Faith in Fallacy: A Century of State-Sanctioned Science Denial

Faith in Fallacy: A Century of State-Sanctioned Science Denial, by James Lawrence Powell, reveals the deadly consequences of an entire nation adopting a policy of denying consensus science. During the twentieth century, state-sanctioned science denial cost the lives of at least fifty million people, as many as the great wars. In the Soviet Union under Stalin and his agent Lysenko, denial of genetics led to lethal agricultural policies, resulting in the persecution and execution of dissenting scientists and widespread famine. In Mao’s China, the wholesale adoption of Lysenkoist pseudoscience led to a famine that claimed an estimated forty-five million lives. Hitler made state policy of Nazi eugenics, a twisted theory that held that some races are superior to others. This led first to the murder of disabled persons, including children, and then to the Holocaust. “German physics” caused the exodus of many Jewish scientists, including Einstein. President Mbeki of South Africa conducted his own internet research and concluded that HIV does not cause AIDS and that folk remedies are preferable to antiretroviral drugs, costing an estimated 330,000 deaths. In this century, in Brazil and the United States, Presidents Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump rejected medical advice to downplay the danger of the COVID-19 virus and discourage protective measures, causing many unnecessary deaths. Today’s Republican party rejects man-made global warming, thus denying the greatest threat that humanity has ever faced. The lesson is clear: learn from this deadly history, trust scientists and act on their advice, or cripple the lives of coming generations.