OK to doubt

One of the great achievements of the Enlightenment was the separation of church and state, while one of the most disturbing developments in modern technological societies is the call for science and

state to corroborate each other. Scientists by nature and training must be doubters, not dogmatists, and their failure to remain true to their roots wrecked climate science and now threatens epidemiology.

During the coronavirus pandemic, any disastrous policy decision had political leaders passing the buck and claiming to be “following the science”. This naive approach handed science the de facto role of the dominant religion of our time. But it’s important to realise how tempting it is for renegade scientists to claim a semireligious status and why it is so critical that this poison chalice is resolutely declined.

In contrast to religion, science owes its success to its openness to doubt, to self-correction, to making sober and objectively verifiable statements. Scientists must make clear to our naïve politicos that science hasn’t acquired the miraculous gift of mastering the future.

Computer models aren’t crystal balls which exuberant activists may use to prophecy climate change or virus occurrence.

(REV DR) JOHN CAMERON Howard Place, St Andrews