Dylan Stoll | Health Editor
Featured image courtesy of Pixabay
Why are there still people out there that don’t trust scientists, or worse, even science itself?
The modern age is one of misguided antics, mystery pandemics, misinterpreted facts and misinformation. We spend our days grovelling over social media, absorbing what we believe to be factual information instead of doing the research where it matters. Our degrees are earned on YouTube, and our egos are built in nonsense. We call ourselves “woke,” educated, and informed, achieving a level of confidence akin to a king, but becoming nothing more than a jester.
If that isn’t a recipe for societal disaster, I don’t know what is.
Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, while we run amok clinging desperately to toilet paper and dropping our dignity, there is no better time to be aware of the contribution that science has made to humanity.
It is because of science that we have any semblance of hope for the future, and it is because of science that we will survive. It is not your local “wellness” store that will save you, nor will planets in retrograde or full moons on Fridays. It is the hard work of dedicated, passionate researchers, men and women of science who chose to take a more difficult road, a road of logic, reason, and most importantly, humility.
A scientist must be humble. They cannot be afraid to say that they do not know, or that they are wrong, and therein lies their power. Can the same be said of the online charlatan trying to sell you their snake-oil miracle cures (I’m speaking to you, Alex Jones)?
But how could being wrong be a good thing? Because when a scientist learns they are wrong, they are one step closer to learning what is right.
It is the truth that matters, above all else, and a true scientist understands this. Would you rather live in a world of ignorance, making your choices with dice as if the only life you had was a board game, or would you rather trust in science, and know with confidence that every step a scientist takes is towards the truth?
Now you may ask, how do I know science is the answer? I don’t know, but what I do know is that a scientist, the “building block” if you will of the greater scientific body of knowledge, is trained to look at things logically — to take careful, consistent records and above all else, to be objective. It is this empirical approach to information gathering that forms the steel of all our greatest machinations. Without it, that greater scientific body of knowledge would buckle under its own weight.
But alas, its structure holds firm. After all these years, the truths of the past are still truths of the present. Can we say the same of other “sciences”? Have we not proven that burying toads in our backyards, or rubbing lavender oil on our foreheads will not cure us of our ailments? Why then do we still believe in such archaic notions?
For example, it baffles me to know that there are people out there who still believe the world is flat. What kind of inhuman mental gymnastics do you have to perform to believe such nonsense? Do you have any idea what kind of undertaking it would be for the government to hide such a fact? Better yet, why would they? It doesn’t make any sense!
And of course, the same goes for vaccinations. In our complacency we have become FUBAR-level stupid, mistrusting the very creations that have done nothing but save us from agonizing, soul-wretching deaths, from the tortuous experience a truly uncontrolled plague would be.
If only the memories of our ancestors would reemerge and pull us back to dark realities we know nothing of, maybe then we’d understand just how good we’ve got it today.
And why do we “have it so good”? Because of science, people. The reason we have everything from clean drinking water to high-definition TVs, cars that move to planes that fly, is because of the millions of dedicated hours of careful note-taking, tinkering, and experimentation. It is because of the empirical method that you aren’t dumping your toilet bucket on the streets, or curing mental disorders with bloodletting.
So the next time you decide to “save” your dying child with berries and herbs, or launch yourself into the stratosphere in a homemade rocket to prove those conniving, dastardly, round-world scientists wrong, remember why you have the time and liberty to question such things in peace.
In an unenlightened, science-less world, proving science wrong would be the least of your concerns.
