Quite commonly, the media offer such statements as, “according to experts . . .”, or “experts have found . . .”, or the like, with the obvious implication that what the experts say should be taken as trustworthy, safe to use as a basis for action.
But all experts are human, and therefore may be mistaken. So it is worth thinking about when, and over what sort of matters and under what circumstances, it is reasonably safe to accept what experts state or advise.
For expert information about any particular topic, it is certainly natural for the media to consult someone most prominently associated with the matter: some researcher or scholar who has contributed notably to the contemporary body of knowledge on that topic.
However, that immediately and inevitably means that the information gathered will be in some way biased. Since the expert is evidently known to be acknowledged as such, his [1] views will reflect the majority consensus in the field. But equally well placed and well informed contrarian experts may disagree, without that disagreement having become general public knowledge: as I have discussed and illustrated elsewhere [2], if one looks for contrarian expert views one is likely to find them on almost any topic of contemporary public interest.
Active researchers are successful through being single-minded, persistent, confident that they are on a productive line of work, able to dismiss periodic small failures or mis-steps as wrong in small detail but no threat to the validity of the overall project. It is their competitors, and well informed capable observers, who can discern if the evidence, the facts of reality, judge the project as a whole to be potentially productive or rather misguided.
So we should, by all means, consult the active researchers for deep technical details; but we should not accept forthwith their opinion as to the validity of their findings, and particularly not their interpretations and theories.
It is often the case that individuals who teach, but may not be particularly active in research, could provide a better assessment as to validity and significance of something even at the frontier of science. One of my closest friends, Tony Linnane [3], was a truly outstanding researcher, elected to the Royal Society of London, and one of the first members of the Australian Academy; he often talked to me about one of his colleagues who had no ambition or drive for research but whose encyclopedic knowledge and understanding of the range of the scholarly literature in biochemistry was an invaluable resource for his researching colleagues.
I have had an interest in the possible existence and nature of Loch Ness “monsters” (“Nessies”) for more than 60 years, but I have never attempted anything in the way of searching or organizing of searches. But if anyone wants a truly informed, relatively unbiased assessment of the present state of knowledge about Nessies, and about the individuals who have been and are now actively involved in various ways at Loch Ness, I am the person to ask, rather than the individuals who dedicated many years to active searching by various means and whose views have quite often been demonstrably influenced by frustration over the inability to discover anything like conclusive proof or disproof.
Someone who is an outstandingly successful innovative researcher can be at the same time woefully ignorant about scientific activity in general, about the history of science, about the philosophy of science, about how science interacts with other societal activities.
This essay was prompted by great disappointment over the book, The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science: A Scientist’s Warning [4], by Peter J. Hotez, MD, PhD.
Hotez appeared quite frequently as a consultant to the media during the COVID epidemic, and I had thought his comments always worth attending to, and I admired the fact that his group had prepared, by traditional techniques, relatively inexpensive COVID vaccine that was being made available to low-income countries. So when I learned that he had published the mentioned book, I looked forward to gaining enjoyment and possibly new insights.
Far from it.
The book indulges in gross over-generalizations: Anyone who raises doubts about any vaccine is labeled an anti-vaxxer and as “anti-science”.
But many well informed individuals, journalists and doctors and scientists, have pointed to the possibility of harmful side-effects from some individual vaccines, such as those against the human papilloma virus (HPV), pointing out also that it has never been established that HPV actually causes any cancers, rather than that the association between just a few strains of HPV and a few cancers may be nothing more than chance association, not any causative influence [5].
Hotez is quite correct, however, in noting how right-wing political groups and attitudes have played an important part in public arguments and policies about how best to cope with COVID; and it is of course inexcusable that some of the right-wing extremists actually threatened Hotez and his family with physical harm.
But that is a long way from insisting that opposition to Hotez’s' views represents an “anti-science” attitude, let alone that even the most extreme instances of attacks on Hotez illustrate that there is a “deadly rise” of anti-science.
Hotez takes for granted that his own views, which are of course consonant with the orthodox contemporary majority consensus, are objectively true. The history of medicine and the history of science are quite clear, however, that medical orthodoxy has not infrequently been wrong. That includes in quite modern times; for example, for much of the 20th century belief in eugenics theory was the orthodox view, including the desirability of forcibly sterilizing individuals with undesirable, supposedly heritable, traits.
During the last four decades or so, the global medical orthodoxy has been demonstrably [6] wrong about HIV and AIDS, as Rebecca Culshaw Smith continues to point out [7]. She has also drawn attention [8] to the fact that orthodox medicine does not understand chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS/ME, myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome) and offers no real relief to those who suffer from it.
