"What follows is a concept that might be disconcerting. In science, our business is not seeking “truth”; we leave that to religious professionals. As Nobel laureate (Physiology or Medicine, 1996) Peter Doherty says: “If you want absolutes speak to a politician or a pope.” No scientist sets out to mislead, but no scientist can labor and bring forth “The Truth.”
It is nothing short of hubris for a scientist to cast his/her scientific results as truth. Just wait 10 years, and someone will come along with better instrumentation and understanding and show you were wrong! Settled science is a preposterous idea that only politicians hold. I teach that uncertainty in science is not a bad thing, and if a student thinks otherwise, he (or she) needs to get over it! True, if your uncertainty, despite your best effort, is too high, your conclusions may be limited, but that’s the job. Live with it. No, embrace it or sell real estate.And herein lies my problem with Dr. Fauci. In so many of his briefings, press conferences, interviews (the guy loves the camera!), and recent books, he has too often implied (or worse, stated) that science is truth, even to the point of asking that we infer that he, himself, is the science. That meant that any criticism of Fauci was taken to be a rejection of science and, by extension, a rejection of truth. This is utter nonsense. Scientific results are not truth; no scientist* ever speaks in terms of “truth.”
That Fauci has done this time and again is most surprising, given his experiences during the HIV/AIDS epidemic; he struggled for years trying to save patients and do the research required to manage this complex disease. He, of all people, must understand uncertainty. Though I admire him greatly, I think that, unfortunately, he gave into the hubris that tempts all scientists.
In his book, Expect the Unexpected, Fauci says of President Trump, “It was clear that some of the things he was saying were contradictory to the scientific facts.”
