Why People (Rightly) Don’t Trust Scientists

And why they are right to deride the liberal media

Please at least skim The Scientists Who Declared War on Half of America:

The Scientists Who Declared War on Half of America

Tl;dr – We are all flawed. We can do better, but delusions of perfection cause unnecessary suffering.

Note: This post is about scientists (humans), not science (the process by which we get less wrong over time).

Scientists Are Only Human

Like many EAs and Vegans, many of the most “popular” scientists present themselves as purely rational, Truth-telling machines. This is not true.

There is a long history of celebrated scientists making predictions that are 100%, 180-degrees wrong.* There are no apologies, no lessons learned, just continued absurd hyperbole, such as this 2026 doozy, cited by Professor Pielke (emphasis added):

What role do Mann and Hotez play in the literary analogy?

They are obviously the diminutive hobbits, Frodo and Sam, who they quote at length as they close the book. If the war is lost, they explain, just like in the existential battle waged by the hobbits, “there won’t be an Earth.” (p. 259)

No Earth indeed.

<sigh>

Professor Pielke also notes that it isn’t just a few attention-seeking egomaniacs. Just as with Paul Ehrlich’s ridiculous lies,* the scientific establishment – Science and Nature – has gone out of its way to promote and celebrate Mann and Hotez’s crazy book.

The End, Over and Over Again

In 1991, I was named a Global Change Fellow by the Department of Energy. Ever since then, I have documented scientists claiming, again and again and again, that we are “just a few years away” from the “Point of no return!” Humanity continues to blow through these deadlines, and the average human is far better off today than the average human of 1991, let alone 1971 or 1871.

So why can’t we have an honest, constructive, practical, and productive discussion of how to make the world even better?

The problem isn’t Big Oil. It isn’t Greedy Republicans. It isn’t Evil Capitalists.

It’s us.

Again: Science – e.g., testing falsifiable hypotheses – isn’t the problem.

Humans are the problem.

Each of us is inherently flawed. Being aware of some human flaws leads many of us to believe we have transcended them. More education simply makes us more sophisticated in our rationalizations of what we want to believe:

Smart People Are Especially Prone to Tribalism, Dogmatism and Virtue Signaling

We are rationalizing animals, not rational beings.

Evolution has left all of us, without exception, slaves to specific wants:

• We want to think we’re smart (rational, unbiased) / have others in our tribe think we’re smart, etc.

• We want to think we’re special / have others in our tribe think we’re special.

• We want to think we’re important / impactful / will leave a legacy.

• We want to think we’re superior / have others in our tribe admire us.

• We want to be validated and popular in our tribe.

The most sophisticated of us are just more sophisticated at making stuff up (e.g. pulling “priors” out of our asses) to get what we want.

Even the “smartest” among us tell elaborate stories to justify cruelty. (Including me.)

And then our certainty makes others’ lives worse.

Doing Better Starts with Humility

Of course, given our genetics and programming, we can’t do otherwise. We want what we want.

But if (if) our nature and nurture have left us in a place where we take suffering seriously, it is possible to find new programming that can lead to a meaningful life of helping those most in need. It is possible, but it is neither easy nor common.


*Ehrlich died after I wrote this but before I published it. Ehrlich’s NYT obituary refuses to call his predictions wrong. Rather, they were “premature.”

!!!

“We have always been at war with Eastasia.”

As I wrote here, after noting that hardly anyone has ever been more sadistically wrong than Ehrlich:

Again, this isn’t about Ehrlich. It is about liberals and the liberal popular media, which continues to promote him, e.g., 60 Minutes in 2022.

Serious question: Why would someone trust anyone who defends Ehrlich, or any media source that gives Ehrlich a platform? [Or refuses to admit the obvious fact that he was wrong!]