Dr. Lawrence Krauss Returns! Discussing the Edited Book ＂The War on Science＂ (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_855)
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Summary
In this episode, Dr. Lawrence Krauss joins me to talk about his new book, The War on Science: 39 Leading Scientists and Scholars speak out about current threats to free speech, open inquiry, and the scientific process.
Transcript
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Hi, everybody. This is Gad Saad. Today, I've got a fantastic repeat guest who only recently came
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on the show, theoretical physicist and academic celebrity, Lawrence Krauss. How are you doing,
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sir? That's a fine introduction. It's always good to see you, Gad. You too. So today, we put this
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together very quickly because tomorrow, the world is excited about the... Yeah, okay, you got it.
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I don't have my physical copy yet, so I can't do it. The War on Science, edited by Krauss himself,
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39 renowned scientists and scholars speak out about current threats to free speech, open inquiry,
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and the scientific process. For people who don't know what an edited book is, you have one person,
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or possibly more, who are sort of serving as the orchestrator of the whole project, and then a
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whole bunch of people contribute individual chapters. Take it away. Tell us how this came
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about, Lawrence, the people that are in it, and so on. Okay, and I should say that one of the
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extremely, very, very, very distinguished contributors is one person that I'm talking
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to right now, Gad Saad, and I'm very happy, Gad, that you contributed to the book, and it's a lovely,
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lovely piece, as not surprising. The way, look, both you and I, and you for a long time, I know,
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but for you and I, for a long time, have been talking about issues that are in the way of science,
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and scholarship, and getting in the way of academia, at your own institution, and many
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institutions, and the question is how to deal with this internal culture war, and as you know,
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and I'm sure people listening to you know, many faculty are either afraid to speak out because
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they see what happens, people who speak out, or they try and sort of hang below the radar. I think
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the bulk of faculty, frankly, are not as woke as appears, but they basically just want to get on
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with their work, and they just ignore it, and that's part of the problem, of course, because
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it helps contribute the fact that people aren't seeing an act of backlash is one of the reasons
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that many of the people trying to interfere with free speech, or exchange scientific integrity for
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political activism are so active, and I was thinking that it would be useful to do a number of things.
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First of all, to have a number, a wide variety of distinguished people from within academia speak
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out, and there were several criteria. One is that they should span many different fields, because this
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permeates all of academia. Secondly, they should span the political spectrum. They shouldn't be all seen
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as right-wing or left-wing, and so we have the people that are, you know, canonically thought
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of as lefties, you know, Steve Pinker and Richard Dawkins, Jordan Peterson and Neil Ferguson, and I
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don't know where you fall. Some people call you left, some people call you right, I don't know what. It
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doesn't matter, but, and that's very important, because we don't want to see this as an attack from
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the right, because of course the right is attacking a lot of the woke left, or an attack from left, and it had
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to be people from within, because a lot of people are attacking academia from outside, but this is
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from within, and the fact that these people are willing to speak out publicly, we hoped, would also
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send a message that it's okay to speak out. If these people can speak out, you can speak out, and, and so
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hopefully this will have an impact within academia, but also it's important for the public to know what's
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going on in a real way, with not hyperbole and other things, and so this book is, it's, it's, it's
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about all aspects of what's going on in many different ways, and fields ranging from, you know,
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mathematics to, to medicine, to classics even, and also, you know, spanning the spectrum from
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cancel culture, people who've been canceled as a result of what they say, to attacks on scientific
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integrity in areas like, as they say, mathematics or physics, which you might say, who cares,
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to things like medicine, where you, we all care, in a sense that we want, we want doctors to be
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competent, and we also want our children to be protected from ideology in the face of, of, of, of,
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of real potential dangers, like in, in, as a number of people in this talk about gender-affirming care
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for young people, and, and what, what's really disturbing, and you can read in this, is that
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a lot of organizations like the American Medical Association, the American Association of Pediatric
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Specialists, or whatever it's called, are advocating care based on references to articles which are not
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scientific, which don't do what they claim to do, yet, but yet, what often happens nowadays is people
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quote an article, and other people then quote the people who are quoting the article, and they don't
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even look at it, and you see these organizations jumping on the bandwagon for care that could damage
