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This is Science. Shut up!

Published : Saturday, 26 December, 2020 at 12:00 AM  Count : 341

Nazarul Islam

Nazarul Islam

I begin this piece with a painful story. A few years ago, Larry Nassar was a wonderful doctor in the US, because everyone said so. The little girls who were sent to him for treatment, were told it was an honour. Parents were told it was a sign of their greatness, if this doctor would treat their children.

USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University employed him for decades and, according to his former patients, when complaints were made about him these were ignored. After all, Larry Nassar was a wonderful doctor, and no one said this more than Nassar himself, who used his reputation to groom his thousands of victims.

For years, girls told other coaches, the police, university administrators, psychologists. They repeatedly told USA gymnastics officials. And yet, Nassar was not stopped until his arrest in 2016. The girls obeyed. Hundreds of parents kept taking their daughters to see him. Girls must have complained. Some probably vomited quietly in the bathroom later or cried by themselves. They kept competing in gymnastics events.

How was this doctor able to do what he did over these many years? Well-meaning parents, coaches, teachers, attending nurses; hundreds of adults surrounded this man while he violated young girl athletes in plain view. He was able to do this because he was an "expert", and a "scientist", someone whom others were certain knew� more than they did� what was best. He wore a white lab coat and had diplomas on his office walls. He had a high salary, a long career, a staff, and institutions behind him.

In this time of lockdowns, church and business restrictions and closures, immeasurable harms, pervasive losses, and debilitating fear in response to a virus with a survival rate of higher than 99 per cent for most people, we have continued to hear the slogan, trust "the Science" or follow (or obey) "the Science" and "the Scientists." Obey government controls and "the Science" a bit longer, and it will get better.
Further, those who question "the Science" and do not conform - or even merely think differently - are named and targeted as dangerous. The virus is real, sicknesses and deaths are real, of course, while also real are the harms, deaths, and traumas from measures thought to mitigate it.

Further, some have made huge sums of money during this time while others have lost everything - and some will make huge sums from vaccines. When "Science" is funded by corporations and special interest groups, we may learn by asking, "Who writes the checks, and who gets paid?"

I thought science had always been about questioning, and yet lately, questioners are degraded as ignorant, superstitious, or heretical. Those touting the slogan, "Follow the Science" or "Obey the Science" have begun to sound more like Biblical literalists, not at all like what I have understood science to be. We have been told that we must obey the literal last word of "The Science". But whose science? Funded and led by whom and to what purpose?

Published "science" on this virus has changed monthly, even weekly, over many months. Masks are ineffective; wear masks. Wipe surfaces; no need to wipe surfaces as it is airborne and does not live on surfaces. Asymptomatic spread is common; asymptomatic spread is rare. In addition, many scientists have noted that the tests for the infection are often unreliable.

Confusions and contradictions have been dizzying. Hydroxychloroquine, Zinc, and Azithromycin have been used around the world to prevent and effectively treat this virus in early stages and yet, scientists who share information on these drugs are maligned, threatened, and sometimes fired. How is this science?

Now, almost nine months into lockdowns, governments threaten to fine or jail people gathering for holidays, and questioners are still being called ignorant, psychopathic, uneducated, uncaring, and are also accused of getting people killed. How is this something we refer to as 'science'? After all, this involves constant scrutiny and questioning, positing hypotheses, then continually examining and testing them in order to disprove them.

Further, a universe of hypotheses has opened now, for our consideration. And Responsible science was never: "This is the Science, period, now shut up."

The writer is a former educator based in Chicago, USA






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