Jeremy C Kester

“It was, Stern thought, a classic real-world scientific problem. Weighing risks, weighing uncertainties. Most people never understood that the majority of scientific problems took this form. Acid rain, global warming, environmental cleanup, cancer risks—these complex questions were always a balancing act, a judgement call. How good was the research? How trustworthy were the scientists who had done the work? How reliable was the computer simulation? How significant were the future projections? These questions arose again and again. Certainly the media never bothered with the complexities, since they made bad headlines. As a result, people thought science was cut and dried, in a way that it never was. Even the most established concepts—like the idea that germs cause disease—were not as thoroughly proven as people believed.”

From Timeline by Michael Crichton

In keeping with the theme from yesterday’s post on Michael Crichton, here is a passage from his book, Timeline. Given the last few years of Covid hysteria (rightly or wrongly provoked) and the prognostications of “follow the science”, this is a chief reminder that science itself is a process… an imperfect one at that.

Funny how truth can often be found in greater abundance within the pages of fiction than in non-fiction.