My inspiration for this post was reading The Antiscience Movement Is Escalating, Going Global and Killing Thousands, by Peter J. Hotez/Scientific American. Here’s an excerpt:
“Antiscience is the rejection of mainstream scientific views and methods or their replacement with unproven or deliberately misleading theories, often for nefarious and political gains. It targets prominent scientists and attempts to discredit them. The destructive potential of antiscience was fully realized in the U.S.S.R. under Joseph Stalin. Millions of Russian peasants died from starvation and famine during the 1930s and 1940s because Stalin embraced the pseudoscientific views...Now antiscience is causing mass deaths once again in this COVID-19 pandemic…Despite my best efforts to sound the alarm and call it out, the antiscience disinformation created mass havoc in the red states. During the summer of 2020, COVID-19 accelerated in states of the South as governors prematurely lifted restrictions to create a second and unnecessary wave of COVID-19 cases and deaths.”
So Hotez defines antiscience as the rejection of mainstream scientific views and their replacement with unproven or deliberately misleading theories. What does that even mean? Science is a process that moves forward by questioning received wisdom. Does “rejection” encompass doubt or criticism? At what point would a theory be considered “proven”? . And why all the ad hominen verbiage (“deliberating misleading”, “nefarious”)? Can’t people just disagree without being accused of bad faith?
One more thing: Hotez was wrong about the life-saving efficacy of Covid-era restrictions. More on that point:
"Did lockdowns work? The verdict on Covid restrictions." by Herby, Jonung, and Hanke / IEA Perspectives, 2023.
“We define lockdowns as the imposition of at least one compulsory, non-pharmaceutical intervention... The results of our meta-analysis support the conclusion that lockdowns in the spring of 2020 had a negligible effect on COVID-19 mortality. This result is consistent with the view that voluntary changes in behaviour, such as social distancing, did play an important role in mitigating the pandemic.”
"The Effects of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions on COVID-19 Cases, Hospitalizations, and Mortality: A Systematic Literature Review and Meta-Analysis." By James A. Peters and Mohsen Farhadloo / AJPM focus, 2023
“It is worth mentioning that policy stringency and mask wearing were related to decreased cases per capita but not mortality.”
“The Swedish COVID-19 approach: a scientific dialogue on mitigation policies.” Björkman, Gisslén, Gullberg and Ludvigsson / Front Public Health 2023.
“During the COVID-19 pandemic, Sweden was among the few countries that did not enforce strict lockdown measures but instead relied more on voluntary and sustainable mitigation recommendations. While supported by the majority of Swedes, this approach faced rapid and continuous criticism. Unfortunately, the respectful debate centered around scientific evidence often gave way to mudslinging. However, the available data on excess all-cause mortality rates indicate that Sweden experienced fewer deaths per population unit during the pandemic (2020–2022) than most high-income countries and was comparable to neighboring Nordic countries through the pandemic. An open, objective scientific dialogue is essential for learning and preparing for future outbreaks.”
"Assessing COVID-19 pandemic policies and behaviours and their economic and educational trade-offs across US states from Jan 1, 2020, to July 31, 2022: an observational analysis." Bollyky et al / The Lancet 2023
“The policy mandates considered were closures of bars, restaurants, gyms, and schools, mask and vaccine mandates, and stay-at-home orders and gathering restrictions….Our results suggest that state declines in fourth-grade mathematics scores were associated with the intensity of mandates deployed… vaccine coverage is linked to fewer COVID-19 deaths, and protective mandates and behaviours were associated with fewer infections.”
In other words, pandemic mandates were associated with fewer infections but not lower mortality. And if it weren’t for the “antiscience” crowd questioning the wisdom of Covid mandates, scientists might never have figured that out. But because some states and countries were willing to lift Covid restrictions relatively early, researchers were provided with plenty of data for further study. And they discovered that what passed as mainstream science a few years before had led the world astray.