How Do Science Skepticism and Reliance on Tech Coexist?

1960s Faith in Technological Solutions to Social Problems

It’s mainly historians who write about the technological fix these days. It doesn’t crop up much in public debate, as it did 50 or 60 years ago. That’s when Alvin Weinberg coined the term. Weinberg was a nuclear physicist and at the time, director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

Weinberg was convinced that if social problems were reframed as technical ones, they would be rendered solvable. Some of his proposals still tempt politicians. In the midst of the Vietnam War, he proposed the construction of a wall between North and South. Others sound far-fetched. Writing at the time of the Watts riots in Los Angeles, he noted that people are more likely to riot when they’re hot and uncomfortable. Using public funds to provide all homes with air-conditioning would ease tensions! Weinberg believed that technological fixes like these could actually be more effective than trying to get at the social, economic, and political roots of problems.

A few years later two Columbia University sociologists (Etzioni and Remp) looked at the effect in practice of a few technological fixes—including gun control and methadone treatment of heroin addiction. On balance, their overall assessment was that the technologies generally helped, though how much they helped varied. Some are just more effective than others. Some work better with some population groups than with others. It also depends on whether they’re deployed well or badly. In the end, it boils down to politics. Technological solutions can buy time, stabilizing things while a more fundamental solution is sought. On the other hand, they may be seen as sufficient in themselves. Weinberg’s view was that with good technology there was no need for complex social or educational approaches.

A Paradox

What about the major challenges facing us now? Who today shares Weinberg’s faith in science and technology? There’s an interesting paradox here. On the one hand, mistrust in science and scientists is far more extensive than it was in the mid-1960s. But on the other hand, this mistrust co-exists with an undiminished commitment to technological fixes.

The most acute challenge facing the world right now, apart from war, is the natural disaster: flooding in Pakistan and earthquakes in Turkey and Syria. We’ve stopped worrying about epidemics of infectious disease, Covid-19 included. That’s a relief. Right now it’s only virologists who haven’t stopped worrying. They are anxiously following the progression of what’s generally called bird flu.

New Infectious Diseases

Can the virus H5N1 spread to, and between, mammals? There’s evidence that it is spreading, anyhow among minks and seals. There’s little evidence for transmission to humans. As yet. Most so-called new infectious diseases, including Covid-19, and Ebola, are zoonoses. They’re caused by a pathogen, often a virus, which has jumped the species barrier and through mutations succeeded in spreading between humans. And when they do affect humans, we place our hope in vaccines, as we did with Covid-19, even before there was a vaccine.

I believe that on the whole vaccines are safe and effective, though some are better than others, they may work better in some populations than in others, and we aren’t very good at getting them to the communities that most need them. But that’s not the point here. The question is: Do good vaccines solve the problem of infectious, and specifically zoonotic, disease? Do they give us breathing space in which to search for a more fundamental solution? Or do they provide a smokescreen, a justification for doing nothing more?

A recent article in Science points out that zoonotic diseases seem to be emerging more and more frequently. Many factors lie behind this, with increasing human-animal contact of particular importance. “Warming global temperatures will result in changing geographic distributions of wildlife as appropriate habitats shrink, perhaps leading to multispecies refugia that will increase the rate of cross-species virus transmission.” Changing farming practices in some parts of the world may also increase the risk of exposure to animal pathogens. “Unless these processes are limited now, with combating global climate change at the forefront, COVID-19 will only be an unsatisfying taste of what is to come.”

Many experts are reaching similar conclusions, blaming intensive livestock farming, the destruction of forests, and climate change.

And climate change itself is the focus of a further set of initiatives: modifying the earth’s atmosphere through geoengineering. Suggested approaches include artificial dust clouds to block solar radiation from reaching the earth’s lower atmosphere. Many scientists and engineers appear to support the idea, though surveys suggest that laypeople are more skeptical.

Environment Essential Reads

How Nature Makes Us Human

How Outdoor Activities Build Resilience in Children

Why Don’t We Talk About the Technological Fix?

Perhaps Alvin Weinberg would have viewed artificial dust clouds, like animal vaccines and frontier walls as sufficient in themselves. Why don’t we put these things together any longer? Why don’t we discuss the adequacy of technological fixes for social problems in general? Could it be because to do so is to imply we are only tackling symptoms and that more is needed? Could it be because, over the past half-century finding technological solutions has become the default position? Perhaps it’s time to start thinking once more along the lines set out by Etzioni and Remp in the 1970s.