16 December 1999, 815 words
Science is the most powerful knowledge system in the world today. It is so powerful that even people with no real belief in scientific method or fact will use scientific discourse to argue their case. Of course, because such persons always have agendas, their discourse is always bogus.
This is not only intellectually objectionable, but can have pernicious effects. The recent discussions on domestic violence, for example, spawned a rash of pseudo-scientific drivel. One Catholic nun, Sr. Helena Profeiro, wrote a series of articles arguing that violence stems from poor neurological development caused by inherent or environmental factors. Sr. Helena probably has good intentions, and much of her science was correct, but, as is inevitably the case with any extremely religious person, her thinking was hopelessly muddled.
"No experience is ever lost but stored in the unconscious," she wrote. And, "The foetus knows and feels whatever its mother thinks and feels." Now, the first claim is plain wrong, since the neurological structures for long-term memory do not become fully developed until an infant is about three years old. The second claim is probably wrong for similar neurological reasons and, in any case, is quite unprovable. This does not deter Sr. Helena, who makes the following astonishing assertions: "A pregnant woman and her husband enjoyed running around the Savannah. The child tends naturally to run...Ultrasound technicians recognize foetuses by their personalities."
All of which beliefs have nothing to do with scientific truth, and everything to do with Sr. Helena's Catholic agenda.
Related nonsense appeared in a letter to the editor from someone representing the United Nuwabian Nation of Moors. "Fact - women were created first," writes Shawn O' Brien. His (or her) proof is that fossils have been "traced back to one woman's gene called mitochondria, the gene proven to be transferred from the mother to the child, never from the father to the child." But O' Brien's fact is not, in fact, a fact.
A little reading would have informed O'Brien that mitochondria, first of all, are not genes. S/he would also have discovered that, although both sexes have mitochondria, it is contained only in the egg, not the sperm, which is why it can only be passed from mother to child. A little more reading would have told him/her that the "one woman" had an unknown number of companions of both sexes, many of whom were the genetic (but not mitochondrial) ancestors of every living human being today.
But O'Brien could not be bothered, because his or her interest was not in scientific truth, but in concluding that "Men are a genetic fault of women."
But it's not only laypeople who display scientific ignorance. Professional academicians do so as well. Some weeks ago, I was part of an all-male panel discussing domestic violence. I spoke to the small audience of how evolution shaped human sexual behaviour, only to be told afterwards by a senior UWI lecturer that sociobiology had been discredited by feminist intellectuals. In fact, evolutionary psychology is now accepted by leading social scientists as a necessary paradigm for sociological investigations.
What is worst of all, though, is when persons with scientific training also promote scientific ignorance. Thus, one Professor Hylton McFarlane claims that fast food is causing violence among African peoples. McFarlane, according to an article in the Trinidad Guardian, is a pathologist and immunologist who has written over 500 research papers. He claims that African tribes are wiping out one another because of their diet. "What happened in Nigeria was as a result of food abuse," he says. "The more fast food we eat the more we commit crimes. It's a very complex biological correlation."
What it is, in my opinion, is complete crap. But I have no medical degrees and have written no research papers. What I do have is common sense, which leads me to ask the following questions: Why aren't most white Americans extremely violent? How many McDonald's, Pizza Hut and KFC outlets are there in Africa? To write 500 research papers, how frequently did McFarlane perform experiments?
The real question, though, is - Why should any of this matter? Well, it matters because you cannot solve a problem unless you identify its true causes. That is why a scientific approach is crucial, even for non-scientific issues. The average Trinidadian is probably just as indifferent to science as the average Briton or American. But the average Briton or American is probably not as anti-scientific (i.e. superstitious) as the average Trinidadian. And that may well be one reason that their societies are more progressive than ours.
A more important reason, though, is that leaders in those societies do not let superstition determine social and public policies. In Trinidad and Tobago, however, the Prime Minister has publicly announced that astrologers will choose the date for the next general election.
Copyright ©1999 Kevin Baldeosingh