The insight science gives us about our world, the perspectives it gives us, like this one, on the unity and beauty of the planet, are horribly ironic in an age of scientific elitism.
I remember when I first saw it, as a young geek of only six or seven years old, my first thought was the plot hole.
“But...Obi-Wan said his dad was dead?”
“It”, of course, was that mythic scene in Episode II of the Star Wars trilogy. The “Luke, I am your father” scene.
I wasn’t that surprised by Vader’s breathy confession. But I was shocked that Obi-Wan, a sage, fatherly figure, had *gasp* lied.
Yes, I was very innocent. I am all too aware now of how often people lie, even about big things, bigger than the fact that you’re technically heir to the Galactic Empire.
For example, people will say that vaccines cause autism in your children. Or that we can pump and chug as much oil and natural gas as we like with no environmental, social, or health repercussions. Or that people with diseases like depression and HIV are morally weak and inferior and that by treating them with medicines and developing vaccines, we will prompt society’s downfall.
All of these are examples of science fiction. The modern tragedy of American culture is that this fiction is taken as science and the real science is discarded as fiction.
I know science is hard. It’s complex, and to be honest it’s kind of hurting my GPA right now. It’s also flawed. We try to quantify natural phenomena with neat mathematical formulas, but this always comes down to a generalization or approximation. We try to streamline biological processes with neat, three-dimensional graphics, but these vary from species to species and even from cell to cell.
Obviously, we go to all this trouble for a reason. Science allows us to understand the mechanisms of disease, giving us an alternative to pain, suffering, and even death. Science has opened up the very stars to human understanding. Science is power.
That’s the real motivation. Science fuels nuclear and biological weapons development. Science bred a multibillion dollar technology industry based in Silicon Valley. Science built a robotic, unpaid labor force for the megacorporations of America. Science, the very thing that makes the world open up to us, is one of the most effective ways to reinforce systems of oppression when its benefits are restricted to the wealthy and powerful.
But science is a public good. It is the apparatus by which Americans secure their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Science allows me to make informed decisions about what social policies I want in America and whether or not surgery for a running injury would be worth the risks and what ratio of carbs to protein I should try to eat each day. These decisions have shaped my life up to this point and will continue to shape it, positively, I hope, until I die. They will also shape the lives of everyone else in America affected by my vote or by a direct relationship to me.
I have the benefit of access to a world-class science education, but most people don’t have that privilege, and what’s worse, even if they do, they’re taught — not in high school or middle school but as early as elementary school — that science is hard, and science is not for them.
They learn science is hard when a poorly-trained teacher uses unexplainable jargon that they must simply be too dumb to understand. They learn science is beyond them when they realize only the “smart” kids can do science, and no one has ever thought to call them smart. They learn science is not for them when they must memorize the names of the researchers behind every major discovery — Newton, Bohr, Watson, Crick, Einstein — and find that they are all, with very, very few exceptions, white, male, and dead.
We lucky few who survive this process with our curiosity and self-esteem intact then do the very worst thing we could do. We perpetuate the system. We mock the uninformed. We were taught that our cleverness sprung from some innate worthiness, rather than the product of economic, and therefore educational, privilege, so we whip it out at every opportunity to distinguish ourselves from the rest of humanity. This starts at the age children are first divided into “gifted” classes and eventually turns into John Oliver screaming, “It’s 2017, people!” as if that phrase was somehow educational.
I recently attended the D.C. March for Science. Thousands of scientists, both citizen and professional, had finally wandered out of the lab into the daylight of political activism, and it was glorious. It felt like finally, after all this criticism of Trump’s lack of scientific or even just plain factual reasoning, the “intellectual elites” were acknowledging their fault in the matter. Science had become too exclusive, and those who didn’t make the cut did what anyone denied access to a juicy secret does. They made up their own version. Is it so surprising that our national government literally relies on “alternative facts” when the real facts have $30 access codes and a legacy preference?
Let’s cut the elitism out of science. Vote to restructure our public education system in a way that prioritizes students of all disciplines, rather than testing companies. Vote for affordable and equitable public college access. Lend vocal or monetary support to women and minorities in STEM initiatives. Protest cuts to national science and health research funds.
If you have access to science, use it to understand yourself and your world better, whether that means taking college classes or watching Vsauce videos. And if you are a scientist, show people why you and your institution matter. Science is fun and beautiful and weird. If the majority of Americans think science is not only hard, but irrelevant, you’re not doing it right.