‘Settled Science’ is a false construct, used by authoritarian figures to shut down free thought, exploration of ideas and debate.
‘Settled Science’ is most often cited these days by politicians, government agencies and world-wide NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations) in an effort to exert some form of control over the thoughts and actions of those they purport to serve.
If science is settled, only an uneducated fool would question it, right? You can only really understand it if you’ve gone to college and gotten a degree in some science-y thing where other science-y people taught you science-y facts. That’s how this works and if you think you know anything – well, you’re just wrong.
But how can science ever be settled? People who set themselves up as scientific experts have always felt they had all the answers and questioning their authority was dangerous.
In fact, science constantly evolves. Settled Science would rapidly become a house of cards if it were never questioned. Look back in history and you can find various once strongly held beliefs that upon closer examination proved to be incorrect.
That the earth is flat leaps to mind, along with it being the center of the universe, the causes of infectious disease and the existence of germs. “Science” at one time was considered settled when it came to these beliefs.
If those concepts are too long ago to satisfy you, there are plenty of more recent strongly held beliefs that have been proven false.
Just as one example, consider that 25-30 years ago, parts of the medical community, along with government scientists determined that the reason people were becoming heavier and less healthy was that they were eating too much fat. Enter the low-fat diet, with its substitution of sugars, starches and ‘whole-grains’. Since then, obesity rates in the US have more than doubled.
How many pharmaceuticals have been approved, and then later removed from shelves? Wasn’t it ‘settled science’ that told us it was safe to take Vioxx, Zantac and Fen-Fen? Further research, fueled by the high incidence of harm to people taking these drugs, showed that they’re not safe at all.
Science, by its very nature, is never settled.
