The Science

Science is back in the news, and the "I believe in science" crowd is showing just how very little they actually understand science. 

Yesterday, for example, the federal government announced that they want to split up the most common childhood vaccination into three separate vaccinations to see if perhaps one of them is a complicating factor in the increase of the incidence of childhood diagnoses. 

This is actually a very scientific thing to do. When you're presented with a data set that you can't explain, it's science's job - and science's foundation - to start breaking things down into smaller pieces until you can identify a link between what you're seeing and what you're doing. That's the way that science has always worked.

The outcry immediately began - no, it can't be that! We've already done the research on that! We know how that works! Except...we don't. A lot of things have changed - about humans, about the environment, about manufacturing processes, about safety regulations, about all kinds of things - since we did the science the first time. Among the things that have changed, we have also dramatically expanded, through universal implementation, the data set in ways that controlled studies can simply never account for. 

Science itself, on its own principles, would say that it's prudent to do the science again. 

Scientism, on the other hand, is the only one afraid here. 

Scientism is the religious belief in science as the ultimate source of truth. It's a proclamation and a declaration that what we know through science, we simply know and should not question. It's the idea that these ideas should guide our lives without examination because they're already "settled." 

"I believe in the science." 

Cool, bro. But one of the fundamental truths about science is that it's always changing.

Science has never been afraid of the questions. In fact, that's what it's always been about. Asking the questions, seeking the answers, asking them again when the data demands it or even suggests it. For science, the questions are fun. They are a chance to explore, to innovate, to discover something new or to develop something new. 

Scientism is terrified. 

Because if the truth you base your life on must change, scientism feels like it loses some of its authority. And it realizes that if it has to tell you something has changed, then it looks like a liar...and it has to account for the years it led you astray while believing it was doing just the opposite. 

If you ever hear someone say "the science is settled," it's not because the science is actually settled; it's because they are protecting something else, some myth they've created off the science and tried to pass off as truth. The real science is never afraid to ask the question again. 

Only the scientism will tell you that you don't have to.