How did we end up in an age where people question basic scientific facts? Where did it go wrong?

The internet happened, giving everyone able-a voice and opinion.

The idea of ‘everyone’s entitled to an opinion’ happened.

We’ve completely disregarded the reality of expertise. You don’t ask a climate scientist to fix your plumbing. You don’t ask a plumber their opinion on climate science.

But now we’ve embraced this idea that all people have equally valid opinions on every topic. When actually, for every topic there are people who are particularly qualified to speak. Whether that be climate change, covid, abortion, issues of race etc etc – we speak to and about experts as if epidemiologists are only as valid to speak on a pandemic as any other average joe.

And this leads to policy being made based on perceived popular opinion or partisan politics (which is often uninformed and sometimes actively dangerous) rather than on the advice of world leading experts in relevant fields.

It didn’t. People have always questioned science. The world is more scientifically literate now than it has ever been.

When the media started holding surveys and experiments that don’t follow the scientific method as “fact” “proof” and “science.”

Level of confidence is no longer relevant, so we hold statistics with a sky-high level of confidence to the same credibility as ones with very low confidence.

Social Media and the internet. People have degrees from Facebook U and believe as long as they find enough people who believe them they are correct. Plus the average person does not understand how to decided if a source is valid or complete shit, so they find anything that says what they want it to and cling to it like a drowning man grasping his bible.