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young people, that could affect their sexuality, and their sexual pleasure for their whole life,
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much less everything else, and so it's, it's, it's really, for many people, I think they'll be
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surprised, you know, you talk about, and I've talked about the ridiculous, unfortunately, what's legal in
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Canada to be able to have advertisements like at your own, and other universities where, you know,
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people are, where you say, we're looking for the best people as long as they're two-spirit or they
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identify as women, and two-spirit itself is a ridiculous word, which doesn't even come from
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indigenous people, and then, and then other things which are really, you know, the intent,
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of course, of all of this is, the intent was good to stop inequities, but the implementation
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is ridiculous, and often further, not only reinforces the equities, inequities, but reinforces
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notions of even racism. Take, take the note, this ridiculous thing from Jonathan Katzen, his
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wife's all the gold, who talked about classics at Princeton. What Princeton decided to do was,
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if you do a degree in classics, you no longer have to take Greek or Latin. Now, why would such a
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ridiculous thing be done? Well, the reason is, is what is obviously a racist reason, that, that,
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the idea is that people, certain minority groups, won't be able to handle Latin.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean, you, you, you, so that it, the claim basically is,
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these people, these groups are not able to handle intellectual work at the caliber of anyone else,
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so we have to water it down. What is that, what message is that sending? That's a worse racist
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message than the people think, people are trying to, to, to attack. So, there's no sense to any of this,
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and it is really problematic, and, and, and the book, I hope, will, will, will demonstrate a lot
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of the problems, and the last part of the book are a number of people, like Dorian Abbott, and other
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people who are recommending a trajectory to get out of this, but from my point of view, I've always felt
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that the only way this will end, because academic administrators have no backbone, as you know from
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your own administration and other people, they won't, they'll go wherever the wind is blowing.
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The only way, ultimately, is for academics and the, and faculty to take back the reins of
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universities and be willing to make universities what they once were, were places of free and open
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debate, no ideas are sacred, scholarship more than anything, and merit more than anything, and that's,
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and that's what you and I have been advocating for a long time.
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Well, I, I, I want to go back and stress how you started your, your answer, which,
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the two objectives that you had for the book, in terms of political diversity and field
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diversity, I think that strategically, that was crucially important, because when I, when
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I first started standing on top of the mountain, Lawrence, screaming about what was happening
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in academia, people would write back to me and say, well, Professor Saab, but that's just
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in some bullshit, esoteric humanities thing, it's never going to come for us, and then fill
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in the blank, in chemistry, in mathematics, in physics, and I would say, no, no, no, it's coming
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for everybody, it might come later to you, you'll catch the disease later, but it's going to come
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for you, because it eradicates all reason, all logic, all common sense, so I think it was spot on
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for you to, and I've, you've done an amazing job, I mean, you know, you got Amy Wax, the neurologist
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turned lawyer, you've got Janice Fiamingo, she's from English literature, you've got the heart,
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you know, the heart sciences, so that's spot on.
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Do you think that the book, being an edited book,
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every chapter, do you think that it can still resonate
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with the public at large, or are you targeting this
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Well, you know, I'm targeting, I think we're targeting, I'm targeting it for both audiences,
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when I publish a book, I like things, but I have no control over where we're going to go,
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my hope is, there are enough, I mean, you introduced me as an academic celebrity,
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and I've written the introduction to the book, but there are a number of other, quote,
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well-known people, who, my hope will, their names on the book will attract the public,
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and, you know, Jordan Peterson is a good example, and Dawkins, and other people,
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and, you know, I could add you or other people, but, you know, and then there are people,
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But, you know, what I used to, when I ran, at my university, big events, panels on different
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subjects, I'd often have people who were famous, and other really good people, and what I often
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found is the audience would say, I came for X, but it was Y that really impressed me,
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and so my hope is there are some really great articles by people that aren't as well-known
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among the public, and so my hope is that some of the bigger names will encourage the public
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to pick up the book, but that academics will see this, and look, and especially people in
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certain fields will say, these are serious academics, too.
