There has always been a conflict between “science and politics”. Politicians have forever tried to usurp the “authority of science” and use it to support a political narrative. This is what happened when Pope Urban the VIII—truly a man of science he, put his close friend Galileo Galilei under house arrest for Galileo’s support of the Copernican heliocentric theory in the historical Sidereus Nuncius “Stary Messenger”. When Galileo hypothesized that the planets including the earth orbited about the sun and confirmed Copernicus’s theory using his new telescope it did not prove to be consistent with the existing dogma of the ruling class—the Catholic Church. This process has been repeated hundreds of times throughout the ages. It is interesting that many cosmologists, physicists, and chemists are adjusting their own theories about the origins of life.
Einstein’s theory of general relativity and THE BIG BANG THEORY have created a new energy in science for “creationism”. Berkley evolutionary biologist F. Clark Howell opined “There is no encompassing theory of human evolution, alas, there never really has been”. In her book NARRATIVE OF HUMAN EVOLUTION paleoanthropologist Misia Landau writes “Darwinists assume the origins of life is an evolutionary one, and then they plug the fossil record into a preexisting narrative”. Sound familiar? The number of people who are both theoretical physicist and experts (Rabbis”) in ancient Hebrew and Old Testament history you can probably count on with one hand. At least two Herald Schroeder from MIT—GENESIS AND THE BIG BANG, and Jonathan Wells a geophysicist and Old Testament Scholar conclude that the BIG BANG and the creation story in Genesis:1 are perfectly consistent with each other. Hundreds, maybe thousands of scientists, have come to the same conclusion. During my 6 years of undergraduate and graduate immersion in the basic sciences I would have been laughed at by my professors for voicing such an opinion. Today not so much and this gives me great hope.
In more modern times the political narrative has taken over science and become ingrained in our thinking and in The Academy. Rachel Carson ushered in the “modern day of empiricism” and environmentalism with her book SILENT SPRING. She started writing the narrative while still an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. The hypothesis that the overuse of DDT was causing unrecoverable damage to the environment—the most notable example the loss of destruction of bird eggs by DDT leached from ground water. The empiric reality of the causation of DDT use to bird egg destruction was never proven—correlation does not meet the scientific standard of causation. Other examples in SILENT SPRING have fallen when placed under scientific scrutiny. The science does not support the narrative. In the meantime, it has been estimated that over one hundred million people have died from Malaria because DDT could not be used to kill mosquitos. Rachel Carson has been credited as being one of the founders of the modern-day environmental movement. All based on false science and a political narrative. I ask—global warming or climate change? Change the narrative when the argument doesn’t prove true.
The recent misuse of “science” in the Covid-19 pandemic is another example of a political narrative. Always be concerned when experts tell you that “They are Science”. Even in our own State we have people with little expertise making assessments that are founded on a political narrative and pure empiricism. Data is not science until it is tested. Science is the process of testing an idea, not the accumulation of data and then trying to make it fit a political narrative like Lisia Landeau warns. This is what the Darwinists practiced.
I believe from my limited experience in “the hard sciences” that one of the most endearing characteristics of a scientist is humility. When a person puts themselves “out there” as an expert it is hard to be humble. Arguably the greatest surgeon of the twentieth century Robert Zollinger opined: ” I know what I know, and I know what I don’t know….part of what I know is what I don’t know”. He also informed all his senior medical students on their last day on his service that “50% of what I have taught you isn’t true”. He then told us that it was our job in our careers to go out and “set the record straight”. This type of scientific humility led to an open mind. Politicians, journalists in the media, experts on governor’s advisory panels have not been trained in the art of “scientific humility”.
Much of what we have been told about Covid-19 mitigation and treatment strategy has not been true. The hubris of those experts in believing that they could control an airborne upper respiratory tract virus that was easily transmissible for which there was no vaccination—there has never been a human RNA virus for which there was a vaccine, was careless and probably led to delusional fears that may in the end prove to be more harmful than the virus itself. I am a proponent of vaccines and me and my family are vaccinated and “boosted”, but to make claims that the vaccine will end the pandemic were careless. In the end the vaccines are only part of a larger mitigation strategy. A strategy that was completely “botched” by the public health experts.
Doctors and nurses taking care of sick patients have made great strides in treatment. The public health specialists in placing themselves between the doctor patient relationship and transaction have done more harm than good. Top-down coercive mandates do not take the place of a conversation between a doctor and the patient. Do you trust your doctor or doctor “I am Science” Dr. Fauci? In our State Dr. Hahn as in my opinion been magnificent. Dr. Ryan Cole has been equally magnificent. Differences of opinion when tested are part of the scientific process. Those who from within the medical community—Dr. Pate in numerous interviews and pod casts, and from without—Mr. (Dr.) Jim Jones, have made themselves modern day Pope Urbans supporting a political narrative while at the same time trying to marginalize scientific debate. In a bulletin from the State Board of Medicine in October the lawyer for The Board made a similar statement and they got it right in my opinion.
“The Board’s jurisdiction is governed by what is in its statutes and rules,” the Idaho Board of Medicine’s response said. “Neither the Idaho Medical Practice Act nor the applicable administrative rules provide a basis for the Board to discipline licensees for statements made during a conference, to the media, or in any other public setting.”
It is the legislature that should change the law. No one else. It seems like the State Board of Medicine is playing by the rules. Maybe the “experts” should follow suit, but then they have a narrative to support. Just like Rachel Carson.
