Who should we believe in this age of uncertainty?

My mother lied to me a lot. In order to be healthy, she insisted, I needed to drink three glasses of whole milk a day, eat beef liver once a week and that eating carrots would help my eyesight.

She also warned me that not washing behind my ears would have some unspecified consequences, chocolate caused pimples and wearing socks to bed in the winter actually would make my feet colder. (I’m still not sure about that last thing. I’ve tried testing it by wearing one sock to bed and letting the other foot sleep sockless, but the results have been inconclusive.)

In her defense, I’m sure a lot of what Mom told me was done with good intentions and reflected the generally accepted scientific wisdom of the day. Or maybe it was just some sort of maternal instinct to prepare me for the lifetime of information, disinformation and counter-information I would be encountering in the years to come.

And there’s been a whole lot of that lately.

When I turned 60, my doctor prescribed taking a couple of baby aspirins every day to help prevent heart attacks. But now he says I shouldn’t take aspirin because the bleeding risk cancels out the benefits.

When meatless burgers were introduced a few years ago, they were touted as not only healthier for us, but also beneficial for Mother Nature. Reducing the number of gas-passing cattle, it was declared, was better for the environment. And made it smell a lot nicer. (Left unanswered was what would happen to all those cows if we no longer continued to grind them up for Big Macs. Would they become virtually extinct and to see one you would have to visit a zoo? I suspect the cows don’t care one way or the other.)

But earlier this week, researchers cast doubt on the environmental claims, saying there’s not enough evidence to prove plantbased foods are much better for the planet than meat products because it also takes a lot out of the environment to produce whatever the 21 ingredients are that wind up in an Impossible Burger.

On the same day, other researchers questioned the alleged environmental benefits of services such as Uber and Lyft. Proponents contended that ride-sharing helped cut down pollution by reducing the need for short trips, pooling riders headed in the same direction and eliminating the need to look for parking spaces. Now, researchers say, comparable pollution may be caused by legions of drivers driving around town trying to locate their passengers.

So I’m not sure who to believe about anything anymore.

But I’m still eating carrots and washing behind my ears, just to be safe.