When Science Fails Us
Deep flaws and enduring mistakes
Science is neither infallible, nor irredeemable. But it often has seemed to value data, discoveries, and most recently profit over our own humanity.
From Generalists to Specialists
Science, as we know it today, has not always been this sterile, academic, almost secretive pursuit - locked away in laboratories. There were days long ago where anyone who was an “academic” studied pretty much everything. Knowledge was not as rigidly divided into all of these various subjects. And, in fact, the subjects we think of as “scientific” were studied alongside subjects like poetry, religion, and philosophy.1 2 But over the centuries, when knowledge got more and more expansive and discoveries multiplied, we could not maintain this general approach. One man simply could not know it all. We needed experts.
While the discoveries and advancements we made led to incredible breakthroughs that improved our lives and increased our longevity, the rise in “expertise” created its own problem. Science became more insular, harder to question. And, over the course of history, science has made some grave mistakes due to deep flaws in methods and/or assumptions.
Science History: Uphill and Riddled with Blunders
As mentioned in my first post explaining the “science & society” approach - science has not progressed unhindered. There have been speedbumps and roadblocks along the way. The first person to cut open a human body in order to study our internal workings, examine our organs, and figure out how we worked committed what was considered an atrocity in his time. It was viewed as sacrilegious and heretical to disturb and defile the dead.3
But…without such discoveries - where would modern science be?
Despite this history of occasional resistance, science has managed to forge ahead rather bluntly in many cases. And has frequently misstepped. Drastically. Often doing far more harm than good (to certain groups of people). In the name of “science” the Tuskegee syphilis trials withheld treatments from a group of infected black men just to see how bad it could get and what the outcomes would be.4 In the name of “science” we irradiated a beautiful region of islands and atolls in the middle of the Pacific, permanently altering the environment there for marine life and any animal and human inhabitants of the land - all to practice setting off our new atomic bombs.5 In the name of “science” we performed countless forced sterilizations,6 lobotomies, trepanning procedures, and electric shock therapies on people with mental illnesses and developmental delays.7
There’s examples of western medicine having a flawed system for testing or assessing its patients based on cultural beliefs about sex and race. Women throughout history have been dismissed and disregarded for a wide variety of complaints, chalking it all up to “hysteria.” Doctors historically fundamentally misunderstood our anatomy, our hormones, and our brains.8 (When trains were first invented, doctors worried what moving at such fast speeds would do to the uterus.)9 The development of a certain lung capacity measuring tool involved studies on black populations that had been exposed to certain environmental conditions that often result in lung problems. And when their lung capacity came back lower than their white counterparts, this was assessed as an inherent deficiency in their race rather than a byproduct of their surroundings or lifestyle. And so, for DECADES, there was a different tabulation for assessing if a black patient’s lung function was at a “healthy level” vs a white patient’s. (Basically, those patients had to be sicker in order to be considered worthy candidates for certain treatments).10
Modern Issues: Distrust and the Corporate Effect
On top of this history of misunderstandings, flawed research, and misguided cultural beliefs, the ever-present modern issue is that we seem to care more about what makes money than what is best for human bodies and humanity at large. We prescribe first, diagnose later. Build hospital systems around profit rather than outcomes and lower rates of illness. And a bunch of the money for scientific studies comes from the very corporations who hope to sell the drugs, or the treatments, or the pesticides being studied.
Bayer conducted their own study to show that their product was not, in fact, harming the bees.11 (And they even built a “bee hospital” for the PR of it all).12 The book Silent Spring Revolution has a robust account of all the missteps we took in science that resulted in detrimental losses to our ecosystems, our natural world, and the organisms that live in it.13 It demonstrates how we often forged brazenly ahead without considering the potential impacts of the exciting new chemical this or that corporation had just developed (DDT being only one of said chemicals).14 And I only found out about the catastrophe of the drug Thalidomide15 when it was covered in a show I watched: Call the Midwife.16
On the personal level, our routine interactions with science (specifically medicine), can often leave us feeling frustrated, helpless, and dismissed. Almost everyone has had an experiences where we felt like the doctor didn’t really listen to us. We want to scream, “I know my body! This isn’t normal!” At the same time, the doctors’ experiences can leave them feeling jaded, defeated, and even a bit useless. They see a revolving door of non-serious complaints, patients with hypochondria, or to the other extreme - patients who don’t take anything seriously and never stick to a regimen. Meanwhile dealing with pressure from the hospital and the powers that be, and endless red tape from insurance companies.
Anecdotes and Herbalists
These paralleling experiences can, unsurprisingly, result in overall mistrust in the system. Leaving people feeling like the only true expert in their own health. Which, is not altogether untrue - we are experts in our own experiences. We are the first to sense that something is wrong and only we know what regimens will work best for us and our families. It can seem that all doctors have to offer is conflicting opinions, a seemingly rehearsed spiel about “best practices,” a laundry list of pills to offer (each with their own scary side effects), and often a selection of statistics to hold up that discredits our lived experiences. As, the ladies on Pantsuit Politics said recently, ‘life is lived in the anecdotes, not the statistics.’ And so why not try the “lifestyle” change, the homeopathic alternative, or the new diet that your cousin told you works. After all, we trust our cousin more than the modern doctor. Even when a good doctor genuinely tries, they don’t typically have the relationship with us (or the time to build one) that the people in our everyday lives have.
A few years ago, the ladies at Pantsuit Politics had a two-part series of episodes all about “The Wellness Industry’s Influence” and how the misgivings around western medicine are natural, and there is a pretty natural progression from those misgivings to straight up rejection, skepticism, and refusal of life-saving medicines.17
Due to this storied history and flawed present - “trusting science” has become a politics-riddled, all-or-nothing game. With some people rejecting it outright, convinced that it’s all a conspiracy and “experts” are just pushing an agenda. While others seem to have a blind, uncritical loyalty to science, acting like “questioning authority” only demonstrates one’s own stupidity and even threatens our public health.
Tips for Judging a Scientific Study or “Fact”
So where is the “Goldilocks Zone” where trust and healthy skepticism can coexist? How do we move forward critically, but with some confidence and optimism?
Look at who is harmed and who profits.
Who profits off of the paradigm that skinny is always healthy and fat is always bad?
Look at who funded the research.
Was the research independent? Or did the pharmaceutical company “do their own research”?
Look at how the study was done.
Did they control for extenuating factors, experimental errors, and biases?
Look at who’s political or cultural views this finding aligns with
Don’t let confirmation bias get the best of you.
Look at who’s promoting the science
Is it the same company or industry that will benefit from this finding?
Is an “influencer” telling you how bad this oil is, but how good this supplement is, and you should “Visit the link in bio to pick up a bottle today!”
A Critical Study of Science and My Blog
Science and western medicine have made some grave mistakes and continue to misunderstand, ignore, and disenfranchise many people. Science is a process and when good people are doing it the right way, it can yield some revolutionary and lifesaving results. None of us wants to go back to the days before we discovered germs and developed proven ways to decrease the spread of disease. Or the days before antibiotics or antifebrile medications, when something as simple as the common cold or a leg wound could be the end of us or our limb. The objective of a critical study of science, or a “science & society” approach, is to analyze the ways it has failed, the ways it has succeeded, what drives the deepest flaws, and where the application of it sometimes goes awry.
I aim to explore the way power and money influence what science research gets done and what science “findings” get promoted. And, most importantly, investigating how science is implemented into policy. I’ll do this by investigating judicial and legislative history, past and current cultural phenomena, and the linguistic breakdown between the parties.
In short, how can we even attempt to discuss and legislate all of this hairy, scary stuff when we don’t even agree on half of it in the first place?
And this is to say relatively little of other fountains of knowledge such as eastern medicine, indigenous knowledge, and the wisdom and medicines of the global south - the Amazon rainforest, the plains of Africa, etc.
Even after penicillin became widely available and was the standard of care. About the USPHS Syphilis Study
Bayer funded: The Bee Safety of Neonicotinoid Insecticides vs Xerces Society funded: How Neonicotinoids Can Kill Bees
Bayer’s site for “Bee Health: Small Insects, Big Impact”
Silent Spring Revolution by Douglas Brinkley - Publisher’s listing