Letter: False claims about science rooted in conspiracy theories
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Oncologica COVID PCR testing and genetic sequencing. (Photo: Business Wire)
Regarding the letter “Scientific conclusions based on who funds the research” (Aug. 21): When I was a practicing scientist, never was I under any pressure, over all the grant programs I participated in, to get preordained results.
Given this letter’s context, it seems that the writer feels the solid, peer-reviewed science of vaccination, masking and mitigations against the virus is somehow suspect. Perhaps it is the writer who has an agenda when that person interprets scientific results. Instead of updating a worldview based on new peer-reviewed, reproducible results like a scientist would, the writer seeks to discredit the information like a conspiracy theorist would. In particular, the reference to “billionaires” seems like an invocation of a popular vaccine-related conspiracy theory. This is all the more ironic because conspiracy theories are explicitly unscientific, being designed so there is no information that could possibly falsify them.
Ultimately, casting reproducible, verifiable information about the world as partisan, suspect or unknowable is a common tactic of those who seek to undermine democracy. If truth is unknowable, then all that matters is that “my team” wins, which is then used to justify corruption, the degradation of one’s rights, or the very real evils that spring from authoritarian and fascist regimes.
Jackson DeBuhr, Ph.D. • Sappington
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