Dogmatizing Science

I'm generally loath to open an essay with dictionary definitions - it feels like a crutch or a cheat or a copout vs structuring a coherent opening thought, but I'm giving myself a hall pass today, because the crux of the point I hope to make relies on a clear and shared understanding of the two words contained in the title. So:

Science: the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.

Dogma: a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.

Science is, in a way, both its own best friend and its own worst enemy. Science evolves constantly, as human intellectual curiosity, hypothesizing, analysis, experimentation and testing, replication, challenging, questioning, affirming, and rebutting have their effects. What science told us 500 years ago can persist forever and what science told us yesterday can go in the trash pail tomorrow. Such is its nature.

Dogma, on the other hand, remains constant and immune to all those things.

Until it doesn't, that is. Until whoever has been appointed - by us, by our "betters," by themselves, or by some higher power - decides to alter or replace it. With new dogma, which in that moment of supplanting becomes incontrovertibly true.

The intersection of science and dogma should be a null set. Nothing "science" can ever be deemed as incontrovertibly true. That's not to say it's not the best explanation, or that there's an extremely high probability that it's true, but science is and must forever be subject to challenge and, should that challenge prove to be a better explanation, alteration.

Dogma, on the other hand, is definitionally unchallengeable. You and I have no standing or authority or right to question it.

Yet, it is both sad and maddening to say, we live in a culture where the line between science and dogma is being progressively blurred (pun obviously intended - funny how the roles have changed across the decades and centuries).

Some time back, I blogged about climate change becoming dogma rather than science. Many of you know the punchline: the latest dogmatizing has to do with the COVID pandemic. Or, more specifically, the "science" of the federal government's preferred responses and remedies has morphed into a "thou shalt have no other remedies before me" commandment.

There are priests, anointed by the government, whose proclamations are not to be doubted. Those who do are apostates, those who vocalize those doubts are heretics. Those who suggest other things (things supported by science), like factoring in acquired immunity into the stew, are idolaters. Shaming and shunning of all such are demanded both by the priest class and by the faithful. Treatments mentioned by those not of the priest class are the equivalent of "false gods," to be rejected no matter the science. The harm caused by the canonized treatments, such as the forever masking of young children, is either of no account or necessary suffering required of the faithful.

You get the idea.

This is, unfortunately, part and parcel for the modern political landscape, where everything tends to devolve to hard binary contrarianism. Such is our desire to dislike those who aren't of our tribe or who don't share our view that on too many occasions I've seen people not even want others to move in their direction, so that the Inquisitional hate-rage can continue to flow. Had Biden announced he was going to restart drilling for oil as a counter to Putin's aggression in Ukraine, I know there would have been people who favor drilling who’d be upset that they couldn't yell about him on that topic any more.

This hard-contrariness, unfortunately, contributes to the dogmatizing of science. Winning the fight is more important than getting things right. Seeing the other side lose is more important than advancing the best policy or solution. As in prison culture, people who seek safety are pressured to associate with "their own," to conform to the rules set before them, and to either eschew questioning that which they are told is true or simply surrender to the narrative.

And, since religiosity has been overlaid onto policy matters, the preferred solutions often seem to have a punitive or penitent quality about them. Climate change solutions that might us lead our lives as we have been horrify the priest class to the point of forbidding their consideration. The pandemic is forever - we must not return to our former way of life, but instead practice perpetual social distancing, masking, and re-vaccination whenever we've sinned... err... not received communion recently enough... err... are told it's time for another jab by the priest class. Pain and privation strengthen faith.

Challenging this dogmatizing of science is necessary, but it can also be problematic. For it is unfortunately true that too many people interpret "question everything" as "disbelieve everything." The former is science, the latter is not, yet every day you will cross paths with someone who is of the mind that "since X said Y, and X is on the other team, Y is false." That's its own form of dogmatic thinking, and as wrong as the true-believer sort.

Reflexive contrarianism may play as "cool," it may feel like "truth to power," but without the foundational support that science both produces and demands for its 'best explanation of Z,' it's just preening and obnoxiousness. Sometimes, water is wet, the Earth is an oblate spheroid, two plus two equals four, and gravity exists (no, wait! Gravity is a myth! The Earth sucks!).

You can and should question everything, but don't be 'that guy.'

We should demand to be convinced, but must also be open to being convinced, of assertions made by others. No matter who those others are. The author matters not, only the assertion and its supporting evidence.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: The theme of this article was suggested by a regular reader and Internet friend. In other words, I do take requests. Cheers and happy liberty!