Ubi maior
This article was published in a slightly reduced version in the newspaper La Verità on 8 November 2019.
A dear friend informs me of a petition promoted by a group of environmentalists who is having wide echo in national newspapers, in which our media are asked not to give more space to unscientific positions, based on opinions of individuals and not supported by research validated by the scientific community "on the subject of climate change, following the example" of the BBC , the Guardian and Le Monde ". According to the promoters, it is necessary to put an end to "a senseless par condicio " in the name of which "equal relevance to experts in the matter and incompetents who propagate negationist theses on the climate" would be given, because, they explain, "there is no right give space to fake news ».
From an editorial by Annalisa Corrado , one of the promoters, I learn that the initiative is already criticized in some newspapers. Those criticisms, however, make a mistake, in my opinion, of going too far into the substance of the question debated and of neglecting the underlying method in whole or in part. As for the matter dealt with, as a non-specialist I can only record that unlike what we read in the petition the "international scientific community" does not seem "unanimous" in supporting the thesis of anthropogenic climate change, if it is true that only last month Five hundred physicists, geophysicists, meteorologists and other scientists from academies around the world have addressed a " European Climate Declaration " to the United Nations Secretary-General in which he contests the existence of a "climate emergency" caused by man and the politicization of the resulting debate is deplored.
As a citizen, however, I am concerned about the idea that the alterations of the environment in which we live and, more generally, the diffusion of unfounded theories in every sector can affect the well-being and health of peoples in a hard or irreversible way. But precisely because it lacks the cultural tools to decipher and avert these risks, I believe that the representatives of the scientific communities of reference must be guaranteed not only all the resources necessary to study and solve problems, but also the indispensable right to present their theses and to confront each other, including involving public opinion and political decision-makers. The development of scientific knowledge and the practical benefits that derived from it for man have never – I repeat, ever – occurred by suffocating, hiding or condemning the voices that are dissonant with respect to the dominant position from time to time. Indeed, it can be said that almost all the scientific notions and practices recognized today were, at some point in history, heterodox because they were new and not supported by subsequent experiences. The goodness of a scientific theory is evident from the results, not from the authority or (presumed) consent of those who support it, and since the scientific result is always revisable, fighting "revisionism" is equivalent to fighting against science itself.
The wisdom of the Latins left us a maxim: ubi maior minor cessat . The possible urgency to combat climate change or any other threat cannot justify the repression of the freedom to exercise and communicate the results of research, because that freedom is the indispensable premise for investigating problems upstream. In the name of a particular urgency, it is not possible to create a more general and radical one . The problem of the petition for the "climate" therefore ceases to be the greater or lesser foundation of the danger that is denounced, which becomes rather irrelevant ( minor cessat ), and everything is identified with the enormity of putting those who they should occupy with honesty and rigor, without any conditioning ( ubi maior ). The prospect of a scientific community authorized to disclose only the results pleasing to an external establishment – just like the editors of the major media – it is a danger of many orders greater than the possible rise in the temperature of the globe. Because it would deny the possibility of dealing with it in an authentically scientific way.
In the controversy that arose on the sidelines of this initiative, the example of the obligation of mass vaccination, which I discussed in my last book , was very appropriately mentioned. There I opened the analysis with a long anthology of personalities and medical institutions that, distinguishing themselves from what is sworn to be a "consensus" without exception, question the opportunity of the coercive tool or of specific aspects of the vaccination practice in use , or some vaccines. I then proceeded to illustrate the foreseeable risks of having censored or sanctioned "dissident" health workers, creating an atmosphere of intimidation to the detriment of the freedom to exercise the profession and the development of better knowledge. To date, these risks have already translated into a collapse of the confidence of the population in the safety of vaccinations, and consequently also of the professionals and institutions that promote them by subordinating the rights of families to them (I wrote about it here ). But it is easy to predict that such a "militarized" management will produce even more serious damage, on the one hand deepening the distrust of citizens towards those who care for them, on the other pushing more and more pressing research to produce only results compatible with the "state truth" ». Also in this case the problem ceases to be the declared one of vaccines ( minor cessat ) and is placed in the higher order of the method, of a conditioned and gagged medicine ( ubi maior ).
If the petition on climate change had asked the editors to raise the cultural level of the interlocutors I would have been among the first to subscribe to it, because in fact the debates are often poorly represented to the public wanting to concede more to the needs of communication and spectacularization than to the competence, to thesis parity (the reference to a very young Swede is not entirely accidental). But here we ask a very different thing, something that has nothing to do with the climate, nor with science. Here we ask for a method : that of imposing a thesis – it does not matter which – not by informing the citizens, but by depriving them of the information produced by a part of the community of scholars, who would find themselves deprived of the opportunity to provide the public with the elements necessary to make a choice democratically.
The fallacy of calling into question a power, political or media, to settle scientific controversies and decide which " fake news " to silence is made evident by the fact that power by definition represents the interests of the strongest. Thus science would become the handmaid of the strong , not of the truths, however perfectible and provisional, that we need. Unfortunately, the initiative we have focused on is yet another application of this fallacy, which has already become a system of thought in a large part of the public and the political class. To denounce this widespread temptation, I contributed this year to founding the Eunoè association, whose " Manifesto for science " represents an attempt to restore dignity to the scientific profession and to the politics that scientists must use, but not follow especially make them servants.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Il Pedante at the URL http://ilpedante.org/post/ubi-maior-una-petizione-sul-clima on Sat, 09 Nov 2019 04:02:00 PST.