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Electrons, the Holy Trinity, and the arrogance of pseudo-skepticism
I spent the last few days in Padua, northern Italy. I was attending the annual CICAP Fest, a 3-day long festival on science and skepticism organized by the Comitato Italiano per il Controllo delle Affermazioni sulle Pseudoscienze (the Italian Committee for the Investigation of Claims of the Pseudosciences). It was a fun excuse to see some old friends, enjoy the sights and culture of one of the great Italian cities, and of course talk about some of my own ideas concerning this year’s theme: “Navigating uncertainty.”
On the last day I was part of an event together with my friend Guido Barbujani, a prominent human population geneticist, and we talked, among other things, about the similarities, if any, between electrons and the Christian concept of the Holy Trinity.
Wait, what? Let me explain. Guido and I were tackling the issue of trust in science, or lack thereof, to be more precise. Why are so many people across the world “skeptical” of the efficacy and even safety of vaccines, masks, and all the rest? I call this attitude “pseudo-skepticism” because it isn’t really skepticism at all, but closer to denialism.
The word “skeptic” comes from the Greek “skeptikos” via the Latin “scepticus,” meaning to inquire, to reflect. Skeptics, then, do not claim to have The Truth, but rather to seek the best human approximations to truths. Part of the skeptic attitude is maintaining an open mind about all sorts of things, though — as the great Carl Sagan once put it — not so open that our brain falls off. A denialist, by contrast, is someone who is pretty darn sure that a given notion is false, and who moreover is convinced that he knows why everyone else is being taken in.
For instance, a person who rejects the notion of at least partially human-caused climate change at this stage in our understanding of things is a denialist, not a skeptic. There surely was a time when it made some sense to be skeptical of the reality of global warming, but that boat has long since sailed.
Similarly in the case of vaccine denialism or even mere “hesitancy.” To be skeptical of vaccines when they were first introduced at the end of the 18th century by Edward Jenner was very reasonable. To be “skeptical” of the technique today is not.
