Following the Scientist

There have been many claims down through the years by government officials, institutions of: "higher learning," legacy press, and others that they "follow the science." This was the claim by many during the time of holding Americans hostage. Anthony Fauci went from "I follow the science" to "I am the science." This did little more than as citizens; we are expected to follow the scientist, not necessarily the science, and definitely not question their pronouncements. Prior to his passing in 2008, popular author Michael Crichton wrote an addendum to his 2004 best-seller, State Of Fear, titled, "Why Politicized Science is Dangerous." Menno De Boer posted the appendix online under the title, "Michael Crichton: Why Politicized Science is Dangerous.' It is an insightful piece, and although not about Climate Change or Covid, it has applications to both:

Imagine that there is a new scientific theory that warns of an impending crisis, and points to a way out.

This theory quickly draws support from leading scientists, politicians, and celebrities around the world. Research is funded by distinguished philanthropies, and carried out at prestigious universities. The crisis is reported frequently in the media. The science is taught in college and high school classrooms.

As Crichton points out, it was embraced, advocated for and defended the ruling elites and thought shapers of the day as "science":

Its supporters included Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill. It was approved by Supreme Court justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis, who ruled in its favor. The famous who supported it included Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone; activist Margaret Sanger; botanist Luther Burbank; Leland Stanford, founder of Stanford University; the novelist H.G. Wells; the playwright George Bernard Shaw; and hundreds of others. Nobel Prize winners gave support. Research was backed by the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations. The Cold Springs Harbor Institute was built to carry out this research, but important work was also done at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and Johns Hopkins. Legislation to address this crisis was passed in states from New York to California.

It was social Darwinism, the "science" of eugenics. the belief that we could advance the human species by weeding out and breading out the less evolved in the species. Blacks, Jews, “feeble-minded’ and other “dangerous human pests.” The ideas were exported and acted on by another world leader in Germany in the 1930s and 40s. Abandoning science and following the voice of the scientist can be very dangerous and immoral.

https://mailchi.mp/9e42250641a4/thanksgiving-in-the-midst-of-hardship?e=169825fd77