Today is world science day, yesterday the news on a potentially efficacious vaccine against COVID-19 were declared a victory for science.
But the reality that scientists face is much less rosy than those news might suggest. Large parts of the population seem to be suffering from science-fatigue, from the unwillingness to try to comprehend scientific facts.
There are different explanations for how the world works.
Even as a scientist, no let me rephrase this, especially as a scientist, I accept this.
There is a lot of grey between the black and white, there is a question behind every answer.
As scientists we learn something new each single day. We don’t need to defend a dogma if its proven wrong, we accept a better explanation if one comes our way and we proudly proclaim that there is much more we don’t know than we do know about the world.
But science suffers from a perception problem. People believe that science offers hard facts and that science can fix things - preferably quickly and without effort. Laboratories should produce shiny new technologies, cure diseases, and find wonder drugs that allow us to eat as much as we want without gaining weight.
With the Corona Pandemic and the climate crisis we are facing problems that can’t be fixed quickly, problems that are as complex as possible solutions, problems that won’t go away because we chose to ignore them, try as we might.
If we want to halt the spread of disease, if we want to slow the downwards slope towards an inhabitable planet, it won’t be easy, it will require sacrifice. That’s what scientists tell us.
But people don’t want to hear bad news, don’t want to change their lifestyle in even a miniscule way, agitatedly defend their right to just go on like we always did, while the forests are burning, the arctic ice is melting and the pandemic deaths are piling up.
We will all die eventually. That much is true. But should this kind of fatalism drive us towards a selfish
Après moi, le deluge attitude that endangers our fellow humans to die from a deadly virus, that will leave a wrecked earth for the children?
Shouldn’t the threats we’re facing make us open for the voice of reason?
Unfortunately, not.
Climate scientists, epidemiologists and doctors are under attack from populist leaders and media and from an increasingly agitated public, out to (in some cases literally) kill those messengers of bad news.
From Galileo to Darwin, scientists had to suffer the rage of those who saw the status quo threatened.
But scientists who warn about the spread of the pandemic didn’t make up the Corona virus, just as Darwin didn’t invent evolution and Galileo didn’t exchange the sun and the earth, as if hanging a new painting at the center of the universe – the facts were always there, the scientists were just pointing them out.
Now again, scientists and doctors who are warning about the problem, who try to explain its complexity, whose predictions are being proven right over and over suffer the backlash of the anti-science climate, are attacked in the crudest ways and even receive death threats.
The anti-science climate hasn’t started with the pandemic, indeed discussions about a war on science have been waged for years, culminating in disbelief in climate change and in anti-vaccination movements.
But the pandemic intensifies the problem because it brings the debate to the forefront. It makes it harder for scientists to maneuver the new terrain of this unprecedented situation, with a lack of canonical knowledge, while under constant siege by (social) media to produce a solution quickly!
What should scientists do then? Stop preaching scientific facts? Move science back into the ivory tower and keep scientific communication to academic journals and conferences, where no alternative facts outside the scientific realm interfere with the blissful vibes of bar graphs and p-values? Doesn’t appear to be a good idea. While scientists are no politicians and shouldn’t speak out on all topics, they should speaks out on the topics, on which they have the most knowledge and they should advise the public on consequences of actions – and non-actions, even if the consequences are dire.
