Dogma

“I meet people who apologize because they work for salmon farms, on the Alberta tar sand, or for a pharmaceutical corporation or logging company. They say they don’t agree with their employers but they have to make a living. I hope none of you finds yourself in a situation where your job clashes with your beliefs.”

– David Suzuki in Letters to My Grandchildren

Scientism is when you “believe in” faith-based scientific dogma as if you needn’t take responsibility for its truth, and can rely on someone else—experts, family, media; in short, any source that brands itself as scientific but may know very little about the subject under discussion.

When I tell employed doctors what I’ve learned, a typical response is: “I don’t believe you.” No scientific “right answer” in Medical Update, no insurable diagnostic code, no “belief.” They may even be away from the computer when they say this, which means it is an embodied reflex and not the result of inattention. This rejection of the new is taken as “conservative;” unfortunately, it is not only hard-headed and -hearted, it’s dangerous to the living future. They are co-destroying the future for sake of reducing the psychological tension that would come from questioning the system to which they are invisibly chained.

Key things to remember: skepticism is not a method, scientism is not science, and data are not knowledge or wisdom.

Don’t let your peers’ complacency throw your patients—or your descendants—under the bus, and don’t let your bullshit detector fall into disuse—you’ll need it to re-examine the modern status quo.