The Age of Anti-Science

I have been hearing a lot about anti-science these days... it has a number of names anti-science, science deniers, science rejectionists... seriously. The idea is that if you dispute 'common scientific ideas' you are somehow against science and a deeply ignorant person. I first ran across the term when researching vaccine issues, then fluoride and climate science... and now I have started to see it everywhere.

The basic premise is that 'scientists' (nice and vague that one) have performed 'studies' (equally vague) that 'prove' a result. The most basic would be an example of a study that showed hot water burned skin. If you argued that hot water did not burn skin well then you would be (bu bu bu bum) ANTI-SCIENCE, got it?

Now that we have the overall premise of anti-science down you see how it could be applied freely to stupid people who either want to burn themselves or others they know, but what about the studies that it is being applied to like:

Vitamins & Supplements
Vaccine Safety
Diet (Saturated Fat, Cholesterol and High Fructose Corn Syrup)
Chemical Food Coloring and Flavoring
Allergies
Climate Change

The list is actually quite long and these few items barely scratch the surface but they are the ones on my mind, mostly. One of the main things that I have noticed is that if you do not believe what you are told by the 'scientists' you are wrong, even if it is later discovered that the 'scientists' themselves were in the wrong with their study... A good example of this would be eggs. Remember the demon egg? The deadly bomb of cholesterol mascaraing as a delicious breakfast food??? Simply one egg a day could make you a walking death trap - possibly infecting those around you with the amount of cholesterol you have ingested... Then a few years later, "Um... Hello? (is this thing on?) Um, yeah... those eggs we told you were poison... we were, well, we um... see the thing is... they are okay now."

Another thing that I find equally disturbing about the anti-science finger pointers is the sponsors (i.e. the people who pay for everything) who are supporting the studies almost always get the results that they want and those studies which do not meet their needs are tossed aside. This happens quite often actually and you never know it because these studies are brushed aside or something is 'wrong' with them. Now granted, there are inherently flawed studies, and these should be discredited... but many just show different results. An example of this would be the recent BPA issue that is everywhere right now. Unilaterally, studies done by the BPA industry showed no harmful effects on people whatsoever! However, all the studies performed by independent institutions, like schools and labs without industry ties show that BPA was not only harmful, but harmful in microscopic doses...

So if we need to believe in science and believe in the studies which science and which studies? Why are the studies I choose to favor somehow less important than the others because the result is different?

I met someone in the science field recently and she said once that any study can be made to show what you want it to. That was a very scary thought, one that preoccupied me for quite some time. Think about that for a minute... any study can be made to show what you want it to. So like when Monsanto wanted us to believe that DDT was safe and harmless, so harmless they sprayed people with it, children in pools and passers-by on the street, to prove that in a few years they would have debilitating cancers, diabetes and fertility problems... ooooh so the 'scientists' did 'studies' showing that the product was 'safe'... I'm sold.

But this is modern science we are talking about, not 40 year old science... so it must be better and must be different than this archaic stuff I am referring too... but it isn't. The swine flu debacle is a perfect example. We never had to break out the trailer for the piles of dead... there was no crier with a bell and a creaky cart. But there was a lot of panic, fear and fear-mongering, scare tactics and pressure from all sides to get vaccinated with a, hot off the press, barely tested vaccine. There was a point in time where I actually worried we could die or would be forced to take the vaccine against our will.

Who's science are we looking to and how do we know that those scientists have our best interests in mind? According to the nay-sayers asking these questions makes me personally anti-science. Basing my life's decisions on them makes me a danger to society. I am what is wrong with America today... Who the fuck knew?

I find that science is taking on near religious proportions in this day and age. We have supplanted churches will pills and the latest science du jour for health and well being, no matter the costs. Doctors, scientists, and institutions have taken on near omniscient status deciding who is of sound mind, who has the right to push a baby out of their body and who has the right to die off a ventilator. Dispute is often met with physical restraints, court orders and loss of custody. Lawsuits and defensive medicine have taken the place of sound advice and reasonable expectations.

This from a country with the highest infant mortality rate of the industrialized nations and ranked #33 in general medical care... and yet we are told that American medicine is the best in the world. So again, which studies are we looking at?

Science is a never ending quest to find answers to the universe and everything in it. Science cannot be absolute, it cannot be definitive and unchanging - it defies the concept of science.