When science becomes a religion

You and I share this world with people who are drinking bleach and chugging raw milk. A world in which influencers tout alternative, holistic treatments rather than proven ones—a world in which some people earnestly believe that the world is flat. And not for whimsical reasons, but quite seriously.

But none of that is unusual. We used to attribute every little thing in our world to gods and spirits; we have always had a love-hate, push-pull relationship with logical thought. It's simply now that it has become so obvious.

Equally, it’s not surprising that we might become overprotective of the scientific method—and science writ large. We feel the need to protect our experts and our institutions. We see what we have built degrading; towers of sand falling to tidal attrition.

At the same time, we risk falling prey to the exact same behaviors that we criticize—a strict, dogmatic adherence to beliefs for the sake of emotion rather than logic.

Because, like religion, science can be dogmatic. We know historically that many scientific breakthroughs were dismissed by the broader scientific community until proven; scientists are simply people, and they are affected by the same emotional, philosophical, and political concerns. Further, we know that laymen do not always interpret science correctly, and must therefore be humble in our assertions.

When science has been "wrong," it’s often been wrong for the same reasons the anti-science community has been wrong. We are all vulnerable to pleas of common sense; we exacerbated peanut allergies for decades by keeping peanuts from infants. We refused to believe that COVID-19 could be aerosolized because we assumed the particles were too large.

And science, of course, can and should change in light of new evidence. But this is often slow-going... and often misunderstood.

Earlier, I mentioned the fact that people have been "drinking bleach." Likewise, I've had people panic when they learned that restaurants use bleach to disinfect dishes. "Conservatives, maybe," they scoffed. "But no reputable restaurant will use bleach!" (Bleach is, of course, used everywhere in restaurants, including to sanitize dishes.)

You should not believe in science. You should test and prove science. And our limits are not science itself, but rather in our understanding of it.

Today, even this statement would get someone’s hackles up: “No, you should believe experts.” But experts are actually rarely in agreement, in any field. The world is not so simple and not so binary. Veterinary medicine is an example: many veterinarians actually disagree on when it is appropriate to spay and neuter dogs. And there's nuance involved, regarding the dog's size.

But if you ask one side of laymen or another, they will insist that experts agree on their side. And they will be fundamentally correct, because it’s a choice of which experts you’re listening to.

Science is not a monolith, no matter how much we want to treat it as one. And we don't always understand it as well as we should, even when we think we do.

A few days ago, a post came across my thread—an older woman saying, “I have decided against chemotherapy and radiation. I feel good, and I need to work. It’s in God’s hands now.” Looking at this woman’s timeline, it became immediately obvious that she was an older, liberal woman whose friends and family had already passed. She had been given a year to live.

In the medical community, chemotherapy and radiation are treated as personal decisions because they are personal decisions with pros and cons, especially toward the end of life.

Nevertheless, this dying woman had well over a thousand negative comments, ranging from a passive-aggressive “It’s God’s choice to give us chemo,” to a caustic “And I’m glad I won’t be sharing a world with an idiot like you.” These comments, directed toward a harmless and dying old lady, assumed that she was MAGA, that she was a science denialist, and critically, that she deserved to suffer and die because of her beliefs.

Why?

Well, there is now a backlash against what is perceived as anti-science rhetoric that is, itself, anti-scientific. It treats science as a religion; that we must venerate doctors and scientists above all else, and, most critically, they must never be wrong. 

Unfortunately, this requires that we hold in our heads a cognitive dissonance:

• Doctors, scientists, and teachers are never wrong.
• Yet, medical science underserves women and minorities. 
• Medical errors are a serious health problem.
• But you should never question a doctor.

And this is where we slide into something that is more dogmatic; it's when "science" becomes nothing more than another religious belief. It’s a problem when a belief structure requires that you have cognitive dissonance; it creates an uneven terrain upon which you can never have a solid footing, and a culture in which you are never quite safe.

What are we to make of a world in which women experience a 29% longer wait during a heart attack, but women are conversely told to never question their care? When the medical field is taught to diagnose based on pictures of white skin, but minorities are told they must never question science?

Obviously, science is important. But science is also treated unequally. Despite a proliferation of science showing that GLP-1 medications are a net positive, for example, the same “dogmatic pro-science” people will say that they just “have a suspicion” or “just don’t feel right” about it.

Many of the arguments against GLP medications are essentially the same as the arguments against mRNA vaccinations: it’s too new, it’s being promoted by Big Pharma, it sounds too good to be true. But this time, the arguments come from across the political aisle. For a core population, it isn’t about science or religion; it’s about having an identity and reflecting that identity in voice, if not in action.

This isn't a one-off. It's something that has become quite aggressive, driven by bots and people, and creating a new divide. Any time anyone questions their medical care or questions a scientific finding, they are accused of being anti-science. Ironically, it's this behavior that will chill and kill science altogether.

And what I worry most is the acceptance of dissonance; the idea that certain patterns are "okay" and "not okay" without rationale or reasoning. A white woman using an herbal tea to calm her nerves is seen as "woo," but an indigenous woman like me would be seen as "cultural." A man declining treatment is seen as stalwart and logical; a woman declining treatment is seen as hysterical and uninformed.

Dissonance is a way to exacerbate our biases and treat people unequally at our own whims.

If we truly want to support science, we must be discerning and thoughtful. We need to think and compile evidence; we need to reason before we respond. And we need to remain "curious rather than judgmental."