Science is Definitely Real.

But what is it, really?

Photo by Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash

Wigs were in fashion. “It’s not fake anything,” said the ads. “It’s real Dynel.” That mid-century joke comes to mind whenever I see the yard signs. “In this house, we believe ... Black Lives Matter. Love is Love. No Human is Illegal . . .  Kindness is Everything.”

So far, so good. I completely agree.

But “Science is Real” leave me cold. The philosopher in me says: Everything is real, in some sense. Dreams are real dreams, hallucinations are real hallucinations. Lies are really lies. Some who read the yard signs may think “Right. Establishment science is a real hoax” or maybe “a real power play.”

The signs are colorful, and most of what they say is kind. They express solidarity with the less powerful: with gays, people of color, women, undocumented immigrants. “Science is real” is slightly different. It suggests frustration and grief, at the lives lost because so many refused the Covid vaccine. Those refusals led to millions of unnecessary deaths. It’s hard not to be angry.

But perhaps there’s a better way to make the point.

What is science, really?

Science is real. It’s an organized human activity which, practiced ideally, is our best chance at finding truth. But it’s not infallible; it’s human. Even scientists can fail to see what’s in front of them. (Until the late 1950s, scientists looking through microscopes thought they saw 24 chromosome pairs.) Some are corrupt. (One researcher painted black patches on white lab mice, and claimed they were skin transplants.) And there’s a more fundamental problem: Our world is boundlessly complex. There will always be new data, and new frameworks for making better sense of what we learn.

Science in its ideal form is self-correcting. Researchers constantly test ideas, sometimes finding further support, sometimes finding reasons to doubt. Facts that don’t fit the theory can be disappointing, or – maybe at the same time -- exhilarating. Surprising results are an invitation to think again.

Because of this constant effort to learn more, scientists once dismissed can sometimes turn out to be right. Everyone loves an underdog, and so once-rogue but now-vindicated scientists become cultural heroes. We celebrate Galileo, who was accused of heresy, and marvel that Mendel’s work was ignored during his lifetime. (We forget that most rogue scientists turn out to be wrong. And we ignore the ways in which even the greatest were mistaken: Newton believed in alchemy, Kepler in astrology.

This story of science and its history is shared by most of us, vaccine deniers included. It’s a framework into which public health missteps during Covid (like misinformation about masks and school closures) fit all too easily. It’s a framework in which maverick scientists can seem credible.

Vaccine skeptics often value good science. What they don’t believe is that, during the pandemic, establishment science was good science. To them, the yard signs read  “Our science is better than your science.”  

Maya Goldenberg adds an important dimension to this picture. (Full disclosure: She was once my student.) She argues that vaccine resistance is often not about the strength of the evidence, but about values that are apparently under siege: individual liberty, for instance, or the value of a natural lifestyle. People of color, who have often been mistreated by the medical world, can be  suspicious.

All of us are suspicious of evidence offered by institutions we don’t trust. And across the political spectrum Americans distrust government. So “In this house we trust the government” is also a non-starter.

Another non-starter: “We trust the government”

Goldenberg asks us to set aside military metaphors (“a war on science”) and the “us vs them” framework. Let’s stop assuming that most resisters are ignorant, gullible, and stubborn. We need to try to understand those who disagree, and to find ways to engage with them.

I know: Some people really are ignorant, gullible, and stubborn  -- but that description also fits some of the vaccinated. (It’s possible to do the right thing for the wrong reason.) I acknowledge that there’s no point in trying to talk with the Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world. But she is only one point in a wide spectrum of disagreement.

More precisely

I am fully vaccinated, and deeply grateful that I can be. I’m deeply grateful that I can be. Science, government, and private enterprise worked together superbly. I was, and am, completely certain of what was rational in 2021.

But that conviction about what to do then doesn’t translate into certainty about what the future will bring. There’s a remote possibility that I will eventually be proven to be mistaken. That sort of possibility always exists; life is a gamble. We must always weigh probabilities, balance risks and benefits.

My certainty was not just about how best to protect myself. It was also about my obligations to those around me. More about that next Monday.

For today:  “Science is real” is nearly meaningless, and implicitly insulting.  I’d prefer “Vaccines save lives.”