Among our pre-Christmas topics of conversation: the battle over the legitimacy of parties at 20, the mess regarding the return to Canada of travelers, the choice to vaccinate the general population only very late with a third dose, while other countries, including France, are opening the floodgates.
Three themes which all have science in common but which in Quebec are becoming more issues of politics and communication. But are we really surprised, in the realm of scientific illiteracy?
Before the arrival of COVID-19, science was largely absent from our lives. In the media, a few figures and a handful of appointments provide the essential service: Discovery, Light years, some columnists and specialized magazines … With the pandemic, the national director of public health of Quebec, Horacio Arruda, became the embodiment of science, while his job was (and still is) very political. Doctors: Weiss, Quach-Thanh, Marquis, and other epidemiologists, geriatricians and others, on social networks, on the radio, on TV, will have allowed us to understand the ins and outs of what was falling on us.
The media were once again the sinews of war and knowledge. Doctors responded to journalists who were often poor and poorly equipped; what about us, the public!
We must congratulate everyone for the popularization work, the COVID 101 crash course, but we must also look ahead and ask ourselves what, in the long term, causes a lack of scientific knowledge in a population. Because there are consequences, which we must talk about. There is a direct link between the explosion of the conspiratorial gang which, on YouTube, know.
It gives anti-vaccines who believe that the vaccine kills, politicians like Maxime Bernier who exploit fear, and covidiots who are afraid of everything and who will only send their children to school. follows astronaut.
Ignorance and knowledge
Few volunteers in the media or in governments to methodically take up and dismantle the fallacious arguments one by one. The job is left to the goodwill and dedication of Internet users, known or not, who are heavily insulted.
COVID-19 has imposed new challenges on the media. It is a complex issue where fear, uncertainty and anxiety, normal feelings, are fueled by ignorance.
Knowledge is the cure for ignorance. Science is knowledge. But when it does not yet know, science is not science, it is research. This is where she asks questions, she doubts, she reassesses, contradicts herself, confronts the judgment of peers. And after a while she knows.
Science has become knowledge. But this process takes time. The media and politicians are in a hurry. The situation also requires it, it must be said. So, at the start of the pandemic, when journalists questioned scientists, they replied, with modesty: we do not know yet. At best: we think that. This position of humility of science creates a hole in the narrative, quickly filled by people on YouTube who, on the other hand, KNOW.
Extension workers exist
The pandemic (and the skeptics) have made their nest in this collective deficit of knowledge and scientific knowledge. Interest in research, its progress, its doubts, its relativism, is not widely shared among the population.
However, enlightening popularizers, smugglers ignited by the interstellar, communicators of the nanoparticle exist and have the words to make us understand, to point out the issues. Our media should make an effort and pass the baton to them.
We want, AT ALL TIMES, not in crisis, researchers, astrophysicists, biologists on our talk shows, in our public affairs discussions, specialists who talk about climate, environment with scientific data.
Because scientific illiteracy, that of the conspirators, on the one hand, and that of those who are afraid, on the other hand, is the source of an important social divide which is constantly widening. We will see it and take it in the face in a few days at the option of our parties at 20, facing relatives or anti-vax friends. It flirts with the democratic deficit. And that earns us TV programming no brainer because “tse, the world understands nothing about science” … Vicious circle.
Let’s all raise the level. Let’s talk about artificial intelligence, environment, health, method, let’s create a scientific star-system right down to TikTok.
Let’s make our neurons crackle collectively. Because knowledge is the (second) best vaccine.