Opinion | The Four Bases of the Anti-Scientific Attitude | Observatory

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A few weeks ago, Paulette Delgado published an article in The Observatory about the negative consequences of the anti-scientific attitude and its increasing support in our time. (The author cites the rise in deaths due to the anti-vaccine propaganda that intensified during the recent COVID-19 pandemic as an example.) Since I have voiced my disagreement with the scientific community’s opinions on specific issues in this space, I feel it’s necessary to elaborate on my point of view.

Among other relevant information, Paulette Delgado refers to research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), which mentions four bases for the growing spread of the anti-scientific attitude.

Before commenting on these, I would like to clarify that one not on that list (perhaps because it is obvious) is vital to consider: that the growth of the anti-science attitude in the first place derives from the very fact that science also has much more prevalence in the world, mainly due to the enormous expansion of communication, health, and domestic technologies and the corresponding boom in the dissemination of the knowledge about them. Therefore, more people are talking about science and resorting to it; thus, more people react negatively towards it (as always).

However, a curious thing happens: Generally, those who speak ill of science are also its beneficiaries. In my opinion, their denunciation is not necessarily a cynicism toward the population but a more straightforward issue: generally, scientists, popularizers, and educators do not make it clear to people that the way science sees the world is precisely the same as viewing their mobile phones and using personal computers, the blenders to prepare breakfast every day, the thermometer that measured their daughter’s temperature yesterday, and the vaccines they are rejecting. The politically correct words used by Paulette’s cited research refer to a “mismatch between the delivery of the scientific message and the epistemic style of the recipient.”

What causes this mismatch? A saying comes to me: “Don’t have too much on your plate (or don’t bite off more than you can chew).” Let me explain: By becoming involved in too many issues, scientists and communicators cannot explain to people how science practically proceeds or how it defines so many things in our world. I say they get involved in too many matters because scientists comment with expert authority on many topics that do not belong to their domain.

Scientists, popularizers, and philosophers of science rightly presume that their work is very humble because their interest is not to stand out for their points of view but to describe the events that occur in the world. They do not want any applause for themselves but, instead, recognition of reality. However, one must join G. K. Chesterton in admitting that finding scientists “who are very proud of their humility” is not difficult. For many of these experts, this character trait leads them to believe that the logic they employ in their work should be used to solve all kinds of problems, personal and global. With such all-encompassing pride, they cannot apply themselves to keep up with the urgent. Even worse, by getting into so many areas, they get mixed up in issues of great interest to others; thus, they must dedicate part of their time to dealing with controversies. For example, I can tell you about some of my calluses that have been stepped on. As some of my readers know, I have a pronounced taste for what is usually called the spiritual. That taste has often clashed with scientists who deny the existence of anything that sounds like a soul, god, or even human will and free will. Such scientists often claim with annoyance that precisely this thinking of mine (that epistemic style) prevents their messages from reaching me and convincing me. As long as I retain this point of view, they say, I shall never be able to understand science, whose central element, the rational, opposes the unprovable.

According to them, those who believe in the provable must discard the unprovable. Their reasoning is more or less like this: He who believes that it is possible to demonstrate how part of the universe operates must believe that everything in it can be demonstrated. Otherwise, once all that is provable is proved and completed, a part remains unexplained, and all our previous proofs may be called into question because of the lack of coherence.

I agree that if you can prove one part, you can prove the whole. I also agree that speaking of the unprovable is absurd because it would be like saying that, just as there is a provable whole, there would also be an unprovable one. The reader will agree that two Wholes (everythings) are impossible: there cannot be two things that are both everything, just as there cannot be two nothings, nor two always, two nobodies, or two nevers. (To add a simple analogy, there cannot be two “You are my only love” or two “You are all I have.”) The absolute does not admit the plural. (My proofreader points out those words as errors, as the reader can imagine!)

That’s why I believe that there is only one Whole but, at the same time, not Everything is everything in life. (That sentence reminds me of Blas Pascal’s words, “The heart has reasons that reason does not know.”) Pascal was the great scientist and mystic we learned about in high school. Unfortunately, there isn’t much to add about this. If I wanted to bring up other arguments, I would say that Hegel declared that God was Nothing because nothing could be thought or said about him. His compatriot from the 20th century, Karl Jaspers, said on this subject that only two words can be said: “God exists,” a statement strong enough to sustain the whole meaning of existence. (I think he said it to contrast a little with Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose magnum opus concludes with, “When nothing can be said about something, it is better not to speak;” the truth is that some of us believe that “God exists” is an excellent retort to this judgment.)

