Expertise Matters
- Ocean Hoptimism
- 19 hours ago
- 4 min read
Why We Must Resist the Hollowing Out of Science
There is a unique kind of anguish that comes from watching something you’ve devoted your life to being dismantled by people with no training, no expertise, and, too often, no humility.
For those of us who have spent decades in the field, in the lab, in communities, on the water, or in the policy trenches, the feeling is not just frustration. It is rage. Because we know what is being lost, and we know how long it takes to rebuild when knowledge and institutions are stripped for parts.
The Hollowing Out
This isn’t an abstraction. We’ve seen it:
NOAA budgets gutted, climate research sidelined or defunded, scientists muzzled while hurricanes and warming seas grow more dangerous.
EPA career staff overridden by appointees with ties to the very industries they’re supposed to regulate. Air and water protections rolled back under the banner of “efficiency.” Scientists muzzled.
CDC undermined by political dictates in the middle of a global pandemic, when public trust is most needed. Personal and political ideologies allowed to supplant science and data.
USAID stripped of in-house technical expertise and international support for local conservation efforts, replaced with politically motivated contractors whose loyalty is to ideology, not outcomes.
The result: agencies tasked with gathering data, weighing evidence, and protecting the public good reduced to shells: politicized, demoralized, unable to function as intended.
The planet, our environment, our health: none of these can be bent to fit a political ideology. Gravity doesn’t change because it polls badly. Ocean acidification won’t pause for an election cycle. Viruses don’t care about party platforms.
Warnings From History
We are not the first generation to face this struggle. Across centuries and continents, we see a grim pattern: when politics silences science, society pays a terrible price. From revolutionary France to Stalin’s Soviet Union to Cold War America, the lesson is the same: when ideology replaces evidence, truth dies, and people suffer.
The French Warning: Lavoisier and the Guillotine
During the Reign of Terror, Antoine Lavoisier, father of modern chemistry, discoverer of oxygen and hydrogen, pioneer of the conservation of mass, was condemned not for his science but for his association with the Ancien Régime.
The judge dismissed pleas for mercy with chilling words: “The Republic has no need of scientists or chemists. The course of justice cannot be delayed.” In one day, the guillotine ended the life of one of history’s greatest minds.
The consequence was not just personal tragedy. France lost decades of leadership in chemistry and agriculture at a moment when rebuilding a new society demanded innovation. It was a brutal demonstration of how vengeance and ideology can annihilate knowledge itself.
The Soviet Warning: Lysenko and Famine
Under Stalin, agronomist Trofim Lysenko rose to power by rejecting genetics in favor of pseudoscientific theories that conveniently aligned with Marxist ideology. His false promises of miraculous harvests won political favor, and dissenters were silenced, imprisoned, or killed.
The results were catastrophic: failed crops, famine, and generations of scientific progress lost. “Lysenkoism” became a synonym for the lethal consequences of letting ideology overrule expertise.
The American Warning: McCarthyism
In the United States, the Red Scare of the 1950s weaponized suspicion to silence truth. Teachers, scientists, and civil servants were hauled before committees, accused without evidence, and blacklisted. Entire careers were destroyed for the mere appearance of dissent.
The chilling effect reached into classrooms and laboratories, narrowing inquiry and punishing the creativity a democracy should protect. Just as with Lysenkoism, fear replaced debate, and society paid the price in lost innovation and squandered trust.
We cannot afford to repeat these mistakes. When today’s leaders smear expertise as “elitism” and purge career scientists for inconvenient truths, it is the same script, different era, same intent: silence, conformity, control.
The Call to Action
So what do we do? First, we resist resignation. Silence and despair are exactly what the forces hollowing out our institutions are counting on. Instead:
Defend expertise publicly. Speak out, write, testify, share your knowledge where it cannot be buried.
Support watchdogs. Strengthen independent journalism, NGOs, and community science efforts that hold leaders accountable when official channels are weakened.
Vote like science matters. Because it does. Demand that candidates respect evidence, fund agencies properly, and keep ideology out of technical decision-making.
Mentor and protect. Younger scientists and agency staff are watching how we respond. Create safe spaces, defend colleagues who are sidelined or silenced, and show them science is worth fighting for.
Build outside power. When agencies are hollowed out, communities and networks must step in. Citizen science, university partnerships, grassroots organizing. These keep the flame alive when institutions falter.
Solidarity and Defiant Hope
To our comrades who have been silenced, demoted, or pushed out: you are not alone. Your expertise still matters, your voice still matters, and your work is not erased by the arrogance of the unqualified.
The arc of history shows us that science does outlast ideology, but only if we fight for it. Defiance, in this moment, is resilient optimism. Hope that is not passive, but active, organizing, protecting, amplifying. Hope that insists the environment is not a partisan toy but the shared inheritance of humanity.
The task before us is clear: resist the hollowing out of expertise. Reject the Lysenkos of our time. Remember the lessons of Lavoisier, Stalin, and McCarthy. Defend a future where decisions are made with knowledge, humility, and respect for reality itself.
Because the planet, and our ocean, cannot be negotiated with. And it will not forgive our ignorance.
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