* Progress within a generation is not mandatory for progress across generations. We progress as a species across generations. You don't need to find people chan

* Progress within a generation is not mandatory for progress across generations. We progress as a species across generations. You don't need to find people changing opinions within your circle. Our sample set is far, far bigger. * Data/Evidence itself is a living thing. It changes, new data comes in, old data is discarded, or scientific consensus on the "interpretation" changes and evolves like an organism. Whether you like it or not, entities who interpret and report the data operate on and are influenced by political, social, financial and many other factors. Sometimes they believe they are "doing the right thing" while changing the interpretation. To give you some examples: * For more than 40 years, there was super strong evidence and scientific consensus that neutering dogs early reduces cancer risk. Now, it has already come to light that this consensus was largely driven by moral dilemma to prevent the stray litters epidemic. Last 5 years, the opposite scientific consensus is building up: Neutering dogs early increases cancer and health risk [1] * The complete international goof up on wearing masks, where everyone including WHO and CDC unanimously publicised consensus that masks do not help wearers — was driven by unquantified fears of masks running out of supply for frontline workers, and not by data. There were many ways they could have tackled that fear, e.g. by recommending governments to split retail and emergency stocks. But no, they decided to tackle it by changing the consensus instead, huge confusion and endless debates followed (like how do masks work for workers but does not work for regular people), lives were lost. Now that interpretation consensus has taken a U turn, except it's not new data, data was already scientifically present in the SARS and various other past epidemics. Just new consensus. In many cases, you see that data was politicised not by politicians, but by the scientific community itself — because they are still learning how to cope with moral, social and practical dilemmas when interpreting data, and they do not have accountability for their interpretations. Their interpretations are just recommendations and the final decision making falls on authorities who are only held accountable. Within one generation, you can have one huge mess up with the data or consensus, and have the whole species die off. It could have very well happened already, had COVID not been less fatal to younger population. It's too early to root for within generation progress, but we definitely do progress as a species. That's how it's intended to work. 1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6070019/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6070019/