Anti-Science is Killing People

There was an article in New York detailing how the Republican party became the anti-virus party.  It started as science discovered how big business was selling products harmful to  people or the environment like tobacco and coal.  Industry needed allies and Republicans felt it was Government overreach.

So science, at least legitimate science, became viewed as a liberal endeavor and therefore politicized.  Of course that means the alternate science people become the darlings of the conservative talk shows.  The most outrageous theories were fine as long as they supported the right causes.

This anti science trend has influenced policies that protect the environment and improve health.  It is inevitable that real science will triumph but it may result in damage that's hard to reverse.

One of the strengths of scientific method is that it accepts the possibility of being wrong.  So generally, even the most widely accepted theories are expressed as less than 100% to cover new discoveries.  This effectively opens the door to the anti-science group who can claim something is not proven, even when it has been.

Does carbon cause global warming and climate change, it certainly does.  Is it the only cause?  Probably not and further human emissions are not the only source of the carbon.  However, while there are some natural contributors, like volcanoes, the impact of human activity has been what is different now than it was even 500 years ago.  

Still the room to argue is inherent in the way science is done and you can find "experts" who might actually believe an alternate theory.  Once again the history of science supports the idea that today's crackpot could be right but that is generally a false narrative as science has progressed and unknown factors get included.

We have seen the catastrophic result of this in the country's reaction to the Covid 19 outbreak as politicians, particularly Republican ones believe their shill over real science.  The fact that the world scientific community was nearly universal on how to deal with the virus made that a democratic position.  As such it had to be resisted.  The idea that the scientific truth would be in fact beneficial to all of us was ignored in favor of partisan positions that ended up where we are.

Even now many believe that the scientists are partisan and not to be trusted.  Consider the attacks on some respected spokesmen.  

Unfortunately, the disaster with the virus is likely to get repeated in other areas if we can't reverse this anti-science sentiment.  Our future is all we have and while true science will eventually be proven right, we can't keep killing people to prove it.