As two scientists who lived through Australia’s black summer bushfires and the Covid-19 crisis in the United States, we have seen firsthand how science in modern societies is under siege from an even more insidious “antiscience virus” of weaponised disinformation that undermines our ability to confront these crises.
There are five primary, interconnected forces behind the assault on science and reason. We call them the “five Ps”: the plutocrats, the petrostates, the pros (eg paid promoters of anti-science), the propagandists and – with important exceptions – the media. Together they have generated a perfect storm of antiscientific disinformation that now threatens humanity.
A nefarious web of actors including plutocrats in the US and Australia, along with libertarian tech bros, and petrostates such as Russia and Saudi Arabia fund and amplify deceitful, ideologically motivated antiscience. They collectively employ weaponised social media outlets, podcasts and rightwing cable news broadcasts as their preferred tools. The objective is to inundate the public with fossil fuel-friendly propaganda that undermines climate action or public health measures including vaccinations. Scientists are often portrayed as enemies or villains. The well of public opinion so critical to informed voting is poisoned.
When Mike was in Australia during the 2020 black summer, he warned about the threat posed by the climate denialism of the Murdoch media empire with its dominant and pernicious influence on the media landscape. Yet despite this adverse media environment, the Australian people proved remarkably resilient to disinformation campaigns.
That doesn’t mean that Australian politicians are yet fully on board with the actions necessary to avert catastrophic warming. Mike and his colleague Chris Wright (not the climate-sceptic fossil fuel executive appointed US Department of Energy secretary by Donald Trump, but the University of Sydney Business School climate policy expert) criticised the previous Coalition government for their obstinate resistance to decarbonisation. Australia ranked last among UN member countries in climate ambition under the Coalition rule. And the current Labor government continues rightly to be criticised for its support of expanded fossil fuel infrastructure.
However, unlike the US, which has proven to be especially vulnerable to antiscience disinformation (having now elected the most antiscience government in its 250-year history), Australia – having stood at a crossroads four years ago – chose to take a different path. It elected a government that respects science and reason, even if it’s falling somewhat short of its commitments (eg lowering carbon emissions by 43% by 2030). The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, at least has recognised climate change as an existential threat, while Donald Trump has dismissed it as a hoax.
The dichotomy is equally stark when it comes to the Covid-19 pandemic. The numbers tell the story. Consider the state of Texas, where Peter lives and works. It has roughly the same population as the entire nation of Australia. Yet by September 2022, 90,000 Texans had died from Covid-19 (probably almost 40,000 of whom refused Covid immunisations after they were widely available). That’s almost four times the total number of Australian Covid-19 deaths.
What explains the divergent path of these two western nations when it comes to the acceptance of science and science-based policymaking? A number of critical factors allowed Australians to elect a more climate-forward government despite total inundation with climate disinformation by the Murdoch media and other conservative news outlets. Certainly, the enduring legacy of the black summer was a factor. But so too were several key attributes of Australian elections: compulsory voting, absence of partisan districting and preferential or “ranked choice” voting.
In the US, partisan districting (“gerrymandering”), low voter turnout and a polarised two-party politics that squeezes out moderates have combined to yield electoral representation that is at odds with the actual views of the people. For example, a Gallup poll from last year found that 61% of US adults were concerned about the climate crisis. Yet US policies are currently set by a party that denies the basic existence of climate change.
While there is a modest move in some states towards ranked choice voting, substantial changes in the American electoral system, such as compulsory voting, are unlikely to happen in the near term. A more viable way forward involves attacking the problem at its source: the well-organised and financed antiscience disinformation machine.
In April 2021, Mike was among a number of witnesses, including former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who spoke out against the Murdoch disinformation machine during an Australian Senate media diversity inquiry. Later that year, Labor and Greens called for an official inquiry into the “dangerous monopoly” of the Murdoch media empire. Biennial assessments monitoring media diversity are now under way, with the first report issued earlier this year.
The Australian Broadcast Corporation also took on the Murdoch empire, re-broadcasting a two-part documentary series Fox and the Big Lie over the vociferous objections of the Murdochs.
As we detail in our book Science Under Siege, no media entity has done more to spread climate and Covid-19 antiscience disinformation than Fox News. Much as they have paid the price for their promotion of lies regarding the 2020 election and voting machines, it’s time for outfits that attack science and scientists to pay the price for the threat they pose to human civilisation.
Michael E Mann is presidential distinguished professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Peter Hotez is professor and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine-Texas Children’s hospital. Their new book is Science Under Siege: How to fight the five most powerful forces that threaten our world
