Through much of the COVID19 episode, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough has denounced with outrage those who question or dispute official guidelines about masking, distancing, etc., bellowing “Just follow the science!”
— by which he means, accept what the recognized authorities state that “the science” is.
What Scarborough doesn’t know — together with almost all other media pundits and commentators — is that the recognized authorities are sometimes wrong.
For those who know something about science, and particularly about the history of science — perhaps especially medical science — the problem is, how to find out what “the science” actually is, the pertinent facts and contextual evidence.
Most of us have to rely on what the experts and the recognized authorities tell us, but that is not always correct.
Although quite often there are eminently expert individuals who point that out, typically they are ignored, denigrated suppressed, persecuted. Re HIV/AIDS, see for example the case of Peter Duesberg, chapter 3 in [1]. Re aluminum, consider the example of Christopher Exley [2].
The salient point is that official pronouncements by the recognized authorities about scientific matters need to be fact-checked.
The lack of fact-checking has led to some highly damaging public policies and actions. The list of topics on which the official global “scientific consensus” happens to be wrong is alarming, both in the public importance of some of the topics and in the steady growth in the number of specific matters which the global public has been misled and continues to be misled:
HIV/AIDS [3]
Global warming and climate change (pp. 18-26 in [1]; many posts at https://scimedskeptic.wordpress.com
Eugenics [4]
A host of medical matters [5]
— including notably vaccines [6]
— and the risks posed by aluminum adjuvants in vaccines as well as by other sources of aluminum [7]
The crucial point is that truth, including truth about scientific matters, is a public good: it surely benefits humankind as a whole, in the long run; but specific truths quite typically undercut some strongly vested interests. Truths about drugs and vaccines diminish profit-making by pharmaceutical companies, and thereby lessen political campaign contributions; and so on for all the commercial and ideological sectors of society. Environmental activists don’t want truths about climate change. No political parties want real truths about economics or sociology or psychology.
Humankind needs a system capable of discerning genuine truths; which includes fact-checking of what the recognized authorities say about scientific matters.
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[1] Henry H. Bauer, Dogmatism in Science and Medicine: How Dominant Theories Monopolize Research and Stifle the Search for Truth, McFarland 2012
[3] The Case against HIV , listing >20 books and >900 articles
[4] Tens of thousands of Americans were forcibly sterilized as recently as 1981 on the basis of expert consensus about the heritability of certain behavioral traits — Cera R. Lawrence, Oregon State Board of Eugenics, 3 May 2012
[5] WHAT’S WRONG WITH PRESENT-DAY MEDICINE;
[6] “Vaccines: truth, lies, and controversy”
Peter C. Gøtzsche, Vaccines: truth, lies and controversy (Kindle 2020, Skyhorse 2021)
[7] Publications by Christopher Exley summarized in recent book: Imagine You Are an Aluminum Atom: Discussions With Mr. Aluminum (Skyhorse 2020)
Skepticism about science and medicine 