A Case for the Scientific Conversation
Importance of Fostering Dialouge Instead of Forcing Consensus
Almost a quarter into 2021, we can all acknowledge that this was not what we were expecting for the second decade of the 21st century. In my case at least, I used to daydream of a future characterized by accelerating scientific innovation. And in a sense, the 2020s have delivered with groundbreaking biological developments in cancer immunotherapy and gene editing to treat rare diseases — not to mention the application of mRNA technology towards vaccines for COVID-19.
Perhaps this would not be a century defined by rise of totalitarian governments and invasion of big tech into our private lives but one where scientific possibility unfurls before us. However, I am seeing a problem of science being presented in a way that is paternalistic and lacking in nuance. Instead of allowing the public to glimpse the scientific conversation, scientific communities push a consensus view which often leaves unexplained gaps. This was seen in not only in confusion over the origin of the virus behind COVID-19 but also in the distant domain of astronomy.
Last month I read a book, entitled Extraterrestrial by Avi Loeb, which revived my childhood interest in space exploration and the potential to find evidence of alien life within this century. The book describes the controversy around an unidentified object, dubbed ʻOumuamua, that passed through our solar system back in 2017. While most astronomers insist that ‘Oumuamua was just an unusual comet, Loeb is a proponent of the theory that it was instead a piece of space trash from an ancient, perhaps extinct, alien civilization.
Because the claim of alien space trash is a bold one for the public, there seems to be a higher burden of proof for this explanation rather than one which would not cause alarm like a peculiar comet. Similarly, some scientists are unwilling to acknowledge that the possibility of SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19, evolving naturally in an artificial environment like a lab is just as possible as the virus arising in a local wet market. To be clear, this would NOT mean that SAR-CoV-2 was artificially designed as a bioweapon (all evidence points to natural evolution) but rather it may have been a result of contamination in a bat research lab in Wuhan with poor safety precautions. While this latter explanation could alarm people, it does a disservice to the educated public to not acknowledge it.
At the same time, though the book Extraterrestrial did not irrefutably prove to me that ʻOumuamua was a piece of space trash from an alien civilization, it did convince me that this is the most plausible explanation of those presented. Without having been able to view ʻOumuamu as it passed Earth, we cannot say for sure. Likewise, we cannot say definitely that SARS-CoV-2 did not escape from a lab because no one was there with a microscope to watch while the virus mutated into its current form. But in both cases, all the facts should be presented to the public rather than assuming that they do not know enough to decide for themselves.
This type of information could potentially be available through mainstream media outlets provided that readers first answer some questions before accessing the article. Questions like “Do you understand the scientific method?” and “What is the difference between a hypothesis and fact?” just like we often have to prove we are not robots before signing into our online accounts. But if we expect a jury of our peers to look at evidence to determine verdicts in court then we should extend that same expectation to the public evaluating scientific evidence.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic has made everyone an amateur epidemiologist, maybe going forward we can expand this interest to other areas in science. But the expectation that science will be able to explain everything is a false belief harbored by the public and not explicitly denied by the scientific community. In truth, we are just trying to make sense of the forces around us as we hurtle through space on a tiny rock spinning around the sun. But while grappling to understand the logic behind the universe, scientists should present nuanced explanations to the public and we, as non-experts with reasonable capacity for logic, should be prepared for the complexity.
