Francis Collins on Facts (!)

Posted on Tuesday 24 September 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Francis Collins on how facts don’t care how you feel;
  • Short pieces on Trump and golf; how brain damage is linked to religious fundamentalism; how Carlson and Vance are smart guys who play dumb; about Trump’s Truth Social posts; how Vance attacks the media for exposing his lies; how Trump’s rhetoric really does compare to Hitler’s; and how attacks against Harris’s Arizona office again reveal which side is prone to violence.

The main item today is remarkable because it’s a defense of facts by a scientist who famously converted to Christianity on the basis of seeing a waterfall that split into three parts. (See Wikipedia.) On those grounds alone, I would hesitate to trust anything he has to say about facts and feelings. (At the same time, a significant minority of scientists claim religious faith; they’re examples of how humans deal with cognitive dissonance.) Let’s give the piece a look.

NY Times, guest essay by Francis Collins, 20 Sep 24: Take It From a Scientist. Facts Matter, and They Don’t Care How You Feel. [gift link]

I am a physician and a scientist. Over 12 years, I had the privilege of serving Presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden as the director of the National Institutes of Health. Before that, I led the U.S. component of the Human Genome Project.

I am amazed by the medical progress that has been possible in the past few decades, both in alleviating suffering and saving lives. But I am also deeply troubled by the growing distrust of science in our society, just at the time when its insights are most needed. No recent experience highlights that disconnect more starkly than the last five years of the Covid pandemic. From my vantage point on the front lines of that battle against a dangerous virus, let me highlight both the triumphs and tragedies, and propose some actions that we can all take to re-anchor our troubled society to truth, science, faith and trust — and put us back on an individual and collective journey that might be called the road to wisdom.

He goes on recalling his concerns about misinformation during the COVID pandemic, and the tragic consequences thereof.

The statistic that gives me the deepest heartache is this: More than 230,000 Americans died unnecessarily between June 2021 and March 2022, largely because misinformation caused them to turn away from what might have saved them in the midst of a dangerous pandemic, according to an assessment from the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. This death rate is the equivalent of four fully loaded 737s crashing every day.

Then he goes on to wonder, “What do we mean by truth anyway?” And he describes a “set of concentric circles that represent various levels of truth.” I’ll summarize and bulletize:

  • At the center is the zone of necessary truth: especially mathematics. 2+2=4; the area of a circle.
  • Next is “firmly established facts,” conclusions “that are overwhelmingly supported by evidence” including “most scientific conclusions about objective reality that have been supported by multiple experimental approaches and sustained over many decades.” Gravity; the world is round; the temperature of the Earth is rapidly increasing.
  • Also here, “well documented historical facts”. We landed on the moon; two planes brought down the Twin Towers; Joe Biden won the election.
  • Further out, claims that are potentially true but for which evidence is not conclusive. Did masks help prevent COVID transmission?
  • And farther out, the zone of subjective opinion. Dogs are better than cats? Tattoos are cool?

So it’s fine to disagree about subjective matters, Collins says, but moving closer to the center of these zones, everything is not just a matter of opinion. There, facts don’t care how you feel.

What to do? He has some specific ideas about actions to take:

  • Acknowledge that there is such a thing as truth, and that it matters. Beware if you label other information you don’t like as opinion, even though it’s firmly established.
  • Be comfortable having conversations with people who have differing views from your own. Don’t try to persuade; listen and understand their perspective.
  • Link up with organizations trying to bridge Americans across divides, like Braver Angels.
  • Work toward building a better nation. “We need leaders who are capable of building consensus, not just spewing outrage on social media or cable news. Character really matters. Excusing repeated acts of lying and cruelty from a leader to achieve certain political goals is not a strategy that will lead to the healing of our nation.”

He concludes:

I am well aware that these proposed solutions are not novel, but that doesn’t make them any less necessary or important. Practiced widely and consistently, they could be our best hope.

I have no objections to any of these ideas. But you’ll note how he leaves “faith” out of this discussion.

Yet I have to note. There was someone a while back who insisted that if the Bible said that 2+2=5, he would believe it. He would wrap his mind about what he was taught about arithmetic, and common sense, and defer it all to scripture, which must be perfect, something to acquiesce to, something to override his rational thought. Further: there are plenty of religious fundamentalists who reject what Collins calls “firmly established facts” and “well-documented historical facts.” He doesn’t try to account for those. I lie the blame at religious fundamentalism, which instills a basic inability to think rationally, and to defer to simplistic ancient truths.

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Shorter pieces from today.

  • Salon, Lucian K. Truscott IV: For Donald Trump, it’s the golf that matters, subtitled “Aging golfer’s campaign slows down going into final month before election”. My question: why is he so obsessed with golf? The writer doesn’t have an answer, except to note this trend among all his other craziness.
  • Boing Boing, Ellsworth Toohey: Brain damage linked to religious fundamentalism, Harvard study finds. Comment: well, hardly a surprise, but this is an area it’s impolite to discuss, like religion itself. But: of course.

    Religious fundamentalism is a way of thinking and behaving characterized by a rigid adherence to religious doctrines that are seen as absolute and inerrant. It’s been linked to various cognitive traits such as authoritarianism, resistance to doubt, and a lower complexity of thought.

    As I’ve been documenting on this site.

  • The Atlantic, Charlie Warzel: The Trump Posts You Probably Aren’t Seeing, subtitled “His Truth Social posts are even worse than you think.” My comment: very few people see his posts. The mass population’s support for Trump will not be dissuaded by those posts.

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