Critics of the paper may very well have good reasons to cast doubt on the doctor's conclusions, but there was one response from him in this interview that we think speaks to the danger of allowing the free exchange of ideas to be quashed.
It's a threat that DOC is deeply concerned about within organizations, so we wanted to share that perspective in hopes that it sparks some conversations.
"I tend not to think that I'm a crazy lunatic [laughs], but also that the group of scientists who I've worked with on this study are incredibly world-renowned. There's one author whose name is Sander Greenland; he's one of the top epidemiologists in the world. For epidemiologists, just the opportunity to talk to him… We've offered, ‘Hey, come speak with us, the coauthors. Sander Greenland will be there. Want to talk to one of the top figures in your field?’ Even with that enticing offer, we can't get them to sit down with us.
"We responded to every one of the limitations they've presented in blogs, and our paper has been cited 85 times in less than a year, and I'm pretty sure most of those are not critical of our paper. The way things are judged in the scientific community isn't how loud people get on Twitter — the scientific community is based off of citations, and how are other people writing about this? And we're not getting a ton of published literature that is challenging our findings.
"So if we're being cited regularly and there's just some people on Twitter yelling a lot… that's not how the scientific community used to work. It's just new. So I don't even know how to evaluate what scientists are thinking right now, because the repercussions that come from even publishing this literature or saying something in support of it is career-ruining. So how do we know what scientists are thinking in today's environment when there's this just incredible incentive to self-censor certain viewpoints?
"That is a very dangerous environment for science to exist in, because if we don't have people speaking freely on scientific matters, that's a disaster.
"Lushenko was this Russian scientist from the USSR. It's a famous story. He believed in Lamarckian evolution, and he thought he could make wheat grow in Siberia, in the cold, and [the Soviets] arrested all of the scientists who disagreed with him. And probably a lot of others disagreed with him but were smart enough to shut up and not go to jail. So in the end, he destroyed such a massive amount of wheat that he caused a famine that famously killed millions.
"And I'm not suggesting that USSR censorship is similar to ours — I have preferred the American version of it, where they censor me on social media and don't throw me into a gulag. But the outcome of the two are actually kind of similar, because if arresting five or six scientists gets the rest of them to shut up and not speak, and then we have the authority scientists and are not critiquing them, the outcome of it ends up being the same. I really think that it's an unsafe scientific environment that no one in society should be supporting.
"It's okay if I'm wrong, it's okay if those views are wrong, but we need to be able to speak freely on these things. It's okay to be wrong in science. That's how science works, it has to be fought out. And if we refuse to have discussions, we can't move forward. We're handicapping our ability to progress scientifically if we have such an environment."
If you're a Tangle subscriber—and we suggest that you be—you can read the full interview. And if you have thoughts to share about us offering a venue for this conversation, let us know on Facebook, but please keep it respectful!