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Yeah, not just culture warriors, and, you know, what you said at the beginning resonates,
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because if you're beginning of my introduction, I think I began by saying when I was at Yale,
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We were on Science Hill, and this was in the 80s, and we'd look down the hill at English,
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which was full of deconstructionism, and we'd laugh, and we'd see that, you know,
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Alan Sokal, for example, is one of the authors who wrote that famous spoof in 1996,
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and he was spoofing something we thought, well, this will never happen in science,
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and then I showed virtually the same words now appear in math journals and physics journals
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and chemistry journals, and it really is a matter of, you know, that old saying,
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first they came for the, you know, whoever it was, and then they come for you,
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and so I'm hoping one of the good things and one of the reasons I'm always happy to talk to you,
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let me say that first, but is that a number of people like yourself and other people have
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a voice as well, and I'm hoping if we all get together and speak out around the time of the book
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that we'll reach enough of an audience, and it takes a thousand points of light.
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I've discovered that even in physics and every area that different things will resonate with
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different people, and we have enough different authors here and different ways of presenting
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and different subjects that I'm hoping it could resonate with a broad audience, but, you know,
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it's, once it's out of my hands, I'm, I'm, I'm really hoping, you know, it's, it's okay to preach
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to the converted, but I'm really hoping, and I'm very happy to say, for example, I just found out this
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morning, and I wrote a piece, of course, I write for the National Post, and said, but I'm very happy
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the Globe and Mail. Oh, that's a big breakthrough. And they're going to, this Saturday, the Globe and
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Mail is going to publish a piece by me related to the book. Anyway, so I'm very happy the Globe and
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Mail is picking it up. I've written, I've written a piece for the New York Times, which I expect will
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be rejected later today or tomorrow, but, so I, I want to try and reach out, because for better or worse,
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we're, this book is, is, is about a war that's, for the most part, coming from the left. Yeah.
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Many of the authors, you're, I did add an adenum, this was written before Donald Trump was elected.
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Right. And the, and I have to say, the authors have different perspectives on this, which is great,
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because that's the other thing I did, since I believe in academic freedom. When I chose the people,
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and it was, that was careful, I said, you write whatever you want. I'm not going to tell you what to
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write. And, and, and, and so the people, the authors have different perspectives, but it is
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fair to say, and I've tried to write, and I just wrote a piece in Quillette that, and, and, and that,
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that there is an external war on science, at least in the United States, that's happening. And, and we
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don't pretend that that's not existent, but this book was about the internal culture war, which is
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still going on. And, and it's not, it's not passe, it's not out of date. Sure, Donald Trump and his
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administration are trying to attack parts of that internal culture war, in a way, which I often
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disagree with, because I don't think you attack intolerance with intolerance, or you can't say,
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sure, it's true that a lot of the, the, the diversity, equity, inclusion stuff is postmodernist
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nonsense, but you can't forbid, but the, the solution isn't to forbid faculty to ever talk about it.
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The solution is to allow free and open debate, and the ridiculous ideas will be exposed as ridiculous.
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Exactly. And, and science is a dialectic. It requires, when you, when I write a paper,
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I expect it to be attacked. Okay. If it isn't, then I'm disappointed because, because it means no
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one's interested. And it's only by having that kind of give and take that the good ideas, you know,
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rise up. And, and of course, we often say that free speech is important, not for the speech you agree
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with, for the speech you disagree with, but that's fine. But I think the, the better than that, and
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more important than that, and I first learned it from my late friend, Christopher Hitchens, but I,
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I know he learned it from David Hume, is that, is that the real value of free speech, and I hope
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people, some of the people who read this will get this, is learning that you're wrong, you're wrong.
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If you hear speech that you disagree with every now and then, if you listen to it, you may find out,
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hey, it's, I can change my mind. I was actually wrong. So if you cut out everything you disagree
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with, you'll never learn that you're wrong. And that is, of course, why it's essential for
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academia. Because when we cut out the things we disagree with, we won't get to the truth. And
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that's what we're all after if we're in academia. Indeed. Is this your first edited book?
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It's my first public edited book. As a scientist, I edited a number of scientific
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years ago. So I'm curious, because I've only, I've done, actually, this book right here, wait,
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this book right here. Here it is. Okay. That one is Evolutionary Psychology in the Business Sciences,
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where I was basically trying to demonstrate the utility of the evolutionary lens in anything,
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whether it be in economic theory, or be in leadership, or organizational behavior. And so I
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solicited, very much the way you did for your edited book, a bunch of articles from a whole bunch
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of different people, which, and of course, the process of putting together an edited book,
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curating an edited book is very different from other things. So what are some unique things? I
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mean, we're both old dogs at this. Did you learn anything new about the frivolity of academics and
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meeting deadlines or whatever? Tell us any war stories.
