'Scientism' The New Religion

Scientism, Not Science, Rules the Roost

Dr. Joseph Mercola

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

• As technocracy and transhumanism have risen to the fore, they have brought with them their own form of science — “scientism” — which is basically the religion of science. In other words, it’s a belief even in the absence of evidence, or in the face of contrary evidence, and this is a very serious problem
• The clearest problem with the admonition to “believe the science” is that bona fide experts are found on all sides of any given empirical question
• The scientific priesthood is intolerant to new ideas while, simultaneously, search engines and digitization of scientific literature have eroded their authority as gatekeepers of knowledge
• The way things look right now, the gatekeepers to the scientific priesthood don’t seem to have any intention to open its doors to outsiders and independent thinkers. If anything, they’re trying to massively increase their control over the information we’re allowed to see and share, even to the point of proposing the creation of certifying boards to police physicians’ sharing of medical opinions
• The idea that a group of people can be the sole arbiters of “truth” is irrational. Individual biases always creep in, and the greater the influence of such a group, the more ingrained and dogmatic those biases will become, until the system is corrupted to the core. One could argue that dogmatic faith in nonexistent scientific consensuses is the reason for why we are where we are today

Science has long been regarded as a stronghold of logic and reason. Scientists don’t draw conclusions based on emotions, feelings or sheer faith. It’s all about building a body of reproducible evidence. Well, that’s what it used to be, but as technocracy and transhumanism have risen to the fore, it has brought with it its own form of science — “scientism” — which is basically the religion of science. Sheldon Richman with The Libertarian Institute writes:1

“The popular slogan today is ‘Believe in science.’ It’s often used as a weapon against people who reject not science in principle but rather one or another prominent scientific proposition, whether it be about the COVID-19 vaccine, climate change ... to mention a few ...

The clearest problem with the admonition to ‘believe in science’ is that ... well-credentialed scientists — that is, bona fide experts — are found on both (or all) sides of a given empirical question ... Moreover, no one, not even scientists, are immune from group-think and confirmation bias ...

Apparently, under the believers’ model of science, truth comes down from a secular Mount Sinai (Mount Science?) thanks to a set of anointed scientists, and those declarations are not to be questioned. The dissenters can be ignored because they are outside the elect. How did the elect achieve its exalted station? Often, but not always, it was through the political process ...

But that’s not science; it’s religion, or at least it’s the stereotype of religion that the ‘science believers’ oppose in the name of enlightenment. What it yields is dogma and, in effect, accusations of heresy. In real science, no elect and no Mount Science exists.

Real science is a rough-and-tumble process of hypothesizing, public testing, attempted replication, theory formation, dissent and rebuttal, refutation (perhaps), revision (perhaps), and confirmation (perhaps). It’s an unending process, as it obviously must be ...

The institutional power to declare matters settled by consensus opens the door to all kinds of mischief that violate the spirit of science and potentially harm the public financially and otherwise.”

Scientific Gatekeeping as a Priesthood

In “Against Scientific Gatekeeping,”3 published in the May 2022 issue of Reason magazine, Dr. Jeffrey Singer argues that “science should be a profession, not a priesthood.” Indeed, yet that’s basically what it has become. Singer starts out by reviewing the early discovery of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment against COVID-19, and the subsequent demonization of anyone who supported its off-label use.

He then goes on to discuss the scientific priesthood’s intolerance to new ideas while, simultaneously, “search engines and the digitization of scientific literature have forever eroded their authority as gatekeepers of knowledge.” He writes:4

“Most people prefer experts, of course, especially when it comes to health care ... But a problem arises when some of those experts exert outsized influence over the opinions of other experts and thereby establish an orthodoxy enforced by a priesthood. If anyone, expert or otherwise, questions the orthodoxy, they commit heresy. The result is groupthink, which undermines the scientific process.

The COVID-19 pandemic provided many examples. Most medical scientists, for instance, uncritically accepted the epidemiological pronouncements of government-affiliated physicians who were not epidemiologists. At the same time, they dismissed epidemiologists as ‘fringe’ when those specialists dared to question the conventional wisdom ...

The Need to Reassess Dogmatic Thinking

Singer reviews several other examples of bonafide experts who got thrown under the proverbial bus by the medical priesthood during the years of COVID, and highlights instances where we can now, rather conclusively, prove that public health officials made bad calls.

Several studies have concluded that lockdowns had no beneficial impact on infection rates and COVID deaths, for example, while disproportionally harming the young and the poor. Yet no one has publicly admitted this strategy was an unwise one that should be permanently abandoned and never repeated.