Antiscience and reason

Professor Raymond Tallis, of Sense About Science, has just written a column in Times UK explaining why science is regarded with such suspicion today while junk science passing itself off as science is uncritically accepted.

Right, what have the scientists ever done for us? Well . . .

...Hostility to science is largely pretence, of course. The most vocal opponents still help themselves liberally to its benefits at every waking moment of their lives. Nor, when misfortune strikes, do they deny themselves science-based technologies to rescue them. When they fall desperately ill, few proponents of alternative medicine choose ancient remedies over modern drugs and surgical operations, which are rooted in, and draw upon, a vast hinterland of scientific knowledge.

And yet this hostility should not be dismissed. Underplaying the benefits of science and emphasising the things that go wrong feeds into a general pessimism about the future, and about human possibility, that could be self-fulfilling. Junk science, which parasitises the language of science — think of “reflexology”, alternative “immune therapies” — thrives on denigration of the real thing and is looming ever larger in the collective consciousness....

The contribution of medical science — which is increasing as the emphasis shifts from falling infant mortality to (spectacular) declines in mortality in late life — is part of a larger picture of the beneficent impact of science on living conditions, wealth production and technological support for every aspect of daily life....