If Science can’t be trusted ..
“We need to cover out faces whenever we go out, why don’t you have a mask”!! stomped my colleague on the tarmac on our way out to the cafe. One of our friends who was supposed to join us showed up without a mask when he took the lift down 24 floors to meet us and was now whining about having to go all the way up again to get his mask.
“Hey look, I will maintain a distance of 1 meter between all of you .. what’s the big deal anyway”. Now it was my turn to retort, “okay but are you sure that the cafe we are going to now, has such responsible citizens like you?”.
He frowned realizing that he had virtually no comeback for this. He turned to head up regrettably, but just before he went up he murmured “initially they said, we don’t need masks, now they say we all need masks, the rules change every time”.
He isn’t wrong to question this. In fact, the President of the United States after months of biding time finally decided to wage his own personal vendetta against science. It is true though that in the early days of the virus medical professionals were advising the public not to hoard masks. It was not until they discovered that asymptomatic spreaders were the trojan horse of the virus, that they came down hard on wearing masks.
Its precisely this flip-flop that occasionally makes the public uncomfortable enough to turn some of them into skeptics.
This skepticism towards science has been rearing its head in the west for years and has slowly started spreading to different corners of the globe. A recent study done by Pew Research indicates that belief in scientific theories, explanations and even possible cures are being questioned across dinner tables, by obstinate mask-less party-goers and in some cases by vociferous heads-of-state even as occupants of the planet watch in shock and awe!
A look at the above chart indicates that the countries that appear to be suffering the most now are now the ones with some of the largest percentages of “Not So Much/Not at all” trust in Science.
If you were to filter the list by population size alone, both the US & Brazil stand out from the chart above. Even Russia and Britain whose numbers are not low by any chance still retain some faith in the noblest of professions. India surprisingly is an outlier in this sense, her numbers are astronomical but the fatality rate is almost negligible given her sheer size.
The chart below showing the number of deaths does seem to be self explanatory for the first 2 countries — the US and Brazil. One can easily identify a correlation between the number of deaths and the governments response to the pandemic in these 2 countries.
However the malaise seems to cut much deeper. One of these 2 countries is burning through the worlds largest rainforest at a rapid rate while the other is tearing itself apart on what appears to be a rather simple decision — to wear or not to wear a mask.
What does indeed seem to be the most logical course of action in Asia (to heed the experts) is somehow perplexing for a nation that is both technically and scientifically still the most advanced globally. So, how on earth does a nation with the most enviable scientific community in the world get to this point where the authority of the community in things it knows best is being openly challenged?
Just about a month ago whilst I was binge watching a popular Medical Drama TV Series on Amazon Prime for the 2nd time(out of sheer frustration for the lack of wanderlust), I chanced upon an episode where a patient had brought in a toddler to the hospital with an infection. The patient refused to get the child vaccinated as she believed that vaccination was a ploy by big pharma to game the system and reap profits at the cost of her child’s naturally produced immune system!!
A study done by Gallup poll just last year(see below) revealed that many Americans share her same concerns about big pharma.
It is therefore not surprising that there are even conspiracy theories floating around even stating that Bill Gates created the covid-19 virus to profit from its aftermath. So if big pharma can’t be trusted and neither can philanthropists (who literally do not need anything else to profit from), then in whom do we trust?
There is apparently another reason why science can’t be trusted. It changes too frequently!! There are too many flip-flops. It cannot be trusted!! For instance, is milk really good for one’s health? Feel free to google the internet and be overwhelmed by the various publications that occasionally differ in their opinions.
This is totally unacceptable to many people who wake up at 7:00.a.m. and want their automatic coffee blending machines churning to life at 6:50.a.m. so they can get their coffee piping hot along with their newspaper. This would be followed by the routine drive to work to skip the ‘unpredictable rush hour traffic’ and lets not forget the evening walk-the-dog around the block before what may appear to be a quiet predictable dinner at home with pre-ordered ingredients.
Very often the many scientific touchpoints that all of us encounter in our day to day lives can sometimes be quite bewildering.
“The weather !! is it ever predictable ?? Can these scientists not get it right even for once with all the devices and gadgets they have?”
“Oh look !! Another fundraiser and run for cancer, how many decades has it been with all the high tech instruments they have — and still no cure”?
“An International Space Station? What a waste of time and money? Why can’t we spend that money elsewhere?
It could come as no surprise that even as science has become more sophisticated (some would even say cryptic) especially over the last few decades, the more gradual the drift away from humanity has been. The fact that this indifference has been growing at varying paces in different countries across the world should not be surprising at all.
At its core, science is fact based on empirical data. Facts can be disputed if data changes or more data becomes available. Theories are proposed when there is insufficient data or the absence of it. One of the earliest philosophers of our time — Aristotle and his first attempt at what we now call an encyclopedia would not make it into any library by today’s standards. Over the years, tools alongside techniques applied on data have continuously re-evaluated theories and brought us to where we are. Change is only inevitable.
The countries that have so far ridden the covid-19 wave (till date) are the ones that have put science at the forefront of their response and rallied around it.
With luck, and with enough data points, a future scientific experiment may one day discover that we are actually living inside a Matrix, now won’t that be a relief for some of us to hoping be pulled out from here!!
