“There are in fact two
things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter
ignorance.”
--Hippocrates
I’m no scientist, not by a long shot. When God was giving
out the kind of brain and intellect needed to plumb the depths of human
knowledge with precise observation and experimentation, I think I was in the
wrong line. Hence, I still suffer from
PTSD as a result of high school organic chemistry and in college my favorite
science class was “Rocks for Jocks”, also known as Geology 101. That’s why the
scientists I’ve come to know in my life: I so respect them. Like a young woman
named Sherri who is an actual rocket scientist from M.I.T., helping to design
crew quarters for the next manned space mission. Is that cool or what?! Or my
friend Simon whose specialty is materials science: he invented a biodegradable
form of plastic that will help save planet earth, one disposable fork at a time.
Scientists: people who come by their knowledge not by
opinion, but by study, often years and years and years of study and schooling. Scientists:
who come to discover answers to the hardest of human questions not by winging it,
not by slinging it, but by care-filled and careful work. Experiment. Observe.
Fail. Experiment again. Observe. Maybe finally succeed. Then repeat. Facts
realized: not by hocus pocus or sleight of hand but by the scientific
method.
So, call me crazy, but when it comes to science, I actually
trust scientists like my two friends.
I wish I could say the same for millions of my fellow
citizens, the ones who do not trust hard and true and proven scientific fact.
Take the so-called “anti-vaxxers”, a tenacious and scary group of folks who,
regardless of the real facts when it comes to the science and success of
vaccines, still refuse to get their children vaccinated, thus endangering many
other children. They are against vaccines and so that stubborn opposition has
resulted in something the United States has not seen for a very long time:
outbreaks of the measles and chicken pox. School closures, panic in the
community because of the real fear of spreading diseases that had once been
essentially stamped out through universal childhood vaccinations.
The part I do not get in this anti-science movement is that
scientific facts actually prove that vaccines do work, overwhelmingly so. Fact.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, vaccines have prevented more than
21 million hospitalizations and 732,000 deaths among children in the past
twenty years alone. Or take the polio
vaccine: the CDC reports that the United States has been polio free since
1979. Not one case has been reported. If
you grew up in the 1950’s, you still remember the polio scares, the reality
that polio resulted in 15,000 case of paralysis a year, before the invention of
the polio vaccine in 1955.
But maybe scariest part of this movement, much scarier to me
than the threat of any actual disease is the threat of willful ignorance. The
threat of so many folks, too many folks, making decisions and drawing
conclusions based upon opinion, not scientific fact. Opinions coming not from
actual scientists, but instead in many cases, from celebrities. The most
visible and vocal anti-vaxxers are not scientists: they are actors. That’s
right, actors, like Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey, Alicia Silverstone, and Jessica
Biel to name but a few of the high-profile celebs who pretend and claim to know
more about vaccine science than actual vaccine scientists. The one so called “scientific” study that
supposedly proved a link between vaccines and autism, still cited by some anti-vaxxers,
was long ago discredited by the medical profession, its author stripped of his
medical license.
Here’s what may be the most important fact of all. God gave
each of us a brain to think, not just emotions to feel. I can go ahead and feel
all I want: that vaccines are dangerous, that the world is flat, that climate
change is a hoax and that the universe was created in a literal seven-day
period. But I cannot state these as being factually true. I cannot claim the
proof of so-called “science” to back up my claims, if that science is false or
shoddy or shaped to agree with my opinion. And I certainly won’t be turning
anytime soon for advice on cancer care from Kim Kardashian or on climate change
from a failed real estate developer turned politician.
Science is science. Opinion is opinion. When we mix up the
two: that’s when we get into trouble. As the astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson
said, “The good thing about science is that it is true, whether or not you
believe in it.”
Thank you, science and scientists, for sticking to the
facts. Just the facts.
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