I’ve long been an advocate for the importance of being skeptical as a generally useful approach to life.
But, as the coronavirus has spread around the world over the past year, it’s also been fascinating (and alarming!) to see how often that line from genuine questioning crosses the line (and often goes completely off the cliff) towards distrust, inability to adjust firmly held positions and, at the extreme, conspiratorial thinking where literally nothing that is said by an expert and/or authority can be trusted.
This is all super-charged by the raucous, worldwide virtual “Speaker’s Corner” that social media has become which, as one person observed, has seen the “Information Age” becoming the “Disinformation Age”.
Beyond endless frustration with the stupidity and angry in social media comment sections, in the past year, I have been directly involved in conversations with:
– a person who has a background in healthcare who believes that Bill Gates will be planting microchips in their body via a covid vaccine (never mind that this conversation happened with a person who was speaking into a cell phone – talk about a digital tracking device!) (And eerie coincidence – as I type this blog post, I see a headline on CNN that Melinda Gates has pledged 250 million towards funding Covid vaccinations. So, instead of thinking this is a good headline, should I start wondering – is my TV reading my thoughts?) 😉
– someone skeptical about the vaccine since it has only been tested by the vaccine maker who stands to benefit the most by its use (without acknowledging that if the vaccine ended up being harmful it would likely also damage this company significantly. Or the reasons why it doesn’t need outside testing given the circumstances.)
– A woman who has a background in science but points out that science has misled us in the past, from the health benefits of smoking to thalidomide. (Hard to refute this argument to be honest!) 😉
– Someone who is concerned about giving the vaccine to their children since the long term effects on the reproductive and other health aspects of the vaccine aren’t known (I would counter that the long-term effects of Covid on young people are also unknowable right now and though young people tend to be the lowest risk group overall, there is also documented evidence that many people who have covid end up with a range of vascular and neurological health issues that may cause permanent health problems as well, even in young people, so given the choice, I’d roll the dice on a scientifically sound vaccine than a harmful disease that has not only affected the health of, but also killed people of all ages around the world.) (This discussion may be moot at this point anyhow as my understanding is that the vaccine hasn’t been approved for use on children under 16 yet anyhow.)
– I had a chat with a doctor who made the good point that inherently, because science’s goal is to disprove things, not prove things (if science makes a discovery, other scientists come along and try to show that the original scientist was wrong), this creates a distrust of science when it should be heralded as why science is so open-minded and self-critical. To put it another way, “science isn’t about an end point, it’s about a constant evolution.” (Er, pun intended.)
– He also expressed his frustration at the way he’s studied medicine for eight years and though the first to admit he’s not a trained epidemiologist (another sign of intelligence is admitting what you *don’t* know), his advice is regularly questioned by members of his extended family who have no higher education at all in any field, let alone a science-based one.
Anyhow, I literally had a screenshot of one of the worst examples of conspiratorial thinking I could find ready to include in this post.
But then I realised that a lot of people get their “learning” from memes and since this blog post also has a lot of words which means people are less likely to read it, some people would just see the graphic, believe it, and think I’ve either gone over to the dark side and/or was sharing legitimate information.
So instead, I’ll leave off with this to be absolutely clear where I stand:
