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New knowledge has changed the world. But we seem to have lost confidence in scientists. Science journalist Michael Specter is convinced that the irrational denial of progress deprives us of a better future.
Let’s pretend you have a time machine. You can travel in it both to the past and to the future. You can’t just stay put. What will you choose? Many of my friends, as it turns out, would like to turn back the clock to a time when there were no cars, no Twitter, and no TV shows. Of course, there is something of nostalgia, longing for the “good old” here. But I myself would like to go to the future. Not because I’m looking for adventure. There are simply more opportunities in the future. A child born in India today can expect to live as long as the richest man in the world a hundred years ago. Think smallpox. This disease has destroyed billions of people on the planet. It changed the demographics of the world more than any war. And now she’s gone. We defeated her. Diphtheria, polio… Does anyone else remember what it is? Vaccines, the ability to feed billions of people – all this is the result of the development of science.
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It’s a good news. Unfortunately, we still have big problems. Despite all the advances, many people go to bed hungry every day. Our ambitions have led us to litter the planet. Drinking water, fertile soils, rainforests, oil, gas: their reserves are rapidly declining. Mankind has never needed scientific progress as much as it does now. And we are on the verge of amazing discoveries in many areas. But today many are cocooned with their prejudices so tightly that it is almost impossible to free them.
Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion. Including the opinion about progress. But why are educated, erudite, thinking people increasingly behaving like fanatics? I think, first of all, because in modern society it is customary to treat progress with skepticism. Many speak of it with irony, even the word itself is put in quotation marks – they say, in fact, there is no progress. There are reasons for this distrust. We have lost faith in public institutions, in authorities, in those who govern us… And in science too. After all, science, like politicians, has deceived us more than once: Chernobyl, the Challenger disaster, numerous “cures for all diseases”. And it is easier for us to deny the possibility of progress and stubbornly hold on to our outdated views than to ask questions, demand verification and confirmation. And having received irrefutable evidence, have the courage to accept it.
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About twelve years ago, the media published several shocking articles that described the connection between the “epidemic” of autism and vaccinations with the universal MMR vaccine (it is vaccinated, for example, against measles). Hundreds of studies have been carried out, data have been obtained from the USA, England, Sweden, Canada. They all said: there is no such connection. But this did not change public opinion. Because it is easier to take on faith the coincidence of facts, to focus on your own (private) experience, than to carefully listen to the arguments of opponents and analyze them. Those who replace experience and science with faith and magic run the risk of finding themselves in a situation similar to that which developed in South Africa in the 1990s. More than 400 thousand people died, just because there was a certainty in society that beets, garlic and lemon oil help to fight AIDS much more effectively than antiviral drugs.
Now many object to genetically modified foods. We don’t want companies to get patents on our lives. But where is the science? Science is not a corporation, not a state. It’s not even an idea. Science is a process. Sometimes he is successful, and sometimes he is not. But none of us has the right to forbid science to develop just because it will call into question the picture of the world we are accustomed to.
Michael Specter, science columnist for The New Yorker, author of Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives (Penguin Press) HC, 2009. You can watch his lecture on ted.com.