing to an increased prevalence of animals that are sexually atypical – with lowered fertility, intersex characteristics, and pairing with animals of the same sex.”

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So far so good. This is scientific observation. But then things take a hard lurch to the left.

“I am by no means the first to point out that there is homophobia embedded in that ecological alarm. Many writers in feminist and queer ecocriticism have pointed out that discourse of endocrine disruption in both scientific and environmentalist literature has exemplified a ‘sex panic.’ Posing intersex characteristics as the sine qua non of harm to our environment is a move steeped in heteronormativity. And yet to my knowledge, no one is celebrating the queer here. In this chapter, I want to suggest that we depathologize queer animals, even when that queerness is the product of human-produced toxins in the environment, and even when it inhibits animals’ reproductive capacity. Perhaps we even might find a perverse joy here.”

It’s “homophobic” and “heteronormative” to be concerned about pollution disrupting endocrine systems in birds? Really?

Her paper, unsurprisingly, is titled “Queering Endocrine Disruption” and it can be read – in all its twisted pseudo-scientific ridiculousness – here.

I have a background (master’s degree) in biology, with an emphasis on animal behavior. Even though I’ve been out of the science field for a long time, my fascination with wildlife has never waned. So when I read baloney like this, it fills me with despair for what passes as “science” these days. (She does, at least, refer to this paper as a “contemplation.”)

This is what happens when you impose feelings and emotions into what should be pure scientific observation: It allows absurd and entirely subjective conclusions to be drawn. If this is the logic used by scientists, then science is dead. If this is the logic used by educators, then education is dead. Apparently, all that matters now is advancing a leftist agenda, even if it means twisting scientific observation into pretzels to justify one’s own personal cause célèbre.

“For biologists,” Pollock writes, “reproductive success is often understood to be the final cause of animal existence, which is to say that the aim or purpose of the animal is to reproduce. Yet from whose perspective is reproductive success the ultimate definition of ‘success’? God’s, Darwin’s, ecologists’, or the animals’?”

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(The answer is “genetics.” If animals don’t successfully reproduce and pass on their genes, they die out, either as an individual line or as a species. That’s why the sex drive is one of the strongest hormonal forces in nature.)

Mr. Pollock goes on for page after weary page in her “contemplation.” She ricochets from subject to subject, including – oddly and randomly – the pleasures of intoxication and how sobriety “should not necessarily be considered the default natural state” (which makes me wonder if intoxication played a factor in the writing of this paper).

She justifies atypical animal behavior as joyously living in the moment rather than worrying about a reproductive future. She notes that “genetic continuity is an undue limitation on queer possibility.”

She cites another research paper which notes how DDT contamination may contribute to homosexual behavior in seagulls, then writes, “I am troubled that [the researcher’s] queer reading seems to rely on ruling out the possibility of queerness being caused by pollution. Why does it matter where their queerness comes from?”

And later: “If the birds are affected by endocrine disruption in this way, does that necessarily mean that they are harmed?”

Yay for pollution! Let’s get more endocrine systems impaired to create more queerness among birds!

Pollock’s “contemplation” is a clear example of one of the things ethologists (ethology = the study of animal behavior) used to be warned against: Anthropomorphizing. This is the tendency to assign human emotions or motivation to animal behavior. Put another way, it’s the dangers of interpreting animal behavior through the lens of human emotions. But it seems Ms. Pollock’s paper is nothing BUT anthropomorphizing.

Some of the other random subjects she touches on include: Pope Benedict’s proclamations about gender constructivists; the oppressive systems of capitalism and structural racism; and “the ways that indigenous women’s concerns [about environmental pollutants] are often rather cynically used as a hook for (white) advocacy around endocrine disruption.”

Yes, intoxication may indeed have played a role in the writing of this paper.

In any event, Pollock is interpreting the disruptions of avian endocrine systems from pollution solely through the lens of “queerness,” and then justifying and even celebrating the resulting lack of reproduction in these animals. When someone justifies disruptions to avian endocrine systems as “joyous” because it produces “queer” birds incapable of reproduction, it is not science; it’s propaganda, pure and simple.

This, folks, is what wokeness does to science. Apparently it is now “homophobic” to be concerned about the effect of environmental toxins on animal reproduction. To paraphrase Dennis Prager, you’d have to be a Ph.D. to say something that stupid.

Welcome to the world of the modern university experience. No wonder college enrollment is dropping. Who wants to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars to be taught by someone like this?

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Patrice Lewis

Patrice Lewis is a WND editor and weekly columnist, and the author of "The Simplicity Primer: 365 Ideas for Making Life more Livable." Visit her blog at www.rural-revolution.com. Read more of Patrice Lewis's articles here.


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