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Mankind had many wrong ideas: the sun revolves around the earth, earth is flat, witches have great power (but cannot free themselves from burning), vengeful deities create storms, sacrifice influences battle outcomes, “miasma” (polluted, smelly air) causes disease, etc.
Gradually, careful observation of the natural world debunked these.
Scientific thinking, based on facts and logic, underlies our western democracies. Science bought us electricity, aircraft, metallurgy, air conditioning, explosives, telephones, computers, safe water, television, agricultural productivity unimaginable a century ago, and modern medicine to name a few.
Without science, we would be living in caves or teepees, butchering animals with stone blades, and sewing skins into winter clothing with sinew driven by bone needles, life spans would be 40 years. Our lives would be very different.
Now well past retirement after a life in science, I cannot shake off scientific thinking. Icicles hanging from roofs tell me heat is being lost from the building. Vapour from a car exhaust tell me its catalytic converter is still too cool to work.
Science is wrestling COVID-19 to the ground thanks to skilled researchers who developed several effective vaccines in record time. Some 85 per cent of Canadians are vaccinated and largely protected. The rest will develop immunity the hard way – by getting sick.
Another major challenge is climate change. Recognized by most as an existential threat to all nations, indeed to life itself. We know what must be done, but few governments have the courage to enact the needed legislation. Remember, “planet earth” doesn’t care. The third rock from the sun will orbit our star for billions of years, whether humans are present or not.
But we face another issue threatening our existence: the spread of misinformation. People claim to “research” vaccination, climate change, or the economic benefit of affordable child care by reading a few anonymous Instagram or Facebook posts.
I have written many scientific papers. Based on carefully designed experiments, these include a verifiable reference list. They are always reviewed by expert scientists before being published. That’s real “research.” You don’t become an expert in a science “overnight."
After a BSc, one does experimental work as a master’s student, then more research as a PhD candidate. Even then, I felt intimidated by my first class of medical students. In that year, I worked hard to stay weeks ahead of my class. I reviewed barely recalled subject matter, learning it thoroughly enough to explain it to students.
Nuclear physicists don’t teach zoology, and mathematicians don’t lead chemistry classes. A PhD is neither universal nor transferrable. To put it another way, if you have leaky plumbing, you don’t ask a municipal snowplow driver to repair it, nor should a licensed electrician navigate a municipal snowplow down a suburban street. Within medicine, orthopedic surgeons don’t do dermatology. Our ophthalmologist daughter won’t comment on my arthritis; “Don’t ask me. Go see a specialist, Dad!”
Yet the internet has people offering advice on health care without displaying credentials or clinical data to back claims that COVID vaccines don’t work or cause sterility. Some prefer to believe these anonymous posts instead of trusting their family doctor, forgetting their “humble” GP has a decade of study behind them.
It’s “obvious” raising minimum wage creates unemployment. Unfortunately, it’s also untrue. On Oct. 11, Canadian David Card received the Nobel Prize for Economics for showing that raising minimum wage has no effect on unemployment, work published 25 years earlier. Yet, on winning Ontario’s 2018 election, Doug Ford cancelled the scheduled increase in Ontario’s $14/hour minimum wage to $15/hour claiming that rising wages cause unemployment.
Another “obvious truth” David Card demolished was the idea that a flood of immigrants depresses local wages and creates unemployment. Yet, when 150,000 Cubans fled left Cuba for Miami in 1980, employment and wages remained unaffected.
Nevertheless, these ideas are still core conservative ideology, and widely believed. Now that Professor Card is a Nobel Laureate, the truth may become more widely known.
Wishful thinking cannot substitute for the work behind actual research. However, “alternative facts” now seriously threaten our civil society. Do we really want to return to the type of thinking behind the Spanish Inquisition, to the behaviour of the mob which swarmed the American Capitol last January?
Peter Bursztyn
Barrie
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