Michael Specter on Embracing What We Know

Michael Specter advocates for the pursuit of science in a way I find rather satisfying.


Not because it's a smug beatdown-the-forces-of-antiscience screed - but because it (briefly) advances an argument that highlights real common ground between science and those concerned about Big Pharma, and Monsanto.

Namely - you can hate Monsanto, you can fear Big Pharma, but the very real problems you have with those entities (risky expensive drugs, agricultural monoculture, chemicals in food) are not problems with science.

They are problems of conduct - specifically, the conduct of corporations employing scientific advances for profit.

These are absolutely problems that need to be addressed - but they are not reasons to restrain scientific inquiry into agriculture, chemistry - or to run towards any alternative that presents itself.

As he puts it:
We hate Big Pharma....so we run away from it and leap into the arms of Big Placebo!

We are afraid - so we look to control what we can - what we choose to eat, and what medicince we choose to ingest.

But our choices are not inherently more valid, just because they belong to us. Science can still reveal things about those choices - gradations in quality and benefits - or invalidate them outright.

I love my choices. Often to a degree that blinds me to how foolish they are. But in those sober moments when I can look back dispassionately - I learn a lot.

I've learned to cook using cookbooks that use and describe a scientific method. "We tried X, it led to Y"
I buy products using test data from the most objective sources I can find.

Sure, I still cook and buy crap - but I am light years ahead of where I would be had I tried to learn all of this stuff on my own. They spent the time and money to learn stuff - and all I had to do was read what they found out.

It is pointed out over and over that our internal bias is the largest obstacle to the discovery of hard facts.

I remember grilling my pediatrician about thimerosal in my children's vaccines - I was genuinely scared to death. My doctor did not help me by treating me as if I had no idea that vaccines are intended to prevent horrible disease.

It was an unpleasant experience, but my doctor's ham-handed attempt to say vaccines are beneficial has no bearing on their validity as preventative medicine. It's that age old problem:

Science is great at discovering things, but they need a marketing strategy.

Sadly, the people who create and sell crap often have marketing strategies.

The people who sell the valueless anti-bacterial soap do. Likewise those who sell the ineffective cough syrups. Yet somehow, they continue to sell product.

Ginkgo? Crap. Airborne? Fraud. Despite this, I work with several people with masters degrees who swear by this stuff.

If I was to lock horns with them over their belief in these products - it would utterly poison future discussion. We need people with real concerns about health - to unite behind regulations and allow science to progress, but constrain business conduct for the greater good. It can't be about "You're stupid for believing in that." It has to be, what are we both trying to achieve? How will we know when we achieve it?

And science is the only way to do that.