The deadly danger of science denialism

For years I have been a subscriber to YouTube science communicator Sabine Hossenfelder. Her expositions of scientific topics have always been compelling to me, particularly when she focuses her brilliant mind on her specialty, physics.

For the last couple of years, however, Sabine has been increasingly critical of how science is conducted, especially in academia and in the standards of publications submitted to scientific journals. Nothing wrong with that, per se. Science is a human endeavour, and as is true with all human endeavours, there’s room for improvement.

The problem is with her language. It’s becoming increasingly shrill and categorical and full of hyperbole. More and more her videos come with incredibly damaging clickbait thumbnails with extreme statements like “Is science dying?” and “I don’t trust scientists.” But it doesn’t stop there. Her content contains language with on-camera statements like, “Most of academic research that your taxes pay for is almost certainly bullshit.” Really Sabine? MOST of it?

So what does all this have to do with the price of tea in China? The problem is Sabine Hossenfelder has become the unintentional darling of science deniers, including anti-vaxxers, who hold her up as an exemplar and loudly proclaim, “See? Science really is bullshit!” For this nonsense Sabine has drawn detractors, like the brilliant science communicator Professor Dave. But for every detractor she has a legion of defenders, ready to “sanewash” Sabine’s statements and say they are taken out of context.

Even if that were true, that her statements are taken out of context, and it is emphatically NOT true, it makes no difference in the end. Science deniers would use her anyway. The problem is we have no recourse to say, “Sabine never said any of that” when in fact she did. What she actually meant is anyone’s guess.

Now here’s the big problem, and it is a big problem indeed. Donald Trump is about to take control of the most powerful nation on earth, and he has promised to make a science-denying lunatic, Robert F Kennedy Jr, the Secretary of Health and Human Services. There are people and children out there right now who are alive and well and innocently living their lives who will soon be dead because of the calamitous choice to pick this madman. Kennedy is another glassy-eyed anti-vaccine activist. He is quite possibly the worst choice for the role imaginable. And people like Sabine Hossenfelder, whether they know it or not, whether they care or not, are going to help enable him.

This is part of the madness we must fight, and there is no easy solution. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, I said in the pages of Palmer Report that at least there is one consolation, however pyrrhic that consolation may be. When Aunt Edna and Uncle Cletus die because of Donald Trump, I wrote, MAGA will turn against him.

I was wrong. I won’t make the same mistake again, nor will I sugarcoat it, brothers and sisters. The calamity that Robert F Kennedy Jr is going to cause us will not create allies. At least, not enough to matter. As we have seen from the results of the 2024 election, MAGA is a monster that is not going to be easy to slay.

People like Sabine, who should know better, who should be defending science, are busy tearing it down. So why do they do it? Money. If you check out her channel you’ll notice that her science-bashing videos get almost double the views of her ordinary science-explaining videos. And the more views she gets, the more money she makes. Sabine Hossenfelder is well on her way to becoming another YouTube millionaire. Lies are profitable, the truth? Considerably less so.

Sabine has learned the lesson that Fox News learned long ago, the lesson that the mainstream media knows and exploits only too well every day. Sensationalism makes money. Lies sell better than truth, because lies can be as interesting as the liar wants them to be.

We are going to have to find a way to capture the market with the truth before it is too late. It is one of the great paradoxes of existence that too often the truth only becomes interesting precisely at the point when it is too late to do anything about it. If, for example, global warming needs to be in everybody’s face for everybody to believe it, that is a point when it will be too late. On top of everything else horrible about him, RFK Jr is also a climate change denier.

This is the task we face, and it is huge. What can we do? We can educate ourselves. We can learn what the enemy knows and convert them, one by one, to our friend. Ignorance is the hardest foe, because it is also, paradoxically, full of unearned confidence. Alexander Pope correctly said that a little learning is a dangerous thing. So we must “Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.” Ignorance isn’t just a dangerous thing. In the hands of a psycho like RFK Jr, it can be downright deadly.