Science vs. Sorcery
- Mar 18
- 4 min read
Some days I read the headlines and wonder if science is dead. I know it isn’t, but a grim reality confronts us all. The public’s faith in scientific institutions is far weaker today than before the pandemic. Those who don’t trust these institutions are amplifying untruths in a loop. This is eroding trust in the tireless work scientists do to advance innovation.
Before the Renaissance, natural and meteorological phenomena were explained by religion and faith, tradition and sorcery. Brilliance from the likes of Newton and Galileo forced us to focus on scientific evidence. By the 1700s, philosophers like Voltaire had convinced the West to let logic and rationality guide our thought. Religion and science coexisted in a careful dance where multiple viewpoints thrived with periods of tension.
The 1800s and 1900s delivered the miracles of electromagnetism, pasteurization, penicillin, lightbulb, radiography and more. With increased life expectancy, we opened our hearts and minds to modern science and biomedicine. Although nuclear energy and atomic bombs presented an existential threat, our trust in science and scientific institutions largely remained intact through the 20th century.
COVID-19 delivered a seismic pivot in this story. Rapidly changing evidence and shifting guidance sowed doubt about the reliability of the science behind the disease and the actions to combat it.
The pandemic brought immense polarization and political division and put us into camps that either followed the rules diligently or opposed them vehemently. Social media acted as an accelerant for division with misinformation, disinformation and outright lies.
As individuals, we may have failed to recognize our own responsibility in this divide. We tend to favor easy access to content that aligns with our thinking or entertains us. We - of all political persuasions - read, watch, listen without questioning the source. Instead of helping us at this critical time of fracture, “Big Tech” chose eyeballs and revenue by reinforcing our preferences instead of forcing us to consider different viewpoints and flagging spurious content.
Three forces have converged to weaken our trust in science: the consumer’s demand for instant digital gratification, Wall Street’s pressure on stock growth and the utter devastation of the pandemic.
Here is some evidence of the turbulence we now face.
Climate deniers account for 15% of the US population [1]. In 2023, YouTube content on climate denial rose by an astonishing 70% [2]. And now some policymakers are dismantling green energy initiatives in favor of fossil fuels by promoting the “unreliability” of climate change data.
A significant portion of the population dismisses well-established statistics when they conflict with a desired narrative - for example, the persistent claim that dead people routinely vote. In reality, a 2020 Stanford study of 4.5M voter records yielded 14 possible cases - a rate of 0.0003% - where the allegedly dead may have voted by mail, even though these cases could have been clerical errors [3].
Despite a lack of scientific evidence, politicians are attempting to change long-standing vaccine policies because 24% “believe” the MMR vaccine causes autism [4]. The resulting hesitancy has produced a surge in measles cases across the country.
With this regression of trust, we have reverted to promoting a new kind of sorcery: conspiracy theories from the ubiquitous influencers. Platforms like YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and hallucination-prone AI act as force multipliers in creating unreliable content that takes effort to verify. Even some scientific findings become questionable when non-peer-reviewed publications are promoted without rigorous scrutiny. All of this erodes the quality of our thinking.
Historically speaking, distrust in science tends to parallel scientific discoveries that cause whiplash to existing belief systems and power structures. Galileo was tried in an inquisition when he proved that the Earth wasn’t the center of the heavens. Evolution by natural selection continues to face resistance from those who prefer the scripture over scientific evidence. The smallpox vaccine led to riots and anti-nuclear resistance came into force after World War II.
This correlation makes me hopeful that the current wave of distrust is less about a wholesale rejection of science and more about the fear of the “new” - like renewable energy, mRNA and AI - accelerated by the speed of social media.
I cannot wait for this era of resistance from both ends of the political spectrum to settle. If you are wondering how long this will take, the answer is anybody’s guess. It can be a decade or more.
What can you do in the meantime?
Don’t forward content just because it sounds right or has many likes. Even the individuals and news sources you generally trust may fail their due diligence in the demands of the breaking news cycle. Don’t trust, always verify.
If we do not reclaim our role as critical thinkers, we risk living in a world where discourse is driven by emotion and manipulation. We have to choose evidence over hearsay and science over sorcery. It is not easy to choose the former but it’s never been more urgent.
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