Paul Ehrlich is the gift that keeps on giving.

You know Ehrlich. He is the Bing Professor Emeritus of Population Studies of the Department of Biology of Stanford University and President of Stanford’s Center for Conservation Biology. Author of The Population Bomb–the most famously wrong book in human history–he popped back into prominence due to a hysterical performance (in both senses of the word) on 60 Minutes last Sunday.

“The next few decades will be the end of the kind of civilization we’re used to.”

Humanity is consuming 175 percent of what the earth can regenerate. Biologist Paul Erlich says that our current way of life is unsustainable. https://t.co/AwaKLZFGsj pic.twitter.com/MU1jHpuMwI

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) January 2, 2023

I was personally amused by the reappearance of Ehrlich because, coincidentally, I had just written a piece ripping him a new one while discussing the 50th anniversary of Soylent Green. Total serendipity. I had no idea he would pop up on TV right after I wrote my piece. Honest. I happen to enjoy ripping dystopias and the anniversary was a good opportunity.

I would have assumed, wrongly, that even MSM types would have figured out that Ehrlich was a crank by now, but obviously not. They are trotting him out once again to make ridiculous apocalyptic predictions about the end of civilization. Maybe they, too, noted the anniversary of Soylent Green and wanted to pimp for its vision of the future?

How awful is Ehrlich at predicting? Here’s the opening to his most famous work, The Population Bomb:

Ehrlich’s predictions weren’t seen as those of a crank. As an esteemed Stanford professor he influenced the lives of literally billions of people, leading to policies of mass, forced sterilization of women in India, the horrific one-child policy in China, massive programs in Africa to reduce population, and of course gave an enormous boost to the fortunes of Planned Parenthood and abortion advocates.

Ehrlich, in other words, has been a disaster for human beings as individuals and as a species. While not an intentional villain, he belongs in the ranks of the most destructive people in world history.

Unsurprisingly, his reappearance on 60 Minutes stirred up a lot of criticism, and Ehrlich isn’t taking it lying down. In fact, his response is utterly perfect for a member of the modern scientific Elite™.

60 Minutes extinction story has brought the usual right-wing out in force. If I'm always wrong so is science, since my work is always peer-reviewed, including the POPULATION BOMB and I've gotten virtually every scientific honor. Sure I've made some mistakes, but no basic ones

— Paul R. Ehrlich (@PaulREhrlich) January 3, 2023

How perfect, and how perfectly illuminating!

Ehrlich can’t be wrong–he is a scientist and other scientists agreed with him! So he must be right.

This, I think, captures perfectly the problem with scientism today. Science as an enterprise is supposed to suss out the basic underlying reality and the principles which guide it. Why your theory disagrees with reality, it is your theory that is wrong.

At least that is how it is supposed to work. Unfortunately, it is not how it actually works.

Ehrlich is correct when he points out that he is extremely well regarded and has received a vast number of scientific and other accolades:

• The John Muir Award of the Sierra Club
• The Gold Medal Award of the World Wildlife Fund International
• A MacArthur Prize Fellowship
• The Crafoord Prize, awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and considered the highest award given in the field of ecology
• ECI Prize winner in terrestrial ecology, 1993
• A World Ecology Award from the International Center for Tropical Ecology, University of Missouri, 1993
• The Volvo Environmental Prize, 1993
• The United Nations Sasakawa Environment Prize, 1994
• The 1st Annual Heinz Award in the Environment (with Anne Ehrlich), 1995^[50]
• The Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, 1998
• The Dr. A. H. Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences, 1998
• The Blue Planet Prize, 1999
• The Eminent Ecologist Award of the Ecological Society of America, 2001
• The Distinguished Scientist Award of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, 2001
• Ramon Margalef Prize in Ecology of the Generalitat of Catalonia, 2009^[51]
• Fellow of the Royal Society of London 2012^[1]
• 2013 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Ecology and Conservation Biology

This, however, is not a reflection of glory upon Ehrlich. Rather, it tells you everything you need to know about how useful it is to consider the credentials of people in today’s world. Don’t trust them.

Predicting that civilization would end by 1985 counts as a pretty basic error, I'd think. To the extent he's received scientific accolades, it shows how unseriously the scientific community takes prediction. https://t.co/5xrdKaYrmC pic.twitter.com/IAIhx8whY5

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) January 4, 2023

As for Ehrlich being peer reviewed? That, too, shows the worthlessness of peer review in today’s highly politicized world. Peer review is supposed to ensure that a quality check has been done on the work, and in principle it makes sense. If you assumed that most scientists reviewing the work are utterly unconcerned about their career prospects, and care for nothing but the Truth.

But in reality peer review is almost useless. All it does is enforce an artificial near-unanimity in the scientific community, where the people who are well regarded get to control the Narrative. Deviate too far, and your peers can shut you down. Grant money, publication, career advancement, and awards are controlled by a clique and things only change slowly as the people controlling things die off. Literally die off.

Proof of that is provided by Ehrlich, the most famously wrong man in scientific history. He is fond of making predictions–and has been honest enough to make them checkable–and he is never, ever right. Yet he continues to fail upward, because he seized a moment back in 1968, when the world was at its most pessimistic, and scared enough people into believing him.

His response to failure? “If I’m always wrong, then so is the science.”

Sound like anybody you know?