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Abstract

precisely with a laser, something that was not available in 1921.</p><p id="465b">The problem with this is that the general public doesn’t understand why the guidance on something like COVID-19 changes regularly, nor do they understand why certain things are required and others aren’t. From recommendations for masks and social distancing to vaccine efficacy vs. the Delta variant, our understanding of COVID is changing all the time as we learn more about the virus. This isn’t caused by scientists waffling on what we should do, it is caused by new research into the virus that produces new knowledge on how and why it functions as it does.</p><p id="a9ff">The CDC and other global health agencies are constantly researching COVID, and their scientists and experts are producing new information all the time. Billions of dollars are being put into COVID research, and in general, I trust that these scientists are working diligently to produce accurate information as we understand it.</p><p id="28c7">Unfortunately, there is a confluence of factors that are causing people to disregard the science in favor of “doing their own research.” The disregard for experts and scientists being pushed by the right-wing and the politicization of mask mandates and safety procedures has resulted in a major gap in infection rates depending on where you are. People are taking untested and unverified veterinary drugs because someone told them to disregard the experts based on, apparently, nothing.</p><p id="4e96">The problem is that anti-intellectualism is popular on the right, as universities are supposedly breeding grounds for socialists. Ergo, higher learning is the enemy, and scientists and doctors are not to be trusted.</p><p id="9513">Anyone with a computer can do a Google search to find someone confirming that they are right and thousands of years of scientific and medical research are wrong. And, thanks to the <a href="https://readmedium.com/dunning-kruger-vs-imposter-syndrome-battle-of-the-century-5b05c44144b9">Dunning-Kruger effect</a>, confirmation bias, and a major disinformation campaign by bad actors, a huge number of people don’t trust mask mandates, vaccines, and basic science.</p><p id="f1a4">As a friend put it, people have become convinced that they are smarter than the experts, and everyone else for that matter. And, because they’re “smarter than everyone else,” they must disagree with the consensus as a matter of course. Being smarter requires them to both have an opinion on everything (no matter how woefully uneducated they are on the topic) and for that opinion to be counter to the “common” answer since they’re smarter than everyone so everyone must therefore be wrong. Going along with the consensus means they’re not smarter than everyone.</p><p id="d96d">Unfortunately, this leads to social media posts that rave about something the “experts” don’t want you to know about that can cure everything. These days, it’s ivermectin, an antiparasitic that currently has no research to back up its effectiveness in treating COVID. People are so insistent that it works to cure COVID that the FDA had to put up a notice that <a href="https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-should-not-use-ivermectin-treat-or-prevent-covid-19">it’s unproven for treating COVID</a> and that you should not take veterinary variants because it could be toxic.</p><p id="da44">One of the major benefits of the internet is that all of human knowledge is available at your fingertips. One of the major downsides is that anyone can put something out there and someone is bound to believe it. Combined with the aforementioned Dunning-Kruger effe

Options

ct, confirmation bias, anti-expert biases, and coordinated misinformation campaigns, and a whole bunch of people are going to die needlessly as a result of “doing their own research.”</p><p id="04e4">Look, we could get back to some semblance of normal fairly quickly if people would just trust science and get the vaccine. By and large, vaccinated people don’t catch COVID, and those that do almost always have mild symptoms. On the contrary, unvaccinated people tend to get sicker, and the vast majority of deaths are among the unvaccinated.</p><p id="a003">Experts are experts for a reason. They have spent many years learning everything they can about their area of expertise so they can speak intelligently about it. Do you really think that 20 minutes of Googling is going to make you smarter than a scientist with 40 years of experience?</p><p id="412b">Wear a mask, get the vaccine, trust experts, and we can kick this thing.</p><p id="2bb7">If you liked this, please subscribe to my publication, Thing a Day. I publish something every day on a variety of topics, so you never know what you’re going to see!</p><div id="9c92" class="link-block"> <a href="https://medium.com/thing-a-day"> <div> <div> <h2>Thing a Day</h2> <div><h3>In which I write one thing each day.</h3></div> <div><p>medium.com</p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/1*eDMwsybTKAuurmHy6-tfoA.png)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div><p id="25a3">Here are some other things I’ve written:</p><div id="9439" class="link-block"> <a href="https://readmedium.com/dunning-kruger-vs-imposter-syndrome-battle-of-the-century-5b05c44144b9"> <div> <div> <h2>Dunning-Kruger vs. Imposter Syndrome: Battle of the Century</h2> <div><h3>Or: Why I don’t understand modern debate practices.</h3></div> <div><p>medium.com</p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/0*cn5YINu32ikt9LVr)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div><div id="32c2" class="link-block"> <a href="https://readmedium.com/vaccine-requirements-arent-oppressive-b3eab2b95a9d"> <div> <div> <h2>Vaccine Requirements Aren’t Oppressive</h2> <div><h3>A rebuttal to many of the arguments that anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers make.</h3></div> <div><p>medium.com</p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/0*2tnxzn8GbYad7hRc)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div><div id="f383" class="link-block"> <a href="https://aninjusticemag.com/i-dont-know-how-else-to-explain-that-you-should-care-about-other-people-cb4eb062b3e6"> <div> <div> <h2>I Don’t Know How Else to Explain that You Should Care About Other People</h2> <div><h3>The difficulties of explaining empathy to those who have none</h3></div> <div><p>aninjusticemag.com</p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/0*XQnKLN2BEsOZg6kr)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div></article></body>

You Can Trust Science — I Promise

Why it’s so frustrating that people don’t listen to experts anymore.

