'Science' has become the latest in a long line of words to have its fundamental meaning stripped away in aid of the dogmatic obsession with proving oneself 'right', or 'on the right side'. This latest act of liguistic repurposing was started by Extinction Rebellion, who have repeatedly claimed to be following the science while making demonstrably ludicrous statements such as suggesting that climate change will imminently cause billions of deaths, that deaths from weather-related disasters are on the increase, or that rising sea levels pose a threat to the existence of nations: all claims eviscerated by Andrew Neil last year in an interview with an Extinction Rebellion spokeswoman - who, to her credit, has since changed her mind and resigned.
The hypocrisy of making ludicrous, politically-motivated claims under the guise of science is, of course, nothing new for either political aisle. The left makes self-evidently ludicrous claims about imminent climate-caused human extinction, among others, just as readily as conspiracy theorists on the right try to pass off anti-vaccine myths (such as the MMR jab causing widespread autism in children) as 'scientifically' justified. What's telling is that the very idea of 'following the science' is itself profoundly unscientific.
Such an idea speaks to a cultural moment where core scientific principles like basing conclusions on evidence, falsifying one's theories and allowing one's beliefs to be challenged are being cast aside in all spheres of public life. Science by its fundamental nature is anti-consensus. The aforementioned principle of falsifiability, introduced by Austrian scientist Karl Popper early in 1934, offers the unfashionable view that it is essential not to try and prove one's views right, but to try and prove them wrong. It is easier to justify oneself by finding examples of where one's views appear correct, yet it is only in accepting the possibility of those views being wrong that one can claim to be operating from a position of scientific objectivity rather than personal subjectivity.
The classic example is of a man advancing the theories that all swans are white. If he visits a local park and only sees white swans there, he might incorrectly consider his theory justified. However, in taking this approach he discards the falsifiability principle that every theory should have a condition under which it can be disproven. In other words, the question is not 'is my theory right?' but 'under which circumstances can I accept that my theory is wrong?' Instead of going looking for white swans, our park-visiting theoriser should instead have gone looking for swans which are not white. Even if he never finds any, it is necessary for him to accept a condition under which his belief would be disproven in order to avoid him simply setting out to validate himself.
The phrase 'following the science' represents self-validation of the purest form. Whether used to advance the political cause of Extinction Rebellion or claiming to know how best to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, it is used purely as a means to affix undeserved credibility one's views and stifle any opposing argument. The large number of unknowns surrounding the COVID pandemic in particular has led to this phrase being regularly deployed by politicians, polemicists and activists as a means of presenting the scientific world as united behind a singular viewpoint, when in fact, as should always be the case, there are a wide variety of views and a large amount of disagreement. Not all views are equally valid or honest, of course, and some positions are far better supported by others. The very idea of a singular scientific viewpoint, though, is itself an unscientific fallacy.
This fallacy is not always presented so obviously. Sonia Sodha's recent article for The Guardian, for instance, plays the increasingly common game of obfuscating its intentions by claiming to be doing the opposite. Sodha correctly states that falsehoods have been 'scientifically' validated throughout history and that it is important for all claims to be tested and challenged. However, she quickly reveals her true purpose as being to denigrate those who disagree with her position. Her too-clever-by-half conclusion ('trust science, not scientists') recalls those who say they 'believe in freedom of speech, but...'. When she says scientists suffer from 'the same cognitive biases [...] as the rest of us', it is to reinforce the false idea of scientific consensus.
Sodha has no time for the idea that theories can be disproven by testing and time, or that beliefs can contain a mixture of accurate and inaccurate information. She claims the hotelier Rocco Forte's criticism of the UK government's (in his view) heavy-handed approach to the pandemic was an example of him spreading 'untruths' on the basis of his false claim that flu and influenza are the cause of more deaths than COVID-19, yet ignores the accurate claims in his broader point - ones difficult for Sodha's position - that COVID-19's death rate relative to infections is low, that government fatality estimates have consistently been wildly exaggerated and that the consequences of lockdown could have far more severe consequences further down the line.
Similarly, Sodha is correct that the concept of herd immunity does not now appear credible. This is only the case, however, thanks to the time and effort put into to falsifying it. When the pandemic began and little was known about COVID-19 or the best way to tackle it, herd immunity was simply one among many. That it does not appear to hold water does not mean, as Sodha implies, that simply asking the question was always wrong because of what we know now. This view, presenting knowledge as eternal and moral truth rather than the outcome of a long-term process of asking, testing and learning, has become dispiritingly commonplace, also reflected recently in the Black Lives Matter adherents' zeal for desecrating historical figures for even the loosest association with the now recognised evil of industrialised slavery.
The drive to counter the spread of disinformation is a perfect example of a willingness to publicly combat the surface manifestations of a problem while ignoring the meaningful underlying causes. Just as those decrying cruelty and harassment on social media are almost always the same people doing it and justifying their own participation ('I'm a good person doing it for the right reasons!'), so too is the cause of the disinformation problem - the cultural trend of validating one's beliefs rather than falsifying them - ignored because of the vested political interests of those call out 'fake news' when it suits them but embrace it wholeheartedly when it serves their purposes. Unlike the dogmatic viewpoints into which online activists divide themselves, science is not a uniform, absolute doctrine and those who claim to be 'following it' are by definition destroying its most fundamental principles.
