Yesterday I was at a brewery in a particularly nerdy, computer-sciency part of town. There were a couple of guys having drinks at the end of the bar, and they w

Yesterday I was at a brewery in a particularly nerdy, computer-sciency part of town. There were a couple of guys having drinks at the end of the bar, and they were conversing loudly enough that I knew they wanted to be heard. One loud guy says to the other, “my professor at [mumbled] college told us that there’s no way that smoking can cause birth defects. He said that research would be unethical because they’d have to force women to have babies and force them to smoke. Blah blah blah ...” All the guys around him nod in agreement then go on to share screeds about how the liberals are ruining all the fun the world and violating their personal freedoms. And, I’m thinking to myself, “What the F is going on?” They were talking confidently enough that even I second-guessed my my beliefs on smoking. So, I hit Google Scholar, read the abstracts of the top 5 papers (out of hundreds), and then felt relief that, yes, the science on this topic seems legit and well-explored. And, yes, it is dangeous for pregnant women to smoke. But, I’m still bothered. These guys seemed like educated, and likely intelligent, people. And, yet, they’re trapped in a political belief system that is making them doubt science wholesale. Some authority figures (likely with same political stance) can tell them ‘facts’ with enough conviction that these guys buy it without question. And, worse, they go on to confidently spread memes about the unreliability of science, scientists, and the liberal political agenda. To me, as a scientist, this is scary as hell. For 300+ years, we’ve been using science as our most reliable way to understand the world and make rational predictions. And, now, people are disavowing science if it slightly goes against their belief system. What does this means for the future? I don’t know, but I can’t imagine that it’s good. (By the way, I don’t consider myself a ‘liberal’, although that’s what I am called these days. Generally, I just try to learn a lot about things and side with what seems like the most rational position.)