I wrote an article a few days ago to debunk or otherwise argue against many of the anti-mask and anti-vaccine points. In that article, I made a point to mention that yes, I trust the scientists at the CDC, and yes, I trust them even though those scientists have “changed their minds” about COVID several times in the past 18 months. That’s how science works.

However, I wanted to delve a little deeper into that. In particular, why we need to rely on science, scientists, and experts to get us through this. Let’s start with science.

The Scientific Method is the method by which we learn about the universe. It covers all science, from microbiology to astronomy to molecular physics and everything in between, and it shapes how we study, develop theories, and then adjust those theories based on the evidence presented.

In a nutshell, you start with a question, do background research, construct a hypothesis, test that hypothesis, and then move from there. If you find that your tests confirm your hypothesis, you publish your results, which becomes new information for future research. If your tests don’t confirm your hypothesis, you adjust your procedure to determine if your process was done correctly; if it still doesn’t confirm your hypothesis, you communicate your results and it becomes new information to be taken into account for future research.

The upshot of this is that science is never truly settled. Scientists are constantly testing and re-testing hypotheses, trying to further understand how the world works or otherwise determine if the current understanding of a topic is correct or needs revision. The scientific method is a process that repeats forever.

That is the foundation of all human knowledge — the premise that we never stop learning from past experiments. Modern science is built upon foundations laid down by the ancient Greeks and other civilizations from thousands of years ago, and we continue to build upon that foundation today.

That doesn’t mean that everything these ancient civilizations did was correct — far from it — but it laid the groundwork for how we understand the universe in modern times. That’s the point: science builds on itself. Past research contributes to future research, and as we develop new and better methods to test hypotheses, our understanding of things changes.

This is how and why scientists “change their minds.” It’s not that the facts have changed; it’s that our understanding of the facts has become clearer. A hundred years ago, our understanding of the universe was limited by the available technology. At the time, a meter was defined by a physical bar. Now, a meter is a standardized unit of measurement defined by the distance traveled by light in a vacuum in a given amount of time. This is something that we can measure precisely with a laser, something that was not available in 1921.

The problem with this is that the general public doesn’t understand why the guidance on something like COVID-19 changes regularly, nor do they understand why certain things are required and others aren’t. From recommendations for masks and social distancing to vaccine efficacy vs. the Delta variant, our understanding of COVID is changing all the time as we learn more about the virus. This isn’t caused by scientists waffling on what we should do, it is caused by new research into the virus that produces new knowledge on how and why it functions as it does.

The CDC and other global health agencies are constantly researching COVID, and their scientists and experts are producing new information all the time. Billions of dollars are being put into COVID research, and in general, I trust that these scientists are working diligently to produce accurate information as we understand it.

Unfortunately, there is a confluence of factors that are causing people to disregard the science in favor of “doing their own research.” The disregard for experts and scientists being pushed by the right-wing and the politicization of mask mandates and safety procedures has resulted in a major gap in infection rates depending on where you are. People are taking untested and unverified veterinary drugs because someone told them to disregard the experts based on, apparently, nothing.

The problem is that anti-intellectualism is popular on the right, as universities are supposedly breeding grounds for socialists. Ergo, higher learning is the enemy, and scientists and doctors are not to be trusted.

Anyone with a computer can do a Google search to find someone confirming that they are right and thousands of years of scientific and medical research are wrong. And, thanks to the Dunning-Kruger effect, confirmation bias, and a major disinformation campaign by bad actors, a huge number of people don’t trust mask mandates, vaccines, and basic science.

As a friend put it, people have become convinced that they are smarter than the experts, and everyone else for that matter. And, because they’re “smarter than everyone else,” they must disagree with the consensus as a matter of course. Being smarter requires them to both have an opinion on everything (no matter how woefully uneducated they are on the topic) and for that opinion to be counter to the “common” answer since they’re smarter than everyone so everyone must therefore be wrong. Going along with the consensus means they’re not smarter than everyone.

Unfortunately, this leads to social media posts that rave about something the “experts” don’t want you to know about that can cure everything. These days, it’s ivermectin, an antiparasitic that currently has no research to back up its effectiveness in treating COVID. People are so insistent that it works to cure COVID that the FDA had to put up a notice that it’s unproven for treating COVID and that you should not take veterinary variants because it could be toxic.

One of the major benefits of the internet is that all of human knowledge is available at your fingertips. One of the major downsides is that anyone can put something out there and someone is bound to believe it. Combined with the aforementioned Dunning-Kruger effect, confirmation bias, anti-expert biases, and coordinated misinformation campaigns, and a whole bunch of people are going to die needlessly as a result of “doing their own research.”

Look, we could get back to some semblance of normal fairly quickly if people would just trust science and get the vaccine. By and large, vaccinated people don’t catch COVID, and those that do almost always have mild symptoms. On the contrary, unvaccinated people tend to get sicker, and the vast majority of deaths are among the unvaccinated.

Experts are experts for a reason. They have spent many years learning everything they can about their area of expertise so they can speak intelligently about it. Do you really think that 20 minutes of Googling is going to make you smarter than a scientist with 40 years of experience?

Wear a mask, get the vaccine, trust experts, and we can kick this thing.

If you liked this, please subscribe to my publication, Thing a Day. I publish something every day on a variety of topics, so you never know what you’re going to see!