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I was a chair of a physics department for 15 years. So I've learned a lot. I mean, that was a learning
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experience about academics in many ways, as, as, as, as, as, um, I was going to say as children,
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but I shouldn't say that. But, but, um, it's, it is, if it is definitely like herding cats. And,
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and, and in this case, it was even, I mean, as I say, when my academic volumes were people sort of
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more, you know, knew what was going on, but of course you get, look, when people don't realize
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academics are people. Um, what I, what, and, and, um, and I love when, when I, um, it always amuses me
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that academics were once students and they know all the good excuses for, for being late. And so,
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you know, the cat ate my homework and, and, and, and, and, but on the whole, um, I, um, I, it, it,
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it, it required, well, one of the things that's very interesting, of course, is, um, that, that
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you've probably seen, but I've had to deal with a lot is the way different fields require referencing
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and footnotes. And, and, you know, because if you have a whole, the same field, everyone does things
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the same, but lawyers and doctors and physicists and other people do things very differently. And how
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to balance that was really quite an interesting experience. And, and, um, and some people want to
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know, what style should the footnotes be in? And personally, I don't care about style, but it's,
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but in some fields, that's really important. And so dealing with the different academic
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sensibilities and should this be, you know, an academic article written like a, you know, a law
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review or, or, and so it was, it was, um, it was, uh, like herding cats, but I, I actually, in the end,
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I, I was, um, immensely oppressed with the, um, graciousness of almost everyone who agreed to do this.
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And, and, and because they are all, you know, well-meaning and, and, and a lot of people spend
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a lot of time and, um, I owe people like yourself and other people a debt of gratitude. Um, I hope
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we're all doing, I, well, I really felt like we're all doing this for the right reasons and we don't,
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Well, I think we, I think I will say we're all doing it for the right reasons. Cause it's not as
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though we're going to make money off this. It's not as though most of us need an extra line on our CV.
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We're doing it for, for the purest of reasons. I mean, if you might remember, forgive me for
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reminding the world this, I was writing the article while sitting in Newport beach.
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Sprouse was able to whisk me away from the beach for about 10 days as I sat at the Starbucks in
00:18:15.980
Let me know it. And, uh, absolutely. The fact that you would write it on vacation and other people
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would, it was, it was, uh, was really, uh, no, I'm very, very excited about this book.
00:18:27.480
Yeah. I was just going to say, I mean, uh, how many other contributors have you had chats with
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to be released in various podcast forms so that we can try to maximize it?
00:18:40.120
Yeah. Well, we, we were able to get 20 done great. And, and for the podcast, and we're going to
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include this in the podcast as well. Wonderful. Um, we are basically what I've decided to do
00:18:52.020
starting earlier this week, we're going to do released. Now it'll be 21. If we include this
00:18:56.080
be 21 podcasts in 21 days, every single day, we're releasing one. And, uh, and, and I, I will say
00:19:03.060
in that regard that, I mean, well, you know, this, I imagine how much work this would be. And, and I
00:19:11.220
know in all books, it's always five times as much. This was 10. I was surprised at how much work it
00:19:15.940
was because of course everyone also has errors and other things, but, but, but I think we all work
00:19:20.200
together. And, and I think the 21 podcasts, well, I hope also resonate in different ways. And, and,
00:19:27.000
and I'm hoping that different people will, you know, release it to their audience. And in that
00:19:32.980
way we may filter it out. Will you be releasing it on YouTube podcasts and X? Uh, what this, uh,
00:19:40.660
this, no, no, this one or any of the other 20. Well, what we do when, well, traditionally the origins
00:19:46.140
podcast, we release it on a sub stack and release it on YouTube, but we haven't released it directly on
00:19:51.920
X. And it also goes into the standard, the audio version goes into all the standard podcast, uh,
00:19:56.660
the only reason I ask it is because in the recent past, I would say in the last year or two,
00:20:02.500
I've taken to also posting everything directly on X and it gets a huge number of views. So I think
00:20:09.740
you'd be missing out if you don't do that. Yeah, no. In fact, we were looking into doing that.
