Don’t Trust Science?

At Facebook they analyzed everyone’s status updates and arrived at the conclusion that there is one day all year when Facebookers are happiest. Christmas.

Data crunchers in other labs have revealed that if you live in Vermont you will live longer than if you live in New York.

Science interprets stuff like that and makes it really useful.  (“Honey, call the movers – we’re going to Burlington on Christmas.”)

Okay, so what if a doctor told you that getting a vaccination against swine flu would be good? Would you get the shot?

Guess what — according to a University of Michigan poll, 60 percent of parents surveyed said they do not plan to vaccinate their children against H1N1. Many were worried about the vaccine’s side effects. People believe that getting the shot might make you more likely to get sick. Bill Maher told his 60,000 Twitter followers, “If u get a swine flu shot ur an idiot.”   Even the popular Dr. Mercola is against the shots.

The news is bad for flu vaccinations and it’s even worse for others. Some parents, including Jenny McCarthy, believe that having your children vaccinated against measles might make it more likely that they’ll be diagnosed with autism. Fewer people, therefore, will take the good advice of their doctors and get a vaccination that might help their children and society at large.

People don’t trust science like they used to. A Pew Research Center poll says that only 27 percent of Americans think our greatest achievements are in science – down from 47 percent a decade ago.   One explanation is that the days of Big Science – landing on the Moon, inventing the transistor – seem far away. Science is routine now.  We expect our smart phones to do the laundry and make photocopies.

Even the innocuous Bill Nye the Science Guy is making people mad.  A story appeared on Rainn Wilson’s website about the time Nye was giving a science talk in Waco, Texas:

He cited Genesis 1:16, which reads: “God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.” Nye stated that the lesser light in the aforementioned quote was not technically a light, but a reflector, as in it reflects the sun’s light. The God-fearing folks of Waco were furious. One woman shouted, “We believe in God,” and proceeded to usher out her three children.

Just because your doctor says get a flu shot doesn’t mean you have to get one.  (I’m not getting one.)  Just because NASA says we should go to Mars doesn’t make it a good idea.  (There are a few old bosses I’d like to send to Mars, believe me, but I’d rather we spend the money on solar power and electric cars.) It’s good to question science and medicine.

In the void brought about by all that questioning, however, sometimes you get ignorance.  Not good.  My fear of getting a flu shot comes mostly from ignorance – I admit it, and by not trusting science we could be creating an epidemic of ignorance worse than the flu.

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Backlash

This week’s Newsweek cover article is a slap at Oprah Winfrey for crazy talk about complementary and integrative medicine. Oprah does cover some fringe stuff that is wacky and sometimes wrong. But I think she’s right to do it. Here’s why.

The history of medicine is smeared with snake oil. It was once believed that drinking oil – not olive oil, but the black stuff that comes out of the ground – had healthy properties. Even today, some swear that drinking apple cider vinegar helps digestion and whacks infections, but it may actually damage tooth enamel and sear the esophagus.

Newsweek slaps Oprah for going out on a slippery snake oil limb, promoting people like Suzanne Somers and her aggressive program of hormone replacement therapy. Somers, 62, takes 60 vitamins and supplements and also gives herself a shot of estrogen directly into her vagina. Newsweek portrays her as laughable, but I agree with Oprah – Somers might be a pioneer. Self-experimenters have often advanced science. At the age of 22, Sir Isaac Newton nearly blinded himself by staring at the sun in a mirror because he wanted to study the after-images it left on his retinas. Australian physician Barry James Marshall swallowed some foul-smelling bacterial crud to show that Helicobacter pylori caused ulcers. Sir Issac ended up with marks on his eyelids; but Marshall ended up with a 2005 Nobel Prize for linking the bacterial crud, H. pylori, to ulcers. I’m not saying Suzanne Somers is going to surprise us with a treatise on gravity, but she has courage.

“Everyone was against me, but I knew I was right.” — Barry James Marshall

The line between courage and dumbness, however, can be slim. Jenny McCarthy, another frequent Oprah guest, believes that her son Evan contracted autism because he received a measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination. So far researchers haven’t found a link between vaccinations and autism. We do know, as Newsweek points out, that the vaccinations have saved the lives of thousands of children who otherwise might have died.

Facts like that don’t seem to change McCarthy’s belief. “My science is named Evan, and he’s at home. That’s my science.”

Speaking of belief, look at “The Secret.” Oprah led the charge for it, and it has some good stuff, reminding us that we are all fields of energy in a larger field of energy. But it also stated that all diseases can be cured by the power of thought alone. That’s going too far. Even super-Secret supporter Oprah had to caution a guest on her show who had breast cancer and who was thinking of forgoing surgery against the advice of her doctors. Said Oprah, “I don’t think that you should ignore all of the advantages of medical science, and try to, through your own mind now because you saw a Secret tape, heal yourself.”

Yet Oprah knows people can heal themselves with Qi Gong, meditation, yoga, acupuncture. She’s not afraid to promote this “new” medicine, a medicine that is actually old, embracing the best of East and West.

Newsweek is going backward, contributing to the backlash against new medicine. Oprah is going forward by supporting medical pioneers. While looking into the sun, drinking crud or shooting up in the vagina may not seem so brilliant, breakthroughs come from acts of courage or folly and sometimes both.