When did the war on science start?
When I was a boy, growing up on the farm, we learned at home that science was our future.
The green revolution was putting an end to starvation and hybrids were the future of grain farming. That technology eventually got stuck on corn, but we could see the potential.
Growing up, I knew vaccines were keeping us from the plagues of polio, whooping cough and measles, which had killed and maimed the generations before us. They were so widely accepted as safe, or much safer than not having it, that every child was treated.
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In those days, the names and the faces of local folks that were infected and often died were burned into every parent’s memories. Children’s grave markers prove the effectiveness of science. My predecessors had first-hand knowledge of vaccines’ benefits. Mine is part of the culture. Convincing my kids of our collected wisdom is a challenge.
In the early days of tuberculosis vaccines, more than 100 children died from a contaminated dose of the BCG vaccine in one German town. But that didn’t stop vaccinations. Science saves lives and they all knew it first-hand.
Plant and livestock breeding are products of science. So is precision ag. The profitability they bring has allowed farmers to produce more with fewer chemicals, costs and risks, both physically and financially. It has fed millions more than otherwise might have been the case.
Science isn’t a set of books. It is the process that we can use to decide whether we can trust something.
Most of us choose to trust things we know to be effective, either first-hand or second-hand from our elders or teachers. They are trusted sources.
A paper published in the late 1990s in the British medical journal Lancet tied vaccines and autism together. It was later discredited and withdrawn, but fuelled by the new and still trusted medium of the internet, it started a firestorm of first world parents refusing herd immunity programs for their kids.
Those parents didn’t have first- or second-hand knowledge of whooping cough, measles and polio.
When it comes to genetic modification, pesticides and food safety, most North Americans are more than two generations removed from the farm.
And maybe a science-based education is lacking in our culture, along with a body of trusted sources.
michael.raine@producer.com
