COVID-19 and distrust of science

When Galileo supported the Heliocentric model of the solar system through observation, the Vatican clergy forced him to recant his findings - all just because they believed the Earth to be the center of the universe. Galileo famously said ‘Eppursimuove’ (Italian - ‘and yet it moves’) in disapproval. What he meant was that regardless of any of their beliefs, or him retracting his findings, the Earth still moved about its orbit. This is an old example of science denialism and its futility in the broadest sense – because we currently know that Galileo, not the Vatican, was correct. A lot more has been updated since then in the field of astronomy, but science-denial and distrust of scientists is still a major problem today, reflected by a significant number of people. The psychology behind it remains the same as for the disapproving Vatican clergy who accused Galileo of heresy. As much as the scientific process is borne out of human rationality, distrust of science can be said to be borne out of our irrationality; more specifically - errors of reasoning.

To understand why many people are so readily dismissive of various scientific discoveries or facts, we definitely have to understand what science is and why it is so hard for so many of us to grasp it. This is especially relevant during this pandemic; because as much as we can observe how effective science has been in preventing worst-case scenarios, we can also see how denial of scientific findings, mistrust of scientists in favor of conspiracy theorists is spreading faster than the virus itself. Much like how the Earth keeps orbiting the sun, apathetic to our denial, the virus keeps doing what it has evolved to do – replicate to infect as many people as possible. For humans, science is the best and only method we have to understand this pandemic and fight it. There is no viable alternative yet. Denying science obviously threatens public health and human progress itself.