“The seduction of falsehood threatens society”

Isn’t doubt a legitimate approach in science?

One of Claude Allègre’s arguments was in fact: “Science is doubt. » An argument already put forward by cigarette manufacturers after the correlation between tobacco consumption and lung cancer was demonstrated. In reality, doubt has much more to do with scientific research than with science.

That’s to say?

Like all researchers, climatologists know things and also ask questions. But the fact that they don’t know everything is not an argument for putting what they know into perspective. Furthermore, every scientist belongs to the human condition, he can make mistakes and not be objective. What is asked of him is to demonstrate honesty, in a very particular sense: he must present his results to others working on the same subject in order to receive their criticism. After sometimes virulent exchanges, and a lot of rework, these researchers ended up agreeing that a scientific result had been obtained. From there, it is possible to say: “We know that…” A scientist should never speak for his or her own name. The “we” indicates a plural discussion. “We know that” is science. “We wonder if” is research.

Can better science popularization help?

As the novelist Umberto Eco said, there is a “force of the false”. It seems to me to have become very powerful on social networks and certain media which place a premium on dissent. If I declared in The Pilgrim that Einstein kept making mistakes, I would be invited on certain television shows the very next day. Whereas if I tell the theory of relativity as it is, I won’t interest many people. Everyone is perfectly free to believe what they want, but what society will we build if we give the freedom to believe the false a higher value than that of the truth?

And in terms of education, what can we do?

Climate skeptics are also gaining credibility among the population, because very few of us know how human activities affect the climate. At school, you have to take the time to tell in detail the story of a discovery: the atom, vaccines, climate change… If they have never been exposed to this kind of story, people end up thinking that science is an arbitrary discourse like any other. And that we can criticize it like any ideology.