Science is under threat

Clara Martin

Written Expression

With the rise of populism in this post-truth era, science is under threat.

“The Earth is flat ! “ That’s a common debate in USA nowadays, that was absolutely impossible to conceive a decade ago. With the advent of conspiracy theories and their spread through internet, sciences seem to be endangered. Thus with the rise of populism how to protect it ? To my mind, it’s necessary to protect sciences to all cost but we can’t force people to think what we want them think, thus we must find other solutions than to impose them a truth.

First, we can’t say that theories are another truth acceptable if we have proofs for THE truth. As the theoretical physicist, Lawrence Krauss, said “Purpose of education is not to validate ignorance but to overcome it” and in a world where new technologies are spreading, to understand science it’s a needing and certainly will be a survival tool. In effect, we can see yet that the ignorance leads to a threaten for the human kind, for instance with the apparition of anti-vax parents that we can find in miscellaneous fact of child deaths.

So we have to protect sciences for our generation as much as for the future ones , it’s undeniable. However, we can’t conflict with the personal truth of somebody. On the hand, the force isn’t a solution because our society must rely on tolerance and to the respect of each other’s and as Neil deGrasse Tyson said in his talk show “ Political attempts to require that others share your personal truths are, in their limit, dictatorships “. On the other hand, if someone believe in something and we try to show them there are wrong, with arguments, we expose ourselves to the phenomenon of blow-back, which can lead to them focusing completely on the subject. You can’t just destroy the fundamental believes of a person just like that because it means you destroy who they are.

Actually, I’m convinced that the main problem it’s that people don’t understand sciences or didn’t collect enough proofs in their lives to believe in it, thus they create their own truth because they need answer to this ignorance. As Neil deGrasse Tyson said “[The enlighten of society] won’t happen until the people in charge, and the people who vote for them, come to understand how and why science works.” Furthermore, if the scientist was seen as a superior being who we believe without doubt in the past, nowadays, people lost trust in him and he have to change his way of sharing sciences. And I think that some news forms of sharing that begins to appear and are based on citizen participation could really be solutions. We have, for instance, public debates where everybody can share their idea and debate on them about important subjects as the global warming. We also have the solution of the co-production of knowledge where citizens participate actively in sciences with the collect of data.

To conclude, Sciences are universal and everybody must understand them but we are in a transition period between the moment where scientists were unique and belonged to an elite and a world where everybody will be able to call themselves a scientist. Thus, it’s the duty of each citizen aware of the situation, each scientist and each government to assist with those transition. Science isn’t under threat as long as it exists people to defend it and I will try to be one of this people

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