The Assault on Science, Truth and Democracy.

How does disinformation and the assault on science, truth and democracy ‘relate to protecting our Muskoka Watershed ecosystem?’

By Geoff Ross.

Most of the benefits enjoyed by the developed world come from science. And yet science itself is now under assault in many quarters. How did this come about? How does it relate to the health of our watershed? And, what does the average person need to do about it?

This is the first of two articles addressing these questions.

Consider first that science is, at its core, rational thought — the process of separating fact from fiction, as to how our world works. That process is the scientific method, which has evolved and strengthened over thousands of years. It is not the stereotypical person in a white coat holding up a test tube. It is the much broader search for truth.

By the midpoint of the 20th century, science was making enormous progress. In 1945, nuclear energy brought science to the world’s attention in a way never seen before, with both positive and negative implications. In the early 1950s science gave us the Salk vaccine as a cure for the terrible scourge of polio. In the 1960s science put a human on the moon. Science was truly on a roll — and for most people it inspired awe, confidence and hope.

But science was also developing enemies.

The tobacco industry, threatened by the science linking smoking and lung cancer, responded with a well-documented assault on the associated science and scientists, establishing a disinformation tool kit to confuse and to deny facts. That tool kit has more recently been used by climate change deniers, massively funded by the fossil fuel industry.

Science is also under attack from people who want to control what people buy, how they vote, and what they accept as truth. Authoritarian leaders need to enforce adherence to some ideology if they are to retain control. Ideologies, including communism, capitalism and countless others, generally run into problems with truth. For them, science and truth in the hands of the general population are enemies, and disinformation is a key tool for attacking these enemies.

We are now seeing how disinformation works to destabilize democratic societies. Thus, science, truth and democracy are all under attack, with the same weapons and for the same reasons.

A key tool for spreading disinformation is falsely casting scientific statements as opinions, while claiming that all opinions, scientific or otherwise, are equally valid. This completely ignores what science really is.

Science is the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence.

Evidence, and a systematic methodology to determine the actual value of that evidence, distinguishes scientific fact from opinion. Disinformation may claim to be based on evidence, but that evidence will rarely survive a reality check using the scientific method. Unfortunately, few within the population have training in the scientific method and the complex process of applying it.

We are thus vulnerable to disinformation that can be manufactured quickly, expressed in simple terms, and that claims to represent the truth, when in fact it deliberately obscures the truth.

How does all of this relate to protecting our Muskoka Watershed ecosystem? The health of our ecosystem, and us as part of it, can only be protected by the application of science and the avoidance of abundant disinformation.

The next article in this series examines the disinformation problem and suggests some measures people can, and should, take to protect themselves from it. These do not require the full application of the scientific method but do involve checking the evidence.

This is the sixth article in the current series of articles from Muskoka Watershed Council and was published on MuskokaRegion.com on January 4, 2025. Its author is Geoff Ross, member and a former Chair of MWC, and a person who has published in major scientific journals and is familiar with the complex process of applying the scientific method, and the truth and value of the results. The series is edited by Peter Sale.