Episode 221: Anti-Science Mugging on the Right and the Ascent of American Anti-Intellectualism
Added 2025-05-28 13:43:43 +0000 UTC“Jaw Clench Study Takes Tax Dollars,” United Press International cautioned in 1975. “‘Shrimp On A Treadmill’: Rand Paul Mocks National Science Foundation Studies,” Forbes reported in 2021. “Gov't waste report finds $400K spent to give lonely rats cocaine: 'Absurd',” Fox News told viewers in 2024.
According to these headlines, a wasteful, woke liberal government has been squandering taxpayer money on something wholly undeserving: frivolous scientific studies. Tens of thousands to millions of dollars, we’re told, are being handed out like candy so scientists can sit around watching monkeys clench their jaws, putting shrimp on treadmills, and give cocaine to rats. And who gets to choose which studies are funded? Wasteful ultra woke organizations like the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and Health and Human Services.
It’s true that some research doesn’t end up having much practical relevance––indeed this is the nature of scientific inquiry! There are sometimes cul-de-sacs and wrong paths. But the majority of the time, studies that are trivialized in media and on the Senate floor aren’t superfluous at all.
While soundbites like “shrimp on a treadmill” might paint a ridiculous picture, they’re also taken out of context, obscuring the scientific merit and moral import of the research and researchers, who work for years on often obscure, tedious lines of inquiry only to have their lives’ work reduced to a cheap punchline by bad-faith demagogues playing to the public’s ignorance and lizard brain impulses.
So, why is this media and political punchline so popular? And what’s the agenda of the lawmakers and media organizations that denigrate and misrepresent research and science more broadly, and the larger current of conspicuous anti-intellectualism that has always been present in American political culture, but in the last ten years has entirely taken over the modern American Right?
On this episode, we discuss the decades-old, anti-intellectual gambit of mocking and attacking the “frivolous study,” examining how it warps and devalues science and international cooperation in a broader effort to defund public institutions, both scientific and otherwise.
Our guest is Brenda Ekwurzel, Senior Director of Scientific Excellence at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
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Guest
Brenda Ekwurzel is Senior Director of Scientific Excellence at the Union of Concerned Scientists. A climatologist, geologist, geochemist and hydrologist, Dr. Ekwurzel has shared her expertise on climate science across a wide range of research and media, from ABC News to NPR, the New York Times to the Washington Post.
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Show Notes
March 2025 | Union of Concerned Scientists
The Golden Fleece: Anti-intellectualism and social science
Leigh Shaffer | 1977| American Psychologist
'Shrimp On A Treadmill': The Politics Of 'Silly' Studies
Nell Greenfieldboyce | August 23, 2011 | NPR Morning Edition
The State of Science at 100 Days: Co-Opted, Hindered, and Undermined
Jules Barbati-Dajches | May 8, 2025 | The Equation
Trump team freezes new NSF awards — and could soon axe hundreds of grants
Dan Garisto | April 17, 2025 | Nature
A Backward March: Another Month of Attacks on Federal Science
Jules Barbati-Dajches | April 2, 2025 | The Equation
A Hundred Attacks and Counting: What Happened to Federal Science in February
Jules Barbati-Dajches | March 12, 2025 | The Equation
Fact Check: ‘Shrimp on a treadmill’ study and cost misrepresented
Reuters Fact Check | February 21, 2025 | Reuters
Musk and Ramaswamy’s DOGE Strategy: Bully Federal Scientists
Karen Perry Stillerman | January 15, 2025 | The Equation
Sebastian Furness | April 2, 2024 | University of Queensland
NIH scientists identify new brain mechanism involved in impulsive cocaine-seeking in rats
June 28, 2022 | National Institutes of Health
Richard Hofstadter and America’s New Wave of Anti-Intellectualism
David Masciotra | March 9, 2014 | The Daily Beast
From Anti-Government to Anti-Science: Why Conservatives Have Turned Against Science
Naomi Oreskes & Erik M. Conway | November 15, 2022 | Daedalus
New Book Examines Effects of Anti-intellectual Thought on Science
Michael Saunders | September 20, 2024 | BU School of Public Health
The Antiscience Movement Is Escalating, Going Global and Killing Thousands
Peter J. Hotez | March 29, 2021 | Scientific American
How Trump’s attack on universities is putting research in peril
Dan Garisto, Jeff Tollefson & Alexandra Witze | April 24, 2025 | Nature
A climate scientist questioned his findings. It didn’t go well.
Stephanie Hanes | June 10, 2024 | Christian Science Monitor
Michael Mann beat his defamers. But climate scientists are still under attack.
Lauren Kurtz | February 28, 2024 | Yale Climate Connections
Her work paved the way for blockbuster obesity drugs. Now, she’s fighting for recognition
Jennifer Couzin-Frankel | September 8, 2023 | Science
Why isn’t the right more afraid of COVID-19?
Christina Pazzanese | October 30, 2020 | The Harvard Gazette
Many Americans deeply distrust experts. So will they ignore the warnings about coronavirus?
Eric Merkley | March 19, 2020 | The Washington Post
Trump Administration’s Attacks on Science Already Surpass Two Bush Terms
Elliott Negin | August 16, 2019 | Truthout
The truth about Galileo and his conflict with the Catholic Church
Jessica Wolf | December 22, 2016 | UCLA Newsroom
Attacks on federal research funding anger scientists
Ben Goldfarb | February 3, 2015 | High Country News
Battle between NSF and House science committee escalates: How did it get this bad?
Jeffrey Mervis | October 2, 2014 | Science
Silencing the Scientists: the Rise of Right-wing Populism
Clive Hamilton | March 2, 2011 | Our World
Adlai Stevenson, the original egghead
Kimberly French | November 3, 2008 | UUWorld
All That’s Gold Does Not Glitter
Etienne S. Benson | June 1, 2006 | Association for Pyschological Science
Proxmire's booby prize; Does the Golden Fleece have a silver lining?
Laura van Dam | August 5, 1982 | Christian Science Monitor
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Transcript
For a full transcript of this episode, go here. You can also find transcripts of past episodes, live shows, Beg-a-Thons, Interviews and News Briefs here.
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Credits
Senior Producer: Florence Barrau-Adams
Producer: Julianne Tveten
Production Assistant: Trendel Lightburn
Newsletter: Marco Cartolano
Music: Grandaddy
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Comments
Finding out that they've been homophobic towards frogs for like 50 years now :( Real talk though, fantastic episode + guest. Fascinating to know where these studies actually lead! And infuriating to see how credulous media can be picking up on these "concerns." The tirade beginning at 10:00 or so gives the whole game away when it makes fun of rural road construction studies in Poland. All of the studies are important, obviously, but how is that one in particular not inherently relevant to the US??? Just shows how false the "just a concerned everyday American taxpayer" persona is. (Or maybe it's also a case of assuming anyone outside the US has NOTHING worthwhile to show us.) Sorry, long rant. Good episode. I remember that AARP shrimp commercial very clearly 🫤
ellie
2025-05-29 19:59:30 +0000 UTCI got so much verbal ammo from this episode - also why are Americans such know it alls? I mean really - I’m probably a huge know it all too 😂
HenrytheWorst
2025-05-29 19:32:34 +0000 UTC
