Dear Editor:
RE: PPC not racist, Sept. 30.
Henry Brunsveld’s response to Barbara Cooper’s allegations suggests that the PPC at least suffers from the same scientific illiteracy that can be found across the political spectrum.
Science is fundamentally concerned with describing the states of nature and their causes. However, as the old adage goes, people are most easily convinced of that which they already believe. The PPC, for example, opts for a “scientifically-based approach … that opposes vaccine mandates, … passports and other authoritarian measures”, effectively advocating for policy-based evidence making, rather than evidence-based policy making.
With respect to immigration, Syl Carle (in the Advertiser, Sept. 9) did invoke evidence for PPC’s preferred policies. People in Nordic countries use 10 times more energy per capita than other parts of the world. The conclusion? Fight climate change by limiting immigration. But in so doing, he fell victim to the “is-ought” fallacy: that the scientific assertion, at least to a first approximation, may be correct does not lead directly to the conclusion that limiting immigration is necessarily good social policy.
While these are examples among the worst abuses of science, they are but symptoms of the greater problem: that when it comes to policy making of all stripes, too many people treat science like a drunk treats a lamp post – for support and not illumination.
Tom Nudds,
Centre Wellington