Science

~ This article first appeared in the Leader Vindicator newspaper. ~

A cursory look at health, academic, and environmental literature reveals a cultural infatuation with science.  Nothing, no matter how mundane the subject, can be accepted as fact if it does not pass muster from one group of scientists or another.

I do not doubt that ‘science is real,’ as proclaimed by so many yard signs sticking about urban regions.  There is, however, an ache that creeps into my heart when I observe such devout public adherence to the revelations of scientists.  If science is the path to credibility, whose science do I believe?

It is obvious that science has been corrupted into a tool used to prove whatever the person or organization funding it wants to prove.  I can investigate websites created by vegan activists and find a wealth of scientific information proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that humans are not designed to consume meat, and that we perform better without it.  Moments later my browser can lead me to another website that scientifically proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that a human’s short digestive tract and massive brain is a result of meat consumption, and we better start eating more meat and fat if we hope to hop off the obesity train and optimize our health.

Vegans say the meat-eaters’ science is flawed.  Meat-eaters say the vegans’ science is flawed.  Each side has further scientific evidence to back up their opinion that the scientific method the other side is using is flawed.  I strongly suspect that, if I found myself in the miserable position of requiring someone else’s assurance that I’m making acceptable dietary choices, I would be quite hopelessly confused and hungry after a mere hour of scientific dietary study.

Someone, surely, realizes that people will be confused when they study science that leads so confidently to multiple conclusions.  That same someone, surely, has deduced that their own scientific ‘facts’ will have more clout if they become law.  As a result, we have various arenas of science lobbying to influence government policy so the lowly masses will not need to be confused by one scientific conclusion or another; we’ll be able to accept as law whichever conclusion receives the most support (i.e. whichever opinion spends the most money).  If the scientific truth changes with each election cycle, so be it.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of a scientific culture is the lost ability of a person with reasonable intelligence to simply know something.  In many cases, rural people with comparatively pitiful educations possess immense knowledge of their surroundings thanks to extensive experience within their environment.  The skills they’ve accumulated through life enable them to survive with what is available instead of what is provided for them. 

When science enters the picture to save the day, it concludes that children raised in a financially poor, rural scenario are neglected and the family’s wisdom for survival is nothing but ridiculous hokum.  With such negative downward pressure from the higher echelons of society towards ‘backwoods’ or ‘hick people’, the simple lifestyle is marginalized and people living in it gradually begin to believe that they are indeed stupid and flawed.  Many rural communities today are exactly what they’re supposed to be: hopeless, poverty stricken scars on the earth perpetually plagued by drug use.  They are so because, generations ago, scientific progress arrived and deemed the lifestyle unworthy.

When science influences the lives of citizens by attempting to eliminate an individual’s ability to be wrong, it has gone too far.  In many cases, a diversity of individual trials and failures will provide much better insight for survival in a particular community of people than will one answer handed out to the populace from behind the walls of a geek room at the university.  The risk of providing such freedom of experimentation to communities of people is that some will make truly terrible, stupid mistakes.  It is well within our right as humans to be wrong, because nothing else in the world experiences failure the way we do: people take failure personally, and we learn from it.  In this sense, as society defers risk by becoming obedient to centralized science, we become less human.

Of course, even science admits that it is frequently incorrect.  Consider The Pessimistic Meta-Induction from the History of Science as scientists’ universal aversion to correctness.  The theory states that, thanks to the frequency with which past scientific facts have been proven incorrect by new scientific facts that themselves will likely one day be proven incorrect, pretty much anything that’s scientifically orthodox should be taken with a grain of salt.  Medications, chemicals, and household goods that were scientifically proven to be safe, only to later be scientifically proven to be harmful, are fine examples of flawed scientific leadership in action.  What else are they wrong about?  Health?  Climate?  Who knows?

Science is real, and it is a wonderful discipline that indulges our inherent curiosity of all aspects of life. It is not a method for influencing the thought process and lifestyle of the masses .I would rather fail on a personal level than be swept up as a victim of national miscalculation, because failure from experience always outweighs the tragedy of deception.