Great Blue Heron Soars over Union Bay Natural Area, a former landfill restored by University of Washington – photo by Leah Wheeler
Today my wife can return to work thanks to cold medicine. I led a birding and natural history field trip in a former landfill that University of Washington has since restored to become a diverse natural area. My father-in-law is receiving a colonoscopy to assess his health status. One of my daughters flew to Washington DC to visit him in a jet aircraft, and tonight, my wife and I will eat in a smoke-free restaurant. I thank scientists for making all of these things possible.
There are some who discount science and scientists. Long ago, we called these science disbelievers members of the Flat Earth Society. Today, several candidates for president could be characterized as anti-science, modern-day Flat Earth Society members who deny climate change, evolution and any form of environmental destruction. These bold deceivers prefer not to let science or facts get in the way. Let’s not go there. Science is a big reason why we can enjoy living here – in a technologically-advanced, first-world, democratic nation.
What has science done for you lately? How about medicine, agriculture, all forms of transportation and energy, water and sewage treatment, and weather forecasting, just to name a few of the many ways that science has improved our lives. Historically, we have been good at science, have embraced it and it has served us well. Lately, however, due to well-financed, highly visible dis-information campaigns, doubt has been heaped upon legitimate science.
Scientists have a thorough process of vetting their discoveries and opinions to hone them, and we as a society benefit from the scientific consensus they arrive at. Scientists develop hypotheses and test them; they are skeptical by training. Their theories do not gain acceptance until they are subjected to rigorous peer review and can be validated by factual evidence based on extensive research and data.
Here is one example of applied science that we can all relate to: antibiotics. When you take an antibiotic it kills bacterial infections in your system. These are truly wonder drugs that have saved untold numbers of lives and spared millions from disease-related misery. Scientists created antibiotics and most other medicinal drugs.
Science also helps us understand why we must take antibiotics until the prescription is done. Evolution is at play here. If you stop taking antibiotics mid-cycle (don’t try this at home!), bacteria will mutate, adapt and continue infecting your body. In short, bacteria will evolve to tolerate a smaller dose of the antibiotic and spread through your body. Maybe people who don’t believe in science or evolution should stop taking antibiotics.
To discredit science would be equally ignorant and self-destructive. But we have seen this form of public disservice before as recalled by Al Gore in his recent article Climate of Denial: “ A half-century ago, when Science and Reason established the linkage between cigarettes and lung diseases, the tobacco industry hired actors, dressed them up as doctors, and paid them to look into television cameras and tell people that the linkage revealed in the Surgeon General’s Report was not real at all. The show went on for decades, with more Americans killed each year by cigarettes than all of the U.S. soldiers killed in all of World War II.”
Gore also wrote about the continual challenge to gain acceptance for climate change despite overwhelming evidence supporting it: “The scientific consensus is far stronger today than at any time in the past. Here is the truth: The Earth is round; Saddam Hussein did not attack us on 9/11; Elvis is dead; Obama was born in the United States; and the climate crisis is real. It is time to act.”
God gave us sophisticated brains to use, not to atrophy. Let’s apply our most intelligent and time-tested methods to addressing the world’s problems through science. Doing so, we have a chance of saving ourselves and planet Earth, aka God’s creation.
P.S. – If you would like to join me on a science-based trip to an outstanding natural area, check out the Birding/Nature tours offered on my website.