00:20:14.900
And, and, and I've been discussing with X as well. I think you're right. It, it tends to have,
00:20:19.180
well, there are a few reasons for it. I'll tell you in my opinion. Okay. Maybe, well,
00:20:23.520
the public should hear this as well. Uh, uh, uh, I, um, I tend to think, I don't know all the
00:20:32.040
algorithms. I know Elon Musk and some of you, but, um, I think the algorithms, if you post something
00:20:37.640
that isn't X tends to not reach as modern audience. And I suspect there are algorithmic
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reasons for that as well in X and, and, you know, their business. So I can understand that's,
00:20:49.600
that supports the idea of directly uploading it on X because, yeah, that's, that's the point.
00:20:55.880
And so, yeah, we'll try, we should, we'll, we will try and, and coordinate that as well,
00:21:00.620
because the idea is to reach as broad a, um, a public as well. And let me just say,
00:21:06.140
yes, sir, people are worried about Gadsad's next vacation. Um, that, you know, if for some reason,
00:21:14.440
unexpectedly, this book becomes a bestseller, then there will, then the, the, the, the pros,
00:21:19.780
the, the proceeds will be split so that Gadsad could take a beautiful, his beautiful wife and
00:21:25.200
wonderful children on a beautiful vacation somewhere nice. From your lips to God's ear,
00:21:30.820
if you believe in God. Your audience, if they should buy the book to know that if it does well,
00:21:36.500
then this poor man who works day and night and even on his vacations to help write a book will one day
00:21:42.200
be able to go on a nice vacation. That is a lovely wish. Uh, last question for you,
00:21:47.260
because I know you've got a whole bunch of things happening. I think you're traveling today.
00:21:50.940
What are some things, so you retired, how many years ago was it from, from university?
00:21:55.840
Uh, uh, it would be 2019. So it's, so it's been about six years. You've still maintained a hectic
00:22:02.840
schedule. Are you happy that in a sense you're out of the ecosystem of academia or do you long for,
00:22:12.200
the past that you're no longer, give us a sense of where Lawrence Krauss is?
00:22:16.060
I miss my students, my graduate students. I think I miss that part. Um, uh, I still,
00:22:21.300
I mean, I still collaborate with his colleagues on physics papers. Um, I am thankful. I feel like I,
00:22:27.320
I thank my lucky saints that I got out of academia when I did for so many reasons,
00:22:32.220
not just because of the nonsense that's going on, but now I see what's happening to my colleagues.
00:22:37.320
There's many distinguished physicists who are losing their grants and have to fire their postdocs.
00:22:41.800
And it's an awful time. Uh, it's, it, there's the attack from outside and inside together.
00:22:47.780
I, I, when I, I had, I also will say, you know, I've spent my whole life as an academic,
00:22:54.440
but because of the other things I've done, I've obviously gotten to go beyond the academic community.
00:22:59.360
And I had a longing to try and do things that outside the safety net of academia, right? I
00:23:05.880
wanted to try it. And so it was something I wanted to do. And, and it, so this is interesting. It's,
00:23:10.280
it's, and I'm glad I'm doing that as well. I like to try different things. So even as an academic,
00:23:14.420
I always moved up institutions about every 10 years or so, because I found that, uh, it's too easy to do,
00:23:22.160
Well, you're definitely not a stay in your lane professor, which I highly admire. And so kudos to
00:23:28.580
you for having been one of the only ones to do so. Lawrence, you're right. Reply.
00:23:35.180
Well, thank you. It's nice to, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's the truth from you. And, um, and, and, um,
00:23:41.760
yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm wishing we could one day do one of these together because it's, uh, it'd be great.
00:23:47.240
That would be wonderful. Uh, stay on the line so we could say goodbye offline. I'm very excited to
00:23:51.720
upload this hopefully tomorrow with the release of the book. Could you put it up one more time
00:23:57.000
It's a book in, in U S and Canada, July 29th, the release of the book. Um, and, uh, you can get it
00:24:03.580
in, in any, uh, any, hopefully way you can get an Amazon. And if your bookstore doesn't carry it,
00:24:08.640
you should tell them to carry it. And then for people in the, in, in the UK and Australia,
00:24:13.400
it's going to be released on September 25th. There is a British publisher that's, that's releasing a,
00:24:19.440
a slightly edited, more edited down abbreviated version of the book, but, but, uh, it's coming
00:24:24.100
out there. Perfect. Thank you so much for your hard work, Lauren. Stay on the line so we could
00:24:27.420
say goodbye offline and you're invited back anytime you'd like. Thanks. Thank you. Cheers. Great.