After their thrash­ing in the 2012 elec­tions, Repub­li­cans are cast­ing about for a new stan­dard­bear­er, and Mar­co Rubio is a lead­ing can­di­date for that post.  One con­se­quence of that atten­tion is this GQ inter­view with Rubio, which includes this awe­some exchange:

GQ: How old do you think the Earth is?

Mar­co Rubio: I’m not a sci­en­tist, man. I can tell you what record­ed his­to­ry says, I can tell you what the Bible says,but I think that’s a dis­pute amongst the­olo­gians and I think it has noth­ing to do with the gross domes­tic prod­uct or eco­nom­ic growth of the Unit­ed States. I think the age of the uni­verse has zero to do with how our econ­o­my is going to grow. I’m not a sci­en­tist. I don’t think I’m qual­i­fied to answer a ques­tion like that. At the end of the day, I think there are mul­ti­ple the­o­ries out there on how the uni­verse was cre­at­ed and I think this is a coun­try where peo­ple should have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to teach them all. I think par­ents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what sci­ence says. Whether the Earth was cre­at­ed in 7 days, or 7 actu­al eras, I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to answer that. It’s one of the great mysteries.

Though not a sci­en­tist, man, Rubio has nar­rowed down the age of the earth to some col­lec­tion of sev­en chunks of time, pos­si­bly days.  He’s thus care­ful not to tread on the toes of young earth cre­ation­ists or the var­i­ous old earth cre­ation­ists (gap, day age, pro­gres­sive, etc.), while stu­dious­ly avoid­ing what any sci­en­tist would actu­al­ly have told him.  Seen cyn­i­cal­ly, he’s try­ing not to annoy the var­i­ous Protes­tant groups he’ll need to win over to beat the Cory Booker/Elizabeth War­ren tick­et in the 2016 pres­i­den­tial election.

Less cyn­i­cal­ly, this is a fur­ther exam­ple of the real­i­ty-dis­tort­ing bub­ble that the Repub­li­can par­ty has cre­at­ed.  With­in the GOP, it may sim­ply be the case that the accept­able range of views on the age of the earth has become reduced to the squab­ble between Hen­ry Mor­ris and Hugh Ross.  It’s anoth­er case of “math you do as a Repub­li­can to make your­self feel bet­ter.”

Anoth­er sort of cyn­ic would reply by ques­tion­ing Rubio’s intel­lect, and not just because of his Dude-esque lan­guage.  How else do we explain a sit­ting Sen­a­tor’s who endors­es cre­ation­ism, let alone his claim not know how old the earth is?

But intel­lect is not the way to under­stand Rubio, cre­ation­ism, or the broad­er prob­lem of sci­ence denial.  As his­to­ri­an Adam Laats writes at the Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion, “The notion that only the igno­rant can oppose evo­lu­tion does not hold water.”  The his­tor­i­cal evi­dence and mod­ern research on cre­ation­ists them­selves shows that cre­ation­is­m’s per­sis­tence is not a mat­ter of igno­rance, but a result of social psy­chol­o­gy and informed rea­son­ing.  Laats con­cludes (refer­ring to Rep. Paul Broun’s claim that evo­lu­tion, embry­ol­o­gy, and the Big Bang are “lies straight from the pit of hell”):

those of us who care about pro­mot­ing evo­lu­tion edu­ca­tion must admit the hard truth. It is not sim­ply that cre­ation­ists such as Broun have not heard the facts about evo­lu­tion. Broun—along with oth­er informed, edu­cat­ed creationists—simply rejects those facts. Evo­lu­tion edu­ca­tors do not sim­ply need to spread the word about evo­lu­tion. We need to con­vince and con­vert Amer­i­cans who sin­cere­ly hold dif­fer­ing under­stand­ings about the nature and mean­ing of science.

That’s large­ly right, but I think he focus­es too nar­row­ly on sci­ence here.  Sci­ence denial isn’t real­ly about sci­ence, as I argue in an essay that just came out in Trends in Micro­bi­ol­o­gy. My paper, based on a talk I gave at this sum­mer’s Amer­i­can Soci­ety of Micro­bi­ol­o­gy meet­ings, takes on key ideas that I think sci­en­tists need to under­stand to address sci­ence denials of any sort, whether they reject the sci­ence of evo­lu­tion, cli­mate change, vac­cines, or the link between HIV and AIDS. 

“Sci­ence denial,” I argue, “is wrong and harm­ful, but not anti­science nor irra­tional. It is dri­ven by gen­uine fears and deep per­son­al val­ues.”  I con­clude, “Sci­ence denial is less about sci­ence and more about deep fears and core per­son­al iden­ti­ty.” That means it isn’t just a mat­ter of engag­ing peo­ple about the nature and mean­ing of sci­ence (though that’s an impor­tant start). We need to under­stand the social forces that rein­force sci­ence denial, the social dynam­ic that leads peo­ple to sci­ence denial and keeps them there:

Rec­og­niz­ing and defus­ing the social pres­sures under­ly­ing sci­ence denial are key in con­vinc­ing peo­ple that it is even worth con­sid­er­ing sci­en­tif­ic ideas that seem con­trary to those of their social iden­ti­ty. When sci­ence denial becomes entwined with group iden­ti­ty, the risk of social ostracism is prob­a­bly cost­lier than sci­en­tific error.

To get past that, a key step is to find mem­bers of that same social group who accept the sci­ence at issue.  In the case of evo­lu­tion, that means reli­gious sci­en­tists and pro-sci­ence cler­gy.  In the case of cli­mate change, it means busi­ness lead­ers and staunch con­ser­v­a­tives.  And for vac­cines, it large­ly means parents.

But that out­reach can hap­pen through oth­er com­mu­ni­ties.  The fram­ing sto­ry of the essay is about the vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve at Dragon*Con, orga­nized by Women Think­ing Free:

You do not expect to see Dra­co Mal­foy car­ry­ing a Hermione Granger poster, let alone one in which she touts the whoop­ing cough vac­cine. Yet at the Dragon*Con sci­ence fiction and fan­ta­sy con­ven­tion, fans of Har­ry Pot­ter, Star Wars, Star Trek, Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca, and Buffy the Vam­pire Slay­er love to dress as their favorite char­ac­ters. Some of them even don cos­tumes to spread the word about a vac­cine clin­ic, attract­ing hun­dreds oftheir fel­low atten­dees to get immu­nized. Who could say no to Draco?…

The pro-vac­ci­na­tion mes­sage came not from peo­ple speak­ing as doc­tors or sci­en­tists, but from fel­low mem­bers of a com­mu­ni­ty pro­mot­ing the pub­lic under­stand­ing of sci­ence, with a syringe in one hand and a wand in the other.

And that’s why it works. Sci­ence denial isn’t pri­mar­i­ly about sci­ence, it’s about our communities.

Trends in Micro­bi­ol­o­gy made the paper free access (though alas, not Open Access) so please do spread it far and wide.