I would disagree with this. There are African villages where lots of kids die of diarrhea, and when researchers introduced solar water disinfection (essentially put water in a plastic jug and put it in the sun for a while), people wouldn’t do it because it signaled that they were low class, despite that fact that lots of child deaths could be prevented.
Similarly, economic returns vs mortality risks of running in a gang.
Similarly, drug addicts and alcoholics.
And don’t forget fatties.
Now, one can respond “revealed preferences” and kind of defeat the purpose of calling actions rational or irrational, but people’s actions often are not too closely linked to survival.
The first part could be read as, art (morality, aesthetics, appreciation of humanity) can prevent us from scientific methods (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation#Freezing_experiments) or conclusions (human biodiversity). Regarding the freezing experiments, I wouldn’t be surprised if that knowledge has saved more people than were killed in the experiments. While “shut up and calculate” is popular around here, I think a lot of people would have a problem with such experiments, no matter what the net positive is.
The second part could be read as being against post-modernism/relativism/new-age b.s. Sadly the pointed, acknowledged absurdity of dada and surrealism has gone mainstream, and “What I say is art is art” is interpreted non-ironically.