Is Science Always Right?

When Should We Be Sure We're Right?

I overheard a conversation the other day in which GMO food (genetically modified organisms) were challenged by one party, while the other said: "But you'll listen to the science about Global Warming!"

There've been several opinion pieces written recently about how GMOs are an open and shut case--absolutely no cause for alarm, plus they'll allow us to feed everybody.   Meanwhile, the science behind climate change is, in fact, unquestionably certain.  And yet plenty of people like me are uncomfortable with the former, but not the latter.  Why?

The answer is simple: there's value in what's worked in the past.  And I don't mean just the past year or two, I mean human experience through the years, and the world before that.

Science is a process wherein ideas are fighting for supremacy as we test them; this is how the natural world, and human history--until recently, worked too.  And just as the ablest lion should be the dominant lion, any new theory that claims that it's the new champ can't be elevated to ablest theory status without proof that it is, indeed, best.  And the benefit of the doubt goes to the current champ, not the challenger.

Which is why the idea that humans are scrambling genes in the things we eat, and so upending the gradual (evolution) and sudden (breeding for selected characteristics) process of life-better-suiting-its-environment is troubling.  Sure, initial experiments may show that there's no danger in GMO food, but the stakes are too big to get wrong.  For example, we're already contending with invasive species running amok in parts of the world where they don't belong, do we really need to mess with the interior makeup of species, too?

Meanwhile, Climate Change, like GMO food, is the challenger to the status quo.  Even if only half, instead of 99%, of our scientists said it was a dire emergency, why take a 50/50 chance with a loaded gun to the head?  And the case for disaster can easily be made: try googling 'melting permafrost' + 'global warming'; the numbers are, frankly, scary.

All of which is a peculiarly conservative perspective to have.  And I'll freely admit that when the stakes aren't high, I'm almost always willing to entertain alternatives.  For example, did humans really live in the Americas 130,000 years ago, rather than no more than around 13,000 years ago?  Here's a fascinating article that follows the evidence for 130,000 as it unfolded, and the pushback that it met.