As to vaccines, so authoritative a voice of orthodoxy as Anthony Fauci has admitted that the vaccines against influenza and COVID-19 do not protect against infection and need improvement even as they offer some benefit of lessened symptoms after infection [9].
It is no criticism of doctors or medical scientists to point out that there are many things about medicine and public health that are not well understood, or about which orthodox opinion happens to be misguided.
One reason why it is a mistake to claim anything about medicine or public health to be “science” is that such a designation is widely taken to mean “objectively true”, whereas even the best general knowledge in medicine is of a statistical nature, which means that there will always be possible exceptions to standard approaches. Dozens of books and articles have described in considerable evidence-based detail the many ways in which modern contemporary medicine’s orthodoxy is inadequate or just plain wrong [10]. A contemporary example of current interest is that evidence as to possibly harmful effects of radiation from 5G cell-phone networks is entirely inconclusive one way or the other [11].
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[1] I was taught to write many decades ago in a British environment where it was taken for granted that masculine pronouns referred to humankind, to humans of any sex or gender. Readers educated under very different contemporary circumstances should please interpret such pronouns as “his” as standing for his/her/theirs” and referring without discriminatory intent to “human being”.
I use quite a lot of classic quotes from the literature, for instance from George Bernard Shaw, whose prefaces are well worth re-reading and re-re-reading, brimming with quotable phrases, for instance that “progress depends on the unreasonable man”. Of course Shaw was fully conscious of the fact that some unreasonable human beings happen to be female, and when he wrote that aphorism, “man” was universally understood to mean “human”, not specifically masculine human. Instead of resorting to various possible but clumsy “language-modernizing” devices when quoting Shaw (and others), I prefer to stick with the original. Perhaps the contemporary craze confusing sex/gender/behavior/identity/language will turn out to have been a passing phase in the English-speaking world, given that other cultures are perfectly content that, for example, a female person can be gender/language/grammatically “male”, like “das Mӓdchen”.
[2] Dogmatism in Science and Medicine: How dominant theories monopolize research and stifle the search for truth, McFarland, 2012
[3] Phillip Nagley, “Anthony William Linnane. 17 July 1930—11 November 2017”;
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbm.2019.0025
[4] Peter J. Hotez, The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science: A Scientist’s Warning, Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2023
[5] For much to-and-fro over HPV and the vaccines against it, see https://scimedskeptic.wordpress.com/?s=hpv
[6] “The Case against HIV”, http://thecaseagainsthiv.net, includes an extensive bibliography of dozens of books and hundreds of articles
[7] Rebecca V. Culshaw, The Real AIDS Epidemic: How the Tragic HIV Mistake Threatens Us All, Skyhorse, 2023; Rebecca V. Culshaw Smith,
[8] https://rebeccaculshawsmith.substack.com/p/why-has-mecfs-research-stalled-for-b81
[9] David M. Morens, Jeffery K. Taubenberger, & Anthony S. Fauci, “Perspective: Rethinking next-generation vaccines for coronaviruses, influenzaviruses, and other respiratory viruses”, Cell Host & Microbe, 31 (2023) 146-157
[10] “What’s wrong with present-day medicine”, bibliography last updated 10 March 2020; https://mega.nz/file/ZLhyGSxY#t2wneBEyHdMpDU57LceJ95MJerV7BUykQ3BpFRya6vI
[11] Frank de Vocht & Patricia Albers, “The population health effects from 5G: Controlling the narrative”, Frontiers of Public Health,; 10 (2022) 1082031; published online 19 Dec 19. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.1082031; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9806221
Thanks, Ted.
For details from qualified physicians and researchers, see "The Great Barrington Declaration", https://gbdeclaration.org/
As Dr. Bauer is well aware, the scientist as a brave truth seeker following the evidence wherever it may lead (Sir Galahad in a lab coat) is long out of date. Scientific research is largely a corporate and government funded matter now. Corporations are interested in money and governments in power. Independent voices are intolerable to them and they will crush them if they can. The Covid disaster put all this on full display. A government/corporate alliance rushed into use an experimental therapy that soon proved dangerous and largely ineffective. Physicians and scientists who criticized the program were fired, threatened, ostracized, and censored. Alternative therapies were ridiculed and suppressed. The public was subjected to a mandatory vaccine campaign completely contrary to medical ethics. Data showing the harm caused by the vaccines was hidden from the public. To this day, there has been no acknowledgement by the authorities of the harm done nor any punishment for those who lied and furthered the harm. The HMO I belong to is still urging their members to be vaccinated (including their children!).