By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
If we choose to believe that the earth is flat, we will never launch rockets into space.
Refuse to accept that living organisms undergo natural selection over time and patients will die of newly-resistant bacterial agents.
Reject vaccinations as ineffective and harmful and we would still have smallpox and polio rampant among us every year, along with far more measles, whooping cough, etc.
Denounce chlorination and fluoridation of water and we will return to a variety of water-borne illnesses and an epidemic of tooth decay.
And reject our constantly increasing scientific understanding of this new coronavirus and we will see massive deaths.
This distortion of “science” to fit a political or social perspective is Lysenkoism. Trofim Lysenko was an opponent of the new science of genetics being developed in the West, following the rediscovery of Gregor Mendel’s work in 1900. The new science of genetics traced characteristics that were passed down, generation to generation by heredity. The Soviets had overthrown a Czarist system where the Czar was an inherited position. In the new worker’s society, a young couple who worked in the factory or farm field and built strong muscles should be able to have a baby who would be born stronger. Genetics did not match the politics. Russian geneticists died in gulags. The Russian population followed Lysenko not because they understood the science involved, but because it fit with their politics or world view. Russian agriculture from 1928 to the mid-1960s was devastated. Huge numbers died in famines.
Lysenkoism has now come to America. “Science denial” or “anti-science bias” is rampant. Citizens are refusing to accept the death rates, its easy aerial transmission, or the protection measures necessary to slow the spread of coronavirus. This is not because they closely examined the scientific evidence. It is because of “motivational reasoning.”
Even when a person is more educated, their sense of who they are is closely tied to their group identity—often their family and neighbors—and that identity group’s political beliefs. Thus there is a tendency toward “confirmation bias” where we prefer “experts” we agree with and deny other “experts.” The United States population ranks lowest in science literacy among developed countries. We also suffer from an anti-expert attitude that prefers a “common sense” based on simple-minded social media communication and disdains true experts they portray as elitists. Lysenko lives on.
Political persuasion now supercedes science. Many go to great effort to rationalize why any “facts” that contradict their interpretation of the world must somehow be wrong.
Science however is universal. The same chart of chemical elements hangs in science labs worldwide. And the “proof” that a science concept is correct does not depend on a political position but on whether the science concept matches the real physical and biological world. The real world, including this coronavirus, is not partisan. In science there are no “alternative facts.”
The late Nobel physicist Richard P. Feynman was asked to join the team to investigate why the first space shuttle disaster occurred. As he interviewed NASA scientists, he discovered that they had fooled themselves into believing that it would be safe to launch the Challenger in colder weather where the O-rings had never been tested. They had gone beyond the limits of evidence. Behind their motivation was the public relations and eagerness to launch.
Feynman’s famous conclusion: “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.”
Fooling ourselves by denying the growing science of this coronavirus means more deaths.
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John Richard Schrock has trained biology teachers for more than 30 years in Kansas. He also has lectured at 27 universities in 20 trips to China. He holds the distinction of “Faculty Emeritus” at Emporia State University.