No one, not opportunist quacks, not imposter cult leaders, not obscurantist family members, not obstinate religious leaders, not clueless politicians, not biased media, has done the kind of damage to the reputation of science as the spokespeople and representatives of science: WHO, CDC, ICMR, IMA, vaccine makers, and the numerous institutions and organisations that are supposed to do science and reach it to the people.
With fumbling up the initial response, followed by wrong advice based on incomplete data, knee-jerk reactions to developments and mutations, swinging from one end of the spectrum to another by claiming that a certain medicine shows promise to prescribing it to everyone to the point of creating shortages and black markets, to the approval of untested vaccines and then backtracking on efficacy only to say the exact opposite of what they said, to the constantly changing recommendations to governments and people, to bickering and disagreement in public, to oscillating between blaming China and exonerating it, to not having clear control of the narrative and public announcements, to bungling up simple advice about whether to mask or not, to taking about-turns on their own guidance without as much as blinking an eye, to getting into public spats with quacks and ‘Godmen’ and even other men & women of science, the keepers of science have put every step wrong possible to make science less accessible, trustworthy, and honest.
This pandemic, and the ridiculously short-sighted approach of doing science publicly, allowing non-scientists to have a say, rushing to announce results prematurely, and the complete lack of cooperation, coordination, or even goodwill at times between those that we look up to has damaged the movement towards rationality and away from superstition more than is immediately evident. These people have created more anti-vaxxers than the anti-vaxxers could ever hope for in their wildest dreams. They have dealt a huge blow to the standing of science as a method of approaching problems. The kind of destruction and taking apart of the very foundation of scientific temper that had slowly built up over decades, even centuries, that their behaviour in this pandemic has wreaked will take a long time to repair itself.
Oh, and before anyone misunderstands this as coming from someone who is having second thoughts about ‘allopathy’ or modern medicine, here are my two cents to end this rant:
- AYUSH is dangerous poppycock. it is laughable to believe that in the 21st century, we still believe in things like water having memory or cow urine being able to cure viral infection.
- There is no such thing as ‘allopathy’. It is a pejorative term invented by Hahnemann, the self-declared prophet of Homoeopathy.
- I remain a rationalist with a deep commitment to reason and the scientific system. This is despite the best efforts of scientists and their ilk to accidentally discredit it with the laypeople during this pandemic as abovementioned.
