“Scientists have given science a bad name”

 

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“Scientists have given science a bad name”

A caller to my radio show yesterday, a physician, took strong issue with me regarding COVID-19 therapeutics. He accused me of not believing in science. His last words before we had to go to a commercial break were, “I’m a scientist.”

Given that I am not a scientist, he assumed that comment would persuade me — or at least persuade many listeners — that I was not qualified to disagree with him.

If that was his assumption, he was wrong.

“I don’t care,” I responded. “It’s irrelevant. Scientists have given science a bad name.”

I would not have said that as recently as three years ago.

But in recent years, and especially in the past two years, some basic suppositions of mine have changed.

I no longer assume when I read a statement by a scientist that the statement is based on science. In fact, I believe I am more committed to scientific truth than are many scientists.

The American Medical Association advocates the removal of sex designation from birth certificates. If many doctors or other scientists have issued a dissent, I am not aware of it. 

"Assigning sex using binary variables in the public portion of the birth certificate fails to recognize the medical spectrum of gender identity." 

Those are the words of the author of the AMA report, Willie Underwood III, M.D. Sarah Mae Smith, M.D., an AMA delegate from California, speaking on behalf of the Women Physicians Section, said, 

"We need to recognize gender is not a binary but a spectrum." When the American Medical Association and a plethora of physicians tell us that human beings, unlike every other animal above some reptilian species, are "not binary," i.e., neither male nor female, the assertion "I am a scientist" becomes meaningless. 

In mid-2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the medical community was demanding physical distancing, mask wearing and the lockdown of businesses and schools, more than a thousand health care professionals announced that the protests against racism then taking place — events with no social distancing, often no masks, plenty of yelling, and people "coughing uncontrollably" (New York Times description) — were medically necessary. 

Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist, tweeted, "We should always evaluate the risks and benefits of efforts to control the virus. In this moment the public health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus."