“China’s leaders are mostly engineers and scientists, so they don’t waste time questioning scientific data.”exactly. as if science itself wasn't supposed to consist of questioning scientific data. but chinese leaders treat it like luther treated scripture. while i'm trafficking in stereotypes, let me point out that that the chinese tolerate a thoroughly authoritarian government: really we don't know who's in charge. the chinese, evidently, don't care, and they display complete deference to incomprehensible authority that would persist even if there were no authority. at any rate, i strongly suggest that tom friedman is an advocate of the chinese system of government, and, like our beautifully-educated advocates of reason, he treats science exactly like a messiah, and its word as law.
this one learns during one's friedmanian education: science as a series of conclusions, starndardizedtestable; as a scripture; but to say that "science" is a varied mess is an understatement - from the most entirely speculative physics a la hawking's latest toe to the most solemn of the latest social science - in education, for example - that is deployed without knowing it as the expression of a moral system. in between there we get something a little more reliable; we are entirely - i say globally - unable to study ourselves scientifically. every study is a new rationalization, self-deception, or self-expression, self-loathing, or expression of solidarity. every study is prescriptive: it wants a policy. "science" emerges as a kind of scholasticism: something to be accepted in virtue of one's training; an actual claim of a certain class or group to have a special access that you can't have to the truth.