I have written in a previous text about physicalist faith, that is, the faith of those who believe that there is only the coming into being of inanimate matter in this universe. Indeed, I think that the proponents of both the physicalist faith and the theistic spiritual faith must agree that neither has arguments to validate their faith and that the only thing that can be shown is that the other cannot be proven wrong. If they want to argue about it, the truth is that they will only succeed in engaging in a meaningless lawsuit in the hope that, suddenly, rhetoric will come to their aid, and one of them will achieve what the popular singer-songwriter Joaquín Sabina sings in “El Hueso de mi Quijada (My Jawbone):”

I saw an argument
between a crow and a parakeet.
The crow was right
because he had a bigger beak.
*

Another research point cited by Paulette describes that many anti-scientific attitudes arise when “the scientific message contradicts what the recipients consider to be true, favorable, valuable, or moral.” This has to do with what I have already said: If I believe in God and am told that science denies His existence, I will surely stop believing in science. However, we must never forget something important. (I discussed it when I said some issues are not everyone’s concern, no matter how many experts there are in our fields.) What science says about the facts of reality is not the same as what scientists can say about those facts or any other topic once they remove their gowns. In other words, science, always humble, limits itself to explaining how things happen: If it is going to say anything about morality, it will only be about its demonstrable components (for example, how the brain reacts to reward an action that in the social context is considered good). It will remain mute when asked if there are such things as absolute good and human dignity (yes, mute, much like a computer that does not have the program installed for a specific task). To justify this silence, scientists may intervene and clarify, “That’s not a problem for science” or “There’s nothing in science to prove it,” but pretending that the latter is the definitive answer to the issue will be a mistake.

If we want people to believe in science, we must start by explaining its limits. For example, although it demonstrates the anthropogenic origin of climate change, it is not among its functions to exhort us to act or guide our steps to reverse it. Science has no will; it does not exhort or guide anyone. Human beings (scientists or not), based on the information, worry and make decisions about whether or not to act and how. This is important because when it comes to vaccines, science should only explain to us how they have been created, how they function, and how their scope and limits are measured; however, it will be up to us (I insist, scientific or not) to plan and promote their use. People distrust human beings, not science. We don’t ask science for better explanations; we ask those who disseminate it. From them, we can demand they inform us how far the proven knowledge goes -the scope – and where the assumptions begin, what decisions are made about the knowledge, and what decisions are made about the suppositions. It’s true that nothing will align everyone in this world with a single way of thinking (a single cognitive style), but it seems that questions like this could make people increase or regain their trust in science. We must be very alert not to confuse the scope of science with the rational scope of scientists when they do science, much less with their rational scope when they go beyond work and begin to opine on other things.

The second point of the research (the reader has already noticed that I am going backward) points out that anti-science stances also arise “when the recipients (of the scientific message) embrace the social belonging or identity of groups with anti-scientific attitudes.”

Identifying with a group because of its anti-scientific ideas is like joining a football (soccer) team: it doesn’t matter if it always wins or loses; we will be loyal to it out of the sheer urgency to identify a pure survival instinct. The comparison is especially valid when we think that attachment to one’s team only makes sense because there is an opponent: delete the rivalry, and football will disappear. When a pro-science group known as The Four Horsemen of the Atheistic Apocalypse emerged in the United States, and thousands of people joined their creed, thousands of others took it as a direct provocation to throw themselves into the anti-scientific camp (The Four Evangelists of Revealed Truth would be a good name for such a group). I insist that it is a contradiction for science to declare itself atheistic or for someone to try to defend their atheism (or theism) with rational arguments. The only thing that such confusing measures will achieve is to spur the opposite position.

I now come to the first point of the research: people become anti-scientific “when a scientific message comes from sources perceived as lacking credibility.” My question is whether once we no longer need to search for our identity in rival groups to such sources, once we are free with our beliefs, and once we receive explanations about the procedures and scientific results clearly and in our cognitive style (i.e., with pears and apples from our own gardens), why shouldn’t we believe? Within this incomplete analysis of mine, I now find only one reason, and it has nothing to do with the attitude of its detractors but with the worldwide and somehow uncontrollable expansion of science in our day. Unfortunately, this latter more (the rise of science) is resulting in less, corresponding to the countless number of researches concealing an equally incalculable number of frauds. Today, gurus and charlatans no longer exist exclusively in pseudoscience but in science itself and in a form that is much more difficult to track and denounce than the former. The issue, always present in human history, has intensified with the development of artificial intelligence, enabling us to create all kinds of fakes and place them even in serious journals. The case of the man who wrote a totally invented and meaningless article on quantum physics and sent it to a journal in the genre, where it was immediately approved, now threatens to reproduce itself in abundance on the other side, contaminating real science with false information as never before. Fortunately, as far as I know, artificial intelligence also makes it possible to trace these frauds and detect and dismantle them before they do substantial damage. (Besides encouraging us about the possibility of rescuing scientific truth, this good news opens up hopes of achieving a balance in today’s hyper-technological world.)

Science is in crisis for many reasons. Paulette Delgado mentions some of them in her article. I have chosen only four to review. But the reasons are perhaps innumerable. That is why the cry of warning and the call to action are addressed to us all, to the whole world, because science belongs to everyone, whether we like it or not, whether we accept it or not. This is precisely the message of a second article published by Paulette this week, where she advocates the importance of science education and literacy. I conclude, therefore, by calling on us to be disposed, in the humblest way, to safeguard the achievements of the scientific treasury, which is ours, so we can enjoy journeying the stretches of sky, sea, and land that science opens for us and see how from there we can hear, increasingly better, what for some is the intimate rumor of reality, and for others, the undeniable call of something… everything… nothing… never…

Translation by Daniel